So many countries, so little sense

The half-wit who serves as president and the slightly-more-than half a wit who writes this blog actually share something: neither one of us knows a thing about foreign policy. My brain is as filled with half-baked ideas and unproven generalities as that guy who’s hobnobbing with the European leaders. Allow me to share some.

  1. With regard to Kim Jong Un, (and from the department of the painfully obvious) we shouldn’t become involved in a nuclear war with North Korea. Their missiles may not be able to reach our west coast, but they will be able to reach Seoul where about twenty million people will die in the first fifteen seconds—before it gets worse. North Korea does not want a nuclear war either; in fact, their economy and their infrastructure are burgeoning, and while Trump bemoans our weatherbeaten airports and archaic roads and bridges, North Korea is building new ones. And lots of other stuff.
  2. Trump has found a kindred spirit in right-leaning Polish leadership which shares Trump’s anti-Muslim, anti-environment, and pro-coal philosophy. (Yikes, who thought “pro-coal” would be a term in the 21st century?) Of course Poland remains one of our staunchest allies, but as it is in this country, many Poles have not adopted the nationalist leanings of Trump, Polish president Andrzej Duda, and the country’s strongman head of the governing party Jaroslaw Kaczynski. There’s an authoritarianism rising in Poland that I’m sure Trump finds attractive; moreover, the three men share a hatred of the press and a distrust of the courts. Na zdrowie!
  3. Finally, Qatar, Can we get a little love for this nice little country and the world’s wealthiest nation. Since Trump suddenly decided a month or so back that if his friends the Saudis didn’t like Qatar, then he wouldn’t either, this little country of 2.5 million has been ducking the world’s slings and arrows. Recently they were presented with a list of demands that pretty much seem like a list with each Arab country could present itself or each other. There’s plenty of bad behavior to go around. I’m not exonerating Qatar, but coming down on the side of the Saudis because they were nice to our president and kept street disturbances “to a minimum” is not the way to implement foreign policy.
  4. Finally, Indiana. It’s not really a foreign country despite Mike Pence, but as you probably know, the Carrier factory that President Trump convinced owners not to move to Mexico will lay off more than 600 workers, about a third of them just before the holiday season. And Boeing—the company Trump targeted for overpricing its planes—will lay off about 200 workers in a struggle to, as a spokesperson said, keep up with changing markets. No comment yet from the “greatest jobs president ever.”

I welcome your comments on other countries. Apparently there are quite a few of them.


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