Last week we assassinated General Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s military. The best thing that can be said of the good general is that he had it coming. Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American troops and civilians. He had been at it through three American administrations and our intelligence told us that he was about to begin a series of strikes that would have set off an even bigger conflagration.
Killing him had been considered and rejected by both the Bush and Obama administrations but it took an unstable fool like Trump to pull the trigger. There has been consideration that maybe it wasn’t the wrong decision. It should be pretty clear to readers of this blog that I consider Donald Trump to be a demented, egomaniacal, sociopath and that’s on his good days. But maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t his worst decision. That’s not to say that he didn’t screw it up in the aftermath, but maybe, for a number of reasons, it really needed to be done.
For one, this degenerate Iranian murderer had been figuring out ways to kill innocent people all over the Middle East and beyond for almost four decades. That alone should have made him a target. But unfortunately there are political ramifications to this act. Those who are busy screaming about Iran starting a war over this may have a point but maybe they should think again. We have been sticking our noses into Iran’s business ever since I can remember. Obama almost solved a good part of the problem with the Iran Nuclear Treaty but Donald Trump put the kibosh on that. He abandoned the Treaty and reinstituted murderous sanctions.
He wrongly thought he could force regime change by starving Iran to death. This just proves Trump knows nothing about human nature. Everything he has done to starve the Iranian people has actually strengthened the regime because it has given them a new enemy on which to blame all the problems of their nation. “The Americans are starving you. Show them that they cannot crush us. Fight back.” That’s what the regime is saying and it’s working. It’s making the people forget how much they hate the regime, because now they have someone else to hate, someone who in their eyes, is taking food out of their children’s mouths, someone who has lied to them and screwed them since 1953.
In case you didn’t notice, that someone is us! This position has also emboldened the Iranians to unfold all kinds of controlled, warlike attacks that have been going on for years, but are now escalating. None of these attacks were big enough to cause us to invade them. They were just a lot of annoying things that cost lives but were not significant enough to start a war. Iran doesn’t want a war with the US. No one invades a country that they know they can’t beat. Not unless your President is Peter Sellers. No, the Iranians have just kept up a constant annoyance without giving us an excuse to drop the big one on them. This was proven on Tuesday when Iran retaliated.
With millions of their citizens and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shia flooding the streets to protest America killing their favorite terrorist, the leadership of Iran sent a flock of missals into a bunch of empty sheds near an American installation in Iraq. Really? And whom is this supposed to frighten off?
Sure they needed to do something to save face. They pushed the envelope previously and we killed their top general. If they try to top that we might knock off the Ayatollah or even a whole city. So they launched an attack at a target they knew wouldn’t get us too mad but would possibly save face before their own people. By doing this they showed that they are reasonable people and way smarter than Trump.
But what about our actions? Look, there is no sense in having the greatest military in the history of man unless you use it to keep the peace and encourage others to do the same. What was going on with Iran wasn’t truly peace, especially when they recently killed another American.
So Trump, who loves to beat up on small kids, took that American death as a sign of his omnipotence and pulled the trigger on Soleimani. It wasn’t any kind of gamble. He knew that Iran wouldn’t go to war over it. They can’t. But then because he’s such a worthless egomaniac he wasted the big move. What he should have done was send one of the State Department people who testified against him to quietly tell the Iranians, “This was just a warning; an example of what we can do to anyone, anytime we decide to act. Take it to heart and stop all this provocative nonsense or the next one will be much worse. Nobody wants what’s happening now. Play nice and we’ll loosen some serious sanctions, but keep up with this nonsense and we’ll double everything you do.” Such a message should be delivered quietly, behind the scenes directly to the Iranian hierarchy.
Instead Trump went dancing around bragging about how “he” had killed this guy and throwing out threats all over the place. This is going to work about as good as pulling the treaty from Iran or his “signed” deal with Kim.
Somebody in our government has to finally realize that no nation that currently has nuclear weapons is ever going to give them up. We established that through the brilliant foreign policy of Bush/Cheney when they talked Quadaffi into giving up his nuclear weapons and then killed him. That was the end of American trustfulness and we will be paying for that for the rest of time. Oh, and having the biggest liar in the history of the Presidency in the White House definitely isn’t going to change that view.
But we can still make a functional deal with Iran. Oh wait. Obama already did that but Trump didn’t like it.. Those big numbers the anti-treaty clowns keep quoting bothered him but that was already Iran’s money. We had just locked it up in our banks. Now if we want the same deal again, Trump will have to release most of the sanctions and kick in a hell of a lot more money and this time it will be ours. Then he can lie about it because that’s how he makes most of his deals.
With all the chaos resulting from Trump’s decision to kill Soleimani, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo goes on TV and tells the nation that the world is now a safer place, thereby proving that neither Pompeo nor anyone else in our government knows squat about what the hell is going on in the world.
Yes, we may have established boundaries by killing Soleimani. Sure we have finally stood up on our hind legs and established that we aren’t going to let Iran continue to get away with their criminal behavior, but that is a long way from making this a safer world. There’s a definite possibility that Trump has made it a far more dangerous one.
The fact that Pompeo and Trump don’t realize this is one of the major factors that establish just how dangerous we have made it.
Everyone already knows what a bully and coward Trump is. He just enforces that concept by picking on a country that can’t possibly fight back militarily. What we now have to figure out is whether or not the Iranian leaders have inhaled enough of the magic weed to make them think they can actually compete with us on the battlefield, thereby leading them to do something even more rash than what they have done to this point.
It has been the indulgence of previous and present leaders, in letting Iran get away with years of bad behavior that has led us to this point. It’s unfortunate that it had to be the least able leader in our history that finally pulled the trigger because everyone knows he is without the ability to conceive a strategy on how to make the next step. Pompeo proved this with his idiotic statement. The fact that Pompeo was dumb enough to say the world was now safe, when it is obvious that it isn’t, that there are now more avenues open to violence and more opportunities to escalate, just proves that our nation is adrift in a leaderless sea of potential disaster.
The pundits that tell us that Iran will never meet with us are wrong. Iran doesn’t want a war with the US now or at any time in the future. Their problem is that they, like many nations in this world, understand that we have a madman in the White House and that any negotiations with this liar and egomaniac will have to be renegotiated a year from now when a new administration is in place. Only when Trump is ousted will there be a chance for peace. That’s not because Trump is more warlike than anyone else, he’s just not up to negotiating a peace deal. Trump doesn’t want war but he just isn’t smart enough to avoid it, especially with his egomaniacal need to show everyone how tough he is. One bad move by Iran and this dumb shit will be pressing the button. A year is a long time to stall, especially when daily events lead to escalation.
The biggest problem is that fanatics lead Iran just as a non-functional clown leads us. That does not exactly bolster the safety factor. Pompeo adds to that problem by speaking about Iran’s populace and how they want to overthrow the regime. Really? Maybe they did, but not anymore. How can they even think we’d back them after the way we betrayed them the last time they believed us and tried to overthrow their government with promised American aid that never arrived?
If there is any single factor that might completely refute Pompeo’s allegation that the world is safer now, it is the President himself. We have a raving, egomaniac in the White House, a blundering idiot who while claiming to seek regime change in Iran, has, with one fatal move, created regime support in that formerly divided country, while driving anti-American hatred in Iraq and weakening the entire region.
Of course the question of timing has entered the discussion in a significant way. Why now? Why after both previous administrations passed entirely on this move and this one did for three years. Why did it happen now? Does the bell called impeachment ring true? Trump has already stated that Obama would start a war to enhance his ability to stay in the White House. Is he now taking his own, foul advice? The Fat Liar in the Oval Office has made no secret of the impact the impeachment has had on him. Did he see this as a way to shift the public eye onto another subject? If so, it has surely worked. Almost no one is dealing with the imminent impeachment today. All eyes are on the Middle East and all conversation is on war. So if this assumption is true, Trump has been successful, but at what cost?
Has he once again sold out the nation for his own benefit?