Once again, apologies for my absence as I beaver away in the background on the Political Truth Portal. My promo video introducing the concept is now complete, and I will drop it on Substack tomorrow evening. I’m making excellent progress, so I decided to take time out today to share my thoughts on what has become my growing frustration and anxiety since I last sat down to do a brain dump. I might be busy, but the world hasn’t stopped burning, and Trump certainly hasn’t become less unhinged, so here goes with my thoughts on where we are.
It will require a three-part series to take a much-needed look at the big picture, because it’s easy to focus on the here and now, without examining the root causes of the problem. This conflict with Iran has already cost many lives, including those of American military personnel, and it’s been prosecuted based on yet another lie, just as was the Iraq War.
We saw MAGA stalwart Joe Kent resign yesterday from his role as Director of the United States National Counterterrorism Centre. Kent can’t be dismissed as a RINO because he remains totally aligned with the election denial of 2020; he’s an avid supporter of mass deportation and is totally wedded to the whole ‘MAGA agenda. Trump can attempt to throw him under the bus, but it’s clear that he is simply defending an ‘America First’ doctrine that he is suggesting Trump has abandoned to go to war in Iran.
While the whole statement is damning, there are two telling paragraphs in his resignation letter:
I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent treat 0our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.
He later adds:
As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.
Regardless of the fact that I abhor Kent’s political beliefs, he served 11 tours of active duty and lost his military wife in an ISIS attack in Syria. In stark contrast, the guy attempting to throw him under the bus for telling the truth, dodged the draft five times. This is the same man who, in an interview with Howard Stern in 1997, compared his efforts to avoid STDs in the 1980s to the dangers of combat in Vietnam, stating:
“It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier”
There is no doubt that Trump’s adventure in Venezuela was like him taking political speed. The perceived success of that mission, which delivered nothing at all, is measured by improvements in the lives of Venezuelans, who have seen no change. However, for Trump, things were very different; it allowed him to steal oil and extort the regime for personal gain. This was enough encouragement for him to expand his extortion ambitions. The Cuban people now see themselves facing starvation from the oil blockade. It all plays straight into his malignant narcissism.
All this did not escape the attention of world-champion political manipulator Benjamin Netanyahu, who saw an opportunity to make a 40-year dream come true at the expense of the American taxpayer. All he needed to do was whisper into the ear of his useful idiot to convince him that he would be a hero if he neutralised the Iranian threat. He knew that the Jewish lobby had almost total control of the US legislature in the event that Congress was required to approve war, but more important than that, he knew Trump would never go to Congress, and I’m sure he whispered to him that it was his decision, and Congress would likely get in the way.
The Iran war is, without question, the most successful psyops operation on the US since the founding of the state of Israel, and for Netanyahu, Trump continues to be the gift that keeps on giving. Massage his ego, promise him self-enrichment, then just wind him up and set him free. Quite frankly, it would be farcical were it not so tragically deadly. I did incidentally hear an interesting interview on UK radio today that indicated that the suggestion that this is Israel’s war is an antisemitic trope. How utterly predictable, is my answer to that.
The moment the opening strikes decapitated the Iranian leadership, Trump went on an unsurprising lap of honour. I’m sure Netanyahu whispered, ‘I told you so, Mr President, you’re a winner again.’ There was just one small problem: BiBi forgot to mention the Mosaic Doctrine or Mosaic Defence before the attacks began. As reported by Ata Mohamed Tabriz in Iranwire today :
Mosaic Defence is not just a concept; it is an official military doctrine adopted by the IRGC (Revolutionary Guard) in the mid-2000s. After observing the “Shock and Awe” campaign in Iraq, Iranian planners concluded that they could not win a conventional war against the U.S. Instead, they broke their system into smaller “cells” (like pieces of a mosaic), allowing each province to function as an independent unit even if central command is disrupted.
What Iranian military planners have done is to watch the US and Israeli attacks over the years and develop a strategy for the inevitable war that they always saw coming. A decapitation strategy is ineffective against the Mosaic Defence, which has already frustrated Trump and Hegseth, as they throw billions of dollars into a war they simply can’t win. Of course, in their tiny minds, they are already victorious because they have, in their words, ‘obliterated’ what they see as Iran’s ability to provide a conventional military response.
They have completely missed the fact that Iran has absolutely no intention of conducting conventional warfare. They will do the exact opposite: wage an unconventional insurgent war. If you recall, Operation Vigilant Resolve is regarded as the bloodiest battle of the Iraq War. If you would like a reminder of that operation, I highly recommend you take a look at this excellent piece by Thomas J. Brennan in The War House, published on November 14th 2024. This shows just how difficult it is to fight insurgents.
The only way to prevail over an insurgent enemy is to put boots on the ground, which exacts heavy casualties on the assaulting army. I want to try to explain in this series of posts the true cost of military errors. To be clear, Generals don’t decide to go to war; Presidents and politicians do, normally with enthusiastic support from arms manufacturers and support from those allegedly elected to represent the people. Soldiers go fight where they are sent; it’s their job to follow orders, not to ask questions, unless they believe they are being given illegal orders, which is a whole other post for another day.
It’s a reflection on the ruling class that they will go to war on a whim because it’s often not their sons and daughters who will do the fighting. Trump wouldn’t fight himself, let alone send his sons to fight. As Jean-Paul Sartre said:
“When the rich wage war, it is the poor who die.''
It’s long been the case that Western economies have a system in which a large share of the population is economically suppressed, making military service an attractive escape from poverty, and the US has been a prominent exponent of that strategy. Trump is more than happy to sacrifice the lives of young men from low-income families because, after all, they are expendable ‘suckers and losers’. It is so evident in the way he speaks of the fallen. Just last week, he disrespected their sacrifice by refusing to remove his white-branded hat at their dignified repatriation. He then used an image of himself in a fundraising email as the casket passed.
What disturbs me to my very core in this time of war, is the grave and consequential decision to put American troops in harm’s way that Trump currently appears to be considering. It means NOTHING to him, and even worse, no Republican lawmakers are prepared to stand up and say ‘This is wrong, and it’s a mistake’. Trump has normalised the abuse of international law, presidential power, and corruption to the point that his abhorrent acts, by proclamation, are simply met with a sense of inevitable resignation.
For God’s sake, people need to wake the fuck up. This is NOT normal, none of it is normal. He is a convicted criminal, a President now complicit in an act of genocide and crimes against humanity. Let me explain what real Presidents do in times of war. Obama inherited two wars that had cost US taxpayers almost $2 trillion. He was left to clean up the mess of previous Republican lies that led to the deaths of thousands of US military personnel in Iraq. Not once, and I mean NEVER, did he disrespect the sacrifice of those sent to war. He never refused to be photographed with heroes who had lost limbs in the service of their country. When it came to dignified repatriation, I would point to this interview with a former SEAL Team 6 member who had no time for Obama as a politician. I highly recommend you take a moment to watch it; it lasts just 90 seconds.
I think it tells you all you need to know about the differences between Trump and Obama as presidents. To be clear, on foreign policy and in particular the chemical weapons red line in Syria, I had BIG problems. So, Obama doesn’t escape criticism from me, but on the central tenet of decency, integrity, and responsibility in office, he never needed, nor was he ever granted, total immunity from the Supreme Court for his actions in office.
I often say that history should inform our choices when it comes to war. Despite overwhelming evidence that America seems unable to win a war on its own, including the American War of Independence, they seem to suffer from collective amnesia.
Imagine if Trump were in charge back then, and the French said no, as they are doing now, to his requests for help. My king would be your king right now. It’s not as if you have to cast your mind too far back to understand what US arrogance has achieved when it came to the Iraq war. It displaced millions, failed to deliver democracy and cost the lives of thousands of coalition soldiers. So you’ll have to excuse US allies for refusing to make the same mistake in a war that once again has no legal basis in international law.
It’s actually worth taking a closer look at the consequences of the last war, which was, as we now know, prosecuted on a known lie. The Iraq Body Count project calculates that of the estimated 300,000 violent deaths in the war, around 211,000 of them were civilians. When US or coalition deaths occurred, families and the Western media identified and honoured the fallen within 24 hours. Of the estimated 300,000 deaths, 5000 of them were coalition forces personnel, which is just 1.6% of the total, against a civilian death rate of 70.3%. Tragic proof, it’s never good to be a civilian in a war zone.
The reason I use the Iraq Body Count project data is that, as you will see in the video linked here, it’s based on meticulously collected data rather than speculation. If you watch the video and question the discrepancy in the recorded numbers, that’s because the video was made 15 years ago, and the work has continued since then. I would also add that these numbers DO NOT reflect those who later died from injuries suffered at the time; the total combined number is estimated to be over 700,000, and that’s a conservative estimate.
Why spend time on these numbers? Because they are all too often sanitised for domestic consumption, and that will be done once again in Iran. What we also have to recognise, is that war is the biggest contributor to population displacement. According to UNHCR:
At the end of 2024, an estimated 123.2 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations, and events seriously disturbing the public order.
Pain and suffering don’t end when the guns go silent. Civilians left behind after the West withdraws its armies often face internal conflict that, in non-democratic countries, leads to tribal led civil wars to seize power. Time and time again, the civilian population on the losing side of any internal struggle have no alternative but to flee for their own safety and seek refuge elsewhere. It’s what any one of us would do to protect our families faced with the same circumstances.
The result is that in the case of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya, there was mass migration largely to Europe. Despite this result often of the US making, Trump has the audacity to suggest that Europe has allowed itself to be invaded by Muslims and is facing ‘civilizational erasure’, so, thanks for that. In the next post in the series, we’ll dig a little deeper into the social impact, population displacement, and Trump’s proposition that this is a ‘holy war’
This read pretty much summed it up for me
https://kasperbenjamin.substack.com/p/why-the-us-will-lose-to-iran?r=7fx89c&utm_medium=ios
Another Cuba like move. Going for Zambia in the cruelty leverage grift: "The Trump administration is considering withholding HIV treatment, tuberculosis and malaria medications from Zambia in order to force the country to open its mines to U.S. companies. That’s according to a leaked State Department memo obtained by The New York Times."
Such utterly sick & depraved behavior at the top levels of US gov't, but human lives are sooooo in the way of MONEY!