Is Trump embracing aggressive withdrawal?

[Eric the Green]

(02-27-2017, 02:01 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

Quote:[Someguy; quotation system getting wonky]
Capable of seizing AND holding?  We've had quite a bit of difficulty with the latter ourselves, what makes you think the Russians are so much better at it?

The fact that Russia has had no trouble maintaining control over all of the areas they've seized, including eastern Ukraine, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia.  They seem to be better at it than we are.

What's your idea about when to start worrying about someone bent on world conquest?  After they're done?  I'd prefer to nip it in the bud, thanks.

Yes, better; but they are better at it because they are holding adjacent territories that once belonged to them.

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Quote:I think you have a distorted view of what the Cold War was like.

The Cold War was not a time of high military commitment on the part of the US.  In fact, the balance of terror from relatively cheap nuclear weapons meant that the requirements for conventional military capability expensive both in terms of money and lives was limited to relatively small, contained engagements.

The end of the Cold War greatly reduced the threat of global nuclear holocaust, but the downside was that it substantially increased the scope for conventional conflicts that would previously have been subsumed into the largely peaceful nuclear balance between the US and Soviet spheres.  It's no coincidence that within a couple years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the US was invading Iraq.

Oh yes, the Cold War was characterized by comparatively limited engagements like Korea, Vietnam, and an enormous build-up of conventional forces on either side of the Iron Curtain.  Nothing like the mass carnage of Iraq or the rest of the GWOT.

There were a lot more people killed in wars we participated in in the decade after 1990 than in the decade before 1990.  Millions of people were killed in the two Iraq wars and by the intervening sanctions.  I grant that most of those killed were not Americans, but that was, if anything, because we devoted more military power to fighting, not less.

I grant that there was more combat earlier in the Cold War.  I'd argue that was part of the learning process, before we learned how to do it right under Reagan.  Still, averaging the Korean War and the Vietnam war over the 45 years of the Cold War gives a death rate in the 100,000 per year range, no higher and possibly lower than in Iraq alone after the end of the Cold War.

As a tangent, I would also like to note something not generally acknowledged.  We won the Cold War, just as much as we won WWII.  Total military and civilian deaths on all sides were an order of magnitude lower in the Cold War than in WWII, despite the existence of far greater destructive power.  From a cost benefit perspective, we did a much better job on the Cold War than we did in WWII, or in the wars we've had since the end of the Cold War.

The US lost the Cold War too. The late 1980s Revolution overthrew Cold-War-created dictatorships in both East and West. The Soviets lost control of states they took control over and dominated. The USA suffered the same in South Korea, The Phillippines, Chile and other Cold War satellites whose dictators we had supported. In the Reagan era the US tried to topple a left-wing government in Nicaragua by supporting counter-revolutionaries. In the end, it remained free of US control. Reagan didn't quite do it right. The scandalous support of the counter-revolutionaries in Nicarargua was funded by sales of weapons to an enemy state. Marines were killed in Lebanon as sitting ducks, and the Grenada invasion was a farce.

Reagan can't take credit for the fact that Gorbachev freed his people from Communism. Since the Soviets were not a threat to invade the USA, just a partner in a mutual balance of nuclear deterrence, the defeat of fascism was far more significant, because it was a threat to civilization itself. Now, arguably, there's a threat from within the USA by the cabal that has now seized power here. Meanwhile, the wars waged supposedly against Communism in the Cold War were not necessary wars to defeat an existential threat, but the fulfillment of the Munich Doctrine aka the Domino Theory aka Containment. The most costly Cold War war was also the least necessary, and the least successful: the war in Vietnam. No, the cost for these wars (especially Vietnam) was greater, because there was no benefit, and arguably a greater loss to the USA in morale and unity of purpose among the people; the original source of our current national divide.

Quote:The falloff in workforce participation is largely due to ill considered overgenerosity in welfare programs.  For example, food stamp benefits were already more than adequate and were inflation adjusted, but Obama pushed through an additional increase anyway.  He also expanded eligibility so that a family of 5 making $90k per year living in a million dollar house could collect food stamps.  He made it really easy to get onto SSDI and in general made it more profitable for many Americans to get on the government dole instead of working.  That problem is easily fixed by saying, "okay, you're right, Democrats, we've recovered from the recession, so we can return to prerecession welfare policies now."

There's a smaller component from the baby boom cohort entering retirement.  The best way to fix that is likely to increase the retirement age gradually to 70.  Hey, if Trump can work at a tough private sector job until age 70 before retiring to a cushy life on the government dime, the rest of us can too, right?

As I've discussed in other posts, the stagnation in median incomes dates to about 1970 and is pretty clearly traceable to easy immigration policies.  Slam the door on immigration and labor regains its bargaining  position relative to management, and wages will start going up with productivity again.  Overall the economy is doing fine; the problem is that all the benefit is going to billionaires and not workers.  Stop letting the billionaires import cheap labor and that problem is fixed.

The surge in debt is largely due to massive increases in the deficit in the early Obama years; the deficit has been declining ever since the Republicans took control of the House and should soon be down to sustainable levels.

The fall off in workforce participation is directly due to scapegoating of those on our meager welfare programs. This "anti-dependency," "smaller-government" ideology has meant lower taxes and regulations for the rich and big corporations, with no relief to the middle class. Blaming welfare is the biggest element of trickle-down economics-- the false notion that you can give breaks and subsidies to the rich and that these "job creaters" will pass on the benefits to the rest of us. They don't. They spend it on themselves, they buy-out, they gamble, they send factories overseas, they automate, and they lobby and spend to get their guys in power so they can keep the gravy train rollin'.

Boomer retirement is a major element in the decline of workforce participation. No, people still can't live on welfare and food stamps, even under Obama. If you have even $2000 in savings, they throw you off. Those programs were not expanded under Republican rule these last 40 years; they were cut back. The Clinton-Gingrich welfare deform is still in effect. People can't live a decent life on the dole; what's also true is that people can't live a decent life on the wages most people get either. Republicans have succeeded in keeping wages low for most people and profits high for their clientele. The income gap is the greatest since the 1920s, and poverty has risen after the 1970s decline that had happened thanks to the Great Society.

Immigration has had zero effect on income stagnation. Xenophobia is a poor excuse for belief in Reaganomics and Trumpian prejudice, fear and fascism. It doesn't wash. Illegal immigrants take low income jobs that Americans do not. Other immigrants start more businesses and create more jobs than natives of the USA do. Google employees do not have stagnant wages; they are buying up San Francisco. This is not imported cheap labor; legal immigrants are doing quite well thank you. Cheap labor is found in overseas factories and offices and in machines, thanks to Republican laissez faire policies and free trade. Trump did not even promise less legal immigration, although that may be instituted.

Decline is labor is due to decline in labor unions, facilitated by Reagan and GOP power, and by the labor surplus due to automation, cheap labor abroad, decline of support for education and social programs, suppression of poor ethnic groups through the expansion of prisons, suppression of wages by the CEOs, and lack of taxes for the redistribution of their ill-gotten and undeserved wealth.

The surge in debt is completely due to the unnecessary war in Iraq and the arguably unnecessary and over-ambitious war in Afghanistan, "paid for" with massive tax cuts on the wealthy, and to lax Bush-era regulation (and Clinton-era deregulation) that caused a deep recession, which in turn caused lower revenues and massive spending for relief, and which required expensive, deficit-spending stimulus-- without which we would have all ended up over the cliff in the poor house. Dubya took over a government surplus and ruined our finances for the foreseeable future, and it's all on him and the GOP; every penny. I grant sequestration has lowered the deficit since 2011, but Obama also is responsible for this. It also slowed the recovery, and has helped stall our growth and labor participation rate. A larger and longer stimulus was needed. The depression of 2008 itself was the direct cause of the fall off in labor participation, and the direct cause of that depression was Bush-era policies.

Quote:I'm worried about that too, but that's not a reason to ignore the chance that Putin will start one.  It's just a reason to make sure we don't start one either, for example by not electing Hillary Clinton, who wanted to respond to Russian internet packets with physical bombs.

Concern about Putin is warranted, IMO, but Clinton wanted no such response. That kind of meaningless gibberish about the Lady who should have been our president has cost our nation very dearly. What is dangerous is Trump's enabling of Putin's aggression, since Trump is Putin's man. And Trump is a fascist who is trying to destroy our democracy, which depends on a free press and an independent judiciary. We needed Hillary; we didn't need Mussolini. Regrettably, Mussolini-reincarnate had a better horoscope for getting elected president of the USA than the Lady did.