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Post by Raymond306 on Apr 6, 2017 21:03:33 GMT -6
Tonight the U.S. military launch 50 or more cruise missiles at nerve gas storage facilities on a Syrian air base talking out 18% of Syria's military air capability.
The early consensus was that President Trump sent a clear message to the Assad government in Syria.
I watched the coverage on Fox News Channel for a couple of hours and it took them nearly an 45 minutes after *I* first thought about it, to get around to mentioning that the Syrians weren't the only ones to get a message. I thought about how the news comes as Trump was holding a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The President, along with his Secretary of State have stated in the last week that the time for talking with North Korea was over. And Trump specifically said that China needs to do more about getting the leash back on Kim Jung Hog, adding "if China can't take care of it, we will."
I think there are a couple of lessons that can be taken away from tonight's cruise missile strike. 1) Barack Obama is no longer president and we are no longer drawing meaningless red lines in the sand, and 2) The U.S. is, once again, willing and able to lead from the front and we don't need permission from anyone else to do it.
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Post by Raymond306 on Aug 8, 2017 17:47:40 GMT -6
I looked around the "Political Caucus" and thought this thread would be the most logical for the next posting. According to the Washington Examiner it would appear that push is coming to shove in the U.S./N. Korean diplomatic relationship: The real significance of the story is what was reported in the next paragraph: A spokesman for the Trump Administration said earlier this afternoon that the "appeasement [of North Korea] ended on January 20, 2017." This has been a long time coming. The kook leadership of North Korea has been appeased by the past 4 U.S. presidents starting with George H.W. Bush, followed by Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In short it's far past time for the butt-kissing to end. Appeasement to achieve desirable results didn't work with Hitler in the 1930s, it didn't work with the Soviet Union through the 70s, and it hasn't produced any favorable results with North Korea. Earlier today, following President's Trumps announcement, N. Korea's King Jong Un continued to poke a stick at the hornet's nest: I fear the time is soon coming when words will be replaced by actions.
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Post by chrunch on Aug 8, 2017 23:29:13 GMT -6
I am not sure what the US policy is now. But back when I was fighting the Cold War on the West German front in the late 80's, the US had the following NBC (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) (Reagan) policy.
Nuclear, we can first strike.
Biological, we will never use.
Chemical, we can use if used on us first.
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Post by Raymond306 on Aug 9, 2017 7:03:52 GMT -6
I know there is a certain psychological comfort to be found among certain politicians and their like-minded constituents holding to the "we never commit the first strike" mantra which automatically confers the moral high ground upon the United States should hostilities flare up between "us" and "them" whoever "they" might be. In the past MAD was thought to be (and apparently was) sufficient to prevent an all out war between nuclear armed adversaries. But the world has changed. We now live in a world where a sizable percentage of its inhabitants are comfortable with, and even bestow honor public honors upon suicide bombers. What good is MAD against a people who are perfectly willing, even anxious to die in order to advance the cause? In the current situation we have a quirky (to be kind) dictator who has no problem starving, literally starving his own people in order to create nuclear weapons and a way to deliver those weapons anywhere in the world; a dictator who is happy as a clam issuing threat after threat after threat of nuclear annihilation against the United States. This is a man/child who might cringe at the thought of several hundred thousand of his own people being exterminated in some massive military reprisal?
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