August 22, 2017
Last night, Trump delivered what The Atlantic’s James Fallows dubbed a “depressingly normal speech” announcing his “new” strategy for our endless war in Afghanistan. As many people have pointed out, it is nothing more than a schlocky re-branding of major elements of President Obama’s pre-existing strategy, with the added detriment of an undisclosed number of additional troops and an open-ended timetable.
Of course, it was immediately seized upon as a positive sign by mainstream Republicans, including war hawks like John McCain, critics like Lindsey Graham and Ayn Rand acolytes like Paul Ryan. The timing of the speech, on the heels of a disastrous week for Trump and the country, is an obvious effort to turn the page and showcase Trump in “Commander In Chief” mode. Trump and his handlers clearly seek to demonstrate that he is capable of deliberative decision-making. Indeed, twin articles in today’s New York Times and Washington Post detail the painstaking process through which Trump pivoted from his campaign stance advocating withdrawal to one in favor of escalation and endless war. It is not clear whether the journalists recognize that they are tools in an exercise designed to give Trump the patina of a wartime commander.
Immediately after Trump’s speech, CNN aired a Town Hall with House Speaker Paul Ryan. With a pre-selected audience and pre-screened questions, the ever dodgy Ryan sidestepped the opportunity to decisively condemn Trump’s repugnant refusal to soundly excoriate Nazis and Klansmen, calling Trump’s statements merely “morally ambiguous.” There is nothing morally ambiguous about a failure to condemn those who advocate genocide and use violence to attack those who protest those beliefs. Ryan then stepped in it with a nun who asked him point blank how he could square his legislative war on the poor with his Catholic teaching. Matt Fuller summed up Ryan’s response in one tweet as follows: “Paul Ryan on Afghanistan: No timeline. Spend until we win. War on Poverty: This has gone on too long. Can’t sustain this spending.”
The one-two punch of Trump’s speech and Ryan’s anodyne blathering constitutes an attempted Republican re-set. They are desperate to turn the page from coddling Klansmen and fights over Confederate monuments to the “on brand” Republican policies of warmongering and tax cuts. We cannot let them. We know by now, beyond cavil, that Trump is a Nazi sympathizer who will continue to pursue domestic policies that impoverish, endanger and disenfranchise people of color, regardless of what foreign policy he chooses to pursue. We also know that Congressional Republicans will rubber stamp those policies in exchange for Trump’s signature on their tax cut legislation. The only people who can afford to turn the page are those who will be untouched by a policy agenda that seeks to turn back the clock on 70 years of progress. Just remember, whether brazen or banal, evil is still evil.