When propaganda bites our butts — President Trump's sometimes too big lies

© 2017 Peter Free

 

01 March 2017

 

 

A Big Lie — too filled with hot air — will eventually burst

 

President Trump has been trying to duck the obviously costly failure of a Special Operations raid in Yemen. Not only did Navy SEAL William Ryan Owens die, but 25 innocents did also — including 9 children and 8 women. Not to mention the wounded.

 

We learned afterward, also, that the raid evidently did not return anything worthwhile in the form of the intelligence that it was allegedly after.

 

I dissected this hare-brained operation here, pointing out that we cannot attack civilian-dense targets — under probably minimally rewarding strategic circumstances — and still maintain that we are trying to minimize collateral casualties.

 

Consequently, if we continue to engage in such ventures, we had darn well better be fairly sure that something of great geopolitical value is likely to be gained.

 

 

Do you agree?

 

I hate it when the United States throws away the lives of its volunteer military.

 

I despise it when we murder innocents for no good reason.

 

And I especially loathe it when we combine the two — throwing courage and sacrifice away in silly tactical ploys that emphasize, at most, our leadership's callous disregard for displaying competence and preserving life.

 

 

The moral? — Unconfessed stupidity leads to more of the same

 

It is the hallmark of American leadership that soundly reasoned strategy — evaluated in light of its own announced goals — is nearly always lacking. Historically speaking, we seem to have pledged ourselves to be maximally stupid and murderous at every turn.

 

When President Trump maintains that an obvious failure is a success, he clouds the from-mistake-learning process that we could otherwise use to fine tune our responses to challenging circumstances.

 

President Trump's rock-headedness is a good example of furthering circumstances in which the Big Lie eventually loses its persuasive power. Too many people (around the world) witness the disconnect between what they have been told and what they see.

 

Stupidity at the American top appears to be firmly entrenched. Wasn't that something that the President pledged himself to correct?