Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Devin Nunes doesn’t get it.

House Intelligence Committee Democrats said Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) apologized to them Thursday during a closed-door meeting for his handling of revelations about surveillance that potentially could have been collected about President Trump and his associates during the transition period.

Nunes’s apology was “generic,” Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, said on CNN, adding that it was “not clear” precisely which actions his apology covered.

Nunes came under heavy fire from Democrats on Wednesday after going first to the press, then to the White House, and then to the press again before consulting with committee colleagues about what he said was fresh intelligence about the president and his campaign aides.

That might sound like no big deal until you remember that the committee is investigating the White House and therefore the committee chairman should not be toddling over there to share new information at all, let alone before sharing it with the rest of the committee. Imagine a committee investigating malfeasance at Speedigo Car Corporation. Imagine the committee chair getting new information and immediately dashing off to Detroit to share it with Speedigo, without consulting the rest of the committee. What would that look like? It would look as if the chair had been bought and paid for, that’s what.

On Thursday, Nunes said it was a “judgment call” to personally brief Trump before speaking with his Intelligence Committee colleagues, who are actively investigating allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections and suspected links between Trump aides and the Kremlin.

But Trump is the subject of investigation.

This is just bonkers. This isn’t a government, it’s a madhouse.

Nunes told reporters that the identities of the individuals in the report were “very clear to me,” and that they were members of the Trump team.

That has sparked charges that if anybody is revealing more than they should, it is Nunes — for potentially telling the public that hidden names in surveillance reports referred to the president and his advisers, something that is likely classified information.

Nunes said the information was classified, but he argued that disclosing the existence of the report and the nature of it did not reveal any classified information.

Nunes’s own staff were not aware of the chairman’s decision to go public and brief the president and were dismayed by his actions, said several individuals familiar with the matter.

Because the chair of the investigating committee isn’t supposed to go blabbing to Speedigo.

He can’t get even this right.

A great American, Kurt Cochran, was killed in the London terror attack. My prayers and condolences are with his family and friends.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2017

Two other people were killed – but they weren’t American, so Donald “the Boor” Trump ignores them.

One was Keith Palmer.

PC Keith Palmer, 48, was stabbed as he tried to stop the attacker in a courtyard outside the Houses of Parliament.

He was an unarmed member of the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Squad who had served for 15 years.

…

“Keith was a genuinely nice person; nobody had a bad word to say about him. When I heard what had happened I knew it would be him because that’s just the sort of guy he was, to step straight in when others might step back,” said PC James Aitkenhead, who worked alongside Keith in the TSG.

Conservative MP and former colleague James Cleverly tweeted: “A lovely man, a friend. I’m heartbroken.” Mr Cleverly said the two had served together in the Royal Artillery before PC Palmer joined the police.

In an emotional tribute in the Commons, he later described him as a “strong, professional public servant”.

The other was Aysha Frade.

Aysha Frade, who worked at DLD College London, close to Westminster Bridge, also died in the attack.

She was a British national whose mother was Spanish, the Spanish foreign ministry said.

Ms Frade lived in London with her two young daughters and husband, according to Spanish media reports.

Her father was of Cypriot origin, while her mother was from the Galician town of Betanzos, where her two sisters run an English school, the Voz de Galicia reports.

The principal of the independent sixth form college said she worked in the administration team and described her as “a highly regarded and loved” member of staff.

“She will be deeply missed by all of us,” Rachel Borland added.

But Trump, I suppose in the interests of Making America Great Again, didn’t bother to mention them. Somehow I don’t feel greater.

Congress and national intelligence are investigating ties between Trump and his campaign and Russia, and today we get another unsubtle bumping off:

A former Russian parliamentarian named Denis Voronenkov, who fled Russia last October and has criticized President Vladimir Putin’s government, was killed in Kiev on Thursday, in an apparent assassination that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is reportedly calling “state terrorism.”

Voronenkov, 45, had just left the Premier Palace hotel when he was shot twice in the head on a sidewalk along a busy street in Ukraine’s capital, according to the Kyiv Post. Citing police, the newspaper adds that both Voronenkov’s bodyguard and the attacker were wounded and in the hospital.

The killing has the “handwriting” of the Russian special services, Poroshenko said in a statement Thursday. According to a translation by Reuters, he said Voronenkov’s murder was “an act of state terrorism on the part of Russia, which he was forced to leave for political reasons.”

Responding to those accusations, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “We believe that all speculations about a Russian connection are absurd,” according to state-run Tass media. He also said Ukraine “had proved unable to take care of Voronenkov’s security,” the outlet reports.

Poroshenko said Voronenkov was a key witness in Ukraine’s inquiry into former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and Russian military involvement in the country.

It feels a bit like being locked in a basement watching a pool of sewage rise higher and higher.

Donnie Junior must make Daddy proud.

It has become something of an online custom in the social media age to react to tragic news stories — like Wednesday’s attack in London — with well-meaning if sometimes rote messages like “thoughts and prayers.” But that does not appear to be Donald Trump Jr.’s style.

“You have to be kidding me?!” Mr. Trump said Wednesday afternoon on Twitter, as details of the episode — which left at least five dead, including the assailant, and 40 injured — continued to unfold. The message continued, “Terror attacks are part of living in big city, says London Mayor Sadiq Khan.”

Mr. Trump, the oldest son of President Trump, was calling attention to an article from September in The Independent, a British newspaper, that described Mr. Khan’s reaction to a bombing then in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City.

Which, oddly enough, was not a flip “oh well that’s life in the big city!” but rather an explanation of what kind of preparedness is necessary for a big city likely to face terrorist attacks.

Mr. Trump mischaracterized the London mayor’s remarks. Mr. Khan did not describe terrorism as “part of living in a big city,” as if bombings and shootings were an inescapable fact of life. He said that terrorism preparedness, including providing sufficient support to the police, was “part and parcel of living in a great global city.”

So young Donnie maligned the mayor of London because he didn’t bother to figure out what he’d said. Was it something about his name perhaps? “Sadiq Khan” struck him as a name that a London mayor shouldn’t have?

You use a terrorist attack on our city to attack London's Mayor for your own political gain. You're a disgrace.

— Wes Streeting MP (@wesstreeting) March 22, 2017

https://twitter.com/C4Ciaran/status/844596741122899969

The Times reporter, Liam Stack, apparently emailed young Donnie to ask him why he’s such an asshole.

Mr. Trump declined to elaborate later on Wednesday. “I’m not going to comment on every tweet I send,” he said in an email.

Attaboy young Donnie. Send out insulting tweets based on your own incomprehension and ignorance, and then refuse to withdraw or apologize. Just like Daddy.

The police have identified the marauding attacker:

The man believed to have carried out the attack in Westminster has been named by police as Khalid Masood.

Kent-born Masood, who was shot dead in the attack, was not the subject of any current police investigations, but had a range of previous convictions.

The 52-year-old was believed to have been living in the West Midlands.

The so-called Islamic State group has said it was behind the attack, in which PC Keith Palmer, Aysha Frade and US tourist Kurt Cochran were killed.

Whether or not IS gave any planning or logistical help, of course it’s “behind” the attack in the larger sense: it models violence and brutality in the name of religion, and people who love violence and brutality feel justified in their pet hobby.

The Metropolitan Police said there had been no prior intelligence about Masood’s intention to carry out an attack.

But he was known to the police and his previous convictions included causing grievous bodily harm, possession of offensive weapons and public order offences.

A violence-loving guy. Which is prior, the religion or the love of violence and brutality? I think it’s the latter.

A JustGiving page set up for the family of PC Palmer reached its target of £100,000 on Thursday afternoon, less than 24 hours after it had been set up. That target has since been doubled.

The Met said that as a mark of respect, the constable’s shoulder number, 4157U, would be retired and not reissued to any other officer.

Mrs Frade worked at a London college, while Mr Cochran was from Utah, in the US, and had been visiting the capital with his wife Melissa, who is in hospital with serious injuries.

According to a family statement, the couple had been celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary and were due to return to the US on Thursday.

…

The casualties included 12 Britons, three French children -who have since returned home – two Romanians, four South Koreans, one German, one Pole, one Irish, one Chinese, one Italian, one American and two Greeks.

A multicultural bridge, an international bridge, a bridge that draws people from all over. It’s the bridge where the gaudy Victorian-Gothic Houses of Parliament are right in front of you (going south to north), so naturally it draws people who want to get a look at London. I like the view from Waterloo bridge even more, myself, but Westminster bridge is nothing to sneeze at. Now it will be a place of horror for years to come.

Eiffel Tower in Paris turns off its lights in mark of respect to #Westminster terror attack https://t.co/86W3BGGHr0 pic.twitter.com/KPI72eq4wM

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) March 22, 2017

PC Keith Palmer was killed doing his duty – protecting our city and our democracy from those who want to destroy our way of life. pic.twitter.com/p6igkEJoGY

— Sadiq Khan (@SadiqKhan) March 22, 2017

I've known Keith for 25 years. We served together in the Royal Artillery before he became a copper. A lovely man, a friend. I'm heartbroken. https://t.co/LgF4rQ7Vmg

— James Cleverly🇬🇧 (@JamesCleverly) March 22, 2017

It’s a gorgeous blowy spring-like afternoon here. I went for a walk in the cemetery about a mile from where I live, and in wandering about I saw a surprising inscription:

Elisabeth Utke Jorgensen
Scholar, Pioneer, Artist, Adventurer
1867-1939

I looked her up and found a brief biography by Seattle historian Paul Dorpat:

One of the first women to graduate from the University of Copenhagen, Elizabeth Utke immigrated in the early 1890s to the United States, where she found her degrees in logic and mathematics useless. Pursuing two of the few occupations open to her, she attended secretary school while earning her way as a seam­stress with a knack for “fancy work.” She married Carl Jorgensen, a Norwegian sea captain, and the couple toured the West Coast before winding up in Nome, Alaska, during the gold rush in the early 20th century.

In Alaska Elizabeth designed and built shallow draft landing craft that she and her husband operated in a prosperous lighterage (barge) business, moving miners and supplies between the ships they arrived on and the shallow shoreline of Nome. After returning to Seattle and constructing their home overlooking the ravine, the couple raised a family while Elizabeth continued to practice her skills in photography, sewing and watercolors.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is not apologizing.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian novelist and feminist, has condemned a “language orthodoxy” on the political left after she endured a vitriolic backlash over comments about transgender women.

The author of Half of a Yellow Sun plunged into a row about identity politics when she suggested in an interview last week that the experiences of transgender women, who she said are born with the privileges the world accords to men, are distinct from those of women born female. She was criticised for implying that trans women are not “real women”.

But Adichie defended her comments during a public appearance in Washington on Monday night. “This is fundamentally about language orthodoxy,” she told a sellout event organised by the bookshop Politics & Prose. “There’s a part of me that resists this sort of thing because I don’t think it’s helpful to insist that unless you want to use the exact language I want you to use, I will not listen to what you’re saying.

“From the very beginning, I think it’s been quite clear that there’s no way I could possibly say that trans women are not women. It’s the sort of thing to me that’s obvious, so I start from that obvious premise. Of course they are women but in talking about feminism and gender and all of that, it’s important for us to acknowledge the differences in experence of gender. That’s really what my point is.”

Yes but that’s not allowed to be what anyone’s point is. No one is allowed to have such a point. It is Forbidden.

“I didn’t apologise because I don’t think I have anything to apologise for,” she said on Monday. “What’s interesting to me is this is in many ways about language and I think it also illustrates the less pleasant aspects of the American left, that there sometimes is a kind of language orthodoxy that you’re supposed to participate in, and when you don’t there’s a kind of backlash that gets very personal and very hostile and very closed to debate.

“Had I said, ‘a cis woman is a cis woman, and a trans woman is a trans woman’, I don’t think I would get all the crap that I’m getting, but that’s actually really what I was saying.

“But because ‘cis’ is not a part of my vocabulary – it just isn’t – it really becomes about language and the reason I find that troubling is to insist that you have to speak in a certain way and use certain expressions, otherwise we cannot have a conversation, can close up debate. And if we can’t have conversations, we can’t have progress.”

She’s a writer, after all. Writers don’t like being told what words they have to use. I know this from profound personal experience. Writers need to choose their own words.

Adichie distanced herself from academic feminism and said her new book, Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, is careful to avoid jargon. “I don’t really partake in that kind of language orthodoxy and there’s a part of me that really resists it. So I resist to be coopted into it.”

Jargon is a toxin to language.

“But really, my position remains: I think gender is about what we experience, gender is about how the world treats us, and I think a lot of the outrage and anger comes from the idea that in order to be inclusive, we sometimes have to deny difference. I think that because human difference for so long, in all its various forms, has been the root of so much oppression, sometimes there’s the impulse to say let’s deny the difference, as though by wishing away the difference we can then wish away the oppression.”

This echoes over-optimistic claims of a post-racial society, the award-winning author continued. “In some ways it’s like the idea of colour-blindness, which is, I think, just a really hollow idea that if we say we don’t see colour, then somehow all the oppressions will disappear. That’s not the case …”

It’s very like it. At times it’s identical to it.

During a question and answer session, Adichie was asked about issues of “intersectionality”, the overlap of social identities such as race, gender and sexuality. She remained sceptical: “Speaking of language, even the word ‘intersectionality’ comes from a certain kind of academic discourse that sometimes I don’t know what it means.”

Sometimes it means “I am better than you so sit down and shut up.”

The Independent reports that the perp has been identified.

Abu Izzadeen, who was born Trevor Brooks, has been named in reports as the man who drove a car into the Houses of Parliament and attempted to attack police officers.

His views were far from secret: videos of him can be seen across YouTube, in which he rants about how important it is to kill the police and how everyone in Parliament are kufar, or infidels.

Not quite: he says those raised as unbelievers are kufar, but those born and raised Muslim are apostates. He helpfully names Sadiq Khan and Baroness Warsi. (Khan was an MP before he became Mayor.)

In other words he was a loathsome man who peddled loathsome ideas.

Izzadeen was born in Hackney in east London and named Trevor Brooks. He converted to Islam just before he turned 18, in 1993, originally changing his name to Omar but preferring to be known by Abu Izadeen.

He is thought to have been radicalised after he met other famous islamists Omar Bakri Muhammed and Abu Hamza al-Misri at Finsbury Park Mosque in the 1990s. From there, his engagement with terror appeared to grow – he praised the 7/7 suicide bombers and expressed his hope that he too could die a suicide bomber.

He died as a suicide driver and stabber.

Manafort laundered money for Yanukovych, we’re told.

A Russian billionaire paid former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort millions of dollars to boost the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Associated Press reports. The new allegations arise months after Manafort resigned from the Trump campaign amid concerns over his work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.

“According to documents that we’ve reviewed, Paul Manafort secretly worked for a Russian oligarch who wanted him to promote Russian interests,” the AP’s Chad Day tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. “And in particular, he wrote a memo that outlined this kind of vast plan for him to promote Russian interests in the former Soviet republics — and also to specifically benefit the Putin government.”

Maybe this doesn’t bear any relation at all to Trump and his ties to Russia. Maybe. Spicey wants us to think it doesn’t.

Earlier this week, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer sought to minimize Manafort’s involvement with the Trump campaign, saying that Manafort “played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time.” Spicer returned to the topic at Wednesday’s midday briefing.

“Nothing in this morning’s report references any actions by the president, the White House, or any Trump administration official,” Spicer said. He added, “The report is entirely focused on actions that Paul took a decade ago.”

But even if that’s true…why is Trump drawn to the kind of person who does things like that?

In his deal with Deripaska, Manafort promised to counter anti-Russian sentiment, according to Day and his AP colleague Jeff Horwitz. Citing a strategy memo from 2005, they say Manafort told Deripaska that he would advocate a pro-Russian agenda both in former republics and “at the highest levels of the U.S. government – the White House, Capitol Hill and the State Department.”

“My work for Mr. Deripaska did not involve representing Russia’s political interests,” Manafort told the AP, saying that he instead focused on ago representing Deripaska in countries where he had investments.

Discussing Deripaska’s ties to Putin, Day cites WikiLeaks cables that showed U.S. officials referring to Deripaska as “one of the top two or three oligarchs that are very close to him.”

Manafort has an apartment at Trump Tower in New York and is a veteran of politics and lobbying; his career stretches back to Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. His lobbying firm has been known for working on behalf of “unsavory governments in Nigeria and Kenya, the UNITA rebels in Angola and a group with ties to Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos,” as NPR reported last summer.

Never met an authoritarian he didn’t like, I guess. Sounds very Trumpish.

The BBC’s latest summing up:

Four people, including an armed police officer and a man believed to be the attacker, have died in a terrorist incident near the UK’s Houses of Parliament, Scotland Yard has said.

A woman was among several pedestrians struck by a car on Westminster bridge, before it crashed into railings.

The officer was stabbed in the Houses of Parliament by an attacker, who was shot by police.

At least 20 people were injured, including three other officers.

…

The French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said three French school pupils were among the injured and offered “solidarity with our British friends, and full support” for the wounded students and their families.

The Port of London Authority said a woman has been pulled alive from the River Thames near the bridge and was being treated for serious injuries.

It’s becoming familiar. One lonewolf drives a vehicle into a crowd and then if he’s still alive he attempts to pick off individuals. Dominic Casciani analyzes it:

The incident outside Westminster is exactly the kind of scenario that security chiefs have been planning for.

It looks like the type of attack jihadis have wanted to carry out in Britain – namely attacking people with a vehicle and taking on the security forces with knives.

In the security services’ jargon this is known as a “marauding attack” and is the hardest type of terrorist incident to predict and defend against. That means casualties, as we have seen in Nice and elsewhere, are inevitable.

The casualties are few in number, but people freak out anyway, because humans are bad at overall risk assessment.

This isn’t going to make things any better.

From the BBC’s live page:

What we know so far

•  A policeman has been stabbed and his attacker shot by officers at the House of Parliament
• Police are treating it as a “terrorist incident”
• The attacker is reported to have mowed down several pedestrians as he drove a grey Hyundai car across Westminster Bridge before crashing it into railings
• He is then reported to have run through the gates of the Palace of Westminster and stabbed the officer
•  Eyewitnesses said he was shot by police as he approached a second officer clutching his knife
• House of Commons and Lords in lockdown – as is nearby St Thomas’s hospital
• Public urged to avoid the area and Westminster Underground station is closed
• Prime Minister Theresa May was seen being ushered into a silver Jaguar in the grounds of the Palace of Westminster as what sounded like gunfire rang out at around 14:45 GMT
• A Downing Street source confirmed the prime minster was “OK”.

That was at 5 p.m. their time. The attack started around 2:45 their time.

‘Increased chatter’ on extremist networks – AP

A European security official has told the AP news agency there was increased “chatter” on Jihadi networks Tuesday following the UK’s adoption of an electronics ban aboard flights from certain mostly Muslim countries.

But he said there was no information that Westminster incident was terror-related.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity.

Tory MP describes her reaction

Former education secretary Nicky Morgan told the Press Association: “The Division Bell had just gone and MPs were making their way to the House of Commons chamber. I was walking from Portcullis House along the path of Old Palace Yard when suddenly shots rang out.

“It takes a moment to realise that is actually gunfire and at that point people were yelling get down get back”

They share tweets from MPs:

Armed officers ordered myself and Security Minister into lobby at gun point. Terrifying

— Anna Soubry 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇺🇦🇪🇺🖤🤍 (@Anna_Soubry) March 22, 2017

On lockdown in Commons Chamber following dreadful events in and around parliament. Thoughts with everyone at this terrible time.

— Vernon Coaker (@Vernon_Coaker) March 22, 2017

Twitter video

A video on Twitter appearing to show people lying injured in the road on Westminster Bridge was posted by Radoslaw Sikorski.

Mr Sikorski, a senior fellow at Harvard Centre for European Studies, told the BBC: “I heard what I thought what I thought was just a collision and then I looked through the window of the taxi and someone down, obviously in great distress.

“Then I saw a second person down, and I started filming, then I saw three more people down, one of them bleeding profusely.”

Helicopter top left hovering over Westminster Bridge. My prayers are with the brave police officer who was attacked pic.twitter.com/KsV5xdPxG3

— Michael Fabricant 🇬🇧🇺🇸🇮🇱🇺🇦 (@Mike_Fabricant) March 22, 2017

The scariest item I’ve seen so far:

Donald Trump ‘briefed on situation’

US President Donald Trump “has been briefed on the situation” in London and is monitoring events, his press secretary Sean Spicer tweeted.

I’m not joking. It’s horrifying that he’s the one being briefed about this.

Twenty minutes ago:

Incredibly brave @metpoliceuk anti-terror officers co-ordinating a lockdown & evacuation after #ParliamentAttack pic.twitter.com/XFv6KoNpm4

— George Freeman MP FRSA (@GeorgeFreemanMP) March 22, 2017

A poignant memory:

Flashback: 1979 anti-hijab rally in Tehran, Iran, a day before theocratic regime forcibly and violently began imposing veil on women pic.twitter.com/IzSPSVjIqA

— Borzou Daragahi 🖊🗒 (@borzou) March 19, 2017

Pro Publica tells us about some more possible (or likely) corruption in the Trump gang.

Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who was removed from his post by the Trump administration last week, was overseeing an investigation into stock trades made by the president’s health secretary, according to a person familiar with the office.

Tom Price, head of the Department of Health and Human Services, came under scrutiny during his confirmation hearings for investments he made while serving in Congress. The Georgia lawmaker traded hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of shares in health-related companies, even as he voted on and sponsored legislation affecting the industry.

Oh did he. Surely that’s a big no-no for legislators. I hope? Isn’t it? Are they just openly feathering their own nests now?

Price testified at the time that his trades were lawful and transparent. Democrats accused him of potentially using his office to enrich himself. One lawmaker called for an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, citing concerns Price could have violated the STOCK Act, a 2012 law signed by President Obama that clarified that members of Congress cannot use nonpublic information for profit and requires them to promptly disclose their trades.

The investigation of Price’s trades by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which hasn’t been previously disclosed, was underway at the time of Bharara’s dismissal, said the person.

I suppose soon Congress will be passing laws requiring us all to spend a certain minimum amount of money on our choice of

• weekends at a Trump resort
• outfits or jewelry from Ivanka’s collection
• a condo in a Trump-brand building in any country, with a special recommendation for Baku

Bharara seems to think the firing was because he was getting too close.

When the Trump administration instead asked for Bharara’s resignation, the prosecutor refused, and he said he was then fired. Trump has not explained the reversal, but Bharara fanned suspicions that his dismissal was politically motivated via his personal Twitter account.

“I did not resign,” he wrote in one tweet over the weekend. “Moments ago I was fired.”

“By the way,” Bharara said in a second tweet, “now I know what the Moreland Commission must have felt like.”

Bharara was referring to a commission that was launched by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2013 to investigate state government corruption, only to be disbanded by the governor the next year as its work grew close to his office. In that case, Bharara vowed to continue the commission’s work, and eventually charged Cuomo associates and won convictions of several prominent lawmakers.

But the Trump people won’t let anything like that happen. They’re not wimps.

Pro Publica goes through some of the cases.

In a third case, reported by Time magazine, Price invested thousands of dollars in six pharmaceutical companies before leading a legislative and public relations effort that eventually killed proposed regulations that would have harmed those companies.

Louise Slaughter, a Democratic Congress member from New York who sponsored the STOCK Act, wrote in January to the SEC asking that the agency investigate Price’s stock trades. “The fact that these trades were made and in many cases timed to achieve significant earnings or avoid losses would lead a reasonable person to question whether the transactions were triggered by insider knowledge,” she wrote.

Wouldn’t it be nice if legislators just saw that kind of thing as unacceptable, and stayed well away from it?

Originally a comment by Freemage on Rex has to get a haircut that day.

And Trump (and even Vladimir) fail to fully understand the reason for the US involvement in NATO. It’s not got anything to do with protecting Europe from Russian aggression–that’s a happy coincidence, frankly, though it’s one that gave a polite cover-story to the real benefit to the U.S. for the last almost-70 years.

To-wit: We’re there so that everyone else doesn’t need to protect themselves from Russia. It’s a subtle, nuanced difference, but it’s the reason we haven’t had a World War during NATO’s run. I’m sure Germany, France and England could all make themselves largely impossible to easily invade. Even most of the nations in Europe with less military experience and economic strength would be able to make themselves unattractive as invasion targets.

But achieving that on their own? Yeah, that would require a truly massive military build-up. Especially in Germany. Anyone remember what happened the last two times Germany built a massive war-machine? Even if they did so out of the most genteel and respectable intentions of self-defense this time around, there’s no way the other European powers would look at that and go, “Oh, hey, that’s cool.” No. They’d all build up their own military might. You know, ‘Just in case.”

And some of those smaller nations might just decide to, you know, forge an alliance with this or that larger power, in order to ensure they don’t have to deal with Russian aggression alone. And soon you’ve got a network of alliances and deals and such, many of which are under the table because nobody wants to make it TOO obvious just how much influence they’ve got.

And then some guy is sitting in a sandwich shop and suddenly sees his most hated enemy, and soon we’re all fooked.

We’re in Europe (and Japan and South Korea, for that matter), so that the local armed forces don’t get built up to the point where someone looks around and says, “Hey, now that we’ve got all these soldiers and tanks and things, shouldn’t we maybe use them?”