President Donald Trump unloaded on Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau Saturday for remarks the G7 summit host made on trade, announcing the U.S. will not endorse the communique signed by the seven largest advanced economies in the world.
“Based on Justin’s false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our U.S. farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our U.S. Reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the U.S. Market!” Trump tweeted.
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
Based on Justin’s false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our U.S. farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our U.S. Reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the U.S. Market!
“PM Justin Trudeau of Canada acted so meek and mild during our @G7 meetings only to give a news conference after I left saying that, “US Tariffs were kind of insulting” and he “will not be pushed around,” the President added. “Very dishonest & weak. Our Tariffs are in response to his of 270% on dairy!”
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
PM Justin Trudeau of Canada acted so meek and mild during our @G7 meetings only to give a news conference after I left saying that, “US Tariffs were kind of insulting” and he “will not be pushed around.” Very dishonest & weak. Our Tariffs are in response to his of 270% on dairy!
President Trump was responding to Trudeau’s remarks on trade between the U.S. and Canada, in which the prime minister warned his government would take retaliatory measures if new tariffs were introduced.
I Said HELL NO and I Mean It .
“I highlighted directly to the president that Canadians did not take it lightly, the United States’ move forward with significant tariffs on our steel and aluminum industry,” began Trudeau. “[I] particularly did not take lightly the fact that it’s based on national security reason that for Canadians who either themselves or whose parents or community members have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with American soldiers in far off lands, in conflicts from the First World War onwards, that it’s kind of insulting.”
“And I highlighted it was not helping in our renegotiation of NAFTA and that it would be with regret but it would be with absolute certainty and firmness that we move forward with retaliatory measures on 1 July – applying equivalent tariffs to the ones that the Americans have unjustly applied to us,” Trudeau continued.
Trudeau finished with a warning to Trump, saying “Canadians are polite, we’re reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around.”
CNN Politics
✔@CNNPolitics
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he will with “absolute certainty” impose retaliatory measures on July 1 to answer US President Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum: “We will not be pushed around” https://cnn.it/2Jm3In4
The Trump administration’s record numbers of airstrikes in Afghanistan have failed to expand the Afghan government’s control over its population and stop the Taliban from quickly replacing its opium and heroin processing labs pulverized by the U.S. military, a watchdog agency said in a report to Congress released Tuesday.
In its latest quarterly audit to lawmakers, the U.S. Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) noted:
The expanded authorities provided [by President Trump] to U.S. forces in Afghanistan have resulted in a significant uptick in U.S. air strikes and special operations against the insurgency, with the U.S. dropping 653 munitions in October 2017, a record high since 2012 and a more than three-fold increase from October 2016.
These actions have yet to increase the Afghan government’s control over its population … The goal of the Afghan government is to control 80% of its population within the next two years.
While the U.S. military is targeting the Taliban’s opium business, dealing a blow worth millions of dollars to the group, it is barely making a dent on the illicit trafficking of the lucrative poppy plant, noted SIGAR, explaining:
U.S. and Afghan air strikes this quarter have targeted the Taliban’s opium-production industry, which the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) estimates has as many as 400–500 active facilities at any given time.
According to [U.S.] General [John] Nicholson, [the top commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan], U.S. and Afghan forces recently began targeting them, destroying 10 on November 19 alone.
Gen. Nicholson vowed to continue the pressure on the Taliban’s economic engine — opium and heroin — while remaining careful to avoid collateral damage and civilian casualties, which have increased by more than ten percent to 4,474 between June 1 and the end of November 2017 when compared to the same period the previous year.
Why let the Taliban have the fields.
Afghan security forces, supported by U.S. Air Force B-52s, F/A-18s, and other aircraft, including the F-22 Raptor, are carrying out the operations against opium and heroin, which generate up to 60 percent of the Taliban’s funding.
“Brigadier General Bunch announced that 25 narcotics labs had been destroyed since the beginning of the campaign in November, which he said was the equivalent of nearly $80 million eliminated from the drug-trafficking organizations while denying over $16 million in direct revenue to the Taliban,” reports SIGAR.
The inspector general suggested the cost of carrying out the airstrikes on the heroin labs may outweigh the outcome, noting:
According to the latest DOD [U.S. Department of Defense] financial- management report, an F-22 costs between $35,294 and $36,799 per hour to operate; a B-52 between $32,569 and $34,341 per hour; and an F/A-18 between $9,798 and $16,173 per hour, depending on the model.
By contrast, the labs being destroyed are cheap and easy to replace. Afghans told Reuters it would takes three or four days to replace a lab in Afghanistan. According to UNODC [United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime], the morphine/heroin labs need only simple equipment such as a stove, iron barrel, and locally made pressing machines. According to DOD, the value of seizures and destroyed equipment is based on DEA baselines.
In the report, SIGAR revealed that for the first time, the Pentagon prohibited the watchdog agency from publicizing the full district and land-area under the control of the Afghan government and terrorist groups.
The Pentagon also banned SIGAR from reporting on the strength and capabilities of the struggling Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), who, along with Afghan civilians, have borne the brunt of casualties primarily at the hands of the Taliban in recent years.
“Afghan government control or influence has declined and insurgent control or influence has increased overall since SIGAR began reporting control data in January 2016,” noted the auditor.
U.S. military combat deaths have also increased in recent months.
“From January 1 through November 26, 2017, 11 U.S. military personnel were killed in Afghanistan, and 99 were wounded. This is double the personnel killed in action compared to the same periods in 2015 and 2016,” noted SIGAR in a press release announcing its report to Congress.
Gen. Nicholson did say in November, “About 64 percent of the population is controlled by the government, about 24 percent live in contested areas, and the Taliban control the remaining 12 percent,” without mentioning anything about who controls the territory.
Based on the top commander’s assessment, Afghan terrorist groups, primarily the Taliban, control or contest 36 percent of the population.
Some independent analysts, namely experts from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), have questioned the U.S military’s assessment placing the territory under terrorist control or influence at about 45 percent in late September.
In a significant departure from previous administrations, President Trump authorized the U.S military to strike opium and its heroin derivative in Afghanistan, the world’s top producer of the poppy plant.
Despite investing $8.7 billion in American taxpayer funds on counternarcotics efforts since the Afghan war began in October 2001, Afghanistan is producing more opium and heroin than ever before, doubling production last year to 9,000 tons from 2016, revealed the United Nations.
The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) branch in Afghanistan is reportedly growing, claiming responsibility for an attack in Kabul this week and “the deadliest attack” covered by the SIGAR quarterly report “when an IS-K [Khorasan province] militant detonated a suicide bomb during a gathering of 150–200 people at a Shi’a cultural center in Kabul. The Afghan Ministry of Public Health said at least 41 people were killed and 84 wounded.”
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has extended a hand for talks with South Korea, but Korea watchers are wary of the North’s intentions.
North Korea shocked the world Monday, not with a wild threat, but with an offer to engage the South in dialogue. Two days later, the North and South re-opened a dormant hotline for cross-border calls, the first in nearly two years. South Korea has responded positively, but many observers suspect Seoul may be walking into a trap.
Kim made similar friendly overtures in last year’s New Year’s address, telling Seoul that “positive measures should be taken to improve inter-Korean relations, avoid acute military confrontation, and remove the danger of war between the North and the South.” The North then proceeded to raise regional tensions through repeated military provocations, including both ballistic missile and nuclear weapons tests.
Send Rocket Mn To Hell On A Racket.
“There is reason to be somewhat suspicious of North Korea,” Lisa Collins, a Korea expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, explained to The Daily Caller News Foundation. “North Korea is always looking to maximize its national interests in any way that it can.”
She explained that there are several possible reasons behind North Korea’s sudden interest in dialogue. One, the rogue state may attempt to use “this opportunity as a way to weaken the U.S.-South Korean alliance.” Two, the North may “finally be at the point where it wants to improve relations with South Korea,” and it may even want to use talks with the South as “a springboard to enter into talks with the U.S.” Three, the North may be looking to secure concessions from the South, which could include “more aid, canceling military exercises, and encouraging the U.S. to withdraw its troops from the Korean Peninsula.”
That the North will demand certain concessions is very likely given that Kim stressed that the South “should discontinue all the nuclear war drills they stage with outside forces” and “refrain from any acts of bringing in nuclear armaments and aggressive forces from the United States” in his speech Monday.
In his New Year’s address, the young despot expressed an interest in sending a North Korean team to participate in the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, thus appealing to the desires of the liberal South Korean government.
“[South Korean President Moon Jae-in] wants to host a peaceful 2018 Winter Olympic games, as well as open direct dialogue with his neighbor,” Scott Snyder, a senior fellow for Korea studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in a recent op-ed. These interests make the South susceptible to a North Korean ploy.
“The regime is looking for the weakest link by which to break the maximum pressure campaign, and it seems to judge, not irrationally, that the weakest link is the South Korean government” given its predisposition to using engagement to peacefully resolve this crisis on the Korean Peninsula, Dr. Nicholas Eberstadt, an Asian security expert at the American Enterprise Institute, told TheDCNF recently.
“This is just like a regular exercise in garden variety burglary,” he explained. “This is like a hotel burglar testing every door to see what opens. The door that looks the most promising to the North Korean regime is the blue house in Seoul, so the regime is testing and probing.”
“They want to see how far they can get,” he remarked.
North Korea’s behavior is certainly not out of character and is even common practice for the rogue state, according to another expert.
“I think that what we are seeing is consistent with past tactical shifts in North Korean politics,” Dean Cheng, a research fellow on East Asian political and security affairs, explained to TheDCNF. “We often see periods of mild reconciliation followed by periods of aggressive action.”
He stressed that North Korea’s long-term intentions — specifically reunifying the Korean Peninsula on North Korea’s terms — never change. North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, saber rattling, and occasional overtures for peace are “part of this larger effort to drive a wedge between the U.S. and South Korea, make the American support for South Korea appear less credible, and to press South Korea into modestly conciliatory gestures.”
When Kim delivered his New Year’s address, not only did he announce that the North is “open to dialogue” with the South, but he also order the mass production and rapid deployment of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles. The Moon administration has overlooked this order, focusing most of its attention on the opportunity for talks.
“Everyone always sees what they want to see,” Cheng pointed out. “If you really want to believe that we can cut a deal with North Korea,” as some of the South Korean president’s liberal predecessors did, “then you are going to look for those glimmers of hope. I don’t see much cause for optimism, but I am not Moon Jae-in.”
“As [the position of the South Korean government] is an ideological viewpoint, which is to say it is faith based, it is impervious to empirical reality,” Eberstadt explained to TheDCNF, adding, “We are seeing the triumph of hope over experience in dealing with the North Koreans.”
Within the U.S. government, as well as the armed services, views of the talks between North and South Korea are noticeably varied.
While President Donald Trump initially said news of talks could be good or bad, he solidified his position on the matter Thursday, asserting that “talks are a good thing!” The Department of State expressed skepticism earlier, with department spokeswoman Heather Nauert stating, “We are very skeptical of Kim Jong Un’s sincerity in sitting down and having talks.”
Gen. Vincent Brooks, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, argued Thursday that the U.S. and its allies should not have any illusions about North Korea’s peaceful overture. “We can be generally pleased by the recent overtures that happened. But, we must keep our expectations at the appropriate level,” he said, adding that North Korea may presently be trying to divide the countries united against it. “We can not ignore that reality.”
In recent months, a curious argument has surfaced in favor
of US President Barack Obama. His supporters argue that Obama’s foreign policy
has been a massive success. If he had as much freedom of action on domestic
affairs as he has on foreign affairs, they argue, his achievements in all areas
would be without peer.
Expressing this view, Karen Finney a former Democratic
spokeswoman who often defends the party in the US media told the Huffington
Post, “Look at the progress the president can make when he doesn’t have
Republicans obstructing him.”
According to a Gallup poll from early November, the US
public also believes that Obama’s foreign policy has been successful. Whereas
67 percent of Americans disapproved of Obama’s handling of the economy and the
federal budget deficit, 63 percent of Americans approved of his terrorism
strategy. So too, 52 percent approved of his decision to remove US forces from
Iraq. In general 49 percent of Americans approved of Obama’s handling of
foreign affairs while 44 percent disapproved.
These support levels tell us a great deal about the
insularity of the American public. For when one assesses the impact to date of
Obama’s foreign policy it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that if the US
public was more aware of the actual consequences of his policies, his approval
rating in foreign affairs would be even lower than his approval rating in
domestic policy. Indeed, a cursory examination of the impact so far of Obama’s
foreign policies in country after country and region after region indicates
that his policies have been more damaging to US national interests than those
of any president since Jimmy Carter. And unlike Obama, Americans widely
recognized that Carter’s foreign policies were failed and dangerous.
The failure of Obama’s foreign policies to date has been
nowhere more evident than in the Middle East.
Take Iraq for instance. Obama and his supporters claim that
the withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq is one of his great accomplishments.
By pulling out, Obama kept his promise to voters to end the war in “a
responsible manner.” And as the polling data indicate, most Americans are
willing to give him credit for the move.
But the situation on the ground is dangerous and getting
worse every day. Earlier this month, just ahead of the departure of the last US
forces from Iraq, Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki visited with Obama at
the White House. Immediately after he returned home, the Shiite premier began a
ruthless campaign against his Sunni coalition partners in a no-holds barred bid
to transform the Iraqi government and armed forces into partisan institutions
controlled by his Dawa Party.
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Forces commanded by Maliki’s son arrested and allegedly
tortured several of the Sunni Vice President Tariq al Hashimi’s bodyguards.
They forced the guards to implicate Hashimi in terror plots. Maliki
subsequently issued an arrest warrant for Hashimi. So too, he issued an arrest
warrant for the Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Saleh Mutlaq and fired him without
permission from the Iraqi parliament.
Hashimi and Mutlaq are now in hiding in Erbil. Maliki is
demanding that the Kurdish regional government extradite them to Baghdad for
trial.
Maliki’s actions have driven Sunni leaders in the Sunni
provinces of Diyala, Anbar and Salahadin to demand autonomy under Iraq’s
federal system. He has responded by deploying loyal forces to the provinces to
fight the local militias.
The situation is so explosive that three prominent Sunni
leaders, former prime minister Ayad Allawi, who heads the Iraqiya party,
Parliament Speaker Osama Nujaifi, and Finance Minister Rafe al-Essawi published
an op-ed in the New York Times on Tuesday begging Obama to rein in Maliki in
order to prevent Iraq from plunging into civil war.
Then there is Egypt. Obama’s decision in February to abandon
then president Hosni Mubarak, the US’s most dependable ally in the Arab world
in favor of the protesters in Tahrir Square was hailed by his supporters as a
victory for democracy and freedom against tyranny. By supporting the protesters
against the US ally, Obama argued that he was advancing US interests by showing
the Muslim world the US favored the people over their leaders.
Ten months later, the Egyptian people have responded to this
populist policy by giving jihadist parties a two-thirds majority in Egypt’s
parliamentary elections. For the first time in thirty years, the strategic
anchor of US power in the Arab world — the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty — is
in danger. Indeed, there is no reason to believe it will survive.
According to the Gallup poll, 48 percent of Americans
approve of Obama’s handling of the war in Afghanistan and 44 percent
disapprove. Here too, it is far from clear what there is to approve of. Against
the public entreaties of the US commanders on the ground, Obama is carrying
through on his pledge to withdraw all US surge troops from Afghanistan by the
US presidential elections in November. In the meantime, the US is engaged in
negotiations with the Taliban. The purpose of these negotiations is to reach a
political agreement that would set the conditions for the Taliban to return to
power after a US pullout. That is, the purpose of the talks is to set the
conditions for a US defeat in Afghanistan.
The administration hails its success in overthrowing Libyan
dictator Muammar Qaddafi without sacrificing a single US soldier. And
certainly, this was a success. However, Qaddafi’s opponents, who are now taking
charge of the country, are arguably worse for the US than Qaddafi was. They
include a significant number of al Qaida terrorists and are dominated by
jihadist forces. Attempts by the NATO-backed provisional government to convince
them to disarm have failed completely.
Since Qaddafi was overthrown, large quantities of advanced
weapons from his arsenal — allegedly including stockpiles of weapons of mass
destruction — have gone missing. Significant quantities of Libyan
shoulder-to-air missiles have made their way to Gaza since Qaddafi’s overthrow.
In Syria, while the administration insists that dictator
Bashar Assad’s days in power are numbered, it is doing essentially nothing to
support the Syrian opposition. Fearing the instability that would ensue if a
civil war were to break out in Iran’s Arab protectorate, the US has chosen to
effectively sit on its hands and so cancel any leverage it ought to wield over
the shape of things to come.
As to Iran, Obama’s policies have brought about a situation
where the regime in Teheran does not fear a US military strike on its nuclear
installations. Obama’s open opposition to the prospect of an Israeli strike
against Iran’s nuclear installations has similarly convinced the regime that it
can proceed without fear in its nuclear project.
Iran’s threat this week to close the Straits of Hormuz in
the event that the US imposes an embargo on Iranian oil exports is being widely
characterized by the US media as a sign of desperation on the part of the
regime. But it is hard to see how this characterization aligns with reality. It
is far more appropriate to view Iran’s easy threats as a sign of contempt for
Obama and for US power projection under his leadership.
If Iran’s ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons are thwarted,
it will be despite Obama, not because of him.
Then there is the so-called peace process between Israel and
the Palestinians. Due to Obama’s unbridled hostility towards Israel, there is
no chance whatsoever that Israel and the PLO will reach a peace deal for the
foreseeable future. Instead, Fatah and Hamas have agreed to unify their forces.
The only thing standing in the way of a Hamas takeover of the PLO is the US
Congress’s threat to cut off US aid to the Palestinian Authority. For his part,
Obama has gone out of his way to discredit the Congressional threat by serving
as an indefatigable lobbyist for maintaining US financial support for the PA.
Of course, the Middle East is not the only region where the
deleterious consequences of Obama’s foreign policy are being felt. From Europe,
to Africa, to Asia, to Latin America, Obama’s determination to embrace US
adversaries like Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez has weakened pro-US forces and
strengthened US foes.
So how is that that while Carter was perceived by the
majority of the American public as a foreign policy failure, a large plurality
of Americans views Obama’s foreign policy as a success?
Obama’s success in hiding his failures from the American
public owes to two related factors. First, to date the US has not been forced
to contend directly with the consequences of his failures.
Carter’s failures were impossible to ignore because the
blowback from his failures was immediate, unmistakable and harsh. His betrayal
of the Shah of Iran led directly to the takeover of the US Embassy in Teheran
and the hostage crisis. Carter could not spin to his advantage the daily
stories about the hostages. He could not influence CBS evening news anchor
Walter Cronkite’s decision to end every broadcast by reminding viewers how many
days the hostages had been in captivity.
So too, the consequences of Carter’s weakness in confronting
the Soviet Union were impossible to ignore or minimize with images of Soviet
tank columns invading Afghanistan dominating the news.
To date, Obama’s foreign policy failures have yet to explode
in a manner that can make the average American aware of them.
Then too, Obama and his advisors have been extremely adept
in presenting his tactical achievements as strategic victories. So it is that
the administration has successfully cast the killing of Osama bin Laden as a
strategic victory in the war on terror. Obama has upheld the mission, as well
as the killing of al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki as proof of his competence in
securing US interests. And to a large degree, the US public has accepted his
claims.
Because it is impossible to know when Obama’s failures will
begin to directly impact the America people, it is possible that he will not
pay a political price for them in the 2012 elections. Be that as it may, the
Republican presidential contenders would provide an invaluable service to both
themselves and the American public as a whole if they make exposing Obama’s
disastrous stewardship of US foreign policy a central plank of their campaigns.
At a minimum, forewarned is forearmed. And the dimensions of
Obama’s failures are so enormous, that it is clear that the American people
will suffer their consequences for years to come.
Donald J. Trump
CNN Politics
