The other day, reading something from a forgettable writer, I started out laughing at the presentation of U.S. president Donald Trump as a savant. Please understand that a savant is someone with debilitating mental problems or deficiencies but also has one or more remarkable skills. In Mr. Trump’s case, I would suggest his skills are like those of a stopped clock. He can get it right, once or twice a day.
But when the writer suggests that Trump got it right to withdraw all American troops from Syria, he seems as lost as Trump. I do not care what Trump’s advisors said as to why the Americans should stage the withdrawal; Trump was signing a death warrant for the Kurds.
And no matter how Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin handle it, genocide is a crime against humanity. They must think they can back the Kurds into the hands of the remaining Daesh fighters in Northern Syria and claim it is the Daesh that did the dirty deed. Trump is helping by pulling out the witnesses for them.
The writer goes on to claim that Daesh only exists as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. This is wrong as Daesh (under the ISIS name) was already pledging support for al-Qaeda, three years before President George W. Bush made the mistake of invading Iraq again.
What the writer really proves is that he does not understand Mr. Trump. In fact, Mr. Trump frustrates him. He claims Trump does not read and insults him unnecessarily by saying he does not think.
Maybe Mr. Trump thinks too much. As an insomniac, he seems to do his most irresponsible thinking early in the morning, when he feeds his more ridiculous thoughts to his followers on Twitter.
But he is certainly no savant. What he is good at are those things that made him very successful in his father’s business. It is a business that attracts the showman type, the bluffer and the consummate liar. Trump is just your garden variety womanizer and con man. His very serious weakness is his narcissism.
Mr. Trump represents a real and present danger to the United States of America in its foreign relations. He is a child playing with grenades. The country can eventually recover most of its reputation and regain some of its leadership among nations. It can hopefully fix the weaknesses in its political structure that allowed him into office.
But the next two years in Washington will not be fun.
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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry
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