CALLING THE VICTORY

A few more thoughts on Trump's announcement Monday:

Donald Trump could withdraw American troops from Afghanistan tomorrow, thus ending this country's longest running war. But would that be enough to insure a second term as President? Probably not.

So he's staying in.

If he can see his way to declaring victory in about three years, he'll have a much easier path to a second term: The man who WON America's longest war.

There's a ring to that, undeniably.

And here's all he has to do: Pick the right moment to declare victory and withdraw the troops.

What does victory look like? Whatever he wants it to look like. It's his choice.

What will it look like? Probably this: The Taliban reaches a deal to share power with the current government. Together they thank us for our help and respectfully request that we leave. Trump declares victory and off we go.

Two years later the Taliban consolidates power and the country goes back to what it was before 9/11. Almost certainly.

Or we could leave now; same deal in two years.

The difference: Lingering in country, we'll add a few hundred pounds of American blood to the soil of Afghanistan. Maybe the next crop of opium poppies will be that much more potent.

For the locals it'll mean a nicely mounting body count of dead "terrorists," along with the innocents killed as collateral damage.

(America defines "terrorist" as anyone who actively opposes us anywhere in the world, including inside their own country.)

By killing the guy in Afghanistan, will that prevent him from coming to American to kill us here? Absolutely!

But by killing the man at home, defending his own country from invaders, might we inspire others to come to America to kill us? Not at all unlikely.

That's the downside (along with increased traffic at Dover Air Force base, where American casualties are carried off cargo planes in flag-draped aluminum coffins).

The upside? We get another four years of Donald Trump's Presidency.

For some, that's a pretty good deal. (Donald Trump, for instance.)

Question: Is the man who wrote The Art of the Deal really that cynical?

But wait, you might be saying, he's giving us a victory in Afghanistan! A victory that both vindicates and validates all American deaths so far!

Nonsense. There can be no actual victory for America in that country. Remember, we're fighting against God in Afghanistan. You can't beat God. By definition.

Whatever we do in that region—short of expunging the very concept of Islam forever—the dent in the ocean that we make will fill back in. And fast.

The best we can hope for is death, destruction, and four more years of Donald Trump. That's what this deal is all about. Some would say it's a bargain.

Are you one of them?

AFGHANISTAN BANANA STAND

President Trump has set out new guidelines for the US military in Afghanistan. For the first time, apparently, America is in it to win it.

Make no mistake: We're going to win the war.

This is what the new and improved America is all about: Winning!

(Accept no substitutes.)

America's longest war is headed for a happy ending.

We know all this because the President said so. And that's that. I mean, the man never lies, right? And he's never wrong about stuff. Everything he says is golden.

The troops are to be given all the hardware and personnel they need to get the job done. Furthermore, the commanders in the field will be in charge, for once. Whatever they want to do, BAM! It's done!

But we're not going to dictate to the Afghani government. This is their country and their war (sort of). We're not going to try to remake the place in our image. If those guys want to include the Taliban in the government, who are we to object? (If they can find any Taliban alive after we get through with them. Ha ha!)

We're in Afghanistan to kill terrorists, and when we've killed them all, we'll leave. No timetables. The orders are simple: Kill 'em all, then bail.

Oh, maybe we'll leave when the government of Afghanistan decides they've had enough American help. It's none of our business, right? If those guys make a private deal with the Taliban to end the war, so be it.

We'll declare victory and skedaddle.

It's the new America: We break down the door of your country, kill all the terrorists in there, and hit the road. Rinse and repeat.

(And don't bother leaving a key under the mat. Turns out we enjoy busting things up. Besides, we're on a mission. MAGA!)

Trump often criticized Obama for announcing the schedule of American troop withdrawal, said it gave the Taliban a chance to lie back and wait us out.

Fact is, that's always possible, and Trump's plan won't prevent it. If the Taliban disappeared into the mountains (or into the Afghani government), we'd pretty much have to take off, sooner or later: No more enemy to neutralize, right?

After we leave, they can come back—or break any deals they have with the government.

Remember, this is their country. (They used to run it.) And they have the high moral ground: These are deeply religious men. They can only do the right thing, because they're acting under direct orders from Allah.

Probably the only possible long-term solution to the Taliban would be to field an equally God-addled contingent of Islamic freedom fighters to wipe them out.

Then swallow a cat to chase the rat, and so on.

I got a feeling it could get pretty messy in there...

TRUMP'S MOUTH IS WIDE OPEN AGAIN

A lot of the criticism President Trump is facing these days comes from his slowness to condemn neo-Nazis and White Supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia. He corrected this omission on Monday, then kind of took it all back on Tuesday, at a press conference in front of Trump Tower in New York City.

About the only folks defending him now are the KKK and fellow bigots. And Vice President Mike Pence.

It's difficult to tell if Trump really wants to earn the praise of neo-Nazis (though he'd be delighted to take their votes come 2020). What he seems to be doing is not so much championing their cause, as coming to the defense of his own words—his Saturday statement. The "many sides" statement.

Trump has a history of reacting to criticism by doubling down, by not just repeating what he originally said, but by amplifying it.

It's like he can't stand to be wrong. Or to be seen as wrong.

Trump's position is that he is a perfect being, and as such, all of his statements are perfect and beyond reproach. He can't back down because he's never wrong.

As far as he knows.

This is a quintessentially human attitude. Everybody knows the crap in their heads is good stuff, beyond criticism. We know this because everything we see in the world backs us up. We know we're right. End of story.

(Lucky for us, the human brain edits the world we see, drawing attention to those events and conditions that tend to support the nonsense in our pitiful noggins. When nothing out there can be used to prove us right, stuff is made up. Perfectly natural process from a naturally perfect creature.)

Trump's assertion is this: His Saturday statement was correct, and if you don't think so it's because you're not thinking things through properly.

As Trump remembers it, he condemned the violence—on many sides, many sides.

Note, he's talking about the violence itself, not the political or philosophical positions of any of the people involved. Just the violence.

The way he sees it, the alt-left attacked the alt-right, and blame must therefore be shared. (He did not offer a way to split the tab.)

On Monday Trump stated that bigotry is evil. Apparently, violent protest against evil is also evil, and must be equally condemned. Also, it seems only the alt-left can have an opinion about racism. Folks in the middle are excluded from the debate.

Trump is lucky the alt-right folks came armed and ready to mix it up. If they'd marched peacefully—like black folk alongside Martin Luther King—and absorbed the punishment without fighting back, Trump might just have had to bless their martyred hearts. And make holy icons of their bloody shirts.

(It's happened before. Check out the rise of Adolf Hitler.)

By making a point of condemning the violence on both sides, Trump can stand behind his words on Saturday, triumphant in his accuracy and presidential fairness.

And revel in the little picture.

Like Captain Queeg upbraiding an officer for letting a man go with his shirt tail out, blasting away at the fellow about military decorum and proper behavior—all while his ship steams in a circle toward failure. The Captain refuses all interruption from those who can see the problem, because he knows he's doing the right thing.

Trump defends his little words, lest they be found wanting and reflect badly on him.

Let the citizens of the nation wallow in the Big Picture.

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN - DECODED

I don't understand everything, not even with a long time to ponder. Take Trump's campaign slogan, for instance. It clearly implies America used to be great, but wasn't great right now. Though it could be great again by taking the right actions.

Hence the question: When was America last great?

At first I thought Trump might mean the early part of the Twentieth Century. We'd defeated Spain the the Spanish-American War, but hadn't yet become policeman to the world. (Even the Great War couldn't make that stick.) American industrialists were gobbling up great swaths of the landscape, and unionists were being mowed down by State Militias and whatnot. Minorities were kept in their places. And there was no pesky income tax to interfere with the accumulation of vast wealth.

The glory days of the nation—at least, as seen by the likes of Donald Trump.

So, was that the time Trump wanted to recapture?

Let's put my answer on hold for a moment and talk about what happened over the weekend. The gathering of the alt-right in Charlottesville, Virginia, met with counter protests, and a woman was run down by a car driven by a neo-Nazi.

President Trump condemned this horrific event, but laid the blame on violence and bigotry from "many sides, many sides." He was criticized for not naming the bad guys, for leaving it so vague. (Should the people who counter hatred also be called haters?)

But look, the man was in a tough position. Trump has already begun his 2020 reelection bid, and quite frankly, the alt-right represents a nice chunk of his peeps. For good reason, he didn't want to alienate those folks. They helped put him in the White House, and he would certainly like to count on them again. (If only guys like David Duke, former Grand Poobah of the KKK, would shut the hell up about supporting him!)

Two days later, Trump was hounded into saying the magic words: KKK, neo-Nazis, White Supremacists. (Someone may have written all this down for him.)

Recall how during the campaign he got this bug up his butt about how Hillary failed to use the term "radical Islamic terrorists." It was like a version of the Birther Movement applied to Hillary—the woman wasn't kosher, somehow. Anyway, it made sense to Trump, and he leaned on it pretty hard.

"If you can't name the evil you're fighting, you can win against it."

Something like that.

(Was he suggesting she was hoping to get the radical Islamic vote?)

Although he "joked" about Obama being a founder of ISIS, I don't recall Trump getting on the man for calling the group ISIL. Could've gone either way, though.

Back to Make America Great Again.

I think I finally got what it means: A return to those excellent days before the election of Barack Obama.

Which is why Trump seems obsessed with erasing everything Obama accomplished: Dreamers, gays and transgender folks in the military, environmental protections, a push for higher taxes on the wealthy, healthcare for most Americans.

Trump wants to undo all of that, along with NAFTA and the Iranian nuclear deal.

He wants to set the clock back eight years or so, before there was a Black Man in the White House. And I think the majority of his supporters decoded his message and voted to put white men back in charge of this country, the way God intended.

(In the Antebellum South, the Bible was quoted to justify the enslavement of blacks.)

A lot of Obama's work could be turned around with the stroke of a pen.

(To be accurate, many, many strokes of Trump's pen—I never saw a guy with a relatively short name take so long to scratch it on a piece of paper. And then hold it up for all to see: Donald J. Pneumoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis Trump.)

Getting Congress to cooperate in eviscerating Obama's legacy is proving more difficult. One of the biggest problems comes from adding the words "and replace" to the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. The Republicans can't figure out how to do that. And why should they? All they really wanted to do was get rid of it altogether.

If Trump yearns to be the anti-Obama, it may not even be a racist thing (though it likely is for a large number of his followers). Remember how Trump reacted (or failed to react) to Obama's jokes about him at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner a few years ago? Some think this is the main reason Trump tried so hard to become president.

Too bad he couldn't have run against Obama. If he could have defeated the man directly, and not just the guy's surrogate, maybe Trump wouldn't have to be so ruthless in the destruction of Obama's accomplishments. (Doesn't matter; he would have lost.)

But if the Donald had defeated Obama head to head, what would Trump's presidency be about?

Another question: Should a man with such a fragile ego be President of the United States of America?

DEAR KIM JONG-UN

First of all, I want to congratulate you for getting President Trump to haul out his wiener and wave it around at the dinner table in front of grandma and everybody, and for getting him to say what he did about fire and brimstone and so forth. Nice job.

As you know, your whole political career depends on making everybody believe North Korea is just seconds away from annihilation in a deluge of US nukes. If your people ever realized what a fabrication that was—our guy would call it Fake News—they'd climb right up your a-hole and hollow you out with hungry, hungry teeth.

They all sacrifice so much so you can develop the weapons to hold back this ravening chunk of nonsense.

To amend Winston Churchill, dictators don't just ride tigers, fearing to dismount. They have to keep the tiger distracted by shaking the bushes and causing odd noises to erupt from the jungle—strange clanking and whistling sounds that could be anything. Under the circumstances, mere tigers may be forgiven if they forget for a moment there's some idiot riding around on their backs.

Now, as I understand it, you plan to fire four brand-new ICBMs at the island of Guam, where the US bases numerous strategic bombers, causing the missiles to splash harmlessly into the ocean twenty or thirty miles off shore. Just to convince the US you have that capability.

Bad idea, dude.

You may have a lot of confidence in the ability of your techs and their exotic hardware, but you guys haven't fired off that many examples of the long-range stuff. What if you miscalculate? What if one of your missiles goes long and hits the island?

That would be bad, because forty minutes later, North Korea would cease to exist. And two weeks after that, there wouldn't be a North Korean alive anywhere on the planet.

All that risk, and for no gain at all.

We already believe your missiles can hit any city in the Western two-thirds of the continental US. And we know you have nuclear warheads. It's just a matter of time before you put 'em together and nuke us. Maybe a year or two. (Or less; sooner, in fact, than anyone is willing to believe right now.)

So don't push it, okay? Don't do anything. It'll drive our president crazy!

First, he'll think he's won. Then he'll begin to worry you're doing something nasty in secret. Maybe teamed up with Barack Obama. (Trump already knows that man is one sick sum-bitch.)

Your whole strategy is to make the US a viable enemy—without doing anything to actually provoke us. Forcing us to act would be fatal for you, your regime, and many, many of your people.

Here's why. You pose a serious threat to South Korea and Japan. That means the US can't take military measures without getting our friends hurt in retaliation.

Unless we go all-in, right from the get-go.

Only a massive nuclear strike could prevent you from carrying out revenge against your fellow Koreans and the Japanese. Decapitation might not be enough. We'd have to hit everything and take it all out. We'd have to hit you so hard your people wouldn't be able to find a stone they could throw at South Korea in anger.

I've heard it said that once you get the ability to deliver an unacceptable blow to the US, you'll agree to talks. (I think you're pretty much there, right now.) And in those talks, you'll give up your nuclear capability in exchange for what you really want.

If that's true, the question is: What do you really want?

What you've got right now is a 1984-style World of Perpetual War, which is plenty exciting and everything. What could possibly replace it that would be better for keeping your people under your thumb?

Maybe pull some sort of bizarre switcheroo, threaten us into giving in to your radical New Korean Order, where North and South Korea reunite in a democratic paradise that lives in peace with all the world.

You could force us to let that happen! Then happily give up your nukes and most of your conventional armament. Possible? Maybe.

But what if it turns out President Trump needs you to pose a threat to the US, as a distraction from problems at home? The Russia Thing, for instance. Or the lack of Repeal-and-Replace.

That would be weird.

Maybe you should just lie low for a while, and keep your big mouth shut. Our guy's crazy, you know. Might be wise not to set him off.

TRUMP'S THREE PART AGENDA

Aside from his avowed goal to renegotiate every deal ever made by anybody anywhere, President Donald Trump has three main items on his legislative agenda: 1) repeal (and replace) Obamacare; 2) pass tax reform to the benefit of Rich America; 3) fix the infrastructure of the nation.

Part One is well bogged down.

Republicans are at a massive disadvantage. They hate Obamacare, for various reasons (to include the fact often repeated that America has rejected Obamacare), but all they really want to do is repeal it. If "replace" hadn't somehow become attached to the deal, the whole process would have operated much smoother.

Unfortunately, a lot of noise has been generated by the American people, something to the effect that Obamacare ought to be fixed, not repealed, and this disruption of the natural order has made even so simple a thing as "repeal" stall out on the details.

The problem is, folks have gotten a taste of healthcare and want to hold onto it.

This is Obama's legacy, not the healthcare plan that bears his name. From now on, some sort of healthcare will be demanded by the people of this country.

("The horror, the horror!" say Republicans.)

So, on to Part Two.

Trump wants to give a massive tax break to rich Americans and American corporations. The idea is that those worthies will take that money and build countless factories, putting to work all those folks disrupted by the inevitable flow of events in the universe.

Well, you may well give those people the money, but since Trump doesn't plan to link that money to any action, good or evil, nothing will come of this but a specious loyalty to the party that engineered the tax break.

And that loyalty is already pretty much secured by everything that has happened so far. Who are those guys going to vote for, Democrats? Get real!

(As for factories, the rich know exactly where to build those things. And it ain't America.)

Part Three on the agenda is the repair of the infrastructure: the roads, bridges, tunnels, and (perhaps) government buildings of this country.

Technically, repairing the infrastructure should carry with it no more debate than the concept of healing an environment endangered by Global Warming. But, as we've seen from Trump, the obvious doesn't always penetrate the inner sanctum.

Also, doing this fix will require giant heaps of money—money Trump would dearly love to drop at the feet of the military.

But it must be done, or we'll be buried beneath the burden of rusted iron. It could get so bad we'd have to leave the planet to WALL-E and his sentimental ilk.

It's a hard sell, nevertheless.

So here's a plan to tackle all three parts of the agenda with one simple concept: Soak the Money!

That's right. Don't soak the rich. Soak their money. Those guys have lots of it!

We live in a capitalist economy, boys and girls. And one of the most endearing features of such a system is this: You can send your surplus money out there in the world and it comes back with friends—more money.

Money for free, pretty much.

The money your money makes should be taxed at a very high rate. Then use that windfall to pay for healthcare and infrastructure repair.

And when I say healthcare, I don't mean healthcare insurance. I mean actual healthcare.

We have lots of hospitals and doctors and nurses and medical equipment in this bountiful land. If you're feeling poorly—or have been injured—you should be able to take advantage of all that stuff. And let the government figure out how to pay for it.

And how should the government pay for it? Soak the money, is what I say.

(Don't worry. Rich folks will still be rich. They just won't be getting richer at quite the staggering rate they are now.)

Instead of pariahs, rich folk will be our helpless benefactors. Look at that anemic smile! They must feel so proud to be able to help all those diseased creatures rising zombie-like from the nooks and crannies of this country, shuffling into those gleaming hospitals, the great unwashed oozing with their doomsday infections.

Fun fact: If more people had fast and easy access to healthcare, we might not be facing the end of antibiotics—and possibly the end of civilization as we know it.

Is that worth anything to anybody?