Please note that this article will contain at least one word that violates my self-imposed PG rating. It is necessary to convey a point and lesson.
Somewhere in the cobwebs of my mind I remember writing a previous article where I used the restaurant industry’s 6 P’s as a guiding principle. Again that is the central lesson of today’s article. Instead of evaluating whether someone was fit to manage a restaurant I am evaluating the fitness of Donald Trump to manage America. Spoiler alert: he fails miserably! Let’s explore.
The 6 P’s is: Prior planning prevents piss poor performance. Pardon the grammar and the language, but these are words to live by. They also seem to be well above the standard with which Trump is managing American foreign policy.
It is Sunday morning as I commence writing this article and already the situation in Northern Syria is spiraling out of control. On October 7th Trump sent out a tweet that read in part “…if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before)…”
There is a lot to unpack there but I want to limit my remarks to four points.
“Great and unmatched wisdom”; are you serious? Trump may be a lot of things but a very stable genius isn’t one of them. This sounds like the dialog to a remake of The Wizard of Oz. Trump is a guy who went bankrupt in the casino business multiple times; hardly the mark of a genius. Have you ever met a bookie who went broke?
Turkey is supposedly an ally. Is this the way you make a deal? If I don’t like what you do I’ll crush you?
Trump sets himself up as judge, jury and executioner. Even George W. Bush – who was hardly a genius – was smart enough to involve allies and put together an international coalition.
What economy has Trump ever succeeded in destroying? The only one he came close to was his personal economy but daddy bailed him out on multiple occasions. While I certainly expect a Trump Recession I feel we can escape his reign without a total economic collapse.
On the ground the operation is even worse than anyone could have anticipated. We have evidence of multiple occurrences of Russian allies of the Turks bombing hospitals in the region. A video of at least one war crime by the Turkish allied troops has arisen. American troops, who Trump pulled back, have come under Turkish artillery assault.
Now we are pulling all American troops from Syria instead of just withdrawing them from Turkey’s region of operations.
This all brings me back to the 6 P’s. Trump just got on a phone call with Turkish President Erdogan and caved to Erdogan’s demand. He never consulted the Pentagon, military in the region, foreign affairs experts or allies to work out the details. I remain opposed to Trump’s abandonment of the Kurds but the least he should have done was prepare for the move before the bombs started falling. Obviously he never even agreed on an area of operation with Erdogan.
The net result to date is that Trump has driven the Kurds, our best allies in the region, to have pled for assistance from Syrian dictator Bashar el-Assad and the Russians. How does any of this make America safer or promote its interests?
I envision my role as a voter to be highly similar to that of a hiring manger. If I ran a fast food restaurant chain I wouldn’t hire Trump to manage a branch store. I didn’t vote for him in 2016 and cannot imagine a scenario where I will in 2020. You don’t make the same mistake twice and you certainly don’t reward incompetence with a contract extension.
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