There’s so much good commentary on Trump’s War I decided to just pull together a link archive of the best I’ve found. I plan to keep adding to this as stuff happens. I hope you find this helpful. All articles should be accessible to everybody. I’ll group them by topic.
Why Trump Made a Bad Decision to Go to War
Various reporters, The New York Times, How Trump and His Advisers Miscalculated Iran’s Response to War. Basically, Trump and the dimwits advising him made stupid assumptions.
Thomas Edwall, The New York Times, The Smash-and-Grab Presidency Reaches Its Apex. “President Trump’s decision to go to war against Iran exemplifies his smash-and-grab approach to governing: acting without apparently considering the lives to be lost, the law or the institutional damage he will leave behind.”
Edith Olmsted, The New Republic, Trump Went to War With Iran Because Jared Kushner Is a Fool. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were in charge of negotiating with Iran over its nukes, and neither have a clue what they were negotiating about. There is reason to believe that experienced diplomats being advised by actual nuclear scientists could have gotten a decent deal with Iran about its nuclear weapons program. But these two were too dim to recognize reasonable deal when it was offered to them. And next reas …
Judd Legum, Popular Information, Trump says Kushner helped convince him to go to war with Iran. “The disclosure raises additional questions about the role of Kushner, who is being paid tens of millions of dollars annually by Middle Eastern governments that were reportedly lobbying Trump to attack Iran.”
Why It’s Not Going Well
Franklin Foer, The Atlantic, The Obvious Is Taking Its Revenge on Trump. Foer writes, “almost no other foreign-policy question has been studied harder over the past 20 years or so than the likely effect of U.S. military strikes on Iran.” How things are playing out now are pretty much what 20 years of analysis said would probably happen. Duh.
Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, Operational Excellence, Strategic Incompetence. Trump is mistaking the tactical excellence of the U.S. military with winning the war. Nichols, a professor emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, explains these are two very different things.
David Edwards, Raw Story, ‘Which one is it?’ Fox News tires of Trump calling Iran conflict a ‘war’ and ‘excursion’ Why Trump will never be confused with a serious head of state.
“And we did a little excursion. We had to take this little couple of weeks, a few weeks of excursion, but it’s been incredible,” Trump said while touring a factory in Ohio on Wednesday. “Our military is unbelievable, the job they’re doing. I would say, to put it mildly, way ahead of schedule. We’ve knocked out their Navy, their military in it, all forms. We’ve knocked out just about everything there is, including their leadership, twice. We knocked out twice their leadership.”
“Now they have a new group coming up,” he continued. “Let’s see what happens to them. But 47 bad years we suffered with them, not only us, the rest of the world. We’re doing our jobs. So we had to take an excursion, but it’s going well.”
“You just said it is a little excursion, and you said it is a war,” Doocy noted. “So which one is it?”
“It’s both,” Trump replied. “It’s an excursion that will keep us out of a war. And the war is going to be, I mean, for them it’s a war. For us, it’s turned out to be easier than we thought.”
What Could Happen Next
Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, Unpacking Trump’s Rhetorical Flip-Flops on Iran. Trump says the war is already won, but the next minute he says it’s barely even started. Says Josh, “It’s Trump so obviously anything could change but I think right now it’s clear that Trump does not have the stomach for a true regime change war, and he’s going to try to get out of this as quickly as he can. The question is can he actually do so fast enough, not look completely stupid and still preserve some idea that the U.S. succeeded at whatever it was we were trying to do?”
Or, maybe not. I don’t think Trump is ready to call it quits yet. He doesn’t realize what he’s done. Give him at least three more weeks.
"The disclosure raises additional questions about the role of Kushner, who is being paid tens of millions of dollars annually by Middle Eastern governments that were reportedly lobbying Trump to attack Iran.”
Well, that's just not fair, both Jared and Steve are stand up guys, I mean they both came from money, both have close ties to Israel and both are in real estate, for christ sake is there a more honorable profession, used cars maybe?
The mullahs (or whatever they are) in Iran must be laughing their asses off, it's been less than two weeks and oil is only up about 50% but diaper don ready to pull the plug. Of all of his lies to the low info magats he can't really lie about the price of gas, even those dullards understand the correlation. Saying he "obliterated" Iran's nuclear program last year was close to the stupidest thing he has done and he’s done some doozies!
OK. Who thinks gas prices will come down as soon as Dear Leader sings, 'Mission Accomplished'? The Staight of Hormuz is a strategic bottleneck. Iran would love for the US to put US troops on the ground so they can test their versions of the lessons of warfare that Afghanistan and Iraq worked out. Who benefits from a prolonged war that cuts oil supplies? Putin. So would Iraq have the supplies for guerrilla warfare? Well, Vlad would weigh the value of his fiendship with Don the Con against the billions of dollars in oil sales. It will be a tough choice
When I was in the Navy, I worked with a guy who did a couple of tours in 'Nam on a minesweeper in the shallow water of the Gulf there. The Viet Cong were low-tech. A mine was explosives they stole from the US military, detonated from shore if a ship got close enough to the mine. The mine was deployed by swimmers at night. The point being, a determined Iraq can make life hell for the Arab nations that bought the favor of DJT.
The jury is still out on whether we will "stay to finish the job" which is what the Mideast Axis of Evil is going to demand when Trump goes wobbly. 'Nobody's that stupid,", I hear you say. I hope so, but I won't bet a nickel on it.
My opinion is that the clowns running the show have not figured out that things won't just return to the previous state when we leave. (I don't think we will put troops in to occupy.) The repercussions, even with a withdrawal, have doomed the GOP for the midterms. I think it's very likely we will be in a recession in November.
Will the GOP in the Senate rebuke Trump and try to save themselves as the mess gets worse? Or double down on fascism and bet on a coup in 2028? As Trump sees a future of legal peril and criminal prosecution, will he try to keep the office without the formalities of a nomination or elections?
his fiendship with Don the Con
+1 for "fiendship", whether intentional or not
The chicken out option may not be in the bag on this one. Oil pricing is resisting efforts to calm the markets at this point. There are many war fires burning in the middle east that are uncontrolled now by central governments. It appears these warring elements now control that which once was central government, and they will decide when they stop warring. At a billion dollars a day on borrowed money, we might go broke or max out the national credit card before we chicken out. Who knows the proxies that fuel all these other fires. We probably fired the people that knew what was really going on there months ago.
I could drone on, but we are in the world that Rumsfeld called the unknown unknowns. We have the nepo babies of the first crime family starting a drone company when the rest of the world has full production of inexpensive drones, anti-drone drones and probably anti-anti-drone drones by now.
I read yesterday that China was taking delivery on huge oil shipments. That belt and road plan seems to have them with Plan Bs to spare. Who knows if that is true or not though? The only truth we can count on is that anything fearless leader calls a hoax is truth. He seems to use the word excursion in an unorthodox way also. Miscommunication is his forte you know.
Here at home, all this is being spun as yet another example of the "strong" warfighting and unparalleled dealmaking prowess of President Deals. Never mind the fact that everything the child in chief says he wants now, and the most he'll get out of this, was already in hand with the agreement Obama signed with Iran. An agreement he tore up because Obama. We could have all that without the billion dollars a day the war is costing thus far, spiking gas prices, loss of life of US military personnel, neighboring countries under attack for hosting US bases, and unnecessary death, destruction and chaos throughout the region, and the heightened threat of terrorism. And the economic hit here at home is only beginning to take effect. EVERYTHING he said would happen if Harris were president, he's doing. And even as he's mired in this mess as a dinosaur mired in the tar pits, he's talking about doing "the same thing" in Cuba.
EVERYTHING he does puts America in a worse position. He doesn’t solve problems, he creates them.
This is way too much winning. God help us.
So, yes, the Magats love this war though. I asked my Magat buddy what he thought about the war and he said that we should deal with the long-term consequences by just bombing Iran to glass. I noted that that would constitute genocide and he was ok with that and said if you put hospitals and schools next to/on top of military sites, then you deserve to die. Rising oil prices? He lived through $5 gas under BIDEN so he was ok with $3.50 under mango man (put a pin in that one). Unless someone comes to his door and messes with him directly, and he has to put rounds down range, he is ok with it. He spends $1200 a month on electricity. Cameras and floodlights (and AC) on 24/7. Former cop. Wife has a job in the resources industry so they are recession-proof. Very confident that after the collapse, his team will come out on top.
Good luck and God bless, friends.
quote of the day:
"micro dosing hell by staying informed and educated"
– hunter@3gpmh