ON IRAN, ASSASSINATION, AND POLICY BLUNDERS

IF WAR —IT’S TRUMP’S WAR

Yesterday afternoon, while we were all recovering from New Year celebrations, President Trump was agreeing to plans for assassinating General Suleimani in Baghdad.  Suleimani died in a fiery USA  drone attack near the Baghdad airport.

President Trump began his presidency with the promise of no more “dumb” wasteful wars in the Middle East. But he has not been able to fully restrain the War Hawks in his party to keep this promise.  Sadly, these are the same folks who led naive and malleable young Bush junior—into the colossal disaster of the Iraq War—the biggest foreign policy blunder in US history.  Incredibly these same incompetents are still with us —unbelievably  some continue to be influential in making present foreign policy.

Even after misleading “junior Bush” so far astray,  somehow these same elements remained influential in the Obama Administration.  Rasputin-like  they held sway over the “smartest-guy-in-the -room”, canny, polished, and politically sophisticated President Obama. In part preventing him from extricating us from the on going trap of lost lives,  and more trillions of US lost tax dollars in Middle East conflicts. Obama was “so smart” he even expanded the awful. counter productive, deadly  drone war, actually  keeping an “assassination list” as he widened these dumb wars into Libya and Yemen.

In 2016 President Trump was elected in good part on his promise to bring some common sense to a corrupt Washington swamp where politicians, lobbyists, industrialists and military elements all rub shoulders and conspire to expand and continue profit-making “kinetic” operations (war) abroad.  Trump , the candidate, promised to get  our nation out of the quicksand of— always-expanding-deadly and costly ME conflicts and focus our efforts at home. The trillions we spent in Iraq —he reminded us—would have built our southern wall and solved the immigration mess.    President Trump  actually tried to pull troops out of Iraq and elsewhere.  But bold, brutish  and blustery as he is—he was not tough enough to punch back against the powerful concatenation of military, political  and industrial forces who thrive in DC on war and death.  These chair-bound warriors who—from the safety of their figurative bomb shelters love to kill and maim innocents and terrorists alike in the name of “freedom” all over the world. They, in self interest, conspired against Trump, and he weakly acquiesced.

In respect to Iran, President Trump, without good reason, abrogated a major,  functioning, multi national nuclear pact with Iran.  For no good reason, he also imposed stiff sanctions, and waged open economic warfare by preventing Iran from selling its oil on the world market.  This in the name of  a “maximum pressure” campaign ostensibly imposed to get Iran to agree to a new “better” nuclear arms treaty.  But the pressure campaign only exacerbated the problem and deepened the divide between the two nations.

The recent attack by a pro-Iranian militia in Iraq on a base where several US “trainer” troops were stationed elicited an over reaction by President Trump.  There was little evidence to suggest that Iran had any direct responsibility for the militia attack. The few US troops at the base in NW  Iraq (Kirkuk)were those that Trump had tried to remove earlier in the year—but had to back down when neocons and war mongers objected. .  Hard line  advisors forced him to capitulate and leave these troops in place —as a tripwire (target) force.  We can now see how effective they were indeed as “trip wires”.  Ironically the Iraqi militia force involved was one which had allied with US forces against ISIS.   The militia attack resulted in the death of one American contractor. In response President Trump  sent in F15 fighter jets which bombed several militia camps in the region, killing 25 pro-Iranian militia and wounding 50 more.  That again seems an over reaction.  in response to these deaths relatives  of those Iraqis killed as well as other shia militia  massed outside of the USA Baghdad Embassy in Iraq in an anti USA demonstration.  Iraq’s leadership also protested the USA bombings in their territory as a violation of Iraq sovereignty.  The US embassy demonstrations grew violent. This was too much like the Benghazi demonstrations for  President Trump to accept.  Again,  he over reacted.  Claiming that Iranian Gen Suleimani was “planning more attacks” but offering no proof or even that Iran had instigated the Embassy attacks, Trump gave the go ahead for  the assassination of General Suleimani. in Baghdad on Friday.  Have the Iranians been pushed to the point at which they must respond in kind? If war breaks out—it is clear our President precipitated it.  If disaster results, it will be his fault.  The Iran War will be “Trump’s War”.

If President Trump thinks that conflict  with Iran (like another Bush-style $3 trillion dollar fiasco) will gain him a second term—he is sadly mistaken.  The people of this nation are simply sick of and tired of the waste in blood and treasure such foreign adventurism  involves.  Trump promised us “America first” and here we are -again—on the brink of  another quagmire in the ME.

My only hope is that  President Trump will pull a rabbit out of the hat, or as in Ancient Greek theaters a “deus ex machina” in which somehow generated peace talks with the Iranians and comes out a peace making winner.   After the murder of Soleimani —this is only a tfaint glimmer of hope.  Stupidity in Washington  is much too rampant in our times.

If not the ”deus ex machina” then— expect conflict.

My last thought: Somehow, the miasma emanating up from decay and corruption swirling around the booted feet of the DC swamp denizens must affect their mental capacity. The vapors of corruption rise up and are drawn into the lungs and thus into the  blood stream of swamp critters.  These dissolved gases seem to acts on neural functions in the brain—seeming to  limit synaptic transmissions from groups of cerebellar neurons so that memories of past mistakes —even the recent past—  which led to horrible disasters like Iraq—are blocked out of the DC denizen’s consciousness. Thus the slime-coated residents of the swamp, like Sisyphus, ancient  King of Corinth, are faced with  continually repeating  the errors of the past  over and over again.

Our only hope for  ationsl survival is to drain the swamp.