Mr. Trump's Wild Ride
Yesterday, there were three terrorist attacks in the U.S., including one by a man with ties to ISIS (the group Trump said in his first term he eliminated) who had been in prison and previously under FBI observation until, for whatever reason, he wasn’t. Another was a cyberattack directly related to hackers from Iran.
So, it seems like maybe Trump and Kash Patel shouldn’t have fired 45 counterterrorism agents from the FBI, including a dozen whose expertise was specifically monitoring threats from Iran – just because years ago they’d been assigned to investigate Trump. And, especially, fired only days before the administration knew it would be attacking Iran in Trump's war. In all, over 300 national security agents have either been fired or left the FBI since Trump took office, more than 50 of them in leadership roles.
But that’s just my opinion, I’m not an expert on Iran. Though at least that puts me on the same footing as Trump and Kash Patel, and Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Markwayne Mullin, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
In fairness, perhaps calling this “going to war” against Iran is unfair to Trump since he says it is only just an “excursion.” Sort of like going on a family trip to Disneyland.
And from all appearances, Trump does seem to see it as an "excursion". After all, he thinks he can just declare victory and that “the war is over” when he says so. Unfortunately, wars don’t work that way – there’s always another side. With bombs, drones, soldiers, guns. And if you leave before they’re done fighting, they really might just continue fighting you.
Further, Trump and his crackerjack team of saps at the White House keep putting out infantile videos that look like video games, meant to show supposedly (I guess…) how great the “excursion” is going. They’re montages of sports moments and movie clips and AI generated mumbo jumbo where we see, for example, a bowler making a strike, and a golfer hitting a hole-in-one, and bombs exploding and…they are all just utterly mind-numbingly childish.
They come across like Trump and his MAGOP enablers seem to want all of America to think that war is a video game. But of course, war is not a sports event. It's not a video game, it’s not what we see in movies where there’s a script that everyone follows. It's not an AI meme. War is deadly serious -- with emphasis on "deadly."
But this is what happens when unqualified incompetent, wannabe macho civilians are in charge. Posturing, swaggering, fist-bumping. War is serious. People die. Costs rise. Life is disrupted. And no matter how much claims he can just declare the war over, it's still going on because there's no exit strategy. Nor goal.
This is also what happens when the commander-in-chief says something contradicted by everyone around him, and when asked why he’d said what he did when none of his team says it, replied – "I don't know about it."
And this what happens, too, when the commander-in-chief thinks it's just an "excursion" and a video game and he can declare victory and tell oil tankers that have stopped going through the Strait of Hormuz to just "Show some guts. There's nothing to be afraid of." But then, there's never anything to be afraid of on an "excursion" and easy to show guts when playing a video game. But two tankers did try to go through two nights ago and got blown up.
The International Energy Agency said the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz -- through which 20% of the world's oil is transported -- as a result of Trump's "excursion" is the "largest supply disruption in the history of global oil market"!
This is a good time to toss in a reminder that -- 1) We had a nuclear deal with Iran that Trump tore up, and 2) a few months back Trump said that we had "obliterated" Iran's nuclear arsenal. So, none of this -- the war, the disruption of oil, the resultant rise in gas and products that rely on gas, the deaths, the accidental bombing of a girls school and its 170 deaths -- none of this was necessary.
But at the very least, Trump and Kash Patel -- knowing they were going to attack Iran -- shouldn't have fired all those counter-terrorism agents, especially the experts on Iran. Even if you thought it was just an "excursion."
Expert analyst David Rohde of MS Now said yesterday morning that Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has turned aspects of Trump's war against Iran in their favor – not that Iran is necessarily winning, he made clear, but that it was inexplicable that U.S. leadership has no answer for Iran’s action.
Probably because unqualified incompetent, wannabe macho civilians are in charge and act as if this war is just an "excursion" into outer space for a war battle against aliens in a video game. And if you bomb the wrong target and hit a girls school and over 170 people die, well…you can always chug another beer, hit "redo", and circle back to try again.
Until you find out the other side is real and will attack back.
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