Tag Archives: Iran

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.

Heck, on Monday alone, we had the Toddler President declare Iran was negotiating peace, then Iran replied no, they weren’t. However I rarely write my posts the day they go live, so here we go. Fortunately these are less current updates than links to deeper insights.

Commenting on the Toddler’s lies about negotiating, Cheryl Rofer says “The best explanation for the words that drop from Trump’s mouth is that he tries things out to see what the marks will pick up. It’s not lying or fantasizing, but there’s not a simple word for it. I know that “bullshit” has been suggested in a specialized meaning, but the normal use interferes. It’s complicated by his need to always win, always humiliate his opponents. There is probably an element of fantasizing, but how he is perceived by others is also an important factor.”

People are betting on the progress of the war. They’ve threatened one journalist for refusing to change a story about a missile hitting Israel.

The Necrotic Toddler running this country has been talking about dead people walking around without legs. We have minesweepers we could use in the Straits; he and SecWar Hegseth didn’t think to put them in position before the war started.

“He told Welker how little he really cares about gas prices. Since this war started, gas has gone from $2.94 a gallon to $3.66. That’s a 72-cent jump in two weeks. People are already feeling it at the pump and growing increasingly concerned about how high it will go and how they will be able to cover the increasing costs. And when Welker asked Trump directly whether rising gas prices could hurt Republicans in the midterms, he said, “I’m not concerned at all.” He added, “There’s so much oil, gas, there’s so much out there, but you know, it’s being clogged up a little bit. It’ll be unclogged very soon.”

Related to the above: “Iranian attacks ‌have knocked out 17% of Qatar’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity, causing an estimated $20 billion in lost annual revenue and threatening supplies to Europe and Asia, QatarEnergy’s CEO and state minister for energy affairs told Reuters on Thursday.” But never mind, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is celebrating the Toddler’s ongoing effort to eliminate alternative energy in this country — “the era of affordable, reliable and secure energy is here to stay.” This is not only a lie, it’s a stupid lie. All their lies are because they have no way to grapple with reality.

“What we are seeing in just the first few days of the US bombing of Iran is no normal fog of war. It is unprecedented I would argue. We have seen arguably the worst friendly fire incident in modern US history, the worst articulations of war aims, the worst economic/industrial preparations for a war, and, tragically, what might very well be amongst the worst war crimes in US history. To have just one of these things in at the start of the war would be a failure, to have all of them….”

“This isn’t a case of oderint dum metuant — let them hate so long as they fear. Instead, the world increasingly holds America in contempt.” As witness Iranian officials declaring “Someone like us will never come to terms with someone like you.”

““It is not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat,” — Tulsi Gabbard, US intelligence head, trying to avoid saying anything that would upset the Toddler. Spoiler: yes, it is their responsibility.

Cheryl Rofer, who has some knowledge of nuclear issues, says attempting to recover Iran’s nuclear material would be a bad idea.

We already know Russia has a big influence on Putin’s Poodle. Paul Krugman points out how much influence petrostates such as Saudi Arabia have on policies from embracing fossil fuels to attacking Iran. “Why does Gulf oil money play an outsized role in U.S. corruption? Because petrostates, unlike advanced democracies, combine vast wealth with secrecy and a complete blurring of the lines between public office and private gain. So they’re better placed than anyone else to line U.S. officials’ pockets.”

Ukraine is offering us support with its expertise in drone warfare. Nevertheless Hegseth says we wouldn’t run out of munitions except Biden sent them all to the Ukraine. Hegseth also keeps on blaming the media for not gushing enough.

“For the moment the point is: Trump and Hegseth exult in seeing things blow up, as in a video game, and crowing like teenagers because they’ve “won.” That is not how this story is likely to end.”

“[Trump] also said that “Iran wants to make a deal,” but he has declined “because the terms aren’t good enough yet.” Today Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Tehran had not even asked for negotiations, let alone a ceasefire.”

Anyone who thinks we’re on the side of right in fighting for Iran — well, they’re probably happy we’re also embracing Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban.

“Nine former members of the bureau told Kramer it seems clear the administration did not prepare for a global oil crisis. Trump’s claim that “nobody expected” Iran to hit other countries in the Middle East supports their statement because, as they told Kramer, previous administrations planned for exactly that scenario.”

“Not only was the Bush administration exploiting an actual security threat, always better campaigners than governors they also engaged in an all-hands-on-deck propaganda campaign, having a popular president as the front man. Trump has none of this going for him, and it shows” — Scott Lemieux on how W’s White House built support for the Iraq invasion.

Republicans also seem to think they can punch down at Muslims as freely as the W administration did. And they’re repeating familiar bullshit claims about how they’re saving us from Sharia law.

That said, “The men who want to Make America Great Again are searching for a clean break from the Global War on Terror. That conflict was launched with lofty rhetoric about democracy and freedom but led to years of civil war, chaos, swollen ranks of terror groups, genocide, a refugee crisis and, in Afghanistan, a complete, humiliating failure. What these men don’t seem to realize, or care about, is that their language of brute force represents a fundamental break with American traditions around war going back to the Revolution.

“Boastful talk about slaughter is as old as war itself. “The wheels of my war chariot,” bragged one Assyrian king, “were bespattered with filth and blood. With the bodies of their warriors, I filled the plain, like grass.” But America’s founders asserted universal principles that should make such an attitude unthinkable. If you believe not only that all men are created equal but also that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, then war cannot be justified as a pure display of power and dominance.

In his addresses to the troops, George Washington would bring up the imagery of violence not as a spectacle to be enjoyed but as horrors to be endured — from “mercenary hirelings fighting in the cause of lawless ambition, rapine and devastation” to those who wished to keep revolutionary America in “bondage and misery.” And when news of British atrocities reached him, Washington wrote that “their wanton cruelty injures rather than benefits their cause; that, with our forbearance, justly secures to us the attachment of all good men.”

Given the Toddler and his party have shown themselves incapable of admitting defeat or course correcting, this will not go well, nor end well. Though of course the Toddler may not grasp this because his toadies’ job includes shielding him from reality, for example “briefing” him with a montage of shit blowing up (“the videos are also driving Trump’s increasing frustration with news coverage of the war. Trump has pointed to the success depicted in the daily videos to privately question why his administration can’t better influence the public narrative, asking aides why the news media doesn’t emphasize what he’s seeing, one of the current U.S. officials and the former U.S. official said.”). And we have Alan Dershowitz — friend of Jeffrey Epstein, ardent Toddler toady — declaring that just as the Toddler is saving us from Iran, he would have stopped the Holocaust. No, he wouldn’t.

In 2016, the media portrayed the Necrotic Toddler as the peace candidate, as opposed to the bloodthirsty warhawk Hilary Clinton. Siiiigh. The Toddler’s greatest ability has always been that people see him as whatever they want him to be, even though the truth of his rottenness has always been obvious. And of course if Clinton or Harris had broken off a war discussion to talk about fancy shoes, it would have been held up as proof women shouldn’t be in public office. Male privilege at its finest.

Of course the Toddler having Putin interfere in our elections proved an advantage too. And it’s still paying off: as the prospect of high oil prices looms, the Toddler’s lifting sanctions on Russian oil. Putin will undoubtedly give him a big belly scratch for being such a good doggy. Though covering his bases, the Toddler insists high energy prices don’t matter and “Axis Sally” Leavitt insists they’ll go way down as soon as we win. Oh he’s also speculating whether his war on Iran will somehow earn him the Nobel Peace Prize. Damn, he really wants a participation trophy. He’s also finding ways to milk the war for money.

Unsurprisingly despite the reckless efforts of the past year to gut every program that helps people, the administration has declared an unlimited military budget. Not that it’ll do much good: they did not plan for Iran mining the Strait of Hormuz. Whiny SecDef “Whisky Pete” Hegseth insists that’s a lie. I suspect he’s as uninterested in truth as his boss. He’s also outraged that press photographers don’t make him look good enough. When in doubt, whine the media are biased. FCC Chair Brendan Carr has gone further, warning the networks to provide more positive war news — or else (points to the usual odious Sen. Ron Johnson for pushing back)! The Toddler insists we will soon have the straits open as we’ve completely destroyed their military capacity. Oh, and while we’ve (allegedly) demolished one target “we may hit it a few more times just for fun.” Which fits with Hegseth declaring “no quarter asked or given.”

The Toddler is also whining that he expects Europe and others to help clear the Strait — “If there’s no response or if it’s a negative response I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO,” Says the man who threatened to take Greenland from Denmark and has spent much of his presidency grumbling how NATO sucks. So far, most of then are saying no. Which makes more sense than Hegseth saying the Strait is open — it’s only closed because Iran is bombing it. Well, yes.

And while we spend billions, cheap drones make Iran’s retaliations way more effective than they’d have been a few decades ago. Despite Hegseth’s fantasies about how testosterone-powered manly Americans will smash everything in their path. We have, however, proven very good at killing small girls, even though the school had an easy-to-find online presence. Hmm, is it possible cutting a program to minimize civilian casualties was a mistake? Not for Hegseth who thinks war should be brutal and bloodthirsty enough to make him feel manly. And I’m sure the Toddler doesn’t care.

And the Toddler understands nothing: “what’s become even more clear in the two weeks since is that Donald Trump doesn’t understand — and isn’t remotely interested in understanding — the reality of the situation in Iran. The administration’s entire gamble appears to be that Iran would be Venezuela — they could conduct a single night of strikes, decapitate the leadership, and then through geopolitical magic a Delcy Rodríguez figure would emerge to lead Iran peacefully and cooperatively.

Now that not-even-half-baked plan has failed to materialize, it’s clear that there’s no Plan B. Quite the contrary — we seem to have a US government that wakes up each day completely befuddled and surprised to find it’s involved in a conflict in Iran.”

Perhaps that’s why the best he can say about a satisfactory end to the war is “when I feel it in my bones.”

As several people have said, the Toddler is quite simply stupid. Completely stupid. Stupider than we imagine. He has no plan B because that would require thinking about consequences instead of doing whatever seems best for him at any given moment. As he’s always been able to buy, lie or bully his way out of a problem, he’s convinced there will never be any consequences for this approach. Alienating NATO? That’ll never cause any problems later, so why not? As Jamelle Bouie put it in his newsletter (no link, sorry), “Trump expected more or less instant success — a short conflict followed by regime change and another victory under his belt. The idea that there might be unintended consequences — and the fundamental reality that the Iranian government has both agency and the capacity to act — does not seem to have either troubled the president’s mind or figured much in the calculations of his closest advisers.”

This will not end well for anyone. Bouie, again: “But the world actually exists. Real lives are at stake. And his actions have weight that cannot be easily moved. There is no channel to change, and you can’t rewind the action. Trump made his foolhardy decision and now we must live with the consequences.”

Pete Hegseth: “We’re playing for keeps. Our warfighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly. Our rules of engagement are bold, precise, and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it. This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”

Actually the purpose of rules of engagement and rules of war is indeed to shackle the combatants: no bombing hospitals, no torturing of prisoners, no blowing up schools. Hegseth, having had a more distinguished career at Fox News than in the military, seems to feel there’s not enough toxic masculinity in observing such nitpicking. And that his duty as SecDef is to act tough for the camera.

I’m also bothered by that bit about how the authority was “granted personally.” As if the Necrotic Toddler he servers were King Donald (as he so wishes to be) and Hegseth were his vassal, giving orders to armed knights. What Hegseth does, he does as an official of the United States government, as does his boss. It isn’t “personal” in a sense. But as Paul Campos says at the link above, it’s striking “how many top Nazis and MAGATS share the same basic social profile, i.e., lifelong catastrophic fuckup who failed upward under conditions ripe for such people to ascend to positions for which they were farcically unqualified.” And yes, the Toddler is one of those.

Let’s step back in time. If you’re too young to remember the 2003 Gulf War, the occupation of Iraq that followed was a massive drain on our military preparedness, got lots of soldiers killed (and many, may more Iraqis), and accomplished nothing other than removing Saddam. Based on a threat of WMDs that never existed. Despite which the press were happy to gush about W as a great, great war leader — oh, how we Americans love it when our president has a swagger! He’ll destroy our enemies with the same relentlessness with which he clears brush off his Texas farmland — yes, one reporter wrote that (the media often presented W, a child of wealth and a Yale graduate, as a plain-spoken Texas farmer).

One difference is that in 2003, Democrats solidly supported W’s war. Not this time, though Republicans are all in (and so are a handful of Democrats). As the Constitution requires Congress to declare war, Republicans are declaring it can’t be a war, therefore the Toddler is in charge. The administartion’s rationale for doing it without consulting Congress is equally dubious.

And much like the Iraq war, bigots such as Laura Loomer are now declaring its time to round up American Muslims. Because …? Apparently she’s fine with Nazi tactics when they’re not directed at Jews such as herself.

The Toddler and Hegseth almost make W look like he was a competent war leader — and he was emphatically not a competent war leader. The stated reasons for rushing to war are completely inconsistent when they’re not incoherent — Iran was weeks from having a nuke (despite the Toddler declaring last year that we’d annihilated Iran’s nuclear facilities)! Israel was going to attack, Iran would have retaliated against us, therefore there was an imminent threat! It’s regime change! It’s not regime change! The toddler wants unconditional surrender! It’s because we’ve been at war with Iran for 47 years!

This has become the right-wing catchphrase of the day. It’s a lie. We’ve been hostile, but not at war. And fixating on Iran seizing our embassy 47 years ago as the start of things that we overthrew their democratically elected government and installed the Shah as our puppet dictator more than a decade earlier.

Karoline “Axis Sally” Leavitt is faux-outraged that the press a)mention the war dead on the front page and b)quote Hegseth accurately. Why can’t they say how wonderful her boss is? She does that constantly, but she’s lying. While I realize the press secretary is supposed to stick up for their employer, that’s no excuse: Leavitt didn’t have to take the job and become a lying fascist toady.

Hegseth is similarly whining that sure, “tragic things happen” but the press should be reporting how awesome his leadership is, not mentioning dead American soldiers on the front page (and he’s definitely not mentioning allegations an Iranian warship we torpedoed may have been unarmed, and we knew it).! He’s also an idiot when he claims “the terms of this war will be set by us at every step” — no, they won’t be. The Iranians have a say too. Hell, the Toddler and “Whisky Pete” can’t even decide whether this is a quick decisive strike and possibly being in Iran or bombing them, for months or years. “But many reports suggest that the United States doesn’t have enough left in its weapons stockpiles to continue the current pace of action for more than a few days without dangerously weakening the military’s ability to counter other threats, such as a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan.” A Kuwaiti fighter shot down three American F-15s in error; those aren’t cheap either. Our Navy may not be able to provide the Toddler’s promised merchant vessel protection.

It’s going to hit our economy hard. By interfering with the oil flow, the Toddler’s making the case for renewable energy — solar power can’t be cut off in a time of war.

We’re talking spending billions to make the Toddler and his SecWar feel like they’re real men. There’s lots we could do with that money. As usual Republicans only care about the budget when they object to doing stuff that helps people (W left office after racking up record red ink too). And no, the press are not making the Toddler and Hegseth look bad — they’re self-owning.

“The White House has helped MAGA influencers escape the Middle East on a private jet while more than a million ordinary Americans are still trapped with no way out.” Paul Krugman: “U.S. officials have urged all Americans in the region to leave, but they did so after almost all flights had been canceled. Only now are they saying that they’re going to arrange flights on military aircraft and charter flights — an airlift that will have to be immense given that there are surely tens of thousands of Americans currently stranded. Did I mention that Trump and co. clearly went to war without a plan?”

As for regime change: “Asked who he would like to take over Iran, Mr. Trump gave a strikingly blunt answer. “Most of the people we had in mind are dead,” he said. “Now we have another group, they may be dead also, based on reports. “So you have a third wave coming. Pretty soon we’re not going to know anybody.”” However he’s asserted it should be his decision who takes the reins.

A few final notes:

How about betting markets on the war’s outcome? Their spokespeople insist they don’t do bad stuff like bet on the deaths of the enemy leaders but “it’s just that the company would rather let you bet on the deaths and suffering of civilians rather than dictators and presidents. Betting that Khamenei would stay in power is an explicit bet that he would be allowed to continue silencing dissent and killing those who oppose him; betting that he would be deposed is an explicit bet on what has already become a very deadly, illegal regional war.

The Toddler, who’s been in shit fits because South Korea and Brazil arrested their presidents for crimes, wants a pardon for Netanhayu. Here’s a counter-argument for ending our close relationship with Israel.

The reports of Christian military officers proclaiming this is the start of Armageddon may be inaccurate. Though plenty of right-wing preachers outside the military make a similar claim.

Russia’s providing Iran with intelligence about our operations. The Toddler doesn’t care.