The long national nightmare that was the 2016 presidential election is finally over. Now, we’re facing a worse terror: the reality of a Trump presidency. Donald Trump has already promised to nominate a
segregationist attorney general, a national security adviser who is a
raging Islamophobe, a secretary of education who
doesn’t believe in public schools, and a secretary of defense whose sobriquet is “Mad Dog.” How worried should we be that General James “Mad Dog” Mattis may well be
the soberest among them?
Along with a
deeply divided country, the worst
income inequality since at least the 1920s, and a
crumbling infrastructure, Trump will inherit a 15-year-old, apparently never-ending worldwide war. While the named enemy may be a mere emotion (“terror”) or an incendiary strategy (“terrorism”), the victims couldn’t be more real, and as in all modern wars, the majority of them are civilians.
On how many countries is U.S. ordnance falling at the moment? Some put the total at
six; others,
seven. For the record, those seven would be Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and, oh yes, Yemen.
The fairly long article then goes on to describe the issue in some detail.
Now I may not be the finest Constitutional Scholar in the land, but I believe it is unlikely we are here because of any fault on the part of Trump. (At least as to drone strikes.) The headline on the article might just be a touch misleading.