Two things that have not been adequately addressed in the coverage of the Signal scandal:
1) Trump seems not to have been involved in the decision to go ahead with military strikes. It was all left to Stephen Miller, JD Vance and Hegseth. In response to questions from the press, Trump did not even seem to know any of the details or actual…
Two things that have not been adequately addressed in the coverage of the Signal scandal:
1) Trump seems not to have been involved in the decision to go ahead with military strikes. It was all left to Stephen Miller, JD Vance and Hegseth. In response to questions from the press, Trump did not even seem to know any of the details or actual planning. Also, there were no military officers in the group, a truly stunning, frightening and reckless-beyond-all-meaning failure of Hegseth, Waltz, Vance, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, et al. Stephen Miller is now directing US military strikes? WTAbsoluteF? I encourage the Bulwark to cover this in future posts.
2) Vance's open animosity toward and extortion of Europe and his cavalier attitude towards military strikes as policy/monetary gamesmanship - Vance, unlike Trump, is supposed to be smart and well-educated yet he seems completely unaware of the sacrifices that our European and global allies made in the name of protecting the US through NATO and other alliances. The only time that Article 5 has ever been invoked was after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on the US. In Afghanistan, our coalition partners suffered the following numbers of military deaths: UK - 457, Canada - 159, France - 90, Germany - 62, Italy - 53, Poland - 44, Denmark - 43, Australia - 41, Spain - 35, Georgia - 32, Romania - 27, Netherlands - 25, Turkey - 15, Czech Republic - 14, New Zealand - 10, Norway - 10, plus 15 other countries in single digits.* The US had 7.96 deaths per million population, the UK 7.25, Canada (the target of tariffs and annexation threats) 4.68, and Denmark (one of the targets of threats to Greenland) 7.82. The UK also had 179 deaths in Iraq fighting on behalf of the US, Poland had 30 and Denmark had 7.** Yet JD Vance (and Stephen Miller) seem to think this is only about money and (supposed) power. One suspects that every one of our allies worldwide, who used to freely and confidently share their intelligence with the US, is now reviewing their policies and almost certainly avoiding sharing anything that they fear might be transmitted over insecure channels on personal cell phones. First in mind for Vance was not the pilots risking their lives or the likely innocent civilians killed by bombing an apartment block in Yemen, no, it was the message sent by helping European shipping and how much Europe was going to have to pay the US back for the strikes. He seems not to understand that the power and influence of the US comes from having confident, trustworthy allies across the globe. Now, more and more, the US will be on its own.
66 days. That's how long it has taken Musk/Trump/Vance to destroy nearly 250 years of work on our democratic republic and 80 years of work on NATO. And Congressional Republicans either sit by and watch, or throw gasoline onto the fire.
Mark, thank you for including all those coalition casualty numbers (with per capita analysis) in your comments. The negative attitude of the Trump administration towards our NATO allies, who sacrificed blood and treasure in support our country after 9/11, just enrages me. Of course, everything this administration does enrages me, but this is more personal to me because of my own military and government service background. I just came back from a military history tour run by a UK tour company which included some retired military officers from the UK (including our historian). I was ready to apologize to everyone, but they treated me just great, understanding that there are still internationalist Americans who fully support our involvement in NATO.
Two things that have not been adequately addressed in the coverage of the Signal scandal:
1) Trump seems not to have been involved in the decision to go ahead with military strikes. It was all left to Stephen Miller, JD Vance and Hegseth. In response to questions from the press, Trump did not even seem to know any of the details or actual planning. Also, there were no military officers in the group, a truly stunning, frightening and reckless-beyond-all-meaning failure of Hegseth, Waltz, Vance, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, et al. Stephen Miller is now directing US military strikes? WTAbsoluteF? I encourage the Bulwark to cover this in future posts.
2) Vance's open animosity toward and extortion of Europe and his cavalier attitude towards military strikes as policy/monetary gamesmanship - Vance, unlike Trump, is supposed to be smart and well-educated yet he seems completely unaware of the sacrifices that our European and global allies made in the name of protecting the US through NATO and other alliances. The only time that Article 5 has ever been invoked was after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on the US. In Afghanistan, our coalition partners suffered the following numbers of military deaths: UK - 457, Canada - 159, France - 90, Germany - 62, Italy - 53, Poland - 44, Denmark - 43, Australia - 41, Spain - 35, Georgia - 32, Romania - 27, Netherlands - 25, Turkey - 15, Czech Republic - 14, New Zealand - 10, Norway - 10, plus 15 other countries in single digits.* The US had 7.96 deaths per million population, the UK 7.25, Canada (the target of tariffs and annexation threats) 4.68, and Denmark (one of the targets of threats to Greenland) 7.82. The UK also had 179 deaths in Iraq fighting on behalf of the US, Poland had 30 and Denmark had 7.** Yet JD Vance (and Stephen Miller) seem to think this is only about money and (supposed) power. One suspects that every one of our allies worldwide, who used to freely and confidently share their intelligence with the US, is now reviewing their policies and almost certainly avoiding sharing anything that they fear might be transmitted over insecure channels on personal cell phones. First in mind for Vance was not the pilots risking their lives or the likely innocent civilians killed by bombing an apartment block in Yemen, no, it was the message sent by helping European shipping and how much Europe was going to have to pay the US back for the strikes. He seems not to understand that the power and influence of the US comes from having confident, trustworthy allies across the globe. Now, more and more, the US will be on its own.
66 days. That's how long it has taken Musk/Trump/Vance to destroy nearly 250 years of work on our democratic republic and 80 years of work on NATO. And Congressional Republicans either sit by and watch, or throw gasoline onto the fire.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_casualties_in_Afghanistan
**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
Mark, thank you for including all those coalition casualty numbers (with per capita analysis) in your comments. The negative attitude of the Trump administration towards our NATO allies, who sacrificed blood and treasure in support our country after 9/11, just enrages me. Of course, everything this administration does enrages me, but this is more personal to me because of my own military and government service background. I just came back from a military history tour run by a UK tour company which included some retired military officers from the UK (including our historian). I was ready to apologize to everyone, but they treated me just great, understanding that there are still internationalist Americans who fully support our involvement in NATO.