The late Jimmy Breslin (1930-2017), author and columnist for the New York Daily News, made the following observation on hearing of the death of Jack Ruby.  “We may not have found a cure for cancer, but we know how to induce it.”  His point?  Breslin viewed Ruby’s death on January 3, 1967 from bronchogenic carcenoma as a convenient way of silencing the former strip club owner of providing any future information about how he effortlessly appeared at Dallas police headquarters as Lee Harvey Oswald was being transferred to the county jail.

I thought about Breslin as our clueless-in-chief Donald Trump announced he was designating North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, resulting in additional sanctions.  Forget that he was wrong when he said, “Should have happened a long time ago,” even though such designation had been imposed during the Clinton administration following the 1987 bombing of a South Korean passenger jet.  Sanctions that were lifted in 2008 by President George W. Bush as a bargaining tool in talks with Kim Jung-un’s father Kim Jong-il.  Or his justification for reimposing the designation was Kim Jung-un’s assassination of his half-brother.  Although committed on foreign soil, this was a domestic power play, not international terrorism.   Then again, Trump believes an NFL running back taking a knee in Mexico City is international terrorism.

No wonder National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster believes Trump has the intelligence of a kindergartner and does not have the brainpower needed to grasp the issues the National Security Council regularly addresses.  Unlike the toddler-in-chief, General McMaster is a student of history.  And understands there are flash points which transform tense standoffs into armed conflicts.

Consider Japan’s decision to attack Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.   Tensions between Japan and the U.S. had been high since the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931.  Further Japanese encroachment into China and French Indochina made the situation worse.  The U.S. response?  An embargo of all oil exports.  When the Imperial Japanese Navy estimated it had less that two years of oil reserves, the decision was made for a preemptive strike on Pearl Harbor.  You can only squeeze so much blood out of a rock before it gets thrown at you.  It makes one wonder what is the breaking point for the North Korean leader before he too feels a proactive response is his only remaining option.

One must also remember this foreign policy crisis is not happening in a vacuum.  Context is always important.  And one of the clear messages to be taken from our current military operations around the world is how difficult it is to extricate our armed services once they have engaged in a foreign conflict.  Americans have been fighting in Afghanistan for over 16 years and in Iran for 14.  Remember when then presidential candidate John McCain suggested U.S. troops “could spend maybe 100 years in Iraq.”  That may not have been what he meant, but it is looking more and more like the truth.

So, if Jimmy Breslin were alive and witness to Trump’s most recent action, he might observe, “We may not know how to end a war, but we sure know how to start one.”

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP