2017 Feb 22^nd

Patrick J. Buchanan has a column in the morning paper. He is very upset because he believes the “Trump-Putin detent is dead.” He begins by touting Trump and trashing “Bush 2 and President Obama for plunging us into Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria. Trump saw that his countrymen wanted to be rid of the endless wars and start putting America first.” That is a crock of—canal water. The invasion of Afghanistan was in response to the 9/11 attack and was a UN operation. He’s right about Iraq.  Libya was another UN operation. Khadafy had blown up an airliner with a loss of about 270 lives and killed other Americans as well but Buchanan isn’t bothered by that. Our actions in Yemen and Syria were directed against ISIS. Maybe Buchanan is just fine with ISIS.

Then Buchanan writes of “the virulence of the anti-Trump forces in this city (Washington D.C.)” If Buchanan ever ventured out of town he would quickly discover that this “virulent” objection to Trump’s policies are in nearly every major city in the country not just in the capital. The people object to the removal of Obamacare without a replacement; they object to the deportation of parents whose children are citizens; in at least one case a woman whose three sons serve in our military is scheduled to be deported thanks to Trump

Buchanan then describes “the bloodless retrieval of the Crimea.” Bloodless except for the 298 passengers on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shot down by a separatist missile. There were other similar incidents as well. Buchanan is clearly lying by calling this “bloodless.”

Buchanan goes on to describe Russia’s hacking of Democratic emails and “saw to it that WikiLeaks got the information out to the American people.” This was to help Trump. Buchanan seems to understand that this is the sort of thing, interfering in our elections, that can really upset many Americans and make them unlikely to make “smiley faces” at Mr. Putin. Buchanan details just a few of Putin’s crimes, leaving out the murder of a woman journalist in a Moscow elevator or the assassination of an expat in London using a radioactive pellet.  Oh gee, he complains, Trump is “not to be allowed to achieve a partnership with Putin.” Then he calls this anti-Putin paranoia astonishing. Buchanan should look up the meaning of “paranoia.” Having fear of an ex KGB agent who has shown himself to be a murderous thug is not paranoia, not being afraid of him is called stupidity!

Buchanan brings up the issue of NATO’s cost. He claims the US pays a disproportionate share of its cost. Of course our share of NATO’s cost is based on our GDP compared with the GDP’s of other member nations. We contribute about 500 million a year to NATO, far from the “billions and billions” Trump claims we contribute. In terms of defense budgets, any comparison with the budgets of other NATO countries is silly. We have the expense of keeping troops on Okinawa or in South Korea and in Afghanistan, none of that expense is in defense of NATO countries. Much of the money spent on our military or spent in support of other countries (Think Israel) have nothing to do with NATO.