Monday, May 02, 2016

Trump: Shoot at Russian Jets; Knight: He'd Drop Nuclear Bombs

Well, Donald Trump's foreign policy gets more and more interesting. Seems like Ted Cruz's joke that a Trumpertantrum might result in waking up one morning and finding that a President Trump had nuked Denmark isn't that farfetched.

Last week, while Trump was looking on appreciatively, Bobby Knight said that Trump would have the guts to drop the bomb as Harry Truman did saving "billions (sic*) of lives". Of course, we had been at all out war with Japan for three years before that and had lost over 110,000 killed or missing in action and a quarter of a million wounded. But, hey, why bring context up? (Interestingly, Ronald Reagan had an utter aversion to using nuclear weapons and worked to abolish them. Which may be why he was able to win the Cold War by economic means without firing a shot.)

Today, Trump said Russian planes that barrel roll over U.S. Air Force planes should be shot at "at a certain point".
“But I don’t know, at a certain point, you can’t take it,” the businessman continued. “I mean, at a certain point, you have to do something that, you just can’t take that. That is not right. It’s against all, you know, when you talk about Geneva convention, there’s gotta be things that are against it. You can’t do that. That’s called taunting.
. . .
“And if that doesn’t work out, I don’t know, you know, at a certain point, when that sucker comes by you, you gotta shoot,” Trump said. “You gotta shoot. I mean, you gotta shoot. And it’s a shame. It’s a shame. It’s a total lack of respect for our country and it’s a total lack of respect for Obama. Which as you know, they don’t respect.”
Wait, didn't Trump say the Geneva Convention was the problem?

And taunting is bad? How about torture? And killing the families of terrorists?

Maybe instead of shooting, we could "taunt" back or even use economic tools. Something a little more creative than shooting. But, then this is the guy who believes protesters should be taken out on a stretcher. So, why would he think of using brain power rather than brute force.
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*The commentator and text say "millions of lives", but Knight said "billions". Knight is obviously as careful with his war policy suggestions as he is with his facts.

2 comments:

MAX Redline said...

Is "taunting" mentioned in the Geneva Convention?

T. D. said...

I think that's penalized in football.