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Time of India
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Right now, China occupies Bagram air base in Afghanistan: President Trump
US President Donald Trump has claimed that China now occupies the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, which was vacated by America in 2021. #Pahalgam Terrorist Attack India's Rafale-M deal may turn up the heat on Pakistan China's support for Pakistan may be all talk, no action India brings grounded choppers back in action amid LoC tensions The US vacated Bagram, its biggest airfield in the country, in July 2021. "...But we were going to keep Bagram, the big Air Force base, which is one hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons. That's what they do. They make their nuclear missiles and one hour away from Bagram, and I said you can't give up Bagram," Trump said while addressing the 2025 National Day of Prayer at the White House Thursday. "They gave up Bagram, and right now, China occupies Bagram. So sad, so crazy. One of the biggest air bases in the world, among the strongest and longest runways anywhere in the world, one hour away from where China makes its nuclear missiles," Trump said. Blaming the Joe Biden administration, Trump said, "You wouldn't have had the horror show at Afghanistan, which I think is what gave (Russian President Vladimir) Putin the resolve to go in and do what he did because he looked at how badly we got out. Live Events "We lost 13 soldiers, and 42 were horribly injured. Nobody ever talks about them, the legs, the arm, the arms, the face. Horribly injured, that would have never happened. Not even possible to have happened, and we would have been out before he was out," Trump said. He appeared to make a reference to the August 26, 2021, Abbey Gate bombing at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul that killed 13 United States military service members and about 160 civilians. Trump has called the American withdrawal from Afghanistan under the Biden administration "disastrous and incompetent." "Not that they were withdrawing, it was the way they withdrew. Perhaps the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country," Trump had said in an address to the Joint Session of Congress earlier this year. "It would have been great to have while we were keeping it, but they ran out of there like nobody could believe, and I think Putin saw that and he said, 'Wow, this is a great time. I can go get it' because it was the apple of his eye. I could always see that. I talked to him for hours. It was the apple of his eye, but I said, 'Vladimir, don't even think about it'. And he wouldn't have thought about it. But when he saw that, I think that's the reason actually he gained some additional courage, and he went in," Trump said. Bagram Airfield is located in Afghanistan's Parwan Province, approximately 11 kilometres southeast of the city of Charikar and 47 kilometres north of Kabul. The airfield has an 11,800-foot runway capable of serving bomber and large cargo aircraft.
Indian Express
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
Donald Trump: Right now, China occupies Bagram air base in Afghanistan
US President Donald Trump has claimed that China now occupies the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, which was vacated by America in 2021. The US vacated Bagram, its biggest airfield in the country, in July 2021. '…But we were going to keep Bagram, the big Air Force base, which is one hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons. That's what they do. They make their nuclear missiles and one hour away from Bagram, and I said you can't give up Bagram,' Trump said while addressing the 2025 National Day of Prayer at the White House Thursday. 'They gave up Bagram, and right now, China occupies Bagram. So sad, so crazy. One of the biggest air bases in the world, among the strongest and longest runways anywhere in the world, one hour away from where China makes its nuclear missiles,' Trump said. Blaming the Joe Biden administration, Trump said, 'You wouldn't have had the horror show at Afghanistan, which I think is what gave Putin the resolve to go in and do what he did because he looked at how badly we got out. 'We lost 13 soldiers, and 42 were horribly injured. Nobody ever talks about them, the legs, the arm, the arms, the face. Horribly injured, that would have never happened. Not even possible to have happened, and we would have been out before he was out,' Trump said. He appeared to make a reference to the August 26, 2021, Abbey Gate bombing at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul that killed 13 United States military service members and about 160 civilians. Trump has called the American withdrawal from Afghanistan under the Biden administration 'disastrous and incompetent.' 'Not that they were withdrawing, it was the way they withdrew. Perhaps the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country,' Trump had said in an address to the Joint Session of Congress earlier this year. 'It would have been great to have while we were keeping it, but they ran out of there like nobody could believe, and I think Putin saw that and he said, 'Wow, this is a great time. I can go get it' because it was the apple of his eye. I could always see that. I talked to him for hours. It was the apple of his eye, but I said, 'Vladimir, don't even think about it'. And he wouldn't have thought about it. But when he saw that, I think that's the reason actually he gained some additional courage, and he went in,' Trump said. Bagram Airfield is located in Afghanistan's Parwan Province, approximately 11 kilometres southeast of the city of Charikar and 47 kilometres north of Kabul. The airfield has an 11,800-foot runway capable of serving bomber and large cargo aircraft.
Indianapolis Star
21-04-2025
- Automotive
- Indianapolis Star
Honda car produced in Japan will soon only be built in Indiana amid tariff wars
Show Caption In a move most likely in response to the ongoing tariff wars, Honda says it will end production of a vehicle in Japan factories, leaving an Indiana plant as the sole maker of the model. Honda currently sources the Civic Hatchback hybrid from both its Indiana Auto Plant and Japan. Starting later this year, the car will be produced only at the Indiana Auto Plant in Greensburg, Eric Mauk, a Honda spokesperson told IndyStar. Some news reports say the change will occur in June or July. Mauk would not confirm when the operation shift will occur or how it will affect staffing and production output at the Indiana Auto Plant. The Hybrid Hatchback is a semi-electric version of the top-selling Honda Civic that was named the 2025 North American Car of the Year. The model's starting price is around $27,000. President Donald Trump's on-and-off tariffs have left companies searching for clarity and the stock market lurching as even American manufacturers are unsure how to respond. But Japanese automaker Honda seems to be signaling it is willing to move vehicle production to the United States to skirt such tariffs. Earlier this year, a report surfaced that the company was moving production of its next-generation Honda Civic to Indiana from Mexico to skirt tariffs. Trump addressed the news in a speech to a Joint Session of Congress in March, citing the move as a win for domestic growth in the auto industry. Honda did not comment on the report. Other foreign automakers are also considering plans to increase production at existing American plants. The auto industry in particular faces uncertainty in the face of the trade war due to the interconnectedness of the global auto economy. Even if a car is made in America, parts often cross the border multiple times before exiting the assembly line as a completed product. Trump placed 25% tariffs on auto parts. He recently said he might consider a pause or exemption to help out American automakers.
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Take Trump Seriously About Greenland
The United States grabbing land from an ally sounds like the stuff of a Netflix political thriller. But every American should contemplate three realities about Donald Trump's aggressive desire to acquire Greenland, a semiautonomous Danish territory. First, unlike his usual shtick, in which he floats wild ideas and then he and his aides alternate between saying he was serious and saying he might have been joking, he means it. The Danes seem to believe him, and so should Americans. When institutions begin planning based on the president's directions, as the White House is now doing, it's no longer idle talk. Second, Trump is calling for actions that likely contravene American and international law. He is undermining the peace and stability of an allied nation, while threatening a campaign of territorial conquest. He refuses to rule out an unprovoked war of aggression, a violation of the United Nations Charter and an international crime that would be little different in kind from Russian President Vladimir Putin's attempt to seize Ukraine. Finally, the almost-certain illegality of any attempt to seize Greenland against the will of its people and the Danish government means that if Trump directs the U.S. military to engage in such an operation, he could well precipitate the greatest civil-military crisis in American history since the Civil War. How do we know Trump is serious? 'One way or another,' the president crowed in his speech to a Joint Session of Congress last month, 'we're gonna get it.' A few weeks later, in case anyone missed the point, Trump told NBC: 'We'll get Greenland. Yeah, 100 percent.' Trump says a lot of strange things, certainly. He has mused about striking hurricanes with nuclear weapons, running for a constitutionally prohibited third term, staying in office even if he loses, and annexing Canada as the 51st state. But when a president publicly makes a vow to Congress to do something and then repeats that vow over and over, such statements are not trial balloons; they are policy. And sure enough, Trump has followed up by sending Vice President J. D. Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, as unwelcome emissaries to Greenland. Vance—a neo-isolationist who apparently expresses opposition to the president's plans only in Signal chats—has now embraced Trump's old-school imperialism. Worse, Vance tried to press Trump's case by boorishly criticizing Denmark's relationship with the island, smarmily telling the Danes: 'You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland.' (Imagine the reaction in Washington if a European leader came, say, to Puerto Rico, castigated America's management of the commonwealth, and urged the island to sever ties with the United States.) But at least he promised that military force, which to gain Greenland would have to be directed against Denmark, a NATO ally, was not going to be part of America's efforts. Trump, true to form, short-sheeted his hapless VP the next day by saying that military force was not, in fact, 'off the table.' On Monday, The Washington Post reported that the White House has begun work on estimating the costs of controlling Greenland in 'the most concrete effort yet to turn President Donald Trump's desire to acquire the Danish territory into actionable policy.' Once these kinds of meetings start taking place in the White House, the next step is usually to send out orders to the rest of the American national-security establishment, including the CIA and the Pentagon, to begin planning for various contingencies. Even if the American people supported direct aggression against our own allies—by a large margin, they do not—public opinion is not a legitimate excuse for treaty-breaking. Treaties are the law of the land in the United States, and the president's Article II powers as commander in chief do not allow him to wave a monarchical hand and violate those treaties at will. Just as Trump cannot legally issue orders to violate the Geneva Conventions or other agreements to which the United States is a signatory, he does not have the right to break America's pact with NATO at will and effectively declare war against Denmark. When George W. Bush ordered U.S. forces into combat against Iraq in 2003, some of his critics claimed that his actions were illegal, but Bush at least had the fig leaf of a congressional resolution, as well as a lengthy list of UN Security Council resolutions. Trump will have literally nothing except his insistent greed and glory-seeking vanity. If the U.S. military is given direct orders to seize Greenland—that is, if it is told to enter the territory of another nation, pull down that nation's flag, and then claim the ground in the name of the United States—it will have been ordered to attack an ally and engage in a war of conquest, even if no shot is ever fired. These would be illegal orders, because they would violate not only our treaty obligations but also international prohibitions against unprovoked wars of aggression. At home, the president would be contravening the Constitution: Article II does not allow the commander in chief to run around the planet seizing territories he happens to want. At that point, every senior commander, from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs on down, has a moral obligation to refuse to accept or support such a command. Pauline Shanks Kaurin, a military-ethics professor at the Naval War College (where I also taught for many years) told me, speaking in her personal capacity and not on behalf of the Defense Department, that civilian leaders have 'the right to be wrong,' but that if the United States moves against Greenland, especially if both America and Denmark are part of NATO, 'senior military leaders have an obligation to advise against this course of action and resign if necessary.' Shanks Kaurin added that this obligation might even extend to a requirement to refuse to draw up any plans. But what if the orders are less obvious? Trump long ago mastered the Mafia-like talent of making his desires evident without actually telling others to engage in unsavory acts. In that case, he could issue instructions to the military aimed at intimidating Greenland that on their face are legal but that are obviously aggressive. Retired Major General Charles Dunlap, who served as the deputy judge advocate general of the U.S. Air Force and now teaches law at Duke, suggested that Trump could take advantage, for example, of the wide latitude given to the United States in its basing agreement with Greenland. The president, Dunlap told me in an email, could choose to engage in 'a gross misreading of the agreement' and move a large number of troops to Greenland as 'a show of force aimed at establishing a fait accompli of some kind.' Military officers are required to presume that commands from higher authority are legal orders, and so a series of directives aimed at swarming forces into Greenland would likely be obeyed, Dunlap said, 'because of the potential ambiguity' of such directives 'as well as the inference of lawfulness.' In any case, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have taken important steps to ensure that no one is left in the Pentagon to tell them that their orders might be unlawful. All of the top military lawyers whose job is to provide independent legal advice on such matters have been fired. And, as Dunlap notes, courts are notoriously reluctant to get involved in such questions, which is why Congress must step in. 'The military,' he said, 'ought not be put in the middle of something like this.' Americans used to take their presidents far more seriously. Before Trump, when a president spoke, his words instantly became the policy of the United States government—for better or worse. When President Ronald Reagan caught his own aides flat-footed by bungling a policy message during a press conference in 1983, for example, a Reagan-administration official later said: 'You can't say 'No, he didn't mean it' or 'That's not really government policy.' That's out of the question.' But those days are long gone. As a direct result of Trump's many off-the-cuff ruminations and long stretches of political glossolalia, Trump has convinced many Americans not to take their president at his word until it's too late. (Consider how many people, for example, refused to believe that he would impose massive global tariffs, a policy they can now examine more closely by the light of a burning stock market.) I realize that this entire discussion seems like utter lunacy. War against … Denmark? But when the president says something, it's policy. Trump insists that he must be taken seriously. Americans and their elected representatives across the political spectrum should oblige him. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
05-04-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
Trump's Greenland Ambitions Are No Joke
The United States grabbing land from an ally sounds like the stuff of a Netflix political thriller. But every American should contemplate three realities about Donald Trump's aggressive desire to acquire Greenland, a semiautonomous Danish territory. First, unlike his usual shtick, in which he floats wild ideas and then he and his aides alternate between saying he was serious and saying he might have been joking, he means it. The Danes seem to believe him, and so should Americans. When institutions begin planning based on the president's directions, as the White House is now doing, it's no longer idle talk. Second, Trump is calling for actions that likely contravene American and international law. He is undermining the peace and stability of an allied nation, while threatening a campaign of territorial conquest. He refuses to rule out an unprovoked war of aggression, a violation of the United Nations Charter and an international crime that would be little different in kind from Russian President Vladimir Putin's attempt to seize Ukraine. Finally, the almost-certain illegality of any attempt to seize Greenland against the will of its people and the Danish government means that if Trump directs the U.S. military to engage in such an operation, he could well precipitate the greatest civil-military crisis in American history since the Civil War. How do we know Trump is serious? 'One way or another,' the president crowed in his speech to a Joint Session of Congress last month, 'we're gonna get it.' A few weeks later, in case anyone missed the point, Trump told NBC: 'We'll get Greenland. Yeah, 100 percent.' Trump says a lot of strange things, certainly. He has mused about striking hurricanes with nuclear weapons, running for a constitutionally prohibited third term, staying in office even if he loses, and annexing Canada as the 51st state. But when a president publicly makes a vow to Congress to do something and then repeats that vow over and over, such statements are not trial balloons; they are policy. And sure enough, Trump has followed up by sending Vice President J. D. Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, as unwelcome emissaries to Greenland. Vance—a neo-isolationist who apparently expresses opposition to the president's plans only in Signal chats —has now embraced Trump's old-school imperialism. Worse, Vance tried to press Trump's case by boorishly criticizing Denmark's relationship with the island, smarmily telling the Danes: 'You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland.' (Imagine the reaction in Washington if a European leader came, say, to Puerto Rico, castigated America's management of the commonwealth, and urged the island to sever ties with the United States.) But at least he promised that military force, which to gain Greenland would have to be directed against Denmark, a NATO ally, was not going to be part of America's efforts. Trump, true to form, short-sheeted his hapless VP the next day by saying that military force was not, in fact, 'off the table.' On Monday, The Washington Post reported that the White House has begun work on estimating the costs of controlling Greenland in 'the most concrete effort yet to turn President Donald Trump's desire to acquire the Danish territory into actionable policy.' Once these kinds of meetings start taking place in the White House, the next step is usually to send out orders to the rest of the American national-security establishment, including the CIA and the Pentagon, to begin planning for various contingencies. Even if the American people supported direct aggression against our own allies—by a large margin, they do not—public opinion is not a legitimate excuse for treaty-breaking. Treaties are the law of the land in the United States, and the president's Article II powers as commander in chief do not allow him to wave a monarchical hand and violate those treaties at will. Just as Trump cannot legally issue orders to violate the Geneva Conventions or other agreements to which the United States is a signatory, he does not have the right to break America's pact with NATO at will and effectively declare war against Denmark. When George W. Bush ordered U.S. forces into combat against Iraq in 2003, some of his critics claimed that his actions were illegal, but Bush at least had the fig leaf of a congressional resolution, as well as a lengthy list of UN Security Council resolutions. Trump will have literally nothing except his insistent greed and glory-seeking vanity. If the U.S. military is given direct orders to seize Greenland—that is, if it is told to enter the territory of another nation, pull down that nation's flag, and then claim the ground in the name of the United States—it will have been ordered to attack an ally and engage in a war of conquest, even if no shot is ever fired. These would be illegal orders, because they would violate not only our treaty obligations but also international prohibitions against unprovoked wars of aggression. At home, the president would be contravening the Constitution: Article II does not allow the commander in chief to run around the planet seizing territories he happens to want. At that point, every senior commander, from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs on down, has a moral obligation to refuse to accept or support such a command. Pauline Shanks Kaurin, a military-ethics professor at the Naval War College (where I also taught for many years) told me, speaking in her personal capacity and not on behalf of the Defense Department, that civilian leaders have 'the right to be wrong,' but that if the United States moves against Greenland, especially if both America and Denmark are part of NATO, 'senior military leaders have an obligation to advise against this course of action and resign if necessary.' Shanks Kaurin added that this obligation might even extend to a requirement to refuse to draw up any plans. But what if the orders are less obvious? Trump long ago mastered the Mafia-like talent of making his desires evident without actually telling others to engage in unsavory acts. In that case, he could issue instructions to the military aimed at intimidating Greenland that on their face are legal but that are obviously aggressive. Retired Major General Charles Dunlap, who served as the deputy judge advocate general of the U.S. Air Force and now teaches law at Duke, suggested that Trump could take advantage, for example, of the wide latitude given to the United States in its basing agreement with Greenland. The president, Dunlap told me in an email, could choose to engage in 'a gross misreading of the agreement' and move a large number of troops to Greenland as 'a show of force aimed at establishing a fait accompli of some kind.' Military officers are required to presume that commands from higher authority are legal orders, and so a series of directives aimed at swarming forces into Greenland would likely be obeyed, Dunlap said, 'because of the potential ambiguity' of such directives 'as well as the inference of lawfulness.' In any case, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have taken important steps to ensure that no one is left in the Pentagon to tell them that their orders might be unlawful. All of the top military lawyers whose job is to provide independent legal advice on such matters have been fired. And, as Dunlap notes, courts are notoriously reluctant to get involved in such questions, which is why Congress must step in. 'The military,' he said, 'ought not be put in the middle of something like this.' Americans used to take their presidents far more seriously. Before Trump, when a president spoke, his words instantly became the policy of the United States government—for better or worse. When President Ronald Reagan caught his own aides flat-footed by bungling a policy message during a press conference in 1983, for example, a Reagan-administration official later said: 'You can't say 'No, he didn't mean it' or 'That's not really government policy.' That's out of the question.' But those days are long gone. As a direct result of Trump's many off-the-cuff ruminations and long stretches of political glossolalia, Trump has convinced many Americans not to take their president at his word until it's too late. (Consider how many people, for example, refused to believe that he would impose massive global tariffs, a policy they can now examine more closely by the light of a burning stock market.) I realize that this entire discussion seems like utter lunacy. War against … Denmark? But when the president says something, it's policy. Trump insists that he must be taken seriously. Americans and their elected representatives across the political spectrum should oblige him.
