LA Times: Trump is a Wimp for Not Asserting Us Internationally
What happened to the good ol' days of international tyrant George W. Bush?
1.2.2018
11
Thanks, Los Angeles Times, for your pro-American stance.
The headline of of the Times reads "Trump claims he's boosting U.S. influence, but many foreign leaders see America in retreat."
According to the report, written by Tracy Wilkinson, Alexandra Zavis, and Shashank Bengali:
"China has now assumed the mantle of fighting climate change, a global crusade that the United States once led. Russia has taken over Syrian peace talks, also once the purview of the American administration, whose officials Moscow recently deigned to invite to negotiations only as observers... France and Germany are often now the countries that fellow members of NATO look to, after President Trump wavered on how supportive his administration would be toward the North Atlantic alliance... And in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the U.S., once the only mediator all sides would accept, has found itself isolated after Trump’s decision to declare that the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel."
Isn't the Left the side that generally leaps to reprimand Republicans for getting involved in other countries' affairs? A la imperialism? Apparently, in Trump's case, he's making a wimp of the U.S. by not asserting ourselves in everybody's business. Where is George "Hitler" Bush when we need him?
Attempting to lend credence to their point, the Times writers assert:
"One year into his presidency, many international leaders, diplomats and foreign policy experts argue that he has reduced U.S. influence or altered it in ways that are less constructive. On a range of policy issues, Trump has taken positions that disqualified the United States from the debate or rendered it irrelevant, these critics say."
Critics = Democrats. And one of those critics is Nicholas Burns, of Harvard's Kennedy School:
"Nicholas Burns, who served as a senior American diplomat under Republican and Democratic administrations, said the administration’s strategy was riddled with contradictions that have left the U.S. ineffective.... Trump’s 'policy of the last 12 months is a radical departure from every president since WWII,' Burns said in an interview. 'Trump is weak on NATO, Russia, trade, climate, diplomacy. The U.S. is declining as a global leader.'"
Burns, for one, has a different preference than the article reveals: in 2016, he wrote a USA Today article titled "Hillary Clinton is the president we need."
It sounds like the L.A. Times may want to find less partisan critics, and the Left may want to find more consistent criteria by which to judge a President. In the meantime, perhaps, Hillary Clinton is the president they need. Thankfully, that's a need which will never be met.
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