Escalation Just Means It'll Get Worse

And so it begins (via Elena Moore and Megan Pratz at NPR): 

The U.S. military has joined with Israel to launch military strikes against Iran, a dramatic escalation in the years-long effort by both nations to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

"We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan," President Trump wrote on Truth Social Saturday...

Saturday's attack marks the first act of direct military involvement by the U.S. in the rapidly escalating conflict between Iran and Israel.

It included a strike on the heavily-fortified Fordo nuclear site, according to Trump, which is located roughly 300 feet under a mountain about 100 miles south of Tehran. It's a move that Israel has been lobbying the U.S. to carry out, given that only the U.S. has the kind of powerful "bunker buster" bomb capable of reaching the site. Known as the GBU-57 MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator), the bomb can only be transported by one specific U.S. warplane, the B-2 stealth bomber, due to its immense 30,000 pound weight...

The U.S. carried out the strike despite years of promises by Trump to keep the country from entangling itself in another Middle East conflict. Yet Trump has also said it is paramount that Iran never be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon.

Trump initially sought to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran — one to replace the Obama-era agreement that he abandoned, despite Iran's apparent compliance, in 2018. But in the days after Israel's initial strikes on Iran earlier this month, he grew increasingly vocal in his opposition to Iran and the possibility it could attack U.S. assets in the region...

Israel considers Iran an existential threat and says its attacks this month have been necessary to keep Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The attacks have strictly targeted military and nuclear facilities, according to Israel, but the Iranian government says they are already responsible for the deaths of more than 200 civilians.

Iran has responded with a barrage of missile and drone strikes aimed at Israel. The Israeli military says it has intercepted many of those projectiles, but not all. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says dozens have been killed, and hundreds more wounded.

Iran has long defended its nuclear program as peaceful, but Netanyahu has argued it poses a risk not just for his nation, but for the U.S. as well...

For its part, the U.S. intelligence community has said it believes Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003, following the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard relayed that guidance as recently as March during an appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee...

Gabbard has since backtracked her statements to the Senate, siding with trump's - and Netanyahu's - allegations.

No one can determine for now where all of this will lead. Iran's leadership will be pressed to respond in an escalating manner, which would drag America even further into the mud pit with escalations of our own.

So far, Iran's public response was to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokehold in the Persian Gulf. It would cut off 20 percent of the oil getting shipped across the globe, triggering spikes in oil prices and worsening inflation woes everywhere especially in the U.S. How they would implement that - using whatever naval forces they have to attack tankers, most likely - would surely sparking a shooting battle and arguably escalate matters even further. There's still the possibility Iran would strike at any of the U.S. military bases across the Middle East, which would definitely escalate things to likely ground invasion.

All of this happening without anyone openly declaring war, even though everyone involved knows full well that this is a war and nobody in this wants to be the one to step back and calm things down.

It's not a war that a majority of Americans want: All of the current polling is opposed to trump leading us into another Middle East debacle. We've been burned out by the mistakes and destruction of the post-9/11 Global War on Terror that sucked us into Iraqi and Afghani quagmires, neither of which ended cleanly (and with a sorrowful return of Afghanistan to a brutal Taliban rule). And yet, the neocons at Fox Not-News and throughout the Republican ranks are salivating at another chance to inflict "Regime Change" on an Iranian population that's already suffered too much from American involvement in their history.

All this threatens is another quagmire full of occupation, torture, terror strikes by local resistance, and years of misery for all involved.

Gods help us all. I keep saying this, and I keep getting proven right: None of this is going to end well.

The Reckless Reprisal

Update: Again, thanks to Steve in Manhattan for sharing this article on Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. Stay safe and abolish ICE, America.

We're going through the turmoil of having donald trump rattle sabers - again - at Iran, using more direct and dangerous language than he used back in 2019 (via Rebecca Rosman and Franco Ordoñez at NPR):

President Trump on Wednesday declined to say whether the United States is moving closer to a decision to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, after Iran's supreme leader warned the U.S. against an attack and rejected Trump's call to surrender.

"You don't seriously think I'm going to answer that question," Trump said when a reporter at the White House asked whether the U.S. would attack Iran. "I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do..."

"We're the only ones that have the capability to do it — but that doesn't mean I'm going to do it," he told reporters in the Oval Office after an unrelated event. The president said he would be meeting in the Situation Room — which he also referred to as the "war room" — about the crisis...

This comes amid nearly a week of fighting between U.S. ally Israel and Iran, and amid signals from U.S. and Israeli officials that Trump could be considering an attack on Iran.

In a string of social media posts on Tuesday, Trump demanded Iran's "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER" and boasted, "We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran," raising speculation that U.S. forces were already more involved than previously acknowledged.

Khamenei responded to the demand in his address Wednesday, his second public appearance since Israel launched strikes on his country last week.

"This is a nation that will never surrender to any form of imposition," he said.

On Tuesday, Trump also issued a direct threat against Khamenei. "We know exactly where the so-called 'Supreme Leader' is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now."

Again, this could all be the bluster of an overgrown bully that we've seen from trump when he's trying to force a deal on others. However, trump is also impulsive, and currently irritable over how disastrous his birthday parade turned out. he's in a mood to hurt somebody, and dropping bombs on civilians over in the Middle East would seem too easy a move for him to make.

You have to remember what happened during trump's first tenure in the White House: sporadic missile attacks on certain Islamic targets, followed by our Army quitting the battlefield and our regional allies to struggle against Russian-backed Syrians, followed by a targeted attack on a high-ranking Iranian official on Iraqi soil that aggravated regional tensions.

All of this impulsive, unfocused acts of a desperate man trying to pose as an elite Alpha Male on the global stage; with no consideration of the consequences and harm those acts imposed on our nation and whatever allies we have left. Most of this getting imposed on our nation by the only "ally" we are counting on in that region, as Israel - led by a genocidal schemer in Netanyahu who's trying to avoid getting kicked out of power again - is forcing the United States to commit to a military action that will honestly lead into another quagmire for us.

I wrote about this the last time around, back in 2019 when I posed seven reasons we shouldn't invade Iran. All of the arguments I made then are still relevant today, with the added possibility that modern technological boosts to drone warfare will expose our Navy fleets and our regional military bases to potentially disastrous (for us) yet effective (for Iran) ends.

We also have to consider trump's flippant attitude towards our own nuclear stockpile, and that if this situation worsens - and considering how inept our current Defense leadership is, that's likely - trump could well exercise that option. Even one nuke dropped on any place in Iran would kill thousands of civilians and leave literal fallout, while the metaphoric fallout would be the entire world turning the US into a pariah state.

If trump thinks this can push Iran to the negotiating table to hammer out a no-nukes agreement to replace the one he blew up, he's wrong. It won't placate Netanyahu, and the escalation will continue to where we'll be back at the "bomb 'em all" brinksmanship only at a more extreme and irrational level.

This was never going to end well with trump in charge. None of you 77 million voters realized that? /headdesk

There Was No Sense

It was a time of great and exalting excitement.
-- Mark Twain, The War Prayer

Well. File this under the category of HOLY SHITH (via Joe Hernandez at NPR): 

Iranian state media is reporting that a helicopter carrying President Ebrahim Raisi and other top officials suffered a "hard landing" Sunday, with no immediate word on casualties.

The state-run IRNA media outlet reported that the aircraft carrying Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian and other senior officials went down in a mountainous part of northwestern Iran as they returned from an event along Iran's border with Azerbaijan.

Two of the three helicopters on the trip reportedly reached their destination safely, but crews were still searching for the one carrying Raisi, according to state media.

Iran's Interior Minister, Ahmad Vahidi, reportedly confirmed the "hard landing" of the president's helicopter and said the search-and-rescue operation is underway...

And by "hard landing" they mean "holy (expletive) this is gonna be messy." (These are religious extremists, they don't get to curse like us Unitarians).

Rescue efforts by all reports are hampered by massive fog and bad weather. To which my response was "what the HELL were they doing flying through bad weather in the first place? Just delay the next meeting and wait for clearer skies."

So why is this a Holy Shith moment?

Because Iran's leadership is riled up by the current Israeli-Hamas-Hezbollah conflict, stirred by decades of mistrust between the hardline Israeli government and the hardline Islamic Shi'a government that has backed the likes of Hamas to prevent any successful two-state solution involving Palestine. We just dealt with the two nations attacking each other in April:

When he came into office, Raisi said Iran would continue to honor its nuclear deal with the U.S., despite former President Donald Trump's decision to pull out of the agreement in 2018.

Still, Raisi has been viewed as more of a hard-liner than his predecessor, former Iranian president Hassan Rouhani.

Last month, Raisi celebrated Iran's attack on Israel following an airstrike in Damascus that killed seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran blamed Israel for the bombing, but Israel never claimed responsibility. Israel said it intercepted 99% of the missiles and drones Iran fired during its retaliatory strike. (personal note: in truth the US and regional allied forces helped shoot those missiles down)

Iran's president is the head of its government, but the country is ruled by (Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei, its supreme leader...

Raisi is (maybe was) considered next in line for the Ayatollah position as Khamenei is up there in years (85 years old, hey New York Times tell him to retire). If Raisi turns up dead from the crash, the immediate effect is that the Iranian Vice President takes over as acting President for 50 days while a special election takes place.

The political effects would be Iran ramping up their level of mistrust to full-blown paranoia. They reacted to that targeted Israeli strike on Damascus with a missile spam of their own. It won't even matter if this helicopter crash was a legitimate accident - due to weather or to mechanic failure - because the death of one of the top leaders is a casus belli (cause for war) the hardliners want.

Think I'm exaggerating? Look up the War of Jenkins Ear. The Brits went to war with the Spanish over that. The United States almost went to war with France in 1797 over the XYZ Affair. We did go to war with Iraq in 2003 over unfounded claims - in some respect outright lies - around Weapons of Mass Destruction that turned out didn't exist.

Just think what a nation like Iran - controlled by authoritarians desperate to keep their restless and angry citizenry under heel - would do triggered by their President's (possible) death: Willing to blame Israel (and the U.S. and other regional powers) and escalating the madness and bloodshed in Gaza and the rest of the Middle East. Even if Raisi survives, don't be surprised if Iran claims the crash was an assassination attempt.

We are as a planet stuck in the Middle East because of terrible regional factions - Iranian vs. Saudi vs. Israeli vs. Syrian vs. Turkish vs. religious extremists vs. authoritarians across multiple nations vs. Russians vs. Americans - all eager in their own way to resolve their differences through blood, because no one dares want to try peace or diplomatic resolution to end the cycle of violence and hate.

There's thousands of civilians dead across Israel and Gaza and the West Bank and Lebanon and Syria, with more to follow. All because the drumbeats go on...

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.
-- last line of the War Prayer

Update 5/20: This morning, waking up to confirmation Raisi and others died in that copter crash. It's too early to point to a specific cause, and U.S. Senator Schumer is telling reporters that our intelligence agencies are finding no evidence of foul play. But the Iranian leaders will draw their own conclusions. Things can well escalate to more violence from here. Gods help us. 

One Sentence Thought About The College Campus Protests Over Israel's Overkill in Gaza

While there are a number of pro-Hamas agitators screaming about killing Israelis and a number of counter-agitators screaming about killing Palestinians, the heavy-handed tactics by the city/county/state police towards the protests are going to escalate the anger and increase the risk of police brutality/bloodshed on our campuses to a level we haven't seen since the Vietnam-era, and which didn't do ANY of the sides - the protesters on one side, law enforcement on the other - any good.

Where the hell are the efforts at Soft Power de-escalation of hostilities: Assurances of open protest as long as there are no calls for violence, containing protest areas to ensure civility, separating agitating groups to prevent tempers flaring up and fights starting? Okay, that's two sentences, but one had to follow the other...

While Biden is talking to the media about trying to de-escalate, what is he ACTUALLY doing? Where's the hard efforts to rein in Netanyahu as the corrupt Israeli PM is openly planning a genocide in Rafah? Why is Biden focusing on the "violent protests" of occupying campus buildings instead of recognizing that a majority of the student protesters are peacefully marching out there asking for the violence to stop? Okay, that's three more sentences in forms of questions, but yeah these questions need asking, and answering. Okay, that's one mo... Okay I'll stop.

Heading Into This Week of April 2024

Several things on my mind this Sunday:

The vote yesterday by the Republican-controlled House to renew financial and military aid to Ukraine was a stunning break by the Rational factions of the House GOP against the pro-Putin (and pro-trump) Irrational factions. It now becomes a question how long Speaker Johnson remains Speaker before Marjorie Trump Greene gets her revenge, and if the resulting chaos by a leaderless Republican caucus will grant the House Democrats to take the reins.

How quickly the military aid - what we're doing is "selling" them existing equipment and buying up replacement ammo and supplies to ourselves - gets to Ukraine depends on how many transport planes the US Air Force and Army have ready to go the second Biden signs the bill.

Putin's not happy. Ukrainians are. If we can replenish their ammo - and stock them with anti-drone and anti-missile defense systems - we can prevent or seriously hamper any summer offensive Russia has planned.

The vote also passed military aid for Israel, which is a more troubling matter because Netanyahu is NOT de-escalating hostilities with Iran and is NOT delaying the ongoing slaughter and starvation in Gaza. The problem in this matter is both a Hamas organization that wants to spill Israeli blood and a Netanyahu government that wants to spill Palestinian blood. This IS a situation where both sides are at fault and BY GOD both of them need removing so that the Israelis and Palestinians who DON'T want to kill each other can resolve this damn mess.

The passage of the aid bills is a blow to donald trump's direct control of House Republicans... for the moment. Right now, trump has full control of the party's national committee, and trump has finally sent the order out - knew this was coming - demanding all the lower-ballot candidates "donate" at least five percent of their own fund-raising into the RNC if they use trump - and many of them have to, as he's the banner carrier - as part of their campaigning.

It's the shakedown, kiddos. This is where the mob boss demands from all his street-level capos "fuck you, pay me." This is how trump's grift operates: Everything as much as possible goes upward to himself, never downward. Everyone else has to fight for breadcrumbs and his "magnanimity" whenever he feels like it. There is no guarantee that trump will use any of this tribute money towards supporting the GOP in full: It's more likely this money is going towards paying his expanding legal bills.

Speaking of, trump's criminal trial is moving faster than expected. The jury - 12 members, 6 alternates - are picked and sworn in, and the first witness is set to testify Monday. The prosecutors are holding back announcing who the witnesses will be until absolutely necessary, out of precaution that trump will threaten/intimidate them. The first one up is of key interest: David Pecker, owner of the media chain accused of aiding trump's efforts to squash - "catch and kill" - any stories about his affairs (especially the one with Stormy Daniels). Michael Cohen and Daniels are both expected to testify although no idea when.

But that's not all: trump and his lawyers are facing different matters all week long. Even as trump sits in on his criminal trial (required) that Monday morning, his civil court lawyers have to go before Judge Engoron to determine if that $175 million bond trump got was even legal. AG Letitia James argues the bond company does not fulfill requirements under state law, and that trump is lying about his worth (again).

Then on Tuesday at 9:30 am, Judge Merchan will hold a hearing to determine if trump's been violating - the prosecutors count at least seven separate instances on Friday, and trump's tweeted out more attacks over the weekend - the judge's gag order regarding the criminal trial. We are facing the possibility Judge Merchan will hold trump in contempt of violating the gag order, and it's a question of how severe - from fines, to changing trump's bail, to even physically holding trump in a jail cell - the ruling could go. trump and his allies will scream "free speech" and "witch hunt" no matter how harsh the penalty will be: But this is a criminal trial now, and trump has been crossing lines no other defendant has outside of Sicilian mob bosses.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court will hear the Absolute Immunity argument trump insists will protect him from his federal criminal trials, and one that would have serious ramifications on presidential abuse of power should the Justices agree with trump. This is the scary one: If five out of the six Republican Justices show favor towards trump's argument - even if they try to squeeze out a narrow finding that trump alone has absolute immunity (which would violate every form of legal logic on the planet) - we are facing the greatest threat to the Constitutional system since 1860.

And then Friday, trump will get his car towed because he parked it illegally in front of the courthouse. Well, it's possible this could happen...

So. Crazy week still ahead. Crazy month of April still ahead. Crazy summer still ahead.

Good thing I'm already crazy. It keeps me sane while this is all happening. 

Blood And Fire Across the Middle East This April Evening

Damn. While I'd been busy writing a previous article, it looks like the War between Israel and Hamas expanded to include Iran sending missiles and drones to strike targets in Israel (via Becky Sullivan at NPR):

Air raid sirens sounded across Israel and the occupied West Bank and Israeli officials urged people to seek shelter after Iran launched dozens of drones toward Israel late Saturday night in an attack that marked a major escalation of conflict in the Middle East.

Iran had vowed to retaliate after an airstrike on an Iranian consulate in Syria earlier this month killed seven Iranian military officials. It is the first time that Iran has launched an attack on Israel from Iranian soil, Israeli officials said. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the attack also included missiles.

There was already international outrage that Israel struck a foreign embassy, but this is Netanyahu we're talking about: Any excuse to expand the war so he can stay in power:

In a Saturday night address to Israelis, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his country was ready for "any scenario, both defensively and offensively."

"We have determined a clear principle: Whoever harms us, we will harm them. We will defend ourselves against any threat and will do so level-headedly and with determination," Netanyahu said.

Caught in the middle of all this was the United States, bound by treaty and historical obligations to defend Israel. While our military in the region responded by shooting down as many of the drones and missiles as possible to reduce civilian targets, there now comes the dread that we're getting caught in an escalating cycle of retaliation between two sides: Israel backed by the U.S. and European allies vs. Hamas and Hezbollah backed by Iran... and Russia.

It's pretty clear that Russia and Iran are closely tied: Russia is relying on Iranian drone manufacturing to supply the ongoing bombardment of civilian targets in Ukraine. It's also clear - once you step back and look at the bigger picture of the global chaos all this fighting in Gaza and Israel generates - that the ones who profit most in any escalation of hostilities between Israel and Iran are Putin and his lackeys (both in Russia and here in the United States).

I've argued before against any American involvement in a war against Iran. The dynamics were different then: The reason to avoid it now revolves around how we dare not get suckered into a fight that can distract us from aiding Ukraine.

If Biden is smart enough, if he can see the bigger picture here - that the real threat remains PUTIN, and that we need to bolster aid to Ukraine - then we can hope that the United States will play a more moderating conciliatory role in the coming days. Biden needs to - with whatever force and influence we've got left - rein in Netanyahu's warmongering here and now, and end the human rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank to signal Iran to step back on their saber-rattling (the Ayatollahs should worry about engaging in a fight that could trigger political protests at home).

Biden may try to use the moment to bring Republicans over to his side on providing aid to Israel - which he and the Democrats are tying to aid for Ukraine and Taiwan - but given how too many of trump's allies - along with trump himself - are already Putin's puppets, that's unlikely to happen. 

As an aside in one of those grand ironies: If Biden tries to get authorization from Congress to expand our military's efforts against Iran (and Russia), those same Republicans could vote against it out of fear that Biden will win over 2024 voters as a war-time leader, and thus prevent the U.S. from getting dragged into another Middle East quagmire.

All in all, it's another complete mess where the simplest solution is to get Hamas and Hezbollah and Israeli Right Wingers to STOP KILLING EACH OTHER SO THAT NORMAL ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS COULD JUST GET ON WITH THEIR LIVES, THAT WOULD BE GRAND AND DANDY. 

(deep inhale)

In the meantime, we can hope that Biden's diplomacy works its way through the narrowest of paths to a solution of some kind that doesn't involve nuking half of everything between Cairo to Tehran.

Good luck.

The Drumbeats To Another Unhelpful War

The Middle East is back to being a full-blown military crisis, with Israel and Hamas happily drowning each other in a bloody Gaza battlefield, and with Yemeni rebels staging drone and missile attacks on shipping lanes, and now with extremist forces in Syria staging deadly attacks on a U.S. outpost along the Jordanian border (via Zeke Miller and Lolita C Baldor at AP News):

President Joe Biden said Sunday that the U.S. “shall respond” after three American troops were killed and dozens more were injured in an overnight drone strike in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border. Biden blamed Iran-backed militias for the first U.S. fatalities after months of strikes by such groups against American forces across the Middle East since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

Biden, who was traveling in South Carolina, asked for a moment of silence during an appearance at a Baptist church’s banquet hall.

“We had a tough day last night in the Middle East. We lost three brave souls in an attack on one of our bases,” he said. After the moment of silence, Biden added, “and we shall respond...”

The large drone struck a logistics support base in Jordan known as Tower 22. It is along the Syrian border and is used largely by troops involved in the advise-and-assist mission for Jordanian forces.

Central Command said approximately 350 U.S. Army and Air Force personnel were deployed to the base. The three who were killed and most of the wounded were Army soldiers, according to several U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to give details not yet made public.

The small installation, which Jordan does not publicly disclose, includes U.S. engineering, aviation, logistics and security troops. Austin said the troops were deployed there “to work for the lasting defeat of ISIS.” Three officials said the drone struck near the troops’ sleeping quarters, which they said explained the high casualty count...

We are facing here in the states calls by the usual suspects of neoconservative foreign policy rabblerousers still eager for major military strikes - if not straight-up invasion - of Iran. Never mind how most of these "bomb Tehran" advocates are refusing to provide any military aid to Ukraine against a major global threat to democracy in Russia.

Whatever threat Iran poses to American interests abroad - and it is serious - we have to recognize how Iran and Russia are linked at the hips in their efforts to disrupt the Middle East. They've teamed up to provide military support to Syria - the source of that deadly attack - as well as providing aid through Syria to anti-Israeli forces like Hamas and Hezbollah.

As much as Iran hates the U.S. on their own terms, they're just the front, the public face of the bigger threat of Putin backing the Ayatollahs in order to give Putin what he needs: A major distraction for the United States to abandon NATO and Ukraine to Russian conquest. (Think Sollozzo and Tattaglia fronting for Barzini all along).

Going into a direct war with Iran is still a bad idea, same as I said years ago when trump was threatening to invade. If the U.S. goes barging in, we'll be doing it mostly on our own as our regional allies are either too busy committing war crimes (Israel) or unable to engage without disruptions in their own nations (Saudi Arabia and Iraq and Jordan). NATO won't engage because they'll be too wary of Putin's ambitions to send their military forces elsewhere.

If there's any good news, it's that Iran won't be in any decent shape to engage in war themselves, having shipped off a lot of their own weaponry to Russia's war effort and dealing with internal unrest that the U.S. could exploit instead of sending in troops.

Biden has difficult choices ahead. "Proportional responses" by bombing specific Iranian - or Syrian, considering how they are the proxies to Iran's involvement - military hubs hasn't worked well as deterrents before. More aggressive attacks would escalate in ways our regional allies would regret.

It's not helping that the Republicans in Congress - especially the House - are refusing to provide any kind of military funding to allow Biden a free hand in whatever foreign policy decision he makes here. Especially considering how obvious it is that Putin benefits from Middle East turmoil - to where providing more military and financial aid to Ukraine would actually help our efforts to calm the region - and so trump's political allies do not want to upset that apple cart.

I would not argue for war with Iran. I would look to doing something to cut into Syria's military capabilities, and something to support the Iranian citizenry's efforts to end the theocratic despotism hurting them. Anything to avoid another quagmire as our nation tries to bring the bloodshed in Gaza to a peaceful end.

Returning to the Cycle of Violence

Today wasn't a good day. (via Juliette Kayyem at The Atlantic)

The attacks by Hamas against Israel beginning early this morning, some of which are ongoing, will be met by Israel with force. How all of this will unfold, and its impact on domestic and global politics, is not clear, but a simple answer may suffice for now: It will not go well. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already warned his citizens that they are at war; civil reservists have been called up; videos are showing hand battles on the streets. The country is on lockdown, with the potential for future strikes in the south by Hamas and new ones by Hezbollah in the north...

To focus on Israel’s preparedness in no way excuses the Hamas attacks and is not meant to blame the victim. Some on social media are carelessly suggesting that the failures can be explained only as some evil “wag the dog” effort by Netanyahu to unify the country by going to war. Israel has been attacked, and civilians are dead. As in any nation that encounters such a horror, it is essential for the government to determine—without the interference of politics or religion—why. Otherwise, enemies will take advantage of this devastating day for Israel’s counterterrorism strategy...

...Just a few days ago, the Gaza border seemed to have been stabilized after some unrest, and nearly 20,000 workers were able to travel across it again. Today, thousands of rockets, which must have been obtained and hidden, were launched by Hamas. It did not end there. Hamas used drones to strike at Israeli targets. It sent its fighters on foot, by boat, and by air on motorized paragliders. Images have emerged of Hamas attackers on the streets of Israeli towns terrorizing citizens, and worse. This is as much a physical attack as a performative one: Watch us, Hamas seems to be saying. Hamas surely planned for the attack to take place on the Jewish holy day of Simchat Torah and on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War...

How the Hamas group was able to pull this off - and to subvert a lot of the technological advances the Israelis have and to deploy a multi-pronged attack with military precision - points to an even larger effort by other forces opposed to Israel - like Iran - or opposed to Israel's allies - like Russia - in order to escalate instability and violence in the Middle East for their own twisted ends.

Hamas' actions are coming after decades of open conflict between Israelis and Palestinians for control of that tiny corner of the globe, spurred on by political ambitions and policy failures of both the imperial powers of previous centuries and then the failures of post-world war agendas to create equitable and peaceful homelands for both nations. Ever since the end of the Cold War, it's fallen to a dominant Israeli government to govern the region, with what outside observers like the Human Rights Watch compared to an apartheid state. It didn't help that Netanyahu's government refused to stop illegal settlements in areas that should have gone to Palestinian control. And yet Israel needed to maintain that system because nothing had succeeded - not the Oslo Accords, not any attempts to achieve peace with neighboring Arab/Muslim nations, not the underwhelming efforts by western allies to check Hamas' corrupt and violent control of Gaza - to curtail the threats to their own civilians.

This is all coming as Europe (NATO) is trying to refocus their efforts on keeping Ukraine armed and trained to continue fighting against Russia's invasion, with Israel attempting to settle a peace deal with Saudi Arabia that could have undercut the regional extremists, and the United States currently embroiled in a political crisis with the Republican-controlled House - and intentional sabotage by Republican Senators to block needed leadership appointments at State and Defense - that threatens to shut down our funding support - for Ukraine specifically, but it could affect our direct allies like Israel - and military readiness abroad.

For now, the best we know is that hundreds of Israeli civilians are dead and hundreds more held hostage. Further strikes by Hamas are possible, depending on how well-stocked they are (and how the hell did they get so many rockets and drones for their strikes?). The likelihood of Israel's army to go storming into Gaza - and flattening everything including Palestinian civilians and Israeli hostages - within the next 48 hours is pretty much a given: This is open war now against Hamas, and Israel has to fight back - in as punishing a method as possible - just to survive.

Whether this escalates into a broader war - bringing in Syria and Iran directly; dragging Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia if they want war or not; depending on whatever benefits Putin sees in the coming fight - depends on wiser diplomacy and any rationality among the regional leaders to avoid their own losses.

Things that have sadly been missing every fucking time we all had a chance to make peace in the Middle East and instead let the crazies blow it all up again. Too many global powers are profiting from all this. Goddamn us all.

Update: I just want to add this Twitter post from friend Emily - a member of the TNC Horde - who's lived in Israel, has written about Israel, and is constantly moved by the violence there that never ends.

I don't even rly know what I feel, a kind of numb horror, the cellular-level awareness that things will only get worse but that I don't even rly know what that means, a shattered, mourning, terrified heart, trying to hold space for my people & the Palestinians. I'm devastated.

— Emily L. Hauser @emilylhauser.bsky.social (@emilylhauser) October 7, 2023

All That Rage: America's Failures With Iraq

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the official U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, launched in March 2003 as part of George W. Bush's attempt to avenge America after September 11... and personal revenge against Saddam Hussein's attempts to assassinate George's father.

There's a useful timeline with AP News for a refresher, in case you've already forgotten the rage and tears of those years.

There were a lot of failures: 

Failure by our intelligence community to drown out the noise of Neoconservatives eager for war and nation-building they were ill-suited to undertake; 

Failure by Bush the Lesser to contain his personal vendetta; 

Failure by a Congress too cowed by the passions of 9/11 to deny the fantasies of the Neocons and the Bush admin who believed they had an easy war to win; 

Failure by our national media outlets both print and televised who ignored the millions of Americans who protested an uncalled-for attack on a nation that had NOTHING TO DO with Bin Laden's attacks; 

Even further failures by our government to prevent the torture regimes that rose up in the shadows, committing untold war crimes that stained our nation's international prestige.

The start of the Second Persian Gulf War - do people really remember the first one in 1991? - all came about because there were factions in the Republican foreign policy ranks who really wanted to "democratize" the Middle East, but we couldn't do with our allies like Saudi Arabia and Egypt because it would disrupt their totalitarian regimes, and we couldn't do with our enemies like Iran or Iraq unless we were directly provoked. But hey, somewhere had to pop up to build that Utopia, right?

Bush and his administration - especially his Veep Dick Cheney, who had profits in mind for his corporation and his business buddies - used the excuse of the 9/11 attacks to paint Iraq and Iran as part of an "Axis Of Evil" to justify going after them, and then used Saddam's quest for Weapons of Mass Destruction - with unproven allegations of Saddam getting materials to build nukes - to justify invasion.

We had a plan to invade, and we rolled it out to the dismay of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died in the "shock and awe" bombings and later on in the occupation.

Bush and Cheney kept justifying this all as "humanitarian" as though war ever was humane. Cheney himself claimed "We will be greeted as liberators."

These were all lies.

A lot of Americans still bought those lies, as we were still barely years away from the destruction of the World Trade Center towers. The pain and the rage were still raw and tangible.

We had a plan to invade, and also a plan to occupy and get out. Except the occupation was a disaster.

The search for Saddam's WMDs turned into a joke: Everything found were either rusted out, broken, or non-existent. Any evidence we had were either exaggerated out of proportion, or based on Saddam's own people lying about WMDs as a bluff (which didn't work). The justification for occupation faded away. Desperate to prove themselves true, our leaders signed off on extensive "enhanced interrogation techniques" better known as TORTURE to force people to confess where the (fake) WMDs went to. Our sins kept getting worse.

Anyone who criticized the WMD excuses were exposed and humiliated, which led to political and criminal scandals when Cheney's self-appointed intel office revealed an active non-official cover agent (Valerie Plame) and broke CIA protocols. The way Cheney and his people abused their access to big-press journalists also exposed how our national media outlets failed their ethical standards and the nation's trust.

The Bush Plan A for ending the war revolved around propping up an Iraqi ally puppet Ahmed Chalabi as Saddam's replacement, hold elections with a pro-American government, announce victory and get out. But the nation-building plans proved more complex, and Chalabi turned out to be an unreliable ally that neither the Iraqis nor Americans could trust in power. When Paul Bremer issued a controversial order to disband the still-needed Iraqi army and Ba'ath Party, it sparked an uprising that turned the occupation into an almost decade-long quagmire. Bremer's action, and the failure by the Bush administration to control such miscues, pointed out clearly that there was no Plan B dealing with Iraq.

And the poor citizenry of Iraq paid the price for it. They're paying it still, as the chaos of those years allowed sectional factions like ISIL to rise up and spill more blood well into the 2010s.

So here we are, 20 years later. Have we - the United States - learned from our failures?

Arguably No. 

We still have Far Right elements of our government still eager to start opportunistic invasions and occupations wherever they want (except for helping out Ukraine, because they don't want us facing off against Putin). 

We never held any of the architects of that godless torture regime - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld (RIP), John Yoo, Jay Bybee, several others - accountable for their human rights and Habeus violations. There are nations - not just Iraq but also our NATO and regional allies - still calling on us to do so.

We never fully repaid Iraq for the damages we inflicted, an insane amount of money meant for that nation's rebuilding efforts that literally disappeared into rich people's vaults.

Shocking for us at home has been the mistreatment and neglect given to our military veterans who served in Iraq (and Afghanistan) who have not received proper psychological, physical, and economic support from our VA and other federal agencies. Where are the funds to provide housing, medical care, educational opportunities? An entire generation that had been sent off to a decade-long war still ignored, still struggling to rebuild their own lives while Iraq rebuilds their own.

Our (mostly Republican, but even Democratic leaders from that period share the blame) political leadership failed us repeatedly, driven by blind rage and mindless ideological fantasy. Those failures keep happening, as the lack of accountability by all of them - Presidents and Congresscritters, Generals and Analysts, Media Elites and Corporate Criminals, all of them honorable bastards - haunt us to this day.

Who Wins the Last War

War is over. If you want it.
- John Lennon

The United States is officially out of Afghanistan this night (via Scott Neuman and Deepa Shivaram at NPR): 

The last U.S. plane has departed Afghanistan, the Pentagon announced, marking the end of America's longest war and leaving the country's future in disarray and uncertainty under Taliban rule...

Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, said the last U.S. plane was now clearing Afghan air space.

"I'm here to announce the completion of our mission to Afghanistan, " he said.

More than 123,000 civilians were flown out by the U.S. and its partners, which McKenzie called "a monumental accomplishment." A U.S. official also said today that 6,000 people who self-identified as American were American. The official said the number of Americans left in Afghanistan is below 250...

Despite the end of military presence, McKenzie echoed other administration officials who have emphasized in recent days that diplomatic efforts to get more Americans and American allies out of Afghanistan will continue. U.S. officials have said Taliban forces, who now control Afghanistan's borders and air space, have been told that anyone who wants to leave should be able to do so peacefully...

Meanwhile, President Biden as Commander-in-Chief greeted the coffins of the 13 U.S. troops killed in Kabul by the ISIL last week during the evacuations:

On Sunday, the president attended a ceremony at Dover Air Force Base in which the flag-draped caskets containing bodies of the U.S. service members killed in last week's attack in Kabul arrived aboard a C-17 plane.

Biden stood with grieving families as honor guards in dress uniforms removed the caskets. He and first lady Jill Biden also met privately with family members of the dead.

Eleven Marines, one Army soldier and one member of the Navy were among the dead. In a statement Saturday, the president called them "heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice in service of our highest American ideals and while saving the lives of others."

"The 13 service members that we lost were heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice in service of our highest American ideals and while saving the lives of others," Biden said in the statement. "Their bravery and selflessness has enabled more than 117,000 people at risk to reach safety thus far..."

Those 13 troops return as the last official casualties of a twenty-year war and occupation of Afghanistan, started in response to the 9/11 attacks and perpetuated by a succession of Presidencies that had few honest solutions how to exit that nation without the Taliban retaking the place the minute we left.

And as the occupation of Afghanistan comes to its dark end, the recriminations have already begun, aimed at Biden's administration by a Beltway Media that can't remember its' own collusion with Bush the Lesser's administration that led us into that mess in the first place.

If there's any voices in the punditry taking a long historic look at how Afghanistan fell apart, one of them is David Rothkopf at The Atlantic (paywall):

Unlike his three immediate predecessors in the Oval Office, all of whom also came to see the futility of the Afghan operation, Biden alone had the political courage to fully end America’s involvement. Although Donald Trump made a plan to end the war, he set a departure date that fell after the end of his first term and created conditions that made the situation Biden inherited more precarious. And despite significant pressure and obstacles, Biden has overseen a military and government that have managed, since the announcement of America’s withdrawal, one of the most extraordinary logistical feats in their recent history...

In the days following the fall of Kabul earlier this month—an event that triggered a period of chaos, fear, and grief—critics castigated the Biden administration for its failure to properly coordinate the departure of the last Americans and allies from the country. The White House was indeed surprised by how quickly the Taliban took control, and those early days could have been handled better. But the critics argued that more planning both would have been able to stop the Taliban victory and might have made America’s departure somehow tidier, more like a win or perhaps even a draw. The chaos, many said, was symptomatic of a bigger error. They argued that the United States should stay in Afghanistan, that the cost of remaining was worth the benefits a small force might bring.

Former military officers and intelligence operatives, as well as commentators who had long been advocates of extending America’s presence in Afghanistan, railed against Biden’s artificial deadline. Some critics were former Bush-administration officials or supporters who had gotten the U.S. into the mess in the first place, setting us on the impossible path toward nation building and, effectively, a mission without a clear exit or metric for success. Some were Obama-administration officials or supporters who had doubled down on the investment of personnel in the country and later, when the futility of the war was clear, lacked the political courage to withdraw. Some were Trump-administration officials or supporters who had negotiated with and helped strengthen the Taliban with their concessions in the peace deal and then had punted the ultimate exit from the country to the next administration.

They all conveniently forgot that they were responsible for some of America’s biggest errors in this war and instead were incandescently self-righteous in their invective against the Biden administration. Never mind the fact that the Taliban had been gaining ground since it resumed its military campaign in 2004 and, according to U.S. estimates even four years ago, controlled or contested about a third of Afghanistan. Never mind that the previous administration’s deal with the Taliban included the release of 5,000 fighters from prison and favored an even earlier departure date than the one that Biden embraced. Never mind that Trump had drawn down U.S. troop levels from about 13,000 to 2,500 during his last year in office and had failed to repatriate America’s equipment on the ground. Never mind the delay caused by Trump and his adviser Stephen Miller’s active obstruction of special visas for Afghans who helped us...

Despite the criticism, Biden, who had argued unsuccessfully when he was Barack Obama’s vice president to seriously reduce America’s presence in Afghanistan, remained resolute. Rather than view the heartbreaking scenes in Afghanistan in a political light as his opponents did, Biden effectively said, “Politics be damned—we’re going to do what’s right” and ordered his team to stick with the deadline and find a way to make the best of the difficult situation in Kabul...

Let us be honest about this situation: The United States could not afford to stay in Afghanistan forever, could not afford to continue a low-scale occupation and brush war. Just as we could not stay in Iraq forever, just as we couldn't stay in Lebanon back in 1983 or even engage in places like Libya and Syria (which is in its tenth year of civil war). It turns out there are limits to what a superpower nation can do, and we seem to keep forgetting the lessons that should have reminded us of that.

For all the political and foreign policy realities that confront our nation every day, we have to remember that wars must end: Whatever objectives we had going into Afghanistan - revenge for 9/11 - could no longer justify our staying there. And while we are going to have to deal with the horror that the returning Taliban regime is going to punish women and rule by terror/fear, the threat of more war is not a feasible option. This is now a moment where diplomacy / money that is foreign policy can direct our local and global allies to push back against the Taliban's dark rule.

We need to acknowledge the losses we incurred in that 20-year struggle, the sacrifices of our soldiers and citizen helpers who did what they could to rebuild Afghanistan where our political will couldn't.

We need to review - with deep insight and focus - all the things our elected officials and generals did wrong the last 20 years, not just the last 4-5 with trump and Biden. We need to hold accountable the Warhawks of every Presidency from Bush the Lesser to Obama to trump to Biden who promised us many things and misread nearly everything. We failed to learn our lessons with wars like Korea and Vietnam and Iraq (both the first and the second), we dare not ignore this moment to learn where Afghanistan went wrong.

The only way we can win this last war is to make sure we don't screw up getting tricked or manipulated into the next war.

Deteriorating Situation 2020 trump Style

Gods, this weekend has seen more collapses than an earthquake disaster movie.

This is what happened today Sunday January 5 (via Military Times).

Iraq’s Parliament called for the expulsion of U.S. troops from the country Sunday in reaction to the American drone attack that killed a top Iranian general.

Lawmakers approved a resolution asking the Iraqi government to end the agreement under which Washington sent forces to Iraq more than four years ago to help in the fight against the Islamic State group.

A pullout of the estimated 5,200 U.S. troops could cripple the fight against ISIS and allow its resurgence.

The majority of about 180 legislators present in Parliament voted in favor of the resolution. It was backed by most Shiite members of parliament, who hold a majority of seats. Many Sunni and Kurdish legislators did not show up for the session, apparently because they oppose abolishing the deal.

Officials from the Pentagon, U.S. Central Command and the Combined Joint Task Force Inherent Resolve did not immediately respond to requests by Military Times for comment.

The implications here, combined with the previous disastrous moves by trump allowing Turkey and Russia to purge Syrian Kurdish regions, will mean a resurgence of the Islamic State bastards who are so extremist they make the Taliban look like the Care Bears. This is going to lead to another round of internal bloodshed in Iraq that killed hundreds of innocent civilians and threatened a number of minority Persian/Arab groups that ISIL wants exterminated. Throw into this the further isolation of Iraqi Kurds and we've essentially abandoned the one ethnic group in the entire region the United States could trust. They sure as hell won't trust us ever again.

And here's Bombshell Number Two (via New York):

Iran announced on Sunday that it will no longer honor its commitments from the 2015 nuclear deal and said it has removed all limits on its uranium-enrichment program. The declaration came after the regime officials held an emergency meeting to reevaluate Iran’s nuclear program after President Trump ordered the assassination of the country’s top military leader, Qasem Soleimani, in a drone strike in Baghdad on Thursday. Iran also stressed in a statement that it was willing to resume honoring the deal and reopen access to the International Atomic Agency, but only after sanctions against the country were removed and it was sure its interests would be secure — i.e., that the U.S. would fulfill its commitment to the deal after President Trump unilaterally decided to abandon it.

In 2018, Trump withdrew from the deal and made the unsubstantiated claim that Iran had violated its terms. America’s JCPOA partners in Europe disagreed and tried, but ultimately failed, to preserve the agreement thanks to the numerous obstacles Trump and his Iran-hawk advisers erected as part of their maximum-pressure campaign against Tehran.

The JCPOA was working until trump sabotaged the deal. He and his neocon war-hawks despised Obama's efforts, believing it a betrayal of their War On Terror game plan. They'd rather have Iran dive head first into a nuclear armament program to justify attacking Iran for doing exactly that: A self-fulfilling disaster.

This is a failure of diplomacy all around. The war factions of trump's administration are getting what they want: More War, especially one designed to bring about their Rapture. trump is getting the two-fer of pissing on Obama's political legacy (negating a peace deal that could have led to an open and moderate Iran) and setting up a media spectacle designed to drown out (and in his mind shut down) the ongoing Impeachment process.

What we're going to get is further escalation as the situation in the Middle East deteriorates past the point of no return (if we haven't hit that already). We're getting the likelihood of the United States military being ordered to set attacks on Iranian Heritage Sites (civilian locations) which would by the way BE WAR CRIMES. We're getting an increase of terror and militia strikes against U.S. bases and personnel across the globe (We may already have in Kenya).

We're going to get more insanity and more chaos and more death because our government's system of checks and balances are failing to constrain a goddamn madman at the helm. Too many people in trump's Cabinet want this shit to happen, our military commanders unwilling to cross a line that could end their careers as acts of insubordination, and Congress too divided because of McConnell's obstructionist partisan bullshit to do anything to stop trump.

This is now officially out of control. And it's going to take more than luck to live through this.

Oh Jesus. 2020 Just Escalated Quickly

(Update: with a big thanks to Tengrain for including this article on Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! I'd wish you all a Happy New Year but Christ this year already is a trumpster fire... Please leave a comment)

This has been breaking news for the past hour or so. This is via Libby Nelson at Vox.com:

A US airstrike killed a top Iranian military official, along with four others, at the Baghdad airport early Friday morning, according to a Pentagon statement. The attack represents a major escalation of simmering hostilities between the US and Iran.

The death of Maj. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, who led Iranian covert operations and intelligence and one of the country’s most revered military leaders, was reported by Iraqi state television early Friday morning local time, according to multiple US media sources, and confirmed in a statement from the Pentagon.

“General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region,” the Pentagon said in a statement. “General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more.”

The statement concluded: “This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.”

Iran has not issued an official response to the attack, but has criticized the US for its involvement in the region in recent days.

The attack comes after days of escalating tensions. An American contractor was killed near Kirkuk, Iraq, last week and 4 military members were injured in an attack by Iranian-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah. A retaliatory strike by the US killed 25 members of the militia and injured more than 50. Then, on New Year’s Eve on Tuesday, militia members attacked the US embassy in Baghdad...

While this looks on its face like a great moment for the United States - woohoo, we took out a terrorist, an Iranian bigwig woohoo! Team America FUCK Yeah! - this is in fact scaring the hell out of every foreign policy and Middle East expert across the Intertubes and for good reason. To refer to Adam L Silverman at Balloon Juice:

...This strike will also enrage the Iranians and provide the Iranian government with an internal opening for influence and propaganda to rally support for the Iranian state among a domestic Iranian population that may be wavering. So it will likely retard reform in general and attempts at democratization in specific in the short to medium term. Especially if there is immediate Iranian response and/or escalation to today’s attack and a US response to Iran’s actions that can be used by the Iranian government to reinforce its standing with the Iranian people.

Finally, I don’t see why anyone in the Iranian government would talk to anyone in the US government at this point while the current administration is in place. The President, his senior officials, and surrogates have made it clear that they really aren’t interested in talking. Last week Putin announced  that he’s not going to go along with the sanctions regime against Iran any longer, which further reinforces to Iran that they don’t need to talk to us as they have Putin to leverage as a patron. I also expect that Iran will sell their oil to the Chinese because Xi could care less about our sanctions. There is no way to squeeze the Iranians economically as the government is impervious to the pain and has ways to sell its oil to ease that pain. You can find my take on why making war in Iran would be strategic malpractice unless we were prepared for total war and even then it isn’t a good idea at West Point’s Modern War Institute.

My take: This is essentially one step away from honest-to-GOD war with Iran.

This isn't like the strike Obama called on Bin Laden back in 2011. Bin Laden by then was a pariah figure among most Muslim power brokers and nations with few allies to defend or mourn him. The backlash against his death was meager (and in some ways welcomed) across the Middle East. This is different. Soleimani was a high-ranking figure within the Iranian government itself, a major player with ally Syria, and someone well-connected among the Shi'a militia forces threatening much of Iraq and Kurdish areas not yet flattened by Turkey/Russia.

This is like Iran calling an airstrike on the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The kind of thing that would trigger a major political and military response from us. The kind of thing where a declaration of war would be a rational response.

And yet it wouldn't surprise me if trump and his remaining foreign policy/military advisors would welcome this move. trump thinks war is a game and probably thinks this is the kind of thing that will win him more support and silence his Democratic critics.

But war for political gain is no longer a smart move. War for conquest and resources ends up squandering both.

And like I blogged before, going to war against Iran is NOT a good idea.

We are being led into another quagmire - much like the 2003 Iraqi invasion and occupation - only this time against a stronger opponent in harsher terrain with fewer allies, and led by a Shitgibbon who doesn't know the first thing of winning at Risk let alone winning a war against another nation.

We are so very fucking royally fucked.

One Sentence About trump's Betrayal of Syria Kurds to Turkey

That goddamn Shitgibbon - with one phone call with Turkey's brutal despot Erdogan and most likely urged on by his overlord Putin - just betrayed an entire region full of ethnic Kurds - who have been the United States' most consistent ally in the Middle East because they are desperate for their own homeland that Turkey Iraq Iran and Russia would like to never see happen - and is likely cheering on the destruction of entire cities all because the Shitgibbon owns properties in Turkey and he's making blood money off of all that.

Actually I got another sentence here, and that's me hoping to God this eternal Shitgibbon gets impeached within the next 24 hours before he can cause more damage to our foreign allies and national security.

Serious Stuff for Sunday Part Two: Escalation (w/Update)

It's not something on the front pages every day, but there's been a war going on between Saudi Arabia and Yemen that has direct ties - via military aid and God knows what else - to the United States.

It's been bloody, with UN and humanitarian groups condemning the worsening conditions in the war-torn nation of Yemen. While it's in action a border clash, it's also an escalation of hostilities between Saudi Arabia and Iran - which is backing the Houthi uprising - over which side - Sunni vs. Shia - is dominant in Middle East affairs.

Early this Saturday, the escalation bumped up a serious notch when a couple of major Saudi oil installations were struck by drones causing enough damage to shut down half the Saudi oil production (via Ben Hubbard, Palko Karasz, and Stanley Reed at the New York Times):

Drone attacks claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels struck two key oil installations inside Saudi Arabia on Saturday, damaging facilities that process the vast majority of the country’s crude output and raising the risk of a disruption in world oil supplies.

The attacks immediately escalated tensions in the Persian Gulf amid a standoff between the United States and Iran, even as key questions remained unanswered — where the drones were launched from, and how the Houthis could have managed to hit facilities deep in Saudi territory, some 500 miles from Yemeni soil...

The Houthis said they had launched the aerial attacks with 10 drones, which would amount to their most audacious strike on Saudi Arabia since the kingdom intervened in Yemen’s war more than four years ago. The Saudi-led bombing campaign has devastated the poor country and exacerbated the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The Houthis are part of a regional network of militant groups aligned with and backed by Iran, Saudi Arabia’s regional rival, and U.S. and Saudi officials suspect that Iran has dispatched technicians to Yemen to train the Houthis. U.N. investigators have written that the Houthis have advanced drones that could have a range of up to 930 miles.

The targeted oil facilities can process 8.45 million barrels of crude oil a day between them, the bulk of production in Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter. Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil giant, said production of 5.7 million barrels a day — well over half of the nation’s overall daily output — was suspended...

These kind of attacks can have serious global repercussions. Saudi Arabia is one of - if not the biggest - the major suppliers of oil used in transportation, energy, industry, everything. There may be other sources of national revenue - the mining of iron and copper and gold, for example - but putting a dent in their major industry is going to sting.

I got a line memorized from the movie Risky Business. Guido the Killer Pimp telling Joel "In times of economic uncertainty, never EVER fuck with another man's livelihood." It's actually sound advice: It's not only our means of income, but that livelihood defines who we are, no matter how lowly it's a point of pride to any person. Even in good economic times you just don't mess with another person's job. You fuck with that, you piss us off.

Think of the Saudis as a person, more specifically the royal family who runs all of it. What the Houthis just did - fuck with Saudi oil exporting - will get the Saudi royals really pissed off.

Making this worse is the revelation of a new form of warfare: Drone bombing. It's been an advantage of the United States and other technically-advanced nations to use drones as a means of engaging war zones without loss of personnel. But now we're at the point of drones as weapons themselves, akin to the kamikaze pilots of Imperial Japan, only remote controlled and likely harder to stop. Given the range here - 900 plus miles - the Houthi can attack a lot of places in Saudi Arabia to "bring the war home".

Everything here is escalation. Houthi Yemeni escalating against the Saudis. The Saudis guaranteed to escalate against all of Yemen. A possible escalation against Iran by Saudi forces, turning the Straits of Hormuz into a straight-up war zone.

This is more than likely going to bring in the United States and a lot of the European nations (maybe even China and half of Asia).

Wars never end well. Wars can get bloodier in a heartbeat when the dynamics and objectives change.

Gods help us.

Update 9/15/19 9:13PM: I am starting to see tweets about trump promising the U.S. will support Saudi Arabia's military escalation with a "locked and loaded" boast.

Even with warmonger John Bolton kicked out of the White House last week, he's still getting his wish of a war with Iran. FFFFffffffuuuuuu---

Seven Reasons NOT To Invade Iran (w/ 2020 Update)

(Update: Thanks to Tengrain for promoting this entry on Crooks & Liars and Mike's Blog Round Up! Please do stay awhile and read the latest entries especially today's memorial for the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre)

(Update 06/17/2020: Well, I submitted this article to the Florida Writers Association's 2020 Royal Palm Literary Awards in their Non-Fiction/Blog category, and good news tonight it's received Semi-Finalist status!)


(Update 07/25/2020: Follow-up on the RPLA for 2020, this article is now a FINALIST in the Non-Fiction/Blog category! Which comes with another GIF to upload. On a serious note, this qualifies to be a First, Second, or Third Place winner by late October (not guaranteed however, there may be more than three finalists in most Royal Palm categories)).

(Update 10/18/2020: The RPLA awards ceremony was last night, and this article received Silver (Second Place) in the Non-Fiction/Blog category! Thank you, judges!) 


Now, back to the article:

So trump - through his war-hungry advisor John Bolton and other proxies - has been saber-rattling towards Iran lately.

This after he and Bolton saber-rattled at Venezuela before backing off, and after saber-rattling at North Korea before Jong Il figured out how to turn trump into a gushing fanboy.

But this is serious. trump's committed harsh acts towards Iran: Dissing the nuclear deal Obama made with them, re-issuing the hard sanctions Obama relaxed, adding more sanctions towards nations still working with Iran on limiting their nuclear program to non-weapon levels, and essentially threatening to turn the whole country into his next parking lot.

And in the past week, trump's people had been laying the groundwork for a full-out invasion, talking up 120,000 troops getting deployed, a carrier fleet heading to the area, everything they can think of to make the Iranian government freak out. There's been sudden and unconfirmed reports of Saudi shipping getting attacked with mines. A ton of "Gulf of Tonkin" style setup.

And while trump is now showing signs of backing off - that he's suddenly aware that throwing a punch in this schoolyard standoff might mean getting punched back - there's just too many reasons in trump's head - and in the heads of all his neocon war-happy lackeys - to avoid the reality that sooner or later trump wants his goddamn war so he can play Commander-in-Chief. And like it or not, Iran remains at the top of the neocon Wish List.

However, for all the fantasy reasons trump (and Bolton) have for invading Iran, there's a lot of reasons in the real world we shouldn't be eager to start yet another land war in the Middle East.

Starting with 1) The United States will be going into a land war with Iran all on its own.

This is the first thing trump needs to understand: Thanks to all his bluster and bullying on the global stage, most of our natural allies (Hi, NATO!) are in no mood to help us anymore. Unlike 1991 in the first Iraqi War where we formed an international coalition over specific goals (end Iraq's invasion of Kuwait), and unlike 2003 in the second Iraqi War where we formed a smaller but dedicated coalition over questionable goals (end Saddam's attempts to gain WMDs that turned out not to exist), we are not going to find a lot of teammates for this one. The United States has no specific causus belli on this. While Iran's got a lot of ties to terror organizations across the Middle East (especially in Lebanon) they're not enough of a threat to U.S. interests to the area. Despite claims, Iran's been keeping up with their end of their nonproliferation deal with the other nations. The majority of nations prefer keeping the peace now, and are coping with their own problems at home (some of them can even profit dealing with Iran if/when trump's sanctions end).

The only nations that could ally with the U.S. in an invasion would be Saudi Arabia - Iran's primary competitor for regional influence - and the United Arab Emirates. Also Israel, which has been in a war of sorts against Iranian-backed terror groups. However, Saudi forces are tied down fighting a war in Yemen, the UAE's not much of a military, and if Israel joins in on any invasion of a Muslim nation we're basically talking World War III involving half a dozen African/Middle Eastern nations attacking Israel. The other nations in the region with U.S. military presence - Kuwait and Iraq and Afghanistan - are bogged down with their own issues (Iraq in particular is still coping with ISIL and the overflow from the Syrian Civil War) to be of any help. Turkey, our closest NATO ally, is too busy with Syria as well.

We'd be facing a likelihood of nations helping Iran against us. Primarily China, who would have an interest in gaining more Persian/Arabic oil as well as spit in trump's face for his tariffs war. Hilariously enough, Iran is a client nation with Russia - military and regional economic deals - meaning Russia at best will sit on the sidelines eating popcorn while their BFF trump sweats this out alone.

IF the United States enters into a war with Iran, we will be doing so with the fewest number of allies we've ever committed since the Spanish-American War.

2) Rolling Into Iran Will NOT Be Easy.

Unlike Iraq in 2003 - which had been battered not only by international sanctions but by constant military strikes since the First Iraqi War, along with genuine demoralized troops Saddam treated like cannon fodder - going into Iran will not take days, it will take weeks or even months.

Geographically, Iran is bigger than Iraq and with harsher terrain. It'd be similar to fighting in Afghanistan with vast mountainous ranges. A direct strike at the capital - Tehran - would do nothing to quell the rest of the nation, and is far enough inland that supply routes are necessary between any US bases (likely from Iraq) and the front lines, requiring occupation of a lot of major cities between the coast and inland.

Leading up to:

3) We Will NOT Be Greeted As Liberators.

That was one particular fantasy from the 2003-2009 Iraqi occupation that died a quick death. Cheney's assertion back then about Iraqis wanting new leadership was based on genuine hatred of Saddam... but ignored the reality that Iraqis hated getting invaded in the first place. They saw the U.S. trying to impose rule by a hand-picked toady (Hi, Chalabi!) and refused to accept him. Tied into the overall failure of the U.S. occupiers to organize and function to create a new political infrastructure to succeed Saddam's dark rule, and you got a nation full of resentful residents who allowed insurgency and opposition to turn Iraq into another Quagmire for America.

And that was with a nation that wanted independence from a despot. With Iran...?

Granted, the Iranians are oppressed as well - the recent history of uprisings and protests prove that - but they've seen the damage done to Iraq and aren't too impressed with the mess the U.S. is leaving in Afghanistan. The Iranian people know that if the Americans come knocking we aren't going to be all smiles and chocolate bars, we're going to be bombing the shit out of everyone and let God sort em out. They'd rather side with the despots they know than deal with whatever crooked puppet we'd put in office (remember the Shah? That was us putting him on the throne back in the 1950s!)

4) We Do NOT Have the Troops For a Prolonged War Effort.

Especially considering we're STILL active in Afghanistan, with forces in Iraq and Syria coping with ISIL, as well as keeping ourselves deployed in South Korea and Japan to deter North Korea/China, and Gods help us the crap trump is forcing our military to commit to along the Mexican border.

Bolton and others are talking up sending in 120,000 troops if/when we get serious about Iran, which is a smaller number than the 150,000 troops sent into Iraq in 2003... and even then we had retired generals warning us that was half of what was needed to make the occupation work. If trump were serious, he ought to be calling up for volunteers to kick that number into the 300,000 troop range... and the way recruiting is suffering, that's not likely.

We're going into a larger nation, with tougher terrain, more cities to siege. They have roughly 500,000 active service personnel. We may have technological advantages that can shut down things like their own Air Force and communications, but they have advantages of watching us in action the last 15 years and knowing how to counter all that (not to mention getting cyberwar help from Russia).

Remember Millennium Challenge 2002? That war game after 9/11 where the U.S. tried out their game plan against an unnamed country that they later revealed was Iran? The Marine general playing as Iran used crafty asymmetrical methods and "sank" a carrier fleet, and the only way the U.S. side won was by "resetting" the whole thing and ordering that general to not use the methods he deployed. Do you think Iran is going to play by OUR rules if we invade? This is the real world: YOU DO NOT GET TO RESET WARS.

Iran can, arguably, bloody our military's nose early enough in any invasion attempt to make Americans recoil at the losses. And we won't have the troops to recover quick enough.

And it's definitely not going to look good for "the boss" because trump wants his victories pretty like him...

5) We Do NOT Have A Unified And Supportive Home Front.

When 9/11 happened, the entire nation mourned and stood united against a terror threat. When we sent troops into Afghanistan where the threat was, there was near agreement from all Americans that it was the right thing to do.

When Dubya wanted to invade Iraq as part of his Global War on Terror, the unity faded. A lot of Americans argued it was the wrong war at the wrong time (we hadn't captured Bin Laden, we were still nation-building in Afghanistan).

When Obama wanted to do something about Syria or Libya, he was constrained by a GOP-leaning Congress and by general public apathy, and so left it to minimal efforts that left both nations deep into their own civil wars.

So here comes trump, likely claiming (and believing) a majority of Americans want this war in Iran. he probably thinks ANY war effort will force his critics to shut up to avoid getting labeled "unpatriotic" and "treasonous" (which he and his GOP worshipers are doing anyway). he's ignoring the facts that A) he's still unpopular across the general population and B) the likelihood of a bad opening attack wave would make him over-react in public to cause more Americans to distrust his leadership.

6) Don't Forget: Everything trump Touches Turns to Shit.

As a war-time leader, trump will be all over the place. Meddling in military affairs when he shouldn't, ignoring all warning signs when he should. his point men on Iran - Bolton most of all - will only care for the results they want, not what they'll get, meaning worse decisions will follow after bad. Considering how trump may rely on a private merc army - hi Erik! - to beef up his forces could cause confusion and mayhem on the ground in ways our legitimate military won't be able to control.

In short: We're dealing with a White House that won't cope well with any early setbacks, that can well over-react and cause more damage not only in Iran but also here at home.

With the likely bonus of trump selling off billion-dollar contracts to his corporate buddies that can siphon off much needed funding and supplies while the invasion quickly sours. It's Lose-Lose for the nation when this happens.

trump is not serious about going to actual war. Bolton and Sec of State Pompeo and maybe a lot of other neocons are, but trump is going to treat this as a photo op, a chance for him to perform his immigrant-bashing tirades in front of soldiers who won't enjoy being used as props. The whole thing will be over-managed and under-planned, with money going the wrong way while the troops get sent into death traps.

7) Any war is a bad idea when diplomacy is possible and ought to be pursued.

That's just goddamned common sense. trump and the neocons just want this war to prove diplomacy - at least the way it's been done since the Second World War - doesn't work and that they have better ways to resolve everything. It's trump's Id at play again: Every deal he doesn't make is a bad deal, so he'll blow things up and force people to deal his way (where he gets all the credit and probably all the money).

And yet... trump's saber-rattling continues on.

Sorry, Middle East, we're heading into another decade without any goddamn peace again.