A war or not a war. That is the question. Shakespeare couldn’t answer it, so why do we expect Donald Trump to? That really isn’t what’s important, anyway. What is important is that since we’re in it, we must end the military capabilities of this rogue nation for good.
For the last half-century, Iran has been laying waste to the Middle East and the countries that deal with it. Now, people with nothing better to do ask the big question. What signifies the end of this war? Pretty simple. The end of Iran’s military capabilities and the limiting of their financial ability to support other military groups; that is, the end of them as a terrorist threat. Their navy, which has been a thorn in the side of trading nations for fifty years, is now resting comfortably at the bottom of various bodies of water. The rest of its military capabilities must be made to match that status.
There were many discussions on the tube this week over who started the war and why. At this point neither is significant. Iran instigated the attacks by years of terrorist activities. That’s obvious to any observer. What Trump finally did probably should have been done years ago, at least it appears that way to me. Iran has been asking for it for decades. All it took was a guy as dumb as Trump to actually get it started.
Can the old government in Iran manage to come out of this drubbing in a position to lead what is left of Iran after the decimation? Probably not. But then no one but the military looks to be a possibility right now. Whatever it took to kill 30,000 of their own people is what it will probably take to keep what’s left of the Ayatollah-based Iranian government from returning to power.
Iran is probably the most educated of all Muslim countries and yet they allowed themselves to be ruled by a cabal of insane religious fanatics for half a century. They are the nation with the most potential of any in the Middle East and yet they allowed an old religious fanatic to make them into a collection of religious terrorists that threatened half the world. Maybe they aren’t up to leading themselves, and if that’s true, where do they go from here? Is another nation, maybe Jordan, running them for a while the answer?
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But the real problem here is there are many who oppose a war in which we are up to our eyeballs, and many who are trying to stop it even though we must allow it to continue to a definitive conclusion. If we don’t, it will certainly happen again. If we don’t completely destroy the Iranian war machine and install a secular government, we will be right back where we started, and by the way, the destruction of the war-machine includes groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
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The big news has hit the headlines. Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Congress has voted to remove the olive branch from the dime. That’s right. With people starving across the country, with people losing their healthcare, their jobs, and their lives to ICE, congress had nothing better to do this month but fuck with the design of a coin that is all but worthless. What is wrong with these stupid motherfuckers? The country is falling apart, we have a criminal in the White House, we’re involved in a war that’s being led by a government who can’t plan anything but military action or run any kind of functional program, and they’re redesigning a coin … to what end? Of course, the symbolism of removing the peace symbol, the olive branch, and leaving the war symbol, the arrows, can’t be ignored, considering who’s in charge.
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The big noise right now is all about the Strait of Hormuz and how the Trump administration has managed to completely ignore it in their planning of this war. That’s right, the main avenue for trade between the East and the West is a two-mile wide-channel that runs between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. It provides the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf and open ocean. It is 104 miles long and varies in width from 60 to 24 miles. Its shores are lined by Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman, and it is the principal means of transporting oil in the Middle East. For years, it has been threatened with closure by any nation engaged in any form of aggression, and our war strategists just managed to miss that fact in their planning. Yes, Donald loves the smell of napalm in the morning, but he does have to pay attention to where he drops it. The problem with Hormuz is that no one has been able to come up with a way to keep it open once someone decides to close it. All Iran has to do now is run a boat full of mines through it and drop one every so often.
Expecting us to come up with some kind of solution to this after our abject failure to provide for it in our attack plans is ludicrous. Let’s see what lies Trump and his idiots come up with.
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Congressman Adam Smith was questioned on This Week about the government’s responsibility for protecting its citizens. His reply was a stinging accusation that the Trump administration, by using the DOGE movement to attack its own DOJ, has weakened the ability of the Department of Justice to protect our citizens against terrorist attacks or even screw-ups like the ICE murders in Minneapolis. In order to get loyal supporters into key roles in DOJ, Trump has replaced seasoned professionals with rank amateurs, and thereby weakened the whole department.
Smith, very smoothly, makes a case for the cost of the war outweighing the benefits, but does it? The real cost of the war can’t be just taken as what is happening this week in the Middle East. The real cost must be measured over the last 50 years and must take into account all the damage that Iran has done to the nations that have been its victims for the last half century. It’s a pretty big package and in order to balance it, we must look to a complete turnover in Iran’s government. So far, anything that looks like that hasn’t showed a sign of happening. Stuffing the Ayatollah’s kid in the job has only slowed the process because he will never take over, not if the players really wants peace at some point.