Why do we keep empowering our existential enemies?
For those who cling to the insistence that President Trump is always playing 5D chess with his opponents, now would be a great time to explain to the rest of us what the strategy is behind his repeated recent moves to empower our existential Islamic enemies.
First Trump prevented Israel from finishing the job with the savage terror group Hamas in Gaza, going so far as to promise to invest in developing the Palestinian territories into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Then, after vowing to rescue the Iranian people from the oppressive fundamentalist regime, Trump stopped short of finishing that job and made a deal with the mullahs and the IRGC instead of crushing them to the last man and demanding unconditional surrender.
Now Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance, who apparently remains tight with Islam apologist Tucker Carlson, are paving the way to sell F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, which is ruled by Islamic supremacist President Recep Erdogan.
In Trump’s first term, his administration removed Turkey from the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program and blocked any sales or deliveries of the jets over concerns that Turkey’s Russian air defense system could collect sensitive data on the stealth fighter’s capabilities, potentially compromising it for NATO allies. Now Trump is pressing for a workaround.
Vance told reporters on Wednesday that Trump asked him and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to initiate a review to see how the United States could make the sale of the stealth fighters happen. The administration is also planning to move forward with the sale of dozens of General Electric jet engines to Turkey worth more than $700 million, technology that will power Turkey’s first indigenous combat jet program. Asked on Wednesday about the jet engine sale and the F-35 program, he replied, “I’m going to probably do something that will make them very happy.”
Rhetorical question: Why should we be doing anything that 1) empowers Turkey militarily, and 2) makes the America-hating Erdogan happy? Will it make him like us? Would Erdogan ever consider reciprocating? Would the Iranian mullahs? Would Hamas? No, of course not. They want to see America and the rest of the West destroyed, and they will happily exploit our naiveté, our capitalist greed, and our willful blindness about Islam to accomplish that aim.
Erdogan has openly stated his intention of restoring the Ottoman Empire. He has openly vowed that Europe would fall to Islam demographically. He has openly prayed for the death and destruction of our close ally Israel. He has openly praised and/or supported Hamas, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran, Syria’s jihadist President, and the Islamic State. To give a taste of his commitment to Islamic supremacism, in 2020 he praised the re-conversion of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople – I mean, “Istanbul” – from a museum to a mosque, stating that re-converting the glorious once-epicenter of Eastern Christianity back into a mosque (it had been transformed into a museum in 1935 following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire) was “the greatest dream of our youth.” --->READ MORE HERE
Administration is expected to push for a rare override to get the deal through as the NATO summit in Ankara approaches
The Trump administration is expected to override a decision by a Democratic lawmaker who is blocking a proposed $750 million sale of jet engines to Turkey over concerns about the country’s ties to Russia.
Rep. Gregory Meeks (D., N.Y.) had placed a hold on the sale to Turkey—a NATO ally that is hosting an alliance summit next month—because the country continues to hold a Russian S-400 air-defense system that it bought roughly a decade ago, along with other concerns about Turkey’s role in the region.
It is longstanding practice for the executive branch to secure the approval of key lawmakers to go ahead with such sales, though the administration told Congress it plans to press ahead despite the hold.
The face-off illustrates how Turkey’s purchase of the air-defense system continues to cloud its relations with the U.S. despite its bases and role as a mediator in talks to end the wars in Iran and Ukraine. Some worry that the Russian system could gather important information on U.S. technology if used side by side, an issue that has also stymied Turkey’s attempts to buy advanced American F-35 fighters.
Asked about the proposed sale and the decision to bypass Congress, an administration official said, “President Trump has a great relationship with President Erdoğan of Turkey, who has been a great partner in the region.”
Meeks, in a statement Wednesday, said, “Late yesterday, the administration informed me it would once again bypass Congressional review for more than $700 million in defense articles to the Turkish military in yet another deeply troubling example of this administration’s open contempt for Congress’s oversight authority.”
President Trump is expected to visit the Turkish capital, Ankara, in July for a summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The disagreement shows the limits of a recent thaw in Turkish-American ties resulting from a warm personal relationship between Trump and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has lobbied the U.S. to lift limits on arms sales to Turkey.
“That doesn’t necessarily always have the full trickle-down effect,” Alper Coşkun, a former high-ranking Turkish diplomat who is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said of the two leaders’ personal ties. “It’s more of a structural problem.”
A spokesman for the Turkish Foreign Ministry didn’t reply to a request for comment.
Turkey commands the second-largest army in NATO and plays an increasingly important role in the midst of Trump’s friction with Europe.
Turkey’s democracy has come under pressure as Erdoğan has centralized power. But its growing defense industry has supplied weapons to Ukraine, and its government is viewed by some Western officials and analysts as a relatively steady security partner in the wider struggle with such foes as Russia and Iran. --->READ MORE HERE (or HERE)
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