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More U.S. military dead in Afghanistan this year, and more U.S. troops are deploying to the world's most inhospitable place for foreign armies. /AP photo
With the Trump administration sending more U.S. troops to fight in Afghanistan, America's longest war is getting longer.
The commander-in-chief has yet to offer the country an explanation why Americans are dying under his watch during in the latest interminable Afghan war.
Borrowing and inverting a business-world motto that could appeal to President Trump, America's war in Afghanistan is now a "no-mission, no-margin" scenario. In business, even the best-intended enterprises are doomed unless they can turn a buck, generating the marginal income necessary for long-term financial survival. No margin, no mission.
It is impossible to turn a buck--or generate any other gain--if there is no mission to execute at the outset of any enterprise.
What is the U.S. mission in Afghanistan under President Trump?
Trump loves to win. If winning is the mission, then Americans should brace for a long struggle and consider making Afghanistan the 51st state.
While facing impeachment over a criminal conspiracy that included a break-in at the Democratic Party's national headquarters, President Richard Nixon resigned in August 1974. President Donald Trump is making calls out of Nixon's playbook, blaming the news media and leaks of sensitive information by government officials for his failings. /bullworkofdemocracy photo illustration
"The press is the enemy."
"It's always the son-of-a-bitch that leaks."
"The American people are entitled to see the president and to hear his views directly, and not to see him only through the press."
These are all quotes from the president of the United States, but they were not uttered by the current leader of the free world. All of these comments were made by Richard Nixon, the first and only U.S. president who resigned his office in disgrace.
Since taking the oath of office less than a month ago, President Donald Trump has been channeling Nixon, railing against the press and leaks from within his own administration.
Trump says any poll that casts his performance in a negative light should not be believed, calling them "fake news."
When The Washington Post revealed Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had held policy-related discussions with a top Russian official before Inauguration Day, the billionaire businessman claimed the biggest concern was leaks from his administration not the undermining of President Barack Obama while he was still in office.
Flynn apparently discussed American sanctions against Russia with the Russian ambassador to the United States, which the FBI concluded made the national security adviser prone to blackmail from the Kremlin. Trump knew about the blackmail threat for at least two weeks, according to U.S. officials. But he kept Flynn as his national security adviser and only fired the retired general after the Post story was published.
The depth and breadth of the Flynn cover-up is a mystery, for now. The truth will come out eventually.
One of the truths that came out of Nixon's disastrous second term as president is a cover-up is almost always worse than the original crime.
There are many troubling similarities between Nixon and Trump. Just one month into the 45th president's first term, the scariest potentiality is that Trump is even worse.
Energy secretary nominee Rick Perry, a former Texas governor and a longtime conservative government standard-bearer, visits Trump Tower in New York during the president-elect's Cabinet hiring spree in December. /Getty Images photo by Drew Angerer
Conservative Americans found an unexpected haul of presents under the Christmas tree this year: a bigly box bursting open with a business-tycoon president-elect and a Cabinet stuffed with billionaires and plutocratic ideologues.
Several of the executive-department nominees are more akin to a wolf pack guarding the whole farm than a fox guarding the hen house.
Trump's nominee for Housing and Urban Development secretary, Ben Carson, is a retired neurosurgeon and former Republican primary-season rival of the president-elect. He has no public housing experience and a self-help ideology that seems ill-suited to providing an essential safety-net service. /Getty Images photo by Andrew Burton
Trump's nominee for Education secretary, Michigan Republican Party bigwig billionaire Betsy DeVos,
has no experience in public education, including with her own children. She favors private-school vouchers and charter schools as solutions--and likely poison pills--for struggling public schools.
Trump's nominee for Energy secretary, two-time GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry, has advocated dismantling the department. While calling for the agency's demise in an epic 2011 debate gaffe, he forgot the department's name.
Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, U.S. Rep. Tom Price, R-Georgia, favors a free-market approach to medicine that includes slashing HHS regulations and privatizing Medicare.
Trump's nominee for Environmental Protection Agency administrator, E. Scott Pruitt, has been a fierce critic of the EPA in his current role as Oklahoma attorney general. Pruitt is among the named petitioners in a 25-state lawsuit against the EPA over greenhouse gas regulations.
As the country embarks on Republican government in the White House, both houses of Congress, and a majority of statehouses, a host of hurdles that require united effort confronts the apparently partisan Trump administration: healthcare reform; national governments that threaten global security such as North Korea; external economic threats from powerful competitors and volatile global markets; internal economic challenges including a dilapidated infrastructure, an aging population, a skewed concentration of wealth, and disruptive waves of automation that upend the workforce; roiled race relations; immigration reform; and climate change.
Tackling these hurdles from the right, or any single-minded approach, is doomed to failure measured in blood and national treasure.
Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin gained multiple advantages in the U.S. election that elevated Donald Trump to the White House, including the defeat of a potentially formidable adversary: Hillary Clinton. /image via itv.com
Evidence and logic show the Russian Federation government was involved in hacking efforts that were designed to impact the 2016 U.S. election.
The evidence of Russian meddling is compelling, and it was convincingly presented last week by Eugene Kiely for FactCheck.org:
All U.S. intelligence agencies and at least three companies have investigated election-related hacking such as the cracking of John Podesta's email account and concluded that the Russian government was involved
CrowdStrike, the company hired to investigate the May 2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee, concluded that "two separate Russian intelligence-affiliated adversaries" were responsible for the electronic espionage
Fidelis Cybersecurity, another Internet security firm, not only concurred with CrowdStrike's findings but also declared "this settles the question" of Russian government involvement in the DNC hack
On Nov. 17, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified before a House committee, stating the utmost care was taken before the U.S. intelligence community identified the Russian government as the source of election-related hacking: "We gave considerable thought to diming out Russia."
Logically, the case is just as convincing. Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin had powerful motives to push for a Donald Trump victory:
Hillary Clinton, who had foreign policy experience as secretary of state, would have likely been an adversary on the world stage if she had become president.
Donald Trump, who has no foreign policy experience beyond financial dealings, has signaled willingness to cooperate with Putin, including openness to recognizing Russia's annexation of Crimea and fighting in tandem against ISIS in the Middle East.
The chaotic spectacle of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, including Clinton winning the popular vote, is a huge PSYOP victory for Putin. The hacking exposed dirty tricks and fueled unsubstantiated suspicion of vote rigging.
On Oct. 7, the Department of Homeland Securityreported the agency was "confident" that the Russian government was involved in hacking attacks on the U.S. election. /www.dhs.gov
After Russian paratroopers were captured in Ukraine in late August 2014, they were quickly swapped for Ukranian prisoners of war. /AFP image
Big Lie: Ten Russian paratroopers captured recently in Ukraine "really did participate in a patrol of the Russian-Ukranian border, crossed it by accident at an unmarked section, and as far as we understand showed no resistance," the Russian Defense Ministry saidaccording to the BBC.
Closer to the truth: "This wasn't a mistake, but a special mission they were carrying out," a Ukranian military spokesman said.
A resident reacts to shelling damage in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, in August 2014. /CTV News image
Ukraine is a fledgling democracy, and young governments of the people are more imperfect than their mature counterparts such as Australia, Switzerland and the United States.
Vladimir Putin's Russia is imperfection incarnate.
The Russian president, ex-KGB officer, Judo expert and all-star power monger has pushed his James Bondesque villain game to an Ivan the Terrible level. In 2014, Putin has racked up a string of stains on humanity, from exterminating dogs at Sochi during the Winter Olympics to launching an aggressive war against Ukraine.
Putin's Russia, which ranks as an authoritarian regime in indexes of democracy, appears determined to re-establish key elements of the Soviet Union, including large chunks of Ukraine.
This is starting to look a lot like Stalin's Russia.
Russian tanks are invading an Eastern European country and the Kremlin has dusted off a propaganda tool imported from Nazi Germany during World War II: The Big Lie. Joseph Goebbels, who operated Hitler's propaganda machine, was the master of the WWII whopper: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
For weeks, the Russians have been deploying The Big Lie about their military activity on Ukrainian soil. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov shamelessly fired up the propaganda machine, claiming NATO satellite photos showing heavily armed Russian military units conducting operations inside Ukraine had "turned out to be from video games."
NATO satellite imagery reportedly shows Russian military units operating inside eastern Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin signs autographs for Russian troops in Chechnya during the early stage of his crackdown on the breakaway republic in 1999. /Image via npr.org
While getting my weekly dose of the Sunday morning news shows, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry watching some of the pundits and politicos bemoan Russia's role in the U.S. snooping community's Edward Snowden Fiasco.
One wonk wailed over Vladimir Putin's propensity to "stick it" to the United States; in this case, allowing the rogue U.S. National Security Agency contractor to pass through Moscow on his way to seeking refuge at one of the bastions of left-wing politics in Latin America. This was "not the behavior of an ally."
With Putin exercising an iron grip at the helm of the Kremlin for more than a dozen years, it's shocking there are still U.S. foreign policy prognosticators who do not understand how he wields power.
As is fitting for a Russian leader, Putin is a character who literally stepped out of the pages of an epic co-written by Niccolo Machievelli, Leo Tolstoy and Ian Flemming. Putin is a former KGB officer and the strongman ruler of a strong nation. Like Machievelli's prince, Putin is only an ally to the extent that it serves the interests of his country and his ability to rule.
The Kremlin's decision to give Snowden at least temporary refuge on Russian soil is just Putin being Putin. It was surely an irresistible opportunity: a chance to gain access to the man responsible for one of the biggest breaches of national security in U.S. history and to remind Washington that it is not the only powerful player on the world stage.
Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, was a flashpoint in both of the Chechen separatist wars with Russia that followed the fall of the Soviet Union. Street battles, artillery shelling and aerial bombardment in the mid-1990s, and again in 1999 and 2000, leveled the city. /Image via historyofrussia.org
I have lived in and around Boston for nearly all of my adult life, so I have nothing but scorn and disdain for the ethnic Chechen Tsarnaev brothers' attack on the Boston Marathon.
But Vladimir Putin's claim that the marathon bombing vindicates Russian actions in the North Caucasus, particularly his crackdown on Chechnya, is shamelessly self-serving propaganda. Speaking at an annual question-and-answer session on April 25, Putin said, "I was always appalled when our Western partners and the Western media called the terrorists, who did bloody crimes in our country, 'insurgents,' and almost never ‘terrorists.'"
Rule of law was particularly deficient in the North Caucasus, where conflict
among government forces, insurgents, Islamist militants, and criminal forces led
to numerous human rights abuses, including killings, torture, physical abuse,
and politically motivated abductions.
There continued to be reports that security forces used indiscriminate force
resulting in numerous deaths and that the perpetrators were not prosecuted.
Armed forces and police units reportedly abused and tortured both rebels and
civilians in holding facilities. Human rights groups noted that physical abuse
of women was becoming increasingly common in the region.
Government personnel, rebels, and criminal elements continued to engage in
abductions in the North Caucasus.
Burning the homes of suspected rebels reportedly continued. Memorial (a leading Russian human rights group) reported
that on April 22, two days after a special operation in the village of
Komsomolskoye in the Gudermes District of Chechnya, armed men in camouflage
burned the house belonging to the grandparents of Akhmed Bantaev, one of the men
killed in the special operation.
Acting President Vladimir Putin signs autographs for Russian troops outside Grozny in January 2000. Boris Yeltsin had resigned the presidency the day before. /AFP image
