The Americans who voted for Donald Trump wanted a disrupter, and that’s what Santa brought them this Christmas/Hanukah/Kwanzaa. After two years of denying his inner Donald, and under fire from all sides, Trump finally went full Trump. That is, he actually did what he promised, and the establishment lost its collective Schiff.
They really thought this was it for Trump. They thought they finally had him. The GOP just lost the House. The Fed raised interest rates as the market slumped – for totally economic reasons and not to hurt Trump’s chances, and if you say different you are a crazy traitor Russian emoluments treason guy. Ann Coulter was dissing him about the wall so hard he unfollowed her on Twitter. The Mueller festival of elite onanism peaked with the Flynn fiasco.
But when all hell breaks loose, Trump thrives. And he thrives through disruption. He stopped trying to behave – yeah, the last two years was him behaving in an attempt to work with the establishment – and started doing what he said he would do. He went back to disrupting the elite consensus. And that has freaked out the squares.
Trump campaigned on his promise to build a wall. He told Frisco Nancy and Chuck Odd that he would shut down the government if he didn’t get his wall money. The Republican establishment, which does not really want a wall because the GOP corporate donor class doesn’t want to turn off the spigot of cheap foreign peasant labor even though those illegals are all future Democrat voters, led Trump on and on. They put continuing resolution after continuing resolution in front of him, each time promising to really, truly, cross-my-heart-and-hope-you-die fight next time. He gave them a chance. He gave them too many chances. And they expected he’d go along again this time. But conservatives drew the line and Trump realized that he needed to do what he did best to get back inside the ruling class’s decision cycle.
He needed to disrupt, so he kept his promise. He refused to play along with the wall scam anymore. And the gleeful Dem senators singing carols as they expected to get away with another grift ended their serenade with a sad trombone. Now the government is going to shut down, and Trump has zero to lose by holding out.
Then he cranked up the disruption when he announced he was getting out of Syria, and it’s clear that Afghanistan is probably next. The establishment reacted with surprise and horror. It’s hard to understand the “surprise” part, since he campaigned on getting us the hell out of foreign hellholes and has always wanted to. Again, he played along, giving the establishment a chance. And another. And nothing happened. So now he’s done. He’s doing what he promised.
Is this withdrawal a good idea? That depends – we definitely need to provide for the safety of our Kurdish allies, and how that will happen remains unclear at this writing. ISIS is a danger; departing necessarily accepts risk. While the conservative anti-nation building attitude is blind to our successes doing it (like in Kosovo), neither Syria nor Afghanistan seem particularly fertile soil for it. And who is eager to dump more money into them after all the trillions we’ve wasted since 2001?
But beyond the substantive considerations is the fact that the overwrought reaction of the establishment to the idea of actually ending a war supports Trump’s plan. What is our objective anyway? What’s the endstate? In the War College they taught us we should have those things. But the screamers never tell us – instead, it’s always invective about how we love Putin, or how we are stupid or whatever, when we ask, “Okay, how much more in time, money and American lives should we devote to these projects?” We never get a timeline, or a dollar figure, or the number of coffins that they consider whatever their unarticulated objective happens to be is worth.
We keep hearing ISIS might return and we have to stay to stamp out those creeps again, and fine, killing jihadists is cool, but if the goal is to keep Mideastern jerks from being themselves then we will never, ever leave. The elite always denies it wants us to be the world’s policemen, but then it always demands that we keep walking a beat that never ends.
Oh, and of course, Russians, because it’s always Russians – or, at least, it has always been Russians Russians Russians since Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit lost and it will continue to be Russians Russians Russians until Trump is gone and the libs can get back to sucking up to them. Supposedly pulling out our 2200 troops in Syria will allow the maybe 5,000 Russians there to take over the whole country or something. Really? The Chicago PD has over 12,000 cops and do you think they control that one city?
The Syria decision is debatable – I’ve got concerns – with respectable people on both sides (and a lot of idiots who just jumped onto the “stay forever” side only because Trump wants to leave). But there are two key facts to consider, facts our elite superiors always overlook.
The first is that America’s primary military threat today is no longer Muslim weirdos. They are still a threat, and we should still hunt them down, but the real threat is a high intensity conventional war with North Korea and/or China. We are not ready for one, and devoting our efforts to make the barbaric denizens of the desert into peaceful small “d” democrats is not helping us get ready for a land-sea-air-space-cyber battle against a real enemy that has real weapon systems. The thing we need to focus on now, after 17 years of capping Bedouin savages, is the coming war in the Pacific. And that war will be absolutely certain to come if our enemies see that we are not prepared to fight and win it.
The second big issue is that outside the Beltway, where the consensus is that we have to stay in Syria and Afghanistan forever without an articulable strategic objective because we just have to, people want these wars finished. Done. Over. Let the Dems become the Party of War. Throw us in that briar patch.
The Normals are the people whose sons and daughters do the vast majority for the dying of the hazy visions of the DC anointed, and they are tired of it. Make no mistake, they love General Mattis. He’s a hero. But they also see that he does not agree with the president and instead, he agrees with the establishment view, so they get why he had to go. He does not support what they, after 17 years of sacrificing blood and treasure, have elected Donald Trump to do. Note that they also respect the class he showed in articulating his views and departing instead being a petty mean girl like so many DC duds.
Oh, and it’s not just the regular folks who feel this way. Remember The Weekly Standard, that glorified cruise ship brochure that never met a war it didn’t like someone else to go fight? It couldn’t even stay solvent within the conservative movement. Conservatism has changed. The era of unrestrained hawkishness among conservatives is over. And Trump gets that even if the empty suits that make up the GOPe does not.
Trump was elected to stop illegal immigration. The elite does not want that. Trump was also elected to end these Middle East wars. The elite does not want that either. So, under siege and surrounded, Trump charged straight into the ambush, just like they taught us at Fort Benning. And in doing so, he has placed himself on the side of the people outside the Beltway while getting those inside to double-down on policies Normal Americans hate.
Way to get inside their OODA loop, Mr. President. Disruption works. Trump being Trump got him into the White House, and Trump being Trump might just keep him there for another six years.
This Christmas, delight your conservative friends, get your apolitical friends woke, and really, really annoy your liberal pals with my newest novel Wildfire! It asks what America would look like if it split into red and blue halves, and the answer involves lots of action and mockery of liberals. Check it out, along with the first two novels in the series! You won’t regret it. Libs will, but not you.
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