If y’all think back, you remember the Toddler whining about Europe even then. NATO sucked. The European countries were leeches sucking money out of the US so they didn’t have to spend on their own defense. Maybe it was time the USA let NATO fend for itself, huh? Now, things have changed, and the Toddler is whining that Europe should save his ass, as I blogged about last month. He wasn’t prepared for Iran to close the Straits of Hormuz; now he’s suggesting that Europe should handle the easy-peasy task of getting ships through it.
What I thought when the rants against Europe began is that the Toddler has spent his life avoiding consequences for his actions. It’s no surprise he’d think there’d be no consequences this time, that if he needed Europe to help him of course they would. I doubted the situation would come up — what were the odds of another 9/11 — but it turns out he didn’t need one. He went ahead and launched a stupid, pointless war for no good reason. Sure enough, he’s been whining that Europe needs to fix this for him and he seems outraged whining hasn’t worked (it probably doesn’t help that he and Marco Rubio have demolished our diplomatic corps).
Why would our allies help? He considers them, much more than Russia, a threat to the world’s future as he envisions it — the threat of “transparency, accountability, civil rights, and the rule of law.” He’s threatened to attack Denmark for Greenland, openly levied tariffs on Europe because he feels slighted, bullies and threatens their leaders, says he might not support Europe if Russia attacks (hell, he won’t support America when Russia acts against us). If they did everything he wanted, he might then attack Greenland and levy more tariffs because loyalty is not his way. Hell, the Ukraine’s given him advice on dealing with drone warfare and the Toddler’s still thinking about diverting Ukraine aid to Iran.
It’s also true to the Toddler’s MO that he’s gotten away in the past by lying and demanding everyone pretend it’s true. Whether it was destroying Iran’s nuclear capability last week to declaring he’s already accomplished regime change, it’s worked for him in the US — but Iran’s not playing and there’s a good chance his lies will shatter when they hit reality (as detailed at the first link in the paragraph). Iran’s able to hurt us and he has no idea how to deal with it. Except his usual approach which is to keep spewing bullshit: he doesn’t care whether we negotiate with Iran or not, closing the Strait won’t hurt the US, if gas prices go up people know it’s for a good cause (and they may go way, way up), plus lies about how he negotiated with the Sharpie company to get $5 pens instead of Biden’s $1,000 pens.
I didn’t expect the war would go this badly. But then, the head of our military under the Toddler is Pete Hegseth, who “doesn’t like people who are competent at their jobs. He wants people who are into lethality and dumb shows of force, which is not a good thing in a 21st century military.”
In the meantime, the Republicans are making hay, using the war as an excuse to cut federal healthcare spending (just as military urgency suddenly justifies removing protection from endangered whales). They’ll still end up awash in red ink, as they did in the Toddler’s first term (and W’s presidency, and Reagans). The legend that Republicans are fiscally conservative refuses to die. The myth of the Toddler as a competent leader may be about to collapse, maybe. It’s a shame so many ordinary people will pay a price in the process.
The world too; flawed though America always was when it played the world’s policeman, we did some good. The Pax Americana, though, is dead: “The underwriter of this world order has now become a revisionist power, and some people would even say a disruptor. But the larger point is that the erosion of norms, processes, and institutions that underpinned a remarkable period of peace and prosperity; that foundation has gone.” We are now part of the Axis of Evil.
