“It’s easy to explain, once you understand that there is no such thing as foreign policy: all policy is domestic.”
Read more: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2017/04/11/behind-trump-syria-turnabout/
“With President Trump’s undeclared attack on Syria, a sovereign and independent nation, he has confirmed, once and for all, that he is just another foreign interventionist, no different from his predecessors Barack Obama and George W. Bush. That means, of course, another four years of war, bombings, assassinations, shootings, terrorism, war on terrorism, travel restrictions, walls, surveillance, incarceration, POW camps, torture, out of control federal spending and debt, and everything else that comes with an imperialist and interventionist national security state.”
Read more: http://www.fff.org/2017/04/07/trumps-new-war-america/
“The Trump administration’s justification for its airstrikes on Syria manages somehow to be even weaker than Obama’s Libya arguments. The time to push back is running out for Congress. If they can’t do it with a deeply, widely unpopular president who in his first three months in office has antagonized not just members of the opposition party but members of his own as well, they may never be able to.”
Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2017/04/07/congress-and-potus-agree-the-president-c
“In October, Trump blasted then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton‘s position on Syria — that the U.S. military should take out al-Assad’s airfields, the exact type of strike Trump ordered Thursday — by saying attacking a Russian-backed government could start World War III.”
Read more: https://mic.com/articles/173471/trump-world-war-iii-attacking-syria-wwiii-ww3
“Week by week, country by country, the Pentagon is quietly seizing more control over warfighting decisions, sending hundreds more troops to war with little public debate and seeking greater authority to battle extremists across the Middle East and Africa. This week it was Somalia, where President Donald Trump gave the U.S. military more authority to conduct offensive airstrikes on al-Qaida-linked militants. Next week it could be Yemen, where military leaders want to provide more help for the United Arab Emirates’ battle against Iranian-backed rebels.”
Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/under-trump-pentagon-seizing-more-control-over-warfighting-135021268.html
“A senior administration official told reporters on Friday that the president acted pursuant to his authority under Article 2 of the Constitution, which makes him commander in chief. And, the aide said, top officials including Vice President Mike Pence are in ‘constant contact with congressional leaders.’ On Thursday night, Trump laid out conventional U.S. rationales for unilateral military action in a way that suggests he does not see a need for formal authority from Congress.”
“Twenty-four hours after the alleged incident – with the United Nations still refusing to say whether there had been a gas attack, or, if so, who is responsible – the President of the United States does a complete turnaround, ditches a campaign promise, and takes us to the brink of a greatly expanded war in Syria.”
Read more: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2017/04/06/trump-versus-trumpism-syria-in-the-crosshairs/
“‘It’s pricing in a fantasy about a Trump stimulus that simply isn’t going to happen. There will be no tax cut, there will be no 15 or 20 dollar a share reduction in the corporate rate.’ According to Stockman, the main catalyst for his pessimism about Trump’s policies is the ‘debt ceiling trap’ that he contended will prevent tax reform, infrastructure and defense spending that have excited so many investors. Given the ‘factions’ among the Republican Party today, the former Reagan aide also believed that the political turmoil could result in a gridlock the markets don’t see coming.”
“Trump has been saying that NATO members need to pony up their required contributions to NATO. Doesn’t all that seem a bit illogical? After all, why force taxpayers, both American and European, to continue contributing their hard-earned money to an entity that is obsolete, outdated, outmoded, and old-fashioned? But as we have seen with bureaucracies, once you bring them into existence they sometimes become like a permanent cancer on the body politic.”
Read more: http://www.fff.org/2017/02/24/part-obsolete-trump-not-understand/
“In a recent appearance on CNN, [former Reagan administration director] David Stockman suggested that Trump might best spend some time actually addressing economic issues instead of the administration’s travel ban for immigrants from Middle Eastern countries, which Stockman called ‘a giant misfire.'”
https://mises.org/blog/stockman-trump-its-economy-stupid