Late on Thursday evening, President Trump ordered air strikes on Syria, in retaliation for chemical weapon attacks that are blamed on Syrian President Assad. At latest report, 59 Tomahawk Missiles were launched upon the air field from which the chemical attack was supposedly launched. We at Men of the West condemn these attacks for several reasons.
- It is not truly clear that Assad facilitated the chemical attacks.
- Contrary to Trump’s claims, even if Assad did call for the attacks, this is not something that is in the “vital national security interest” of the United States.
- This action needlessly provokes Russia.
- It detracts and distracts from things that are important for American interests.
- It directly violates Trump’s earlier position – the one that those who voted for him expected.
- It seems that Trump’s reaction was based on emotion, not thoughtful deliberation.
- It further destabilizes the region.
All in all, this is a poor decision. It is a bad move on Trump’s part.
We will post more, as information comes in, and the situation develops.
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5
2.5
Let’s not be hasty in our judgement of Trump’s decision.
I think Vox Day made a strong case for just taking a deep breath and waiting to see how this develops. He hinted at a bigger “Metagame” going on behind the scenes and if anyone can pull of a Machiavellian move it should be Trump. Also I trust Vox’s insights because he hears a lot of things that I don’t and he has become rather adept at guessing what is really going on.
I hope you will consider updating the title or your position on this after more comes out?
As we said, we will post additional updates, as warranted. If it turns out that Trump made the right call, and we are wrong, we will gladly post a retraction. Until then, I still think this was a boneheaded move.
T, I’m with you, and there are far deeper reasons for circumspect.
MAGA?
Looks like MABA to me, (Make America Belligerent Again)
You can’t take back a boolit, anymore than you can take back cruise missiles.
The question for me is are we seeing a Trump carefully hid from us or are we seeing the Neo-cons in control of foreign intanglements? Either of which is not good. Either of which I seriously doubt many of us voted for.
No matter what anyone says, us dirt people, the crux of us Men of The West, have an absolute and ultimate stake in what these actors are doing, but even more important is we again, have no say in the matter, our will as governed doesn’t exist when those we entrust with protecting and defending our liberty ignore the liberty of a sovereign nation and it’s people. If Trump does not grasp the penultimate concept Liberty is an all or nothing thing, he and his administration is no better than the last, or the regime we as free men voted against replacing the last regime. By liberty being an all or nothing thing, I’m saying, you can not defend and protect Liberty, never mind advocate it when you violate, pick and choose, who has it and who doesn’t. That is tyranny, no matter how it is dressed up, or, those sovereign peoples and their ideals notwithstanding.
Thing is Trump is one man, but the reality he is surrounded by other men, whose agenda and motives are suspect. It begs the question, where does such a breech of the primal and God given primal rights of liberty and freedom end?
Such men who violate such precepts are renown and are unlimited in their actions as we witness daily. I think it is an understatement to contend we did not vote for this. What is to stop such men from bringing what they have done to our doors and crossing our thresholds in our lives and freedoms, if the one whose sole duty, his only job, is to represent, defend, and protect the laws, interests, ideals, and yes, liberty, of us Men of The West?
It is clear to me, these things do not end well, they are slippery slopes. It is one thing to see and know 1st hand a usurper exists, that the usurper has conned and swindled enough of the people through conscious deliberate allusions and dissimulations to attain the highest office. It is quite another thing to violate the trust clearly and resoundingly asked for in return for protecting ones primal freedoms and happiness.
Attacking Syria, is not America first. It is ultimately and deeply America last, oligarchy before all. Syria did not attack or threaten you or I, we faced no existential, or even far off threat to our selves and country. But those with power and monied interests are threatened with loss, or inability to acquire more money and more power with the secular, sovereign state of Syria and it’s self determination in their way.
The reality is that is not what Trumps sees or motivates him to action, or circumspection and prudence. Even if it is well intended. In fact if good intentions is what decided the issue to act, and it is the act that counts, Trump is a fool and a dangerous one at that to Men of The West.
4
Slow your roll, Son, a couple of things you should probably bear in mind- (Caution, this is absolutely an article in and of itself, don’t take it too personally, a lot of it I cribbed from my own articles)
1. of the three types of ‘extracurricular’ attacks, Chemical, Biological, and radiological attacks, Chemical is by far the easiest to assemble, target successfully, and deliver.
Even a moron can dump distilled ammonia and bleach in a barrel on top of a building, drop in a grenade, and kill off the entire population of the building and surrounding block. Getting the materials into place is a breeze compared to a nuke. And it is an attack that we cannot possibly hope to stop without turning America into a militarized police state that would make 1984 look like a utopian vision.
It is very similar with other types of chemical attacks (although I am not going to explain how to do so here… Mustard gas is public knowledge) Thus, the only hope we have of stopping chemical attacks is to make them too frightening to use, just like we have already done with biological attacks (fortunately, the fear factor in biological attacks is reinforced every time someone cracks open a bunker full of dessicated ragheads)
Nukes have a detectability and delivery problem. The only effective way to get them into place is with an ICBM (way beyond caveman technology) hand-delivery (geiger counters can stop them easily) or ship-launched missiles (surface ships are too easily dealt with, that leaves subs as our enemy’s only recourse) and aircraft that can avoid detection. We are pretty good at stopping aircraft.
So the greatest thing that threatens America’s safety are nuclear-capable subs and chemical weapons as an entire class.
Yes, I support overreaction when we have evidence that someone (no matter who it is) is using weapons that could kill millions of Americans with ease. Especially when the culture that is using it (whether it was Assad or his rebels) is violently inimical to our culture and country.
If it takes turning Syria AND North Korea into glass to keep those weapons from getting Dropped on Santa Monica, Denver, or Salt Lake City, I would still support it. Americans are MY people, the children that would die would be OUR children. America and Americans first. Yes, I recommend caution, but caution never won any wars or stopped any barbarians.
2. Look, NOBODY expected Trump to cater to the alt-right. We expected him to do three things. Crash the SJW Media, Move the Overton window to the right, and encourage companies to stop screwing americans with foreign labor.
He’s not going to make all your dreams come true. Maybe the next President will lean more that way, but THAT president couldn’t get elected in this environment.
He’s doing the job we hired him to do. He is building the wall. He is pissing all over the media and making their leftist bias and criminal behavior clear. He is moving Jobs back and crippling H1b and illegal immigrant competition.
He’s also making it clear that we will not tolerate Chemical/Biological/radiological weapons. They agreed not to use them. so he slapped them when they did.
It may not be your Dream, but it is Rightward as hell.
Some questions simply cannot be dealt with right now. As the Overton window shifts, such a question may be able to be addressed… but for right now? In this environment? Most people are simply not ready for it.
It’s been three months, and in that time he already accomplished more than Reagan did in 8 years. Hell, in one weekend he accomplished more than Bush, Obama, and Clinton did in 24 years.
Go ahead, Jump off the Trump train. send the Alt-right back to it’s well-deserved obscurity with chicken-little antics. Marginalize yourselves again because Trump hasn’t precisely conformed to your ‘vision’ of the God Emperor. Break your ability to make meaningful change by refusing to fight because it is not perfect enough for you.
Just remember though, perfect is the enemy of good. Me, I plan on NOT abandoning all the progress we have made in the last year… It took leftists, with all their powerful manipulative tools, a hundred years to turn America into a French communist Theocracy.
I am willing to keep fighting for the first breach we have made in their drama armor, and expanding it, even if that breach isn’t over their heart. At least for the next 3 years.
The world doesn’t work like you want it to. We got the best we can get, and mostly we try to have the best we can have and do the best we can do.
With the world as it REALLY IS, not how you wish it were, What would you have done? I personally could not see any action that would have worked better at responding to a CBR attack (regardless of who started it, you spank both kids) as well as having all the secondary effects:
He showed China he was serious about stopping people from violating CBR restrictions.
If our goal is to ‘get the hell out of the middle east’, and to keep them from coming HERE, mission accomplished. Isis my be crowing, but we can pull out and let Russia ‘bomb the * out of ISIS.” we won’t even need to get our hands dirty.
More importantly, Princess Fatty III KNOWS china cannot protect him if he gets serious about Nukes, and China KNOWS That if they don’t do something about the Norks, we can and WILL. That falls right under the heading of ‘protecting America’ even if the more… emotional right wingers cannot see it.
He informed Russia first.
He brought Obama’s ‘red line’ up again and made it look even more ridiculous.
He showed the world that we are not playing the pacifist game. We are serious about chemical attacks, because they threaten US as much as anyone else.
He made the Neocucks look even more foolish, and offered the Nevertrumpers who are stuck there out of pride and stubbornness a way out.
He shut the media up about being Putin’s puppet.
The photos of gassed babies were already being juxtaposed with immigration claims. the strike shut that media twist down ENTIRELY.
The Media claims that he is ‘incompetent’ now make THEM look incompetent.
He just made Iran, Syria, and Korea an awful lot more ‘flexible’.
And I really could care less about the fair-weather friends going all nevertrumper because, after all the things he has done in only three months, he does ONE THING that they do not like… and he does it in such a way that few if any negative repercussions can come about. I mostly just hit them with how stupid and shortsighted they are for jumping out of the Trump plane because of a little turbulence.
It’s their own loss.
3. I cannot claim to be any more in the know than anyone else, I have just been following REALLY closely and have noticed that every time Trump does something ‘insane’, it seems to set in motion a chain of events that culminates in both a superior position for him as well as for the American people.
the more nutty and emotional it seems, the more clear it becomes that it was a well thought our strategy with several layers. As a long-time wargamer, I can only envy the way it seems to be manipulating ‘luck’ on a scale that is completely consistent with his business dealings.
Most recently his tweets on ‘wire tapping’ come to mind… Not only has he demolished the DNC’s reputation as well as those of the worst of Obama’s cabinet that have been hard to dislodge, but he also battered the CIA, FBI, and the others that seem to be playing fast and loose with American privacy laws, INCLUDING a devastating glancing blow at the IRS. With the same strike he again highlighted the Media’s inability to tell a complete or truthful story, the corruption of Obama’s presidency and called into question multiple high-level player’s ability to do their jobs.
All with one or two ’emotionally charged’ tweets.
My attitude is ‘wait and see’. I still support the big orangutan, And I agree that he is just as human as us and can make mistakes, but only time (especially waiting until the Carl Vinson battlegroup is in position to block NKorean Subs) will tell if this was actually a mistake, or yet another well-executed strike at Globalists, Progressives, and the wannabe ‘John Galt’ Elites.
I am inclined to agree with you. I think Trump may have a larger plan in place, but I will wait to see what it is before passing absolute judgment. Unlike most Americans, I have friends in Syria, and they are all Syrian Christians. Every single one of them supports Assad, because he protects them. I absolutely do not support overthrowing him. Is he a “good guy”? Of course not, but whatever comes after him will be much worse, and Syrian Christians will suffer because of it.
So for this particular event, I still do not like it, but I will accept a holding pattern until more comes to light.
I would prefer not to remove Assad without making sure someone better is in his place, But then, ‘my wish’ was that we were in position to retake the holy land for Christianity. Not going to happen. I do agree, however, that treating Syria as a western democracy, or installing a leader that will attempt to treat the islamic tribals like westerners, would be a mistake on an enormous number of levels.
*doubletake* You are inclined to agree?
Believe it or not, I pretty much agree with everything you said.