Political Whims in Military and Business – v.s. – Long Term Plans / Consequences!

The political whims of Presidents have and continue to lead the United States to enter into long term military or business situations which have resulted in a whole lot of long-term consequences.

Many of these boondoggle whims could have been avoided or certainly planned for well in advance of any actions that the whims incur.

Our current President, Donald Trump has whimsically proposed both military and business plans which are nothing but pipe dreams when one looks at them through the jaundiced eyes of knowledgeable military and business leaders who are well aware of the pitfalls or earlier administrations boondoggles. They know President Trump’s political whims are backed up by fibs, lies, and razzmatazz by his appointed minions rather than any hard facts of cost to the American people of lives, money and environmental pollution.

Military Actions: A President can initially engage another country in a military conflict on a sudden whim of providing advisors or munitions, or personnel, without an extended plan which in general, would require command officers to generate an action plan, define expected goals, expected casualties and expected timelines for reasonable withdrawal from said action upon the achievement or not of the original stated goals. Unintended consequences: Because of a lack of defined goals the United States in my own lifetime has drifted into years of prolonged involvement in brushfire wars (think Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Venezuela) that escalate with no ultimate goals ever being achieved and no long-term smooth withdrawal strategy organized so that the United States will be able to say that it has fully or partially achieved whatever goals it set out to do. (An example of this latter lack of a withdrawal planning goes directly to Donald Trump’s whimsical negotiations of a withdrawal of all Americans form Afghanistan, setting a firm date for that withdrawal within a short period after he would be out of the Whitehouse and a new President would be taking over, with consequences being a lack of any organized withdrawal plan being in position.)

Business Actions: Generally, require a threats/benefits analysis of any business endeavor to determine goals for long term plans which will lead to the business recouping its investment in such plan in a timespan that leads to profitability. (Think our current President Trump’s whims to shove American businesses into Venezuela’s failed oil extraction business Unintended Consequences: Oil Business moves depend on the world price of barrels of oil, (currently around $60.00/bbl.) versus how much new extraction will cost per barrel to extract and the marketability of the grade of crude oil extracted (Venezuela’s oil will cost about $80.00 per barrel to extract, will only be marketable to specific uses and is very difficult to process, in addition to being a business venture that involves nearly a 20 year investment/renovation plan according to Exxon executives, due to the 25+ years of mismanagement by Hugo Chavez’s/Maduro’s governments.)

OR

into Greenland’s complex mineral extraction of rare earths and other valuable minerals.

Unintended Consequences: Aside from all the political rhetoric being splashed around- Mining of minerals such as rare earth or gold and silver also require massive long-term planning by corporations to understand the types of oars they will be extracting, costs of purification and disposal of waste. Greenland which is Donald Trump’s current whim and piece of coveted real estate is mainly covered by up to three vertical miles of ice, while the areas of open ground are governed by very strict Danish laws which require clean-up and community feedback prior to any permitting. Additionally, according to Scientific American, the Rare Earths are often mixed with highly radioactive uranium ore that requires special handling, and the other minerals are often entrapped in salicaceous rock material which takes very costly processing to extract without leaving toxic wastes that can leach into water resources: all difficult hoops for corporations to negotiate and jump through in order to proceed properly. No American business is going to jump into the possible morass of political and legal battles that could take years to negotiate in order to make Mr. Trump’s whim come true is a reasonable length of time.

Thus it would appear that once again America is allowing their President to joy-ride several whimsical pipedreams on the ruse of Making America Great, when in fact he is only making us look like neo-colonial fools to the rest of the world.

It’s time for America, Congress and Our Judicial to tell President Trump where to get off!