Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Saturday, February 29, 2020

Funny...

As of this very second, I'll give Trump credit for two pieces of policy.

First, USMCA looks like a marginally better deal than NAFTA.  That's not entirely on him, but in this instance he was able to leverage his protectionist bluster into an improved trade deal.

Second, it looks like we might be ending the Afghan war.  This should have happened years ago, but neither Bush nor Obama could find a way that got us out of Afghanistan while preserving long term goals of stability in Afghanistan so that it doesn't return to being a haven for terrorists.  Simply put, there is no deal in Afghanistan that gives us what we want, so we stumbled along dragging the thing out, transfering casualties to mercenaries and proxy forces.  Every year since 2014, we have lost between 14 and 54 US service members lives, because we feared what would happen in 5 to 10 years after we left.

Trump has no long term vision, but he does understand that among his overwhelmingly rural supporters, Endless War is a loser. 

It's ironic that what might be his most important policy accomplishment will be buried in the news, and disappear without a trace.

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