On state of American foreign affairs, Trump leaves the nation wondering

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

As understood by the Constitution’s architects, the State of the Union address is intended to give the president the opportunity to inform Congress of his views on how the country was doing, what problems the country was facing, and on how those problems might be addressed. The speech is the president’s constitutional duty, designed to force him to provide a reasoned account from his institutional perspective of the country’s needs, both domestic and foreign.

How did President Trump measure up in his first State of the Union address? There were the usual sections boasting of accomplishments and the typical extended list of policy issues and proposals. Regarding national security in particular, the president did not short change the topic in terms of length, spending as much or more time on it as he did on the economy, taxes, jobs, and even immigration. But a closer look at the speech reveals that the president fell short on his obligation to give Congress, and the citizens watching, the substantive particulars one would want when it comes to key foreign and defense affairs.

Although President Trump devoted approximately 150 lines in his address to national security, some 40 percent of the time went to the personal stories of Army Sgt. Justin Peck in Syria, the Warmbier family’s loss of a son to North Korea jailers, and North Korean defector Ji Seong Ho. Each was worth telling and moving to be sure. But these stories came at the expense of covering the host of other pressing issues the president mentioned.

As a result, a list of important topics — defense spending, the North Korean nuclear program, the Iranian nuclear agreement, the war in Afghanistan, terrorism, the regional dictatorships of Cuba and Venezuela, Guantanamo and terrorist detentions, nuclear modernization, and the rising competition with China and Russia — received cursory attention.

By contrast, the president’s speech contained a lengthy analysis of the problems with the country’s current immigration system and what to do about it. If the president’s attention to these details is reflective of his policy priorities, then the comparatively minimal amount of detail given to key national security issues strongly suggests where the president’s head is not.

http://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/371728-on-state-of-american-foreign-affairs-trump-leaves-the-nation

[Nitram]

1. Someone on NPR pointed out this morning that Trump's cute story about the opioid crisis basically

suggested that the way to deal with an addict who is a single mother is to take away her baby. Period. That was the whole point of the story. Nothing about treatment at all.