We can afford wars, but not health care.
I understand that over the past several hours the Foreign Minister of Oman has frantically been telling the Trump Administration that a deal with Iran is really, really, close, and that Iran has agreed to “zero stockpiling” of enriched uranium. But Trump and his buddy Bibi Netanyahu started a war with Iran anyway.
With no congressional input, no real effort to rationalize a massive military intervention to the US people, and with negotiations ongoing, Trump took the US into a major war overnight. This isn’t a necessary or a rational war. It’s a calamitous intervention designed to feed the ego of one man.
— Sasha Abramsky (@sashaabramsky.bsky.social) February 28, 2026 at 8:58 AM
Yeah, pretty much. See also Simon Tisdall at The Guardian.
Complicating this is that Trump has received no authorization whatsoever from Congress to do diddly squat in Iran. Trump is in direct violation of the Constitution now. There has been a resolution intended to tie Trump’s hands floating around in Congress for a while. Congress is apparently in recess right now, which may be why Trump decided this was the time to strike. There are frantic calls to get everyone back to Washington to vote on the resolution.
See also Tom Nichols at The Atlantic. Along with obliterating Iran’s nuclear program — the same Trump obliterated a few weeks ago, as I recall — he is pushing for regime change.
… the president has not offered a strategy, or identified any conditions that would signal that U.S. goals have been achieved. Yes, he has vowed to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, but beyond that, he seems to be arguing for just inflicting military damage on the regime, on the assumption that enough ordnance on enough targets will weaken the grip of the ayatollahs. Once the theocrats are on the ropes, the thinking seems to go, the people of Iran will finish the job of regime change for us.
Sounds like what Dubya thought would happen in Iraq.
The best reasoning I've found on this is from Jeffrey Sachs, a professor at Columbia. The key ideas begin at 5:50 or so. Israel has long wanted regional hegemony, and has openly advocated for the toppling of Iran. Epstein and blackmail may also be involved. I'm sure they've calculated that the Orange Menace won't be around much longer, and so they got him to do it.
All the other scary stuff 45 is giving as reasons is BS. An external reason – Israel – makes the most sense to me. Meanwhile Watch this drive!
Iran has been 1 or 2 weeks away from building a bomb for the past 25 years, even though, this time, the big T said that he destroyed that capacity last time.
He wants the people of Iran to rise up and overthrow their despotic regime. Good for him, good for them. Good for Bibi, I wonder if he can manage an empire from the Nile to the Euphrates. Whatever the King and Princelings need, I guess they are gonna get it and know why the gotta get it. I gotta figure out how to get gas money to get into town to buy groceries.
Look! Another train wreck. That will teach them. Great Satan you say, how about the Greatest Satan of all Time. That's what he wants to hear!
I see this as Bibi playing Trump. We do his dirty work, including political assassination on the US taxpayers' dime. This attack may follow the hit-and-run model of Venezuela, where Trump planned and expected the surviving government to be his bitch.
Which brings me to a quote from a Tom Clancy novel where two army soldiers from opposing sides, reflecting on the previous war, asked, "Who won the air war?" The point being that you don't win a war in the air. What matters is who controls the ground after a battle. Trump can destroy military installations and hospitals at will. But the US can't "win" the war unless soldiers on the ground take control. We tried that in Iraq and Afghanistan, and failed. Warring factions in those countries would turn aside from killing each other to kill an American.
My prediction is that we can set back their military goals, possibly destabilize the existing regime, but the government that emerges from the rubble will be more extreme than the one we defeated. This could be a bump in the road that costs us hundreds of billions if we're lucky. Or Bibi may hit the jackpot if Trump puts boots on the ground to occupy.
I suspect that I have posted a link to this before, but, I heart Baudrillard:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulf_War_Did_Not_Take_Place
My take is that this is not a war, not a battle, not politics, not "the continuation of politics by other means", but "the continuation of the absence of politics by other means."
This is a kinetic variety show, guest starring, …. straight form the Pocono of the Middle East, the beautiful West Bank, Bibi "Better than Bonzo" Netanyahoo! We get to watch a show, a hyper-reality show, and the emcee is the "Great One", the Orange Menace. This is his the pedo-prez' biggst gig, bigger than NBC's Survivor, bigger than the M*A*S*H finale, … he is so famous he can grab them by the… um… never mind. This is his mid-season finale and in this show he sets up the season finale where he is crowned the King of America!! This then sets up the series finale, in season (term) 3, where he is proclaimed the Emperor of the Earth!!! The oligarchs will demand a Amazon limited series to wrap up the story line.
And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda
I think Maha's title for this post is spot on. The US military action in a "joint operation" with Israel is in direct opposition to the "America First" campaign promise. And I agree with Doug, for the most part. (I completely agree with Doug's point about boots on the ground).
But as I listened (off and on) to the coverage today (Sat.), there were a handful of little details mentioned in the reporting and the analysis that were kind of mentioned in passing and not followed up on. I can't remember all of them specifically. But taken together they pointed me in the following direction: I don't think the current US administration has any more pressing motive for being involved in this war other than to provide a distraction from the Epstein Files debacle. There may be the hope for a side benefit of keeping the cult members in line by killing some people far far away, people who are not white christian nationalists. But I don't think that the people in MAGA base who already intend to vote R this coming November would stay home (instead of voting) if the US let Israel conduct this operation without any actual participation by SecDef's Imperial Storm Troopers.
First, let's dispense with the pathetic claim that the US admin decided to participate in order to give the people of Iran a chance to reclaim their government from their repressive regime. Puh-lease, spare me. We know that those in charge do not give a flying flock about Iranian serfs, any more than they give a flying flock about Venezuelan serfs. In both cases these folks would be quite happy if they could get away with murdering all Venezuelan underlings so that they can't try to seek asylum in the US. Same applies to Iranians. You don't have to be a genius to detect this excuse as BS.
So I googled "in the 2/28/26 bombing of Iran, what percent of the air force missions were US and what percent were Israeli?" and I got this:
During the joint military operation on February 28, 2026, specific percentages for the total mission breakdown between U.S. and Israeli forces have not been officially released. However, available reports provide a clear picture of the scale and roles of each force:
Israeli Air Force (IAF) Contributions
United States Air Force and Navy Contributions
The operation remains ongoing, and more precise data regarding the exact ratio of sorties may emerge as the Department of Defense and the IDF release further after-action reports.
{end of clip}
I noticed the vagueness of the description of US participation. My take: Those in charge of US missions did not want to take any risk of US casualties, so they took some safe assignments in order to be able to pretend that this whole thing was mostly a US operation, headed up by the strong man in chief. That's certainly how he presented it in his overnight video announcement.
I think bee bee was going to do this whether or not the naval assets got redeployed from the Caribbean to the Persian Gulf are. Perhaps bee bee offered his US buddy an opportunity to cosplay as liberator of the Iranian people, and of course the agreement was reached. Perhaps bee bee only needed US assets in the region to be there to deter any attempts by the bad guys in the middle east to invade Israel… in other words to have a huge US force in place to have Israel's back. All of this is speculation on my part. And it doesn't really matter exactly what the details are, because:
The biggest threat to those in charge is the Epstein Files. So we have to make sure that we don't let our representatives and senators take their eyes off the ball. Sure, we do need a war powers debate and a clear refusal to provide AUMF. But we can't let the "narrative" war on that topic overshadow the Epstein Files story. And, in my opinion, even though it is likely that some extremely unsavory activity by individuals in the government will come out, the really important thing is not the sex scandal part of it, but the picture it will paint of the corruption of the billionaire class that is controlling everything. We need to do everything we can to make it easy for independents to vote against what is going on.
My take on the war as a "distraction" is that it won't work. The American people are not emotionally or ideologically invested in beating up Iran the way they were invested in Iraq. By the time Dubya sent the military into Iraq we'd had months of a masterful propaganda campaign that had everyone hyped up about invading Iraq, either for or against. But not now. This is just Trump pulling another stunt that nobody needed pulled. It's the military equivalent of the ballroom.
Agree completely. Admin is desperate and trying stuff they think will work. Or maybe it's just the orangutan's puerile fantasies about how things work.
Quote of the Day:
our government combines the impulse control of pete hegseth, the intellectual rigor of rfk jr, and the attention span of donald trump with elon musk’s signature sense of humor
…and the work ethic of Kash Patel
"other people can make inroads and find common ground with regretful trump voters, in my personal capacity as a private citizen i am committed to hating those dumb motherfuckers for the rest of my life"
– Lauren
Israel First!
OT, The Epstein Scandal isn't about what you think it is, It's about 'Blat' – from Elvira Bary, a Russian emigre and writer I've been following for some time. Her father was an engineer and she was trained as a lawyer in the USSR. 'Blat' is a Russian word for a particular kind of corruption, that drives all of Russian society.
I've heard others say, that when Epstein is fully understood, it will bring down the power structure of the world. There's an outer visible layer we're familiar with – of politics and elections and such – that hides the way the world really works. Elvira's insight is key to understanding this hidden layer.
'Blat' is my guess as to why 45 invaded Iran.
Excellent link. I encourage others to click through and listen!
OK, Russia has a word for the why question. (Take the Iraq War as an example if you like) Let's say that is why the war happened. OK. Would it have prevented the war if we would have a more equivalent word or concept? Does having the word keep Russia out of dumb wars?
I normally contend that asking the why question is an invitation to listen to useless crap. Most humans misunderstand causal relationships. A why question implies there is one. Why did you get delt those Tarot cards…So, the fortuneteller can feed you blat for money. Other words will do as well. Random chance is at times the correct answer. Many people don't understand that word (random) very well, but blat is not a bad word choice here. It's like getting paid in crypto. (unbacked of course). You need to spend while it still has some perceived value.
For most actions in the middle east, you don't need a four-letter word to help your understanding, a three letter one will suffice. Oil.
I listened to the Blat video and I think it is excellent.