Take a listen to this clip featuring Lawrence Wilkerson, retired US Army Colonel and former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson has been around the block a few times and has some bitter experience with these kinds of misadventures.
The obvious question at this moment is what represents a road too far? Well, I’m afraid Trump is on it, wearing a new pair of his golden sneakers. He’s opened Pandora’s box, and it’s full of geopolitical vipers. In his tiny little mind, he’s said to himself, ‘I have the biggest, most powerful army on the planet, and Iran will comply or die,’ without a thought to the consequences. He saw an opportunity for self-enrichment and has bet his presidency and the Republican Party’s future on it.
He always likes to say ‘in the good old days’ when referring to wanting to make America great. In his mind, segregation and women knowing their place is his kind of golden age in which old, white men set the rules, and everyone falls into line.
Times have changed, the age of gunboat diplomacy is dead, I’m afraid. The very nature of war has changed. The writing has been on the wall since the Vietnam War, A conflict in which, for the first time at scale, the US faced an insurgent enemy who melted into the population and then waged a relentless war of opportunity. A war where shock and awe plays no part in the outcome, other than to make the generals feel good, and shareholders in the industrial-military complex ever more wealthy. It was money wasted then, just as it will prove now. The U.S. military appears to have learned nothing, or is just part of the plan for the next rinse and repeat extortion of US taxpayers?
Iran has 93 million people who have lived in a theocratic dictatorship for almost half a century. Trump decided to make this a holy war because he felt it was easier to sell. In his eyes, everybody hates Muslims, right?. To him, America is now a reborn white Christian nation ready to fight a holy crusade against the evil Islamists. Well, at least that’s the cover story as he lines Witkoff and Kushner to set up his next racketeering operation.
Mixing political power and religion has long been the holy grail of Western dictators. They believe they are doing the Lord’s work by eradicating the people who don’t worship their God. This religious fervour blinds the perpetrator to the truth that war rarely delivers the power those prosecuting it seek. Trump doesn’t care about any of it; he’s not got a religious bone in his body; he just loves the thought that the suckers that follow him think he’s a divine being. It’s a narcissist’s wet dream, and he’s living it.
Trump has followed Putin’s ‘Special Military Operation’ roadmap almost to the letter, but without the ground forces. He made the same assumption that victory could be had in weeks. As a result, he’s facing the same challenges Putin faced: a population that will never give up, and the need to adapt to meet the challenges posed by a traditional, large military adversary. The Venezuela model will not work in Iran, as he is finding out. His wealthy donors will be bending his ear right now, telling him to put an end to it, but he’s now in a position where he can’t.
The bigger problem Trump has is that, regardless of the fairy tale he’s telling about the limitless stocks of interceptor missiles, he’s lying, and that’s potentially a BIG problem for him, because replenishing the stocks will likely take years. President Xi must be thinking all his birthdays have come at once, and he hasn’t had to lift a finger as Trump does a geopolitical face plant for the whole world to see. The problem is, Trump is like the old lion in the Savannah; the pretenders are waiting in the wings; the females in the pride find him repulsive now; incontinence is setting in as he opens the door to the departure lounge; the hyenas are standing off at a distance just waiting for a fight with the buzzards who are circling overhead patiently waiting for the end. Once there is an opportunity, everyone will pile in as his friends abandon him, and Republicans scramble to save what’s left of their careers.
Iran could never resist the overwhelming power of the US Air Force. They knew that, so while Trump brags about destroying air defences and the Iranian Navy (all indications to an idiot like Trump that he’s winning). The truth is, there was no real intention from Iran to fight this war on America’s terms. They will fight a much more subtle war, planting messaging to disrupt the markets. There’s no need to engage with the American military other than to attack air bases and American assets in the region. Their weapon of choice doesn’t cost a billion dollars a day, just a few strategic missiles. cheap drones, and a chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, all while creating regional instability. These are all easily achievable goals, as we are seeing.
The Iranian leadership knows this is a midterm year, and Trump is spending a billion dollars a day to prosecute a war he can’t win. They believe they can stretch things out as long as is required. In their minds, they just have to wait him out. They don’t care how many civilians get killed because every civilian and child death is not only a recruitment Ad for the upcoming insurgency, it also paints the US as a monster on the world stage.
Iran has a stock of millions of sacrificial lambs to expend on an insurgent war of attrition. They know this can’t be won from the air, and the US, for all its power and might, doesn’t have enough troops to win a war on the ground. The country is massive, the terrain is challenging, and the Iranians are fighting in their own backyard. If the US opts for a ground war, then the trouble really begins, because the US public won’t be dealing with a handful of US service members returning in body bags; the accelerated numbers will undoubtedly test the public's appetite for a war that nobody wants even now.
I have said it many times, the US has never won a war on its own EVER. Yet Trump’s malignant narcissism leads him to believe it will be different for him. He’s wrong, his dreams of empire are about to go up in flames, and he’s going to take the American economy with him. It’s the definition of insanity.
We are witnessing the unravelling of Trump’s presidency in real time. The primary season has begun, and the war is highly unpopular, the economy is on the edge, and the country has lost faith in the mass deportation implementation. You can tell from Trump’s behaviour that he’s a man without a solution to a problem he let Netanyahu talk him into. As each day passes, the rift will grow between Israel and the US because anyone with half a brain understands that there are going to be consequences as we see more and more Iranian civilians killed. Israel is now attempting to do in Lebanon what it’s done in Gaza, and the world now sees the US and Israel as one. This will result in large numbers of displaced people seeking refuge in other countries. It is simply a never-ending cycle or fuel for right-wing propaganda.
Trump might have secured absolute immunity from the Supreme Court, but he will enjoy no such immunity from the International Criminal Court. The US might not recognise its jurisdiction, but there will be no shortage of signatories to the Rome Treaty who would be delighted to arrest him should he darken their doorstep once he’s out of power. He is desperate to get the ‘Save America Act’ over the line because he sees that as his only option to control the voter pool for November.
The outside world is starting to see the cracks appear, and that’s becoming a threat to the hard right in Europe. If Trump falls, they believe there will be a domino effect that will make them the target of a voting public seeking retribution for their support of Trump. I have no idea how long it will be before the missile stocks deplete, but you can rest assured that when they do, the Iranian leadership will be ready and waiting.
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