Stalin
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2008
- Messages
- 4,154
WHY did Donald Trump bomb Iran? Because it's there. Because he felt like it.
Because he loves televised displays of American military power. Because he has a touching faith
in the positive outcomes of US-led regime change. Because he didn't want the USS Gerald
R Ford to have chugged all the way over there for nothing. Take your pick.
The build-up to America and Israel's strikes on Iran was confused, chaotic and contradictory.
Let's start with the fact that most of Trump's administration, including himself, have
previously argued that bombing Iran was the kind of thing only a loser with low
domestic approval ratings would do.
(Coincidentally, his are in the low 40s.) "Now that Obama's poll numbers are
in tailspin — watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran," tweeted Trump in.2012. "He is desperate."
In 2024, his future vice-president JD Vance observed that going to war with Iran "would be a huge distraction
of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country." So what changed their minds?
The administration has tried to insinuate Iran was on the brink of acquiring WMDs — although
sadly they didn't quite have the chutzpah to use those exact words. On 28 February, CNN's token
right-winger Scott Jennings gamely claimed that unnamed sources had told him: "Iran planned
pre-emptive missile strikes against US military targets in the region, and against civilian targets as
well. Failure to act would've resulted in mass UScasualties."
The White House also issued vague noises about the need to destroy the Iranian nuclear
programme, which will have come as a surprise to anyone who remembers the White House
claiming to have done so last summer. ("It was my great honor to Destroy All Nuclear facilities &=
capability, and then, STOP THE WAR!" posted Trump on 24 June.)
Given US vOters' opposition to foreign conflicts — and a new Gallup poll showing more
Americans side with the Palestinians than Israel, for the first time ever — Trump has done startlingly
little to make his case. He devoted only a few paragraphs to Iran in his State of the Union
address, saying he needed to hear "those secret words: we will never have a nuclear weapon".
On the night of the strikes, he recorded a short clip in a USA-branded baseball cap, calling for
regime change, but didn't do the traditional address from behind the Resolute Desk. (Nor did
he ask for congressional approval, but that norm is deader than the dodo.) He spent the weekend
following developments from a makeshift situation room in Mar-a-Lago. WFH is allowed if
you're the president, apparently.
The swift death of Ayatollah Khamenei gave Operation Epic Fury an early patina of success;
but if things go wrong, Trump can't say he wasn't warned. "Regime change will result in a bloody
civil war, killing hundreds of thousands and creating another massive Muslim refugee crisis,"
said the late Charlie Kirk, who is now something close to a MAGA saint, last year. There is little
evidence of a coherent plan for the post-Khamenei Middle East — and, when it comes to diplomacy,
frankly, the US is not sending its best.
In mid-February, the US ambassador to Israel, the evangelical Mike Huckabee,
severely damaged his relationship with America's Arab allies by telling podcaster
Tucker Carlson he believed Israel was entitled to all the territory between the Nile
and the Euphrates, as promised in the Bible. "It would be fine if it took it all," Huckabee said.
A dozen governments, including the UAE, called his words "dangerous and
inflammatory". Trump's two Middle Eastern negotiators are Steve Witkoff (whose son Zach is
happily doing crypto side deals with Arab leaders) and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who isn't
even an official government employee. Witkoff and Kushner are also supposed to be working on a
ceasefire deal with Ukraine. Quite the scheduling nightmare.
As American troops mobilised, however, pipsqueak-in-chief Pete Hegseth seemed to have
all the time in the world. On the eve of the invasion, he managed to get into a spat with AI
firm Anthropic because its leader Dario Amodei refused to let him use its model Claude for fully
autonomous weapons or domestic surveillance.
(Slippery Sam Altman of OpenAl has stepped into the breach.) Hegseth also found time to record a
piece to camera mewling that "for too long, the Ivy League and similar institutions have been
subjecting our warriors to woke indoctrination — those days are over".
Bizarre priorities, you might say. But Trump, on past form, will soon tire of war with Iran. The
War on Woke, however, is eternal.
'Lady Liberty'
comrade stalin
moscow
Because he loves televised displays of American military power. Because he has a touching faith
in the positive outcomes of US-led regime change. Because he didn't want the USS Gerald
R Ford to have chugged all the way over there for nothing. Take your pick.
The build-up to America and Israel's strikes on Iran was confused, chaotic and contradictory.
Let's start with the fact that most of Trump's administration, including himself, have
previously argued that bombing Iran was the kind of thing only a loser with low
domestic approval ratings would do.
(Coincidentally, his are in the low 40s.) "Now that Obama's poll numbers are
in tailspin — watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran," tweeted Trump in.2012. "He is desperate."
In 2024, his future vice-president JD Vance observed that going to war with Iran "would be a huge distraction
of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country." So what changed their minds?
The administration has tried to insinuate Iran was on the brink of acquiring WMDs — although
sadly they didn't quite have the chutzpah to use those exact words. On 28 February, CNN's token
right-winger Scott Jennings gamely claimed that unnamed sources had told him: "Iran planned
pre-emptive missile strikes against US military targets in the region, and against civilian targets as
well. Failure to act would've resulted in mass UScasualties."
The White House also issued vague noises about the need to destroy the Iranian nuclear
programme, which will have come as a surprise to anyone who remembers the White House
claiming to have done so last summer. ("It was my great honor to Destroy All Nuclear facilities &=
capability, and then, STOP THE WAR!" posted Trump on 24 June.)
Given US vOters' opposition to foreign conflicts — and a new Gallup poll showing more
Americans side with the Palestinians than Israel, for the first time ever — Trump has done startlingly
little to make his case. He devoted only a few paragraphs to Iran in his State of the Union
address, saying he needed to hear "those secret words: we will never have a nuclear weapon".
On the night of the strikes, he recorded a short clip in a USA-branded baseball cap, calling for
regime change, but didn't do the traditional address from behind the Resolute Desk. (Nor did
he ask for congressional approval, but that norm is deader than the dodo.) He spent the weekend
following developments from a makeshift situation room in Mar-a-Lago. WFH is allowed if
you're the president, apparently.
The swift death of Ayatollah Khamenei gave Operation Epic Fury an early patina of success;
but if things go wrong, Trump can't say he wasn't warned. "Regime change will result in a bloody
civil war, killing hundreds of thousands and creating another massive Muslim refugee crisis,"
said the late Charlie Kirk, who is now something close to a MAGA saint, last year. There is little
evidence of a coherent plan for the post-Khamenei Middle East — and, when it comes to diplomacy,
frankly, the US is not sending its best.
In mid-February, the US ambassador to Israel, the evangelical Mike Huckabee,
severely damaged his relationship with America's Arab allies by telling podcaster
Tucker Carlson he believed Israel was entitled to all the territory between the Nile
and the Euphrates, as promised in the Bible. "It would be fine if it took it all," Huckabee said.
A dozen governments, including the UAE, called his words "dangerous and
inflammatory". Trump's two Middle Eastern negotiators are Steve Witkoff (whose son Zach is
happily doing crypto side deals with Arab leaders) and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who isn't
even an official government employee. Witkoff and Kushner are also supposed to be working on a
ceasefire deal with Ukraine. Quite the scheduling nightmare.
As American troops mobilised, however, pipsqueak-in-chief Pete Hegseth seemed to have
all the time in the world. On the eve of the invasion, he managed to get into a spat with AI
firm Anthropic because its leader Dario Amodei refused to let him use its model Claude for fully
autonomous weapons or domestic surveillance.
(Slippery Sam Altman of OpenAl has stepped into the breach.) Hegseth also found time to record a
piece to camera mewling that "for too long, the Ivy League and similar institutions have been
subjecting our warriors to woke indoctrination — those days are over".
Bizarre priorities, you might say. But Trump, on past form, will soon tire of war with Iran. The
War on Woke, however, is eternal.
'Lady Liberty'
comrade stalin
moscow
