Hallie Jackson, one of MSNBC’s sharpest reporters, noted the irony in Trump’s Iran rant, wonderfully covered by our own invaluable Ursula Faw, because Trump himself, prior to being president, brought up war with Iran as a means of propping up a presidency politically.
@BarackObama will attack Iran in order to get re-elected.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2012
Well, that is certainly good knowledge to have, but even that falls short of noting all that Trump has told us with regard to war with Iran.
I know we all try to suppress the memory of Trump’s inaugural address, but he noted something that literally jumped out at me at the time and has remained etched in my mind since that day in January of 2017:
We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones – and unite the civilized world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth.
I knew at the time that the “reinforce” old alliances was a throwaway. He had already been barnstorming America telling us that NATO had failed the United States and it was time that the poor nations would pay their share. But the “forge new alliances” was no throwaway at all. I knew at the time he was speaking of, and to, Russia.
He brought up this new alliance as part of the “civilized” (oft used in place of “white Christian”) nations of the world to unite in wiping out “radical Islamic terrorism” off the face of the Earth. Presumably, all other terrorists would be allowed to stick around.
I am not making light of terrorism. Terrorism is what it is, sick, twisted, brutal, murder – a crime, and should be treated like a criminal problem. We “suppress” crime, we do not wage a “war” on crime, lest we end up like we did in our “war” on drugs, in a permanent, unwinnable war. As Trump promised to rid the world or “radical Islamic terrorism,” I remember thinking at the time; “He’s going to align with Putin to invade the Middle East.”
It was not one day later that Trump went over to the CIA headquarters to speak to them about ISIS, telling them that had we probably should have “taken their oil” last time, and that maybe they’d get another chance, soon, to “take their oil.”
I said to myself; “This is the entire reason that Putin engineered Trump and manipulated him, the two of them are going into the Middle East to “take their oil” and will be getting rich the entire time.”
I admit, I would have thought that Trump would be much further along in the plan by now. However, he has had some, umm, growing pains along the way. I believe it likely that he didn’t have the people around him to get it done, gone are the Flynns, the Bannons, even the Priebus’s who might have steered Trump more directly toward that end.
It might also not be a coincidence that this verbal assault via tweet against Iran came out one week after he and Putin had their private, no records kept, meeting (no records except the recording secretly made by Putin but not by Trump because Trump fears tapes of such a meeting).
Oh, and Trump is reeling, politically.
I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order to save face!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 16, 2013
