For Trump, the End of the BeginningAmerican Greatness, May 10, 2018, Michael Walsh
Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from Barack Obama’s fantasy “Iran deal†brings a much-needed dose of realpolitik to a fossilized Washington foreign-policy establishment that has operated for far too long on “consensus†and an inflated reliance on the estimation of others, especially those hostile to the American experiment.
What the novice president understands, in a way that none of his predecessors since Ronald Reagan has, is that (as the Declaration puts it) “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind†does not mean to sacrifice control of America’s self-interest on the altar of cultural-Marxist shibboleths like political correctness, “fairness,†“tolerance,†“diversity,†or “white privilege.â€
The president and his new secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, were undoubtedly emboldened to flout the conventional wisdom of Foggy Bottom and its amen chorus in the press corps by their success (caveat: so far) in handling North Korea. Just a few months ago, the usual worrywarts and chin-pullers were fretting that the madman in Washington was about to provoke the only slightly less mad Kim Jong-un into a nuclear exchange in the international equivalent of a dick-measuring contest. Meanwhile, the same Wise Men were thrilled with the “success†of their beloved Obama’s giveaways to the mullahs in Tehran.
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For decades—since the Iranian revolution, in fact—it has paid for lesser nations to ruffle the eagle’s feathers. Rather than bite back, American presidents from George H. W. Bush to Obama have turned the other cheek to near-continuous provocation; indeed, it took the enormity of 9/11 for George W. Bush to rouse the nation to action, and even then it was largely wasted on “nation-building†projects in places like Afghanistan and Iraq that were never really nations in the first place.
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https://amgreatness.com/2018/05/10/for-trump-the-end-of-the-beginning/
