Behold. Now even the religious loonies are crawling out of the woodwork, as Donald Trump starts to thump the drums of war. Right-winger Bill Mitchell, who waffles on his total loyalty to Trump, is framing the Iran conflict in Biblical terms: “Has anyone considered the possibility that America has survived so many close calls over the centuries that our PURPOSE is to defend Israel? If we quit Israel I fear God may quit us and I’m not prepared to take that chance.” Once you combine religious zealotry with politics, things get nuts and fast. And that is where we are, three days before Trump’s fifth month anniversary in office.
My thoughts on this are extremely simple: If WWI and WWII taught us anything, it should have taught us that regional conflicts balloon into global conflicts and quickly. Netanyahu has been planning all this for quite some time, some estimates go as long as thirty years.
Since the 1990s, Netanyahu has been the world’s most persistent prophet of doom about Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions, repeatedly claiming “we are just months away” from an Iranian bomb. Yet he has never once been correct. As is well documented:
In 1992, when he was a 42-year-old Knesset member, Benjamin Netanyahu raised concerns about Iran’s nuclear threat, stating, “Iran is close to producing a nuclear weapon within three to five years, and this threat needs to be uprooted by an international front led by the U.S.” In 1995, in his book, he discussed Iran’s nuclear threat and emphasized that it was a vital issue for Israel.
Overall, Netanyahu made these claims at least in 1992, in 1995, in 1996, in 2009, in 2012, again in 2015, and numerous times since then. Each time, his predictions were dead wrong. But Iran wasn’t his only target. Indeed, as you watch the clip below, note how Netanyahu seems to blanket label all nations in the Middle East as terror nations.
In 2002, Benjamin Netanyahu sat before the U.S. Congress and did something that has since defined the last two decades of global instability: he sold a war. “If you take out Saddam,” he said, “I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.” Netanyahu went on to claim that dismantling Afghanistan, then Iraq, would then allow overtaking Iran as well.
We saw how well Afghanistan and Iraq went. Remember this?
You see where this situation is one of long standing. Now here is where it gets particularly nuts and that means quintessentially Trumpian: Trump proposes a murderous dictator, one with zero interest in human rights, to mediate the Iran/Israel conflict.
We have arrived at a pass so historically incredible it’s almost impossible to credit.
The President of the United States is demanding the unconditional surrender of the foreign leader of a country that the United States is not at war with, Iran.
He meanwhile proposes as a mediator between the two nations that are currently at war in this scenario—Israel and Iran—the most notorious war criminal on Earth, Vladimir Putin, a gambit that suggests he is attempting to leverage one of the most dangerous situations global geopolitics has faced in years into a chance to bring a key political ally and potential future business partner who is a known sociopath back into the community of civilized, rule-of-law-bound world leaders.
That that would happen atop the graves of tens of thousands of innocents—not just in the Middle East but in
UKRAINE—appears to bother him not at all. Indeed, he pleads Putin’s case for being unfairly maligned at every turn, even amongst stalwart g7 allies.Of the two nations actually at war here, only one, Israel, is ostensibly an American ally—but it is that combatant that is willy-nilly committing war crimes on live television by the hour, from blowing up television stations filled with unarmed non-combatants to systematically conducting illegal assassinations across a foreign nation whose skies it now completely controls (and yes, assassinations as the Israelis carry them out are indeed illegal under the laws of war).
The human rights dimension here is one that cannot be ignored. But ignore it Trump will and we have seen the war in Ukraine prove that for the past three years.
Casualties in both of the warring nations, Israel and Iran, are mounting. Deaths are in the hundreds. Total casualties now approach 2,000 already, just 96 hours into the war.
Cable news shows explosions in major Iranian and Israeli cities from morning until night. Netanyahu goes from being silent about the length of his nation’s attack to suggesting it may be several days to suggesting it may be several weeks to engaging in actions and clearing public statements from his administration that strongly indicate in fact months of fighting are ahead. And Netanyahu’s history in Gaza would indicate that “years” is a more reasonable assessment.
Ali Khamenei is the most high-profile Shia Muslim in the world right now. My fear is a simple one, that if he is assassinated, as Trump alluded to just today, that that could put us into another war like Iraq and that could escalate to WWIII. Nothing is worth escalating to WWIII because as Albert Einstein said, WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones. But Trump is in love with the drama of it all, Fox News loves the ratings.
And Trump loves ratings, too. “Acting like a deranged Douglas MacArthur, Trump is losing his shit on Truth Social. He’s now demanding “unconditional surrender” from Iran after making a threat to “kill” Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. This is our worst WWIII nightmare. As the dictator-wannabe’s approval ratings plummet, Trump is becoming more desperate, unhinged, and delusional,” opines influencer Bill Madden. This is the sad and sorry path we are embarked upon.
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T knows where Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is and has decided not to kill him “for now”, Many plaudits all round? I am no Middle east or Islamic scholar as to the ramifications but what if we reframe to consider another Head of State with a strong religious background. Thus: “T knows where Supreme Pontiff Pope Leo X1V is and has decided not to kill him “for now””. What would the reaction and response be? I recognise Stalin once cynically asked how many legions the Pope had. Don’t know how many Ali Khamenei has but I’d guess a helluva lot more in Iran and in support from around the region, not to mention individuals and groups around the world, some already radicalised and many more who would become angry and radicalised. Let us pray that Huckabee’s God speaks Peace (Medal?) loudly to T and tells him to ignore his Xtian ambassador and other Rapturists
Mitchell showing his absolute and total ignorance: “Has anyone considered the possibility that America has survived so many close calls over the centuries that our PURPOSE is to defend Israel? If we quit Israel I fear God may quit us and I’m not prepared to take that chance.”
So, the United States’ *purpose* for existing–since 1776!–was to defend Israel? A country which only came into existence in 1948–a full 172 years after the United States declared its independence from the British Crown?
Wow. This idiot certainly needs to brush up on his history because he might learn that the ONLY reason the United States opted to support the creation of Israel from the British Mandate of Palestine was GUILT over not allowing Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution–most notably the MS St Louis which carried more than 900 refugees. (FDR could’ve issued an executive order but the Republicans–especially the isolationist wing of the party–had increased their numbers in the 1938 elections and FDR was contending with a fair amount of antisemitism and xenophobia from much of the American public who were still dealing with the Depression and the legal immigration quota for German and Austrian migrants–more than 27000 were allowed–had already been met for the year.)
But, after the reports of the death camps and the Holocaust in general became a matter of record, even some of the fiercest isolationists and antisemites decided to support Israel’s existence. And, by the 1970s, the Religious Right–most of whose leadership had been fierce antisemitic when it came to internal US politics–became the most ardent supporters of Israel, but, obviously, for their own devious purposes. A lot of “end times” talk started taking hold in the evangelical and fundamentalist wings of Christianity (especially among Protestant churches, notably the Southern Baptists) and a key point was that Jesus could only return after Israel had been “restored” as a country. The bulk of the prophecies kept having shifting dates supposed to happen within a “generation” (i.e., 30 – 33 years) after the establishment of Israel in 1948/9, and then after the Six-Day War and recapturing Jerusalem in 1967 and then other events that kept moving the timeline (I think the current deal is for Israel to expel all non-Jews–well, more like all Muslims and/or Arabs, though most of Israel’s Christian population are Arabs–from the entirety of Palestine).
Most of Israel’s political leaders put up with these Christian lunatics because of the money that gets funneled to Israel but have refused to indulge their more insane ideas (I seem to recall Falwell had plans to buy up areas on the West Bank to build a Christian theme park and university but he was “politely” told that Israel was not for sale–not in that manner, at least).
You’re offering too many facts for a cult to absorb. Everything is too complex for them…that’s one deep seated reason they’re fine with the apocalypse…reality is too much…so let’s head on into eternity. I wonder how they’d feel about the US and Great Britain overthrowing a democratic election in Iran in 1953? Why? Control of oil of course. As Joe Pesci said in Casino…”its always about the dollars”. Was then. Still is.
Putin to negotiate?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!
Just the guy Netanyahu needs to “broker a peace” between Israel and Iran. Israel would be lucky to retain Tel Aviv and Haifa with a corridor to Jerusalem. Bibi knows–even if Drumpf doesn’t–that Putin is in the proverbial bed with Iran. Iran is one of Russia’s few allies in the war with Ukraine and that is a very uneasy deal (Putin’s largely using the mullahs to keep the various Muslim groups in Chechnya and Dagestan from resuming their own rebellions against Moscow).