President Donald Trump and Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan meet at the White House and deliver joint statements to the media:
Good grief. NBC’s Chuck Toad spent two-thirds of his interview opportunity with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asking repeated questions about the preferred Democrat narrative known as the ‘Muh Russian conspiracy’.
However, Tillerson did have the opportunity to push back against Senator John McCain’s ridiculous attacks against Secretary T-Rex. Anyone who watched the T-Rex talk to the State Department on May 3rd can fully understand the context of Tillerson’s outline of distinction between “U.S. policies” and “U.S. Values”. If you haven’t watched or read the speech you should, SEE HERE.
Senator John McCain was furious that Secretary Tillerson would not accept the McCain/Powers “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine which mandates U.S. foreign policy as interventionist around the globe. Senator McCain wrote an op-ed opposing Tillerson and demanding that U.S. policy must include creating more wars around the world.
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Here is Secretary Tillerson’s actual words in context, that Senator McCain finds so fundamentally abhorrent:
Last month President Trump took a great deal of criticism for calling Turkish President Erdogan and congratulating him on the narrow referendum victory. Many critics of Trump said he was congratulating a dictator, without also recognizing Turkey is a NATO member.
As long as Turkey is allowed to remain in NATO the entire member nation alliance will always be compromised by the self-serving Islamic interests of Erdogan. The EU and the political left, demand President Trump recognize the value of NATO – and hypocritically denounce Trump for speaking to a NATO nation’s leader. This is the mindset of the idiots in the EU and their defenders amid the political left.
Today, the Trump administration announces they are arming the Kurdish fighting forces in Northern Syria. President Erdogan hates the Kurds and considers them as adversaries and political opposition to his control over Turkey.
Within the dynamic you can see a multidimensional problem. The Kurds are fighting short-term against ISIS and Bashir Assad in Syria; however, in the larger Kurdish goal they are also attempting to establish their own independent state, Kurdistan.
Erdogan opposes Assad, but Erdogan more strongly opposes the Kurds and any Kurdistan formation efforts because it would destroy his goal of establishing the new Ottoman empire he dreams of leading. (more…)
Against the backdrop of President Trump assembling the mid-east alliance group, and with the previous diplomatic outline of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in mind, the travel schedule is not necessarily a surprise.
WHITE HOUSE – President Trump has accepted the invitation of King Salman bin Abd Al-Aziz, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, to visit the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia later this month. The visit will reaffirm the strong partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia and allow the leaders to discuss issues of strategic concern, including efforts to defeat terrorist groups and discredit radical ideologies.
President Trump has also accepted the invitation of President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit Israel, where he will further strengthen the United States-Israel partnership. The leaders will discuss a range of regional issues, including the need to counter the threats posed by Iran and its proxies, and by ISIS and other terrorist groups. They will also discuss ways to advance a genuine and lasting peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.
National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster appears on Fox News Sunday for an interview with swamp guardian Chris Wallace.
Previously, some people, stimulated by the worries of annoying arbitrary gnat nonsense, expressed concern that McMaster might be inclined to lean the President Trump administration further toward an interventionist foreign policy.
If you listen to the numerous interviews McMaster has given since taking on the role of National Security Adviser you can clearly sense that President Trump has clear eyes and a firm grip on any McMaster lean.
Secretary T-Rex is the preferred policy point, and doing brilliantly. McMaster represents the AWACS covering Tillerson’s travel, and Mattis is the archangel on his shoulder.
President Trump welcomed Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni to the White House today and they will be holding a joint press conference shortly:
Video Added:
No event is happening in a vacuum. It is critical to emphasize this basic point when evaluating the foreign policy of President Trump and his administration. There is a very well planned multidimensional construct within the sequencing of individual events which shows a policy thread weaving throughout.
The challenging aspect for most of the current U.S. electorate, and specifically those who follow politics closely, is the Trump administration’s position to not publicly espouse targeted and strategic policy objectives.
This deliberate yet not publicly promoted approach is a paradigm shift for those who reference modern diplomatic politics through the prism of past doctrines and their public advancement. The Trump foreign policy approach is a planned, deliberate, consequential, and intentionally quiet undertaking.
That LOOK !
The Trumpian approach is becoming increasingly easier to see. However, it is not the typical approach customary amid politicians who use momentary events to elevate the appearance of their self-importance.
Quite the contrary, with the Trump team each action and participant provides visible dots, but the administration intentionally does not connect those dots for the media or the consuming public – or trumpet their importance.
The Administrations’ focus is on the ultimate outcome each individual event brings to the aggregate conclusion. ie. ‘the goal’; and not on the individual elements as they are assembled.
During a February interview which broadcast just before the Superbowl, President Trump recalled riding with former President Barack Obama to the Inauguration on Jan. 20 when he asked Obama to list the three greatest issues America was facing.
[…] “I asked him what you think our biggest problem is and he told me,” Trump said, recalling the limousine ride to the U.S. Capitol with Obama.
“I can’t tell you,” Trump said after O’Reilly interrupted to ask about specifics. “But it’s a problem, its a military problem with a certain place. No, it’s not China. But it is – he did mention, cause I did ask him what would you say our number one, two, three problems are and the number one problem that he felt – I was a little bit surprised, but I fully understand.” (link)
Almost every mainstream political pundit and political observer believes the concerning country within that conversation was North Korea. Indeed, if you were to evaluate the comment in isolation, against the backdrop of world media headlines, N-Korea seemingly becomes a natural conclusion.
However, CTH does not believe North Korea was the country of concern. President Obama viewed and acted upon all foreign affairs through the prism of ideological belief. Every action taken by the Obama administration was in furtherance of an ideological world-view that was personal to the small circle of like-minded fellow travelers.
Turkish President Recep Erdogan is quick to declare victory today, albeit by a narrow margin, as a national referendum to consolidate power passes during a national vote.
[…] The 18 constitutional amendments that will come into effect after the next election, scheduled for 2019, will abolish the office of the prime minister and hand sweeping executive powers to the president. –link–
Having watched the Erdogan objectives play out over the past six to eight years the approach he has taken has been highly effective.
Erdogan essentially imported a base of support consisting of mostly Muslim Brotherhood political supporters to aid his desire to transform Turkey from a secular nation into a more Islamic dictatorial endeavor.
He may never fully achieve the goal of recreating the Ottoman Empire, but that doesn’t mean there is going to be anything less than toxic turmoil ahead for Turkey and the EU as his endeavors continue to be successful.
A decade or two from now when our children look back upon the period from 2010 to 2020 there will be a rather obvious similarity between the rise of Erdogan to power and the rise of Libya’s Muamar Qaddafi.
Both power-hungry nuts utilized immigration to construct their objectives, and both were national gatekeepers. Qaddafi held power over Europe via the North African migration gate, and Erdogan gaining power over Europe through the use of the Mid-East gate.
National Security Advisor HR McMaster has been selected by conspiracy nuts and alt-reality moonbats as a necessary evil foil to retain their pearl-clutching placement at the table of doomsday drum-beating.
Apparently, when candidate Trump, then president-elect Trump, and now President Trump said: “bomb the s**t out of ISIS“, “rebuild our military” and recreate “peace through strength” – a sketchy handful of fools perceived such statements possible without actually ‘bombing‘, ‘rebuilding‘ or ‘reasserting strength‘.
Yes, cognitive dissonance relies upon use of the Mamet Principle; and yes, it happens on the fringe elements of both sides of the circular political continuum.
In the most recent proclamations of the Moonbats any adviser to the President who would be connected with presenting ‘bombing‘, ‘rebuilding‘ or ‘reasserting‘ options of military use to the President, necessarily becomes a war-mongering pod carrier intent on lulling a 70-year-old President to sleep and exit the room converted to John McCain.
The people selling this narrative are both nuts and gnats.
Please pay attention to HR McMaster in this interview laying out a very reasonable perspective on the various regional issues, his praise for the diplomatic approach by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and his accompanying overview to include (@10:38) the answer to the question: “do you think we need more troops in Syria?“. McMaster’s response: “I don’t think so“.