Originally titled War. What is is good for? On democraticunderground this morning.
Are we starting a war without the American people even knowing it?
Sen. Chris Murphy, Contributor
United States Senator for Connecticut
Trump Is Dragging Us Into Another War... And No One Is Talking About It
While Americans have been focused on the ACA and Trump’s ties to Russia, Trump has been busy expanding the American troop presence inside Syria.
03/25/2017 11:47 am ET | Updated 14 hours ago
With no announcement trump has sent 500 troops into Syria.
Plans are for hundreds more to be sent .in the next few weeks. Rumors are this could be the tip of the iceberg. The administration is trying to keep it secret
The answer is yes.
Beyond deepening U.S. involvement in established war zones, Trump has also signed off on expanded authorities for conducting military operations outside these areas, loosening Obama-era rules intended to protect innocent civilians. Under Obama, strikes against terrorists outside “areas of active hostilities” in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan were subject to significant constraints and White House oversight. To take action, the Pentagon had to demonstrate that an individual (or network of individuals) represented a “continuing and imminent threat” to the United States, the intelligence had to confirm the target and there had to be “near certainty” that no civilians would be killed by the strike.
Trump has already taken action to unshackle the military from these rules. During the same Jan. 25 dinner in which Trump greenlit the disastrous Jan. 29 special operations forces raid in Yemen, the president also agreed to a proposal made by Defense Secretary James Mattis to declare large areas of Yemen active areas of hostilities. This gives the U.S. military much greater latitude to conduct operations against al Qaeda’s local affiliate, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), without checking back with the White House before each strike. Operations in Yemen will continue to be governed by the laws of war, as they are in Iraq and Syria, but the U.S. military will be able to target a much larger range of individuals, the threshold for actionable intelligence will be lower and the acceptable level of collateral damage will be higher. As a result, the Trump administration has already carried out 70 airstrikes in Yemen, nearly double the number the Obama administration conducted in all of 2016. (Trump has reportedly granted a similar expansion of authorities for Somalia, and may also be asked to consider doing so for Libya.)
Finally, the Trump administration has taken steps to scale back transparency. Although some information has trickled out about recent troop deployments, the Pentagon said last week that it will no longer “routinely announce or confirm information about the capabilities, force numbers, locations or movement of forces in or out of Iraq and Syria.”
In the near term, Trump’s approach may kill more terrorists and achieve tactical gains. But its single-minded emphasis on military escalation carries with it real dangers that could produce strategic defeat.
This is all being done in secrecy with no effort at diplomacy. The point of war is death and destruction, money for the MIC, and oil. And in this case,some kind of deranged insane power trip of a madman.
You should read the whole article.