I have to use it. Gee, ya THINK? This whole war with Iran was a mess from the get-go. Sloppy, ill-conceived, stupid, you name it. Someone didn’t do their research before firing off at Iran, and now they are most certainly paying for it. Our allies are beyond irate. They are *pissed*, and rightfully so! Thank you, Raw Story:
President Donald Trump and some of his closest advisers were caught off guard by the scope of Iran’s military response to U.S. strikes, while key Gulf allies have privately expressed anger at the White House’s decision to escalate the conflict, according to a Wall Street Journal report. (WSJ subscription required for the report. I couldn’t read it.) The publication reported Friday that “the president and some aides were surprised at the breadth and scope of Iran’s retaliation,” which included missile and drone launches targeting regional countries from Azerbaijan to Oman, according to people familiar with the matter.
If we’re upset, it’s nothing compared to our allies. They’re getting pulled into something they were firmly avoiding. It makes me wonder how long they’re going to *stay* our allies. At this point, dragging them into the war means they have every right to kick us out of their countries. As we repeat ad nauseam, this is an illegal war. There is no reason for it except for d!ck-waving, as Denis so succinctly said in one of his columns today.
The response has raised fears of a wider regional conflict and complicated the administration’s efforts to frame the operation as a success, the Journal said. Trump has publicly suggested the mission was largely accomplished, telling supporters this week: “We’ve won.” Gulf allies have reacted sharply behind closed doors. “Allies in the Gulf are privately furious with the U.S., according to diplomats and others familiar with the matter,” the Journal reported Friday. “They blame the Trump administration for triggering a war that put them in the crosshairs and pierced their image of a luxurious, business-friendly locale free of the region’s chaos.”
Heh. The war is NOT a success. We’ve thrown billions of dollars down the drain for it, and Iran is nowhere close to being subdued. As a matter of fact, they’ve ramped up their resistance. Now they’re dragging allies into it who Do Not Want To Be Involved. This is lunacy. The US and Israel need to back off!
Trump’s war in Iran has also left Americans in the region vulnerable. The State Department urged citizens to depart or shelter in place only after fighting had intensified, with commercial airspace already shutting down in parts of the Middle East. Analysts say Trump now faces difficult choices between seeking an exit and risking deeper instability, according to the Journal. “U.S. officials, however, say privately there are no plans to withdraw forces – more Marines and warships are headed to the region – and some expected the fighting to last weeks or longer,” the report said.
Wonderful. We’ve already lost servicepeople, and now it’s highly likely we’re going to lose civilians. Well done, a$$holes! This is not going to end well, if it ever ends. It’s incredibly frustrating to watch this and be unable to actually *do* anything. Yes, we can provide moral support, which is better than nothing, I guess. I’m calling my Congresspeople and making my feelings well known, but politely, much as I’d like to be cursing. I hope I don’t get to cursing.
Happy Pi(e) Day! See you soon!
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I’ve stated on this site before how imbecilic this regime is – about what you’d expect with an imbecile in charge who has surrounded himself with imbeciles who can’t say ‘no’ to him.
But the lack of foresight and pre-planning is beyond appalling. You’d think that with the size and wealth of the world’s largest, best-equipped, armed force, and their intelligence services, available to the richest country that has ever existed on the planet, with thousands of years of military history and psychology to draw on, this couldn’t be so.
But then play the ‘Put morons in charge of everything’ card, and what we have today becomes possible, or even inevitable.. The inability to calculate even easily foreseeable consequences one step away from current actions is shocking – like ‘How would Iran strike back?’ or ‘Would the Strait of Hormuz be easily closed by Iran?, or even ‘What will happen to world oil prices?, seem to have never been considered at all.
Let alone the question, ‘Where does most of the world’s essential urea fertilizer for most agriculture come from?, or ‘What happens if we take out 25% of world air traffic?, or the big one, ‘ Should we tell our allies what we plan to do, or just insist they follow us blindly no matter what we do or tariff them if they don’t follow our diktat?’.
The silver lining to all this incompetence is the ‘own goal’ they’ve inflicted on their fossil fuel billionaire backers, now everyone has been reminded that the whole concept of ‘fuel’ for renewables doesn’t involve shipping sunlight, wind, or rain through an easily closed geographic feature, like a strait. And that, therefore the price of ‘renewables fuel’ is not set by the unconsidered actions of morons, but is in fact merely the weather.
That this ‘silver lining’ comes attached to a cloud that may include nuclear annihilation for us all as an unconsidered side effect of all this expensive military action is of perhaps, little comfort. Lets hope the Dunning Kruger afflicted running the US military realize they aren’t playing 3D chess but are merely learning ‘tic-tac-toe’, in time.
good comment except the fossil fuel billionaires are making their money on north american oil. production is unaffected by the war but thanks to republicans they can chatge based on world trading prices rather than having to keep americsn oil in america at prices based on production costs.
Yeah, they get a short term blip, while the rationale for their business model is discredited.
i.e. Digging stuff out the ground, and transporting it places to burn it, is more expensive and riskier than relying on geothermal, sun, wind, and rain to power our economies and societies- and that’s before you bring in many costs of the CO2 production.
They only make more money by making their product even more increasingly expensive and unaffordable, killing the long-term case to continue using it.