The Crashing Stupidity of U.S. Foreign Policy

I listened to John Kerry on Morning Joe this morning, Sept 29, 2015 and was aghast at his, and by extension, Obama's, view of the world and his vision as to how the U.S. can best restore world order to Syria.  He doesn't have a clue as to how things work.

Consider Russia as guided by Putin.  Here is a man who knows what he wants and how he intends to get it.  In the Middle East it's all about oil.  That's really all it's ever been about.  You can talk "green" all you want.  The fact remains that cars, planes, ships at sea, home heating and industrial equipment will for the foreseeable future remain dependent on fossil fuels.  It's nice that people are developing solar energy, windmills and what not, but fossil fuels will be with us for a very long time -- global warming or not.  And, by "us" I include China, India and Europe.

Control the supply of gas and oil and you've got your hand on the global throat.  Putin knows that the only thing that's kept Russia afloat is Russia's oil and gas on which Europe is to a large extent dependent.  Suppose he had a finger on the oil and gas available from Iran, from Iraq, from the Gulf States and from Syria.  There's not much supposing about it and what it would do for Russia's standing in the world.

So how  best for Russia to insert itself into the Middle East?  The emergence of ISIL -- largely resulting from American stupidity -- gave Putin the perfect "in."  He will now hugely expand his presence in the Middle East by promising to destroy ISIL.  If he succeeds in that, does anyone really believe he'll pack up his fighter planes, his tanks, his rockets, and his troops and return to Russia?

But Putin not only thinks in terms of grand global strategy.  He's also thoughtful as regards his tactics.  Initially his entrance into Syria was justified by the need to destroy ISIL.  But supposing he succeeds?  How does he get to remain in the Middle East?  Why of course, through the invitation of Bashar al Assad, the titular head of Syria.  Does Russia care that Assad has been a human rights disaster for the Syrian people?  Does Russia worry that there will ultimately follow an open and fair election in Syria for finding a successor to Assad?

All the other pieces will then fall nicely into place for the Russians.  The Sunnis in Syria, though currently a majority will be ground to dust by the Russian war machine.  This will happen through the assistance of the Iranians, who will act directly, or through the Iraqis with their Shiite led military.  And, on the western side of Syria, Russia can rely on Hezbollah.

And, to all of this Kerry and Obama seem to be blind.

Under current circumstances, the worst thing any country in the Middle East once reliant on the U.S. can do is to continue relying on the U.S.

Muslims and the Presidency

Ben Carson and Donald Trump were both questioned as to whether a Muslim should be president.  Ben Carson said, no, a Muslim should not be president.  Trump said "fine" but he did say there was a problem with Muslims, implying he wouldn't like to see one as president.

Both answers, in my opinion were correct, but Trump's was the cleverer of the two.  To clarify what Mr. Carson said -- when he said a Muslim shouldn't be president of the U.S. -- he was expressing his own opinion.  (He later clarified his statement by saying that if it were a Muslim that shared this country's values, he would have no problem with a Muslim president.)  Either way he did not call for a legal restriction barring a Muslim from the presidency, which, of course, would be unconstitutional.

Trump avoided the PR pitfalls of this question by simply saying that, of course, a Muslim could be president but Muslims did present a problem.  That answer may not make Muslims happy, but it prevented the kind of brouhaha that Carson got into.

So what's the bottom line?  Here's my take:

All religions create a problems for democracies that have mixed ethnicities in their population.  Let me explain.  Sweden, before it opened itself up to a massive influx of Muslims from the Middle East, was a very homogeneous place.  It had little or no experience with assimilating different ethnicities.  It now finds it has to learn -- and learn fast.  The Japanese are an even more insular country than Sweden.  This is a country that accepts no one other than another Japanese.  They once tried to encourage people of Japanese ancestry who had lived in Brazil for some period of time to return to Japan.  It proved an unsuccessful venture.

The U.S. has been assimilating more people from all over the world longer than any other country.  And, truth be told, we've been the most successful at it.  There are several reasons for this.  When the country was created it started off with people from different parts of Europe.  We had those with an English heritage, with an Irish heritage, German, Scandinavian, Italian, French, Spanish and a smattering of others.  It included Protestants, Catholics and Jews.  Some rough spots were encountered.  But we smoothed them out with reasonable success.  The first thing we did was to add to our Constitution an amendment separating Church and State.

But, even with this fix to our founding document, opening the minds of the citizenry took a bit longer.
There was early hostility to the idea of a Roman Catholic person as President.  That was dealt with by JFK.  Another barrier broken down was letting a black man become presidenct.  And, now we face the entry of Muslims onto the political scene.  But this problem too will be resolved.

The key to dealing with the question of a Muslim president is the realization that Muslims, like Catholics, or, for that matter, Protestants and Jews, espouse different values.  What country is more Catholic than Italy?  And, yet, Italians practice birth control to the same extent as non-Catholics in less Catholic countries.

It's immaterial whether a candidate is Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu.  What we want to know is whether embodies American values.  "American values" are something we can debate, but clearly they do not include polygamy, restrictions on women, hostility toward gays and mandates such as those included in Sharia.

Let me leave you with one last question: How would you feel about a candidate who self identified as a Scientologist?

The Much Underrated Donald Trump

As noted earlier, Trump has made remarks that would have wiped out any other candidate.  A great deal has been said and written as to how and why Trump is different.  We need not dwell on that here.

Here I would like to address two other questions: namely, how long can this go on with Trump and, two, would Trump make a good president.  Let's start with how long this can go on for Trump.  My answer would be "a very long time."  Most people assume that what you see in Trump is a strong field general.  He can read the terrain and make the necessary field adjustments to bring in a fair number of women and Latinos.  Let's see how and when he does the necessary flanking movement.

If he's got the skills to pull this off, he'll make a good president -- maybe a great president.  It's high time we got one.