Trump - Global Affairs

[TeamsterGrrrl]

France.

[kscarbel2]

I have a very bad feeling about this. It won't be like Syria........the DPRK will fight tooth and nail like the Vietnamese did. And they have nukes and are seemingly willing to use them. I fear devastation in South Korea and Japan, and maybe even China if the DPRK decides that Beijing has allied itself with the US. The radioactive fallout would be disastrous. It's noteworthy that Air China has now ceased all flights to Pyongyang.....a message sent.

.

.

 

[Keith Pommerening]

5 hours ago, TeamsterGrrrl said:

France.

Kennedy and LBJ were french, here all this time I thought they were dumbacrats.  Kennedy tried to stir things up with Russia too.  Got lucky on that one.

[41chevy]

38 minutes ago, Keith Pommerening said:

Kennedy and LBJ were french, here all this time I thought they were dumbacrats.  Kennedy tried to stir things up with Russia too.  Got lucky on that one.

What she failed to follow through with that France asked the U.S. for assistance fighting Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap , so Ike send advisors to help. Typical French they bailed and left the ARVN asking for help. Ike was more concerned with building up NATO and the fear of the USSR and Joe Stalin invading Europe than Vietnam and missed true situation that French  president Vincent Auriol  created.

I'm afraid her true Berkley views of Vietnam is primarily protests and spitting on us.

[TeamsterGrrrl]

More like the French finally wised up and pulled out of Vietnam, took us a couple more decades to learn the same hard lesson.

[kscarbel2]

10 hours ago, TeamsterGrrrl said:

More like the French finally wised up and pulled out of Vietnam, took us a couple more decades to learn the same hard lesson.

Dien Bien Phu

[41chevy]

Our military forays have always been stupid and unwarrented from the mid 1800's to now, so whats your point?

[TeamsterGrrrl]

Maybe we should stop this stupidity...

[41chevy]

47 minutes ago, TeamsterGrrrl said:

Maybe we should stop this stupidity...

Well why? I learned from you and Kevin that we got involved in all of our past wars for three reasons. A- we are stupid to avoid them for any reason or means necessary, B- it's all for the Republicans egos, C) if we followed the European ways we would not be in the mess we are now mired in un win-able wars.  You both have made me embarrassed to have a father who was a WWII veteran and for myself to be a Vietnam Veteran by proving we were stupid for going to fight in any war for any reason while the smart countries profit from our asinine actions. 

Like Vietnam I always thought it was more then the French being smart and us being stupid. I truly thought there were also other factors.  I learned much from the two most knowledgeable people on this site about our military and republican stupidity..

Edited April 15, 2017 by 41chevy

[TS7]

A lot of good men have died, so some on this site can post whatever they want on this site.

[Bobby j]

2 hours ago, 41chevy said:

Well why? I learned from you and Kevin that we got involved in all of our past wars for three reasons. A- we are stupid to avoid them for any reason or means necessary, B- it's all for the Republicans egos, C) if we followed the European ways we would not be in the mess we are now mired in un win-able wars.  You both have made me embarrassed to have a father who was a WWII veteran and for myself to be a Vietnam Veteran by proving we were stupid for going to fight in any war for any reason while the smart countries profit from our asinine actions. 

Like Vietnam I always thought it was more then the French being smart and us being stupid. I truly thought there were also other factors.  I learned much from the two most knowledgeable people on this site about our military and republican stupidity..

'41chevy....I don't know you personally but have followed your post on here and you seem to be anything but stupid....you and your father are heroes to me as y'all answered the call to serve and in som way made America the great country that it is.....it gets a little worse everyday to listen to these armchair left leaning liberals that belittle everything that makes America great.....this coming from a backward thinking southerner or whatever I was called the other day......Bobby j.

[grayhair]

3 hours ago, 41chevy said:

You both have made me embarrassed to have a father who was a WWII veteran and for myself to be a Vietnam Veteran by proving we were stupid for going to fight in any war for any reason while the smart countries profit from our asinine actions. 

Yo, '41, I salute you and your dad!  My heartfelt thanks for your service.

[kscarbel2]

7 hours ago, 41chevy said:

I learned from you and Kevin that we got involved in all of our past wars for three reasons.

A- we are stupid to avoid them for any reason or means necessary,

B- it's all for the Republicans egos,

C) if we followed the European ways we would not be in the mess we are now mired in un win-able wars.

Certainly not true of me Paul.

Here, I was speaking of the DPRK situation, and not WW2 and Vietnam.

And anyway, aren't we simply having a healthy discussion? I enjoy hearing differing thoughts. I always walk away with at least one new nugget of thought that influences my judgement from that day forward.  We'll never agree on everything, but that's okay........the world (and BMT) would be an awfully dull place if we all thought exactly the same.

[TS7]

Bill Clinton has a lot to do with DPRK situation today.

[TeamsterGrrrl]

As long as you want to blame someone who has no control over the current Korean situation, why not blame the presidents during the Korean War, Truman and Eisenhower?

[TeamsterGrrrl]

You guys are living in the past... Mack has built a 12 liter engine by now, and with 4 valves per cylinder to boot! They even have something called a Maxidyne that only needs half as much gearshifting, and you start the engine by pushing a button on the dash!

[TS7]

Your free to ride your bike because of things Truman and Eisenhower did.

[TeamsterGrrrl]

Truman deserves credit for bringing world war II to a successful end. Eisenhower? Nice guy, but I don't ride the Interstates much.

[41chevy]

But you made a living driving on them

Edited April 18, 2017 by 41chevy

[kscarbel2]

Sadly, America's interstates are falling apart due to decades of neglect. It's as though, once built, they were forgotten. True, the cement construction was incredibly durable, far more than asphalt. Correct me anywhere that I'm wrong, but I believe it was constructed over the 1956-1992 period.

Really, the high quality of workmanship and design, leading to far more years of use than design-intended, is testimony to why it pays to do things right.

The interstate system compares with the local roads that are repaved irregardless of need, as local pavers pay off (bribe) municipal officials, and use increasingly shoddy workmanship to ensure repeat business.

[TeamsterGrrrl]

1 hour ago, 41chevy said:

But you made a living driving on them

Put in most of my trucking miles off the interstate- US12, US52, WI29, US169, etc....

[TS7]

Kscarbel every state built there interstates to there standards, with Federal oversight. A interstate built in 1962 might have had a 20 year pavement life. So maybe it was overlaid in 1985. Now in 2017 it needs to be rebuilt and rebuilt under traffic, not easy or cheap. Standards and specifications are much higher today. Where are all these bribes? I have worked on interstate highways in 5 states since 1973 and quality is much higher today.

[kscarbel2]

"We have tremendous trade deficits with everybody, but the big one is with China. ... And I told them, 'You want to make a great deal?' Solve the problem in North Korea. That's worth having deficits. And that's worth having not as good a trade deal as I would normally be able to make."

President Donald Trump to The Wall Street Journal  /  April 12, 2017

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-says-he-offered-china-better-trade-terms-in-exchange-for-help-on-north-korea-1492027556

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"We had made a pretty big point of making it clear that we weren't willing to sacrifice our domestic economic interests for the sake of some foreign policy issue. We should be careful about 'paying' China -- in terms of standing down on economic issues -- for doing what is in their interest already. Conceivably, they'd prefer not to see instability and military escalation on the Korean Peninsula."

Michael Froman - US trade representative under Obama.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We "never conceded a trade point with China to get assistance on a security topic."

Robert Zoellick - George W. Bush's administration trade representative and later deputy secretary of state.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"It opens up the thinking in everyone's mind around the world that they can haggle for a better deal and get the US to give up on longstanding positions. That is not going to instill confidence.Every administration since Nixon has not fallen for this, and it's the kind of ploy that I used to see on sophomore papers on East Asia in college. If you are Japan or Taiwan, you start to wonder if your interests might get traded. It introduces a level of uncertainty and suggests that there are no principles to US policy."

Michael Green - George W. Bush's administration National Security Council senior director for Asia.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"You want the Chinese to do the right on North Korea because it genuinely is a threat ... not as a favor.

Evan Medeiros – Obama administration National Security Council's senior director for Asian affairs.

[kscarbel2]

A huge shift in (official) U.S. foreign policy.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tillerson: Pushing human rights abroad 'creates obstacles' to US interests

ABC News  /  May 3, 2017

In advocating for America’s interests abroad, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said today that American values must be separate from American foreign policy, even as they “guide” it.

“Guiding all our foreign policy actions are our fundamental values -- our values around freedom, human dignity, the way people are treated,” he said. “Those are our values. Those are not our policies, ” Tillerson told State Department employees in a speech today.

What that means in practice, he said, is that sometimes values have to take a back seat to economic interests or national security.

“If we condition too heavily that others must adopt this value that we’ve come to after a long history of our own, it really creates obstacles to our ability to advance our national security interests, our economic interests,” he said, arguing the U.S. must first ask “what are our national security interests, what are our economic prosperity interests, and then if we can advocate and advance our values, we should.”

“Brutal thugs are smiling. Human rights are not only US values.They are universal. Trump/Tillerson approach is green light for repression,” tweeted Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Obama.

[kscarbel2]

.