Stephen Miller caricature by DonkeyHotey, Wiki Commons
Stephen Miller caricature by DonkeyHotey, Wiki Commons
Trump's "brilliant" strategist has been running around demanding full control of Greenland, while completely unaware that the United States can already do anything it wants there, by treaty.
Republished with permission from Lucian K. Truscott IV
The short answer is no. The long answer is no. The medium answer is no.
The answer is no.
Stephen “Please make me look good when you take my picture” Miller is Trump’s chief saber-rattler when it comes to invading foreign countries we don’t need to invade, such as Venezuela and Greenland. Miller attempted to justify what Trump wants to do in both places on Sunday when he told Jake Tapper of CNN, “We live in a world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
Since Miller was not there at the beginning of time, but I was, I will take this time to set forth how hard the “iron” laws of the world are when they apply to the United States. The answer is, not very.
At age 40, Mr. Miller, you are too young to recall the time in the last century when the United States attempted to “govern” the country of Vietnam by strength and force and power. Here is a photograph of how that worked out for us.
This is the iconic photo of the last rescue helicopter to leave the American Embassy in Saigon on April 30, 1975. It’s not even an Army helicopter. It’s an Air America “Huey” flown by a civilian contractor. Another helicopter, a Marine CH-46, came along soon after and evacuated the few Marine guards who were left guarding the embassy.
Image: Bettman Archive
More recently, in 2001 and 2003, the United States attempted to force its iron will on the countries of Iraq and Afghanistan. It didn’t work. Here is a photo of the final American military cargo jet to leave the Kabul airport on August 30, 2021. That aircraft was carrying the last U.S. soldiers out of Afghanistan.
C-17 taking off from Kabul
These photographs are not stills from some Hollywood movie. They are not fantasies. They illustrate Miller’s concept of how American “strength” and “force” and “power” end up when they are put to use in the real world.
Stephen Miller, as he strides around the halls of the White House exercising what The Atlantic called his “dogmatic force” and “wrath,” has clearly not bothered to read two treaties between the United States and Denmark, “The Agreement Between the United States and the Kingdom of Denmark, April 27, 1951,” and “The Amending and Supplementing Agreement of April 27, 1951” signed by Secretary of State Colin Powell on August 2004.
Click here to read the rest of this article.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
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