9/15/17: Remember when the president said he had a plan to defeat ISIS? And remember when he said, when Obama was in charge, that it was stupid to tell the terrorists an attack on Mosul was coming? The city has now fallen to Iraqi forces.
Trump decides to claim credit in a tweet: “We have made more progress in the last nine months against ISIS than the Obama Administration has made in 8 years. Must be proactive & nasty!”
The joy of tweeting is the simplicity of the arguments you can make; but the battle to defeat ISIS is complex. Know how many Iraqis, all of whom would have been blocked from coming to the U.S.A. under Trump’s first travel ban, were killed and wounded retaking Mosul?
According to a number of estimates the toll may be 8,000.
Know who came up with the policy of letting Iraqis do most of the fighting?
President Obama.
Fourteen American servicemen and service women died in combat in Iraq during all of 2016.
See how that works?
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9/16/17: During his run for president, Trump insisted he would tear up the nuclear deal with Iran as soon as he took a seat in the White House. “A businessman-turned-politician who has never held public office,” Reuters explained, “Trump called the nuclear pact a ‘disaster’ and ‘the worst deal ever negotiated’…and said it could lead to a ‘nuclear holocaust.’”
Let’s check and see how he’s doing. What! Three times, he has had a chance to put the deal in a paper shredder but decided against it. It could be because his Secretary of Defense thinks tearing up the deal would be stupid. It could be because his Secretary of State argued against withdrawal from the agreement. You can read up on the complexities of the issue if you want.
Or, if you’re a Trump fan, you can just wait for the next
idiotic tweet. You know it won’t be long.
Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency, tasked with monitoring Iranian compliance, reports that Iran is in compliance. (See also: 10/3/17.)
Do our most important allies support the deal? Great Britain?
Yes. Germany? Yes. How about France? Yes.
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9/17/17: Rex Tillerson is busy bringing “business efficiency” to the State Department. This year only 140 U.S. officials, policy experts and scientists will be attending opening sessions of the U.N. General Assembly. Last year twice as many attended. Therefore: big savings for taxpayers!
Like setting fire to Maryland.
Also: no one from the U.S. delegation will utter the words “climate change,” unless in a sentence including the word “hoax.”
As a bonus for dictators, Tillerson will send no representatives to meetings devoted to promoting democracy. No State Department personnel will attend meetings on human trafficking, on oceans and the environment, on cyber issues, on military issues, or on foreign assistance.
Meanwhile, extreme temperatures – as in climate change – lead to an increase in wildfires across the American West. On this summer day there are 23 active blazes in four states. A fire in Montana incinerates 78 square miles of forest in a single night. In Oregon, a major wildfire leaps the Columbia River. This has never happened before, and 150 hikers are trapped by flames. Luckily, they are airlifted to safety. For the year, 8.3 million acres have been torched.
That’s like setting fire to Maryland.
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