Will Trump and Bannon drag us into another big ground war? It could happen sooner than we think

[DonViejo]

THURSDAY, FEB 23, 2017 08:00 AM EST

Our president wants to "knock the hell out of ISIS" and "take the oil"; his key adviser longs for World War III

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

On Wednesday NBC News released a poll reporting that 66 percent of Americans are worried that the United States will become involved in another war. One might think that’s surprising since President Donald Trump has been famously portrayed as an old-school isolationist, an image mostly based upon his lies about not supporting the Iraq War and his adoption of the pre-World War II isolationist slogan “America First.”

As I laid out here a few weeks ago, that assumption is wrong. Trump is anything but an isolationist. He’s not much on alliances, preferring to strong-arm other nations into supporting the U.S. “for their own good.” But if they are willing to cough up some protection money, he might agree to fulfill our treaty obligations. His adoption of the phrase “America First” reflects his belief that the U.S. must be No. 1, not that it should withdraw from the world.

In other words, while Trump has no interest in perpetuating the global security system under which the world has lived since the dawn of the nuclear age, that’s not because he believes it hasn’t worked. He doesn’t know what it does, how it came to be or why it exists. He simply believes other countries are failing to pay proper respect and he aims to make sure they understand that America isn’t just great again –it’s the greatest.

This has nothing to do with American exceptionalism. Trump is happy to admit that American pretenses to moral leadership are hypocritical, and he’s openly contemptuous of anyone who believes that the U.S. should try harder to live up to its ideals. If you want to understand what Trump believes, “to the victor goes the spoils” pretty much covers it. He means it in terms of his family, which continues to merge the presidency into its company brand all over the world, and he means it in terms of the United States because we are the richest and most powerful nation on earth and we can take whatever we want.

more
http://www.salon.com/2017/02/23/will-trump-and-bannon-drag-us-into-another-big-ground-war-it-could-happen-sooner-than-we-think/

[BeckyDem]

1. When he says, drain the swamp he means remove all protections, all barriers for business.

It is about the Trump brand, an empire he aspires to see grow past most peoples imagination and no consideration to the consequences domestically nor foreign that will come from his actions.

[Dan]

2. well if this big ground war is against our former allies...

then maybe the military can just surrender...then our allies can convene a military court, put Trump and friends on trial and administer appropriate justice. Just saying...