Can Trump Drain the Foggy Bottom Swamp?
Mar 21, 2017 20:08:43 GMT -5
Post by avordvet on Mar 21, 2017 20:08:43 GMT -5
Can Trump Drain the Foggy Bottom Swamp?
Entrenched State Department interests will be tough to defeat.
March 20, 2017, Bruce Thornton
President Trump has proposed a 31 percent cut in the State Department’s budget, and the denizens of Foggy Bottom are howling. All the usual delusions about diplomacy, foreign aid, “soft power,” and “engagement” are being trotted out to rationalize the $47 billions of taxpayer money State spends. What we don’t hear about are examples of diplomatic successes that would justify maintaining an overfunded bureaucracy mired in internationalist received wisdom.
In fact, many of the defenses of “soft power” are positively surreal in their disconnect from reality. Here’s Stephen J. Hadley, national security adviser to President George W. Bush, talking to the New York Times: “We learned in both Iraq and Afghanistan that our military needs an effective civilian partner if victories on the battlefields are going to be converted into a sustainable peace.” So how’s that creating “an effective civilian partner” working out? For all the “three cups of tea” voodoo, fifteen years of war, repeated attempts at a “negotiated settlement” with the murderous Taliban, and $2.4 trillion in taxpayer money, Afghanistan still faces an existential threat from the Taliban, the most fearsome of some 20 terrorist groups who control 35 percent of the country. The Haqqani outfit, called the “Kennedys of the Taliban,” continues to perpetrate most of the spectacular terror attacks against civilian and military targets. Civilian deaths from such attacks set a record in 2016, including a 25 percent increase in children killed.
Not much peace there, sustainable or otherwise. Nor is the track-record of soft power very good elsewhere. Soft power and diplomatic engagement got us a nuclear-armed thug regime in North Korea, and is on track to turn Iran, ruled by an anti-Semitic apocalyptic cult, into a nuclear power. Nor did soft power stop the slaughter in the Balkans, in Darfur, in Congo, in Rwanda, and today in Nigeria and Syria.
www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266164/can-trump-drain-foggy-bottom-swamp-bruce-thornton
Entrenched State Department interests will be tough to defeat.
March 20, 2017, Bruce Thornton
President Trump has proposed a 31 percent cut in the State Department’s budget, and the denizens of Foggy Bottom are howling. All the usual delusions about diplomacy, foreign aid, “soft power,” and “engagement” are being trotted out to rationalize the $47 billions of taxpayer money State spends. What we don’t hear about are examples of diplomatic successes that would justify maintaining an overfunded bureaucracy mired in internationalist received wisdom.
In fact, many of the defenses of “soft power” are positively surreal in their disconnect from reality. Here’s Stephen J. Hadley, national security adviser to President George W. Bush, talking to the New York Times: “We learned in both Iraq and Afghanistan that our military needs an effective civilian partner if victories on the battlefields are going to be converted into a sustainable peace.” So how’s that creating “an effective civilian partner” working out? For all the “three cups of tea” voodoo, fifteen years of war, repeated attempts at a “negotiated settlement” with the murderous Taliban, and $2.4 trillion in taxpayer money, Afghanistan still faces an existential threat from the Taliban, the most fearsome of some 20 terrorist groups who control 35 percent of the country. The Haqqani outfit, called the “Kennedys of the Taliban,” continues to perpetrate most of the spectacular terror attacks against civilian and military targets. Civilian deaths from such attacks set a record in 2016, including a 25 percent increase in children killed.
Not much peace there, sustainable or otherwise. Nor is the track-record of soft power very good elsewhere. Soft power and diplomatic engagement got us a nuclear-armed thug regime in North Korea, and is on track to turn Iran, ruled by an anti-Semitic apocalyptic cult, into a nuclear power. Nor did soft power stop the slaughter in the Balkans, in Darfur, in Congo, in Rwanda, and today in Nigeria and Syria.
www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266164/can-trump-drain-foggy-bottom-swamp-bruce-thornton