Welcome to Monday, September 16, 2024, and National Guacamole Day. Who doesn’t love the stuff? Here’s Guacamole 101 (pay attention to the part about how to choose the avocados):
It’s also Mexican Independence Day, National Stay Away from Seattle Day, National Cinnamon Raisin Bread Day, Mayflower Day, and World Play-Doh Day (celebrated by snowflakes everywhere).
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 16 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*TRUMP A TARGET AGAIN (see also here). A 58-year-old man with a checkered past was spotted by the Secret Service yesterday allegedly pointing the barrel of an assault rifle through the fence around Trump’s golf course as the former President was playing golf. The Secret Service fired shots, the man fled, but an alert passerby took a photo of the car of the alleged shooter, who didn’t fire) and also photographed the car’s license plate. Apparently, given the license plate, street-camera surveillance followed the car along the streets until the suspect was apprehended by the cops:
The latest incident happened Sunday afternoon at Mr. Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Fla, where Secret Service agents spotted a person concealed in the bushes and holding a rifle while Mr. Trump was golfing. The Secret Service shot at the man, law enforcement officials said. Mr. Trump, who was a few hundred yards away, was not injured, unlike in the previous attempt, when he was shot in the ear at a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13.
The suspect fled but was taken into custody during a traffic stop, and a rifle with a scope was recovered from the bushes. A U.S. law enforcement official identified the man as Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, who has lived in Hawaii and Greensboro, N.C.
. . . Ryan Wesley Routh, the 58-year-old man who was arrested on Sunday in connection with what the F.B.I. described as an attempted assassination on former President Donald J. Trump, had expressed the desire to fight and die in Ukraine.
Mr. Routh’s posts on the social media site X revealed a penchant for violent rhetoric in the weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. “I AM WILLING TO FLY TO KRAKOW AND GO TO THE BORDER OF UKRAINE TO VOLUNTEER AND FIGHT AND DIE,” he wrote.
On the messaging application Signal, Mr. Routh wrote that “Civilians must change this war and prevent future wars” as part of his profile bio. On WhatsApp, his bio read, “Each one of us must do our part daily in the smallest steps help support human rights, freedom and democracy; we each must help the chinese.”
Mr. Routh, a former roofing contractor from Greensboro, N.C., was interviewed by The New York Times in 2023 for an article about Americans volunteering to aid the war effort in Ukraine. Mr. Routh, who had no military experience, said he had traveled to the country after Russia’s invasion and wanted to recruit Afghan soldiers to fight there.
We don’t know squat about the suspect’s motives, but they’ve beefed up the security around Trump as well as Harris and Biden, and the new acting head of the Secret Service is in trouble.
*This seems to be news that hasn’t got the attention it deserves, as it may mean that Israel will be involved in yet another war. The event: a missile fired by the Houthis in Yemen traveled 1200 miles to Israel before hitting the ground, though it broke up before landing near Tel Aviv and didn’t do any damage except causing a small forest fire.
The Houthi militia in Yemen claimed responsibility on Sunday for a rare missile attack on Israel, the second time in two months that the Iranian-backed group has successfully penetrated the skies over the central part of the country.
The assault was the latest illustration of the evolving conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Iranian proxies, which have mounted attacks on Israeli territory in what they have said is solidarity with Palestinians under bombardment in Gaza. It also demonstrated the military capabilities of the Houthis, based hundreds of miles from Israel on the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula.
Air-raid sirens blared in dozens of towns and villages in central Israel around 6:30 a.m. on Sunday, sending people rushing to fortified safe rooms and bomb shelters.
The Israeli military initially said the Houthis had fired a surface-to-surface missile that landed in an “open area” and that no casualties were reported. In a follow-up statement, the military said an initial inquiry indicated the missile had “fragmented midair” and that it was reviewing its attempts to intercept the strike.
Yahya Sarea, a Houthi military spokesman, said the armed group had fired a ballistic missile at what he claimed was a military target in central Israel. His claims could not be independently verified.
. . . The goal of the attack, said Nasruddin Amer, another Houthi spokesman, was to pressure Israel to end the war in Gaza.
“The problem is in Gaza and the solution is in Gaza,” Mr. Amer said in a text message.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel suggested his country would respond to the attack, which he cast as part of a wider “battle against Iran’s axis of evil that is striving to destroy us.”
“They should have known by now that we exact a heavy price for any attempt to harm us,” he said, referring to the Houthis, at the start of a government meeting.
While the Houthis claimed that they fired a special “hypersonic” missile (I saw the “hypersonic” adjective on both the NBC News and local news last night), but both the Biden Administration and Israel deny that is the case. Somebody got it wrong. What remains a puzzle is why this missile wasn’t detected by Israel’s and America’s radar systems (yes, the US helps detect missiles, too) and destroyed. That is problematic, for if the missile didn’t malfunction, it could have done serious damage.
Iran, of course, is behind not only this incident (the Houthis don’t have their own missiles) as well as behind the daily slew of rockets from Hezbollah into Israel (a war crime that nobody seems to call out) and, of course the missiles still being fired—though in fewer number—by Hamas. The conclusion is that Iran must somehow be stopped, but the scenario for that doesn’t bear thinking about.
*Truth be told, I have paid almost no attention to the races for national Senators and Representatives, even though they’re crucial. I was surprised to see in the WaPo that the Senate may flip towards Republicans, just as the House flipped for Republicans two years ago. If both Houses of Congress are majority Republican, and the President is Democratic, nothing will get done. If the President is a Republican, Ceiling cat help us all. The Washington Post, though, says that the GOP is still worried, even though the Senate looks to go red:
The Senate map this year still heavily favors Republicans, with all of the most competitive races for seats held by Democrats, and polling suggests they are on track to flip the Senate red. But Republicans in seven of the eight key Senate races appear to be trailing Trump, and only one GOP Senate candidate — Montana Republican Tim Sheehy — consistently leads his Democratic opponent, Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), making control of the Senate more up in the air than might have been predicted.
In the House, where Republicans hold a slim four-seat majority and control of the chamber will be hotly contested in November, the phenomenon of GOP candidates trailing Trump appears less pronounced and less likely to affect the outcome. Fewer voters appear willing to split their tickets and more Republicans than Democrats represent districts won by the opposite party’s president in 2020. House Republicans are defending 16 seats in districts Joe Biden won in 2020, while House Democrats are defending just five seats Trump won.
I don’t quite get it. If the Senate map “heavily favors Republicans,” why is the GOP so worried about losing that chamber? If it’s “more up in the air than has been predicted”, then why say that the odds heavily favor the GOP. Well, all I can say is that this election is going to be an especially interesting one. And I also worry about the Supreme Court, but there’s only one Justice who might retire in the next four years, and you know who he is.
*In a piece on Murtadd to Human, called “Getting Serious with Gaza“, author Anjuli Pandawar presents an argument by (an apparent) group of Israeli military that Israel has failed in its military strategy to defeat Hamas in Gaza. The group, “The Reserve Officers Forum,” suggests an alternative that, they think, will be more successful. It involves a serious siege of Gaza. From the article:
Editorial note: The Reserve Officers Forum has kindly provided me [Pandawar] with an English translation of their recently-released The General’s Plan. Murtadd to Human publishes it here with the RFO’s permission, with minor editorial adjustments for clarity.
There are more details of the plan at the original site, but they’re in Hebrew.
From the first week of the war until now, the Israeli strategy has been based on the claim that only military pressure brings desired results. Today, eleven months and more since October 7, 2023, we can say with confidence – this strategy is a failure.
It failed, in part, because although the IDF has many tactical achievements, it was unable to attain its strategic goals: total containment of the fighting areas, complete “drainage” of non-combatant population from combat zones, creation of an alternative to the distribution of humanitarian aid by Hamas, and more.
The purpose of this document is not to cry a river over what passed, but to suggest decisive additional action, that will invariably propagate a pivotal change enabling the achievement of these goals.
. . . While the IDF demonstrates fast and steep learning curves while fighting, steadfastly adherent to the mission, constantly improving performance, with an emphasis on underground combat, there is a constant underestimation of Hamas’s repeated comeback, quickly replenishing its assault arsenal, re-staffing its ranks, and regaining control over provision distribution, effectively forcing the local population back into its claws. As we write this document, the IDF has yet to come up with a contingency.
Their solution is a serious siege, which, the group says, would force an end to the war very quickly:
Without getting into the politics of the situation (except encouraging a ruling alternative to the Hamas, which is a pursuit we also gave up, for some reason), we must focus on debilitating at least one of the four pillars upon which Hamas’s rule is contingent: funding, recruitment, supply control and ideological motivation, while adhering to international law.
Presently, cutting off supplies is by far the fastest, most cost-effective, safest for non-combatants, readily-available tactic. We’ve outlined a strategy designed to sever the supply chains and isolate terrorist cells, making it easier for the IDF to deal with their regrouping and safer for local population to move to non-combat zones, beginning with smart utilisation of the Netzarim Corridor.
. . . The answer is simple, the deal in November was reached because up to this point, Israel allowed only two trucks of provisions to enter Gaza daily. Hamas begged, as part of the deal, to increase the amount to 200. The day Israel folded and this number was agreed upon, Hamas immediately ceased fulfilling its end of the bargain, and doubled down on the stringent attitude we see from it till today.
But instead of going right back to two trucks a day, and in spite of Hamas’s blatant disregard of its own commitment, 200 trucks a day continue to enter the war zone, replenishing Hamas with all it needs to keep fighting, and to refuse any hostage deal put on the table.
Well, can you imagine what would happen if humanitarian aid (which right now is controlled almost entirely by Hamas) was reduced by 99%? The world would scream, regardless of whether Hamas surrenders after a period of time. They have enough stuff to hold out for quite a while, so the reduction would mostly hurt Gazan civilians, not Hamas. This seems to me a bad idea given the sensitivity of Israel and the U.S. to world opinion.
But who has a better one? Let me add that sieges like this were enacted by the US just a few years ago when we were fighting Al-Qaeda and ISIS, much less during World War II, when the world didn’t cry out that the US had to give humanitarian aid to Japan or Germany. Is it possible that the surfeit of aid that the world has given to Gaza (they have warehouses full of it) has actually prolonged a war that could be over now, and with the hostages released? (Read the whole short non-Hebrew article about the earlier release of hostages).
*Ceiling Cat help us if Iran gets nuclear weapons. Israel would be a goner, unless Israel struck first. Yet Iran will get the bomb, and it’s infuriated me seeing President after President of the US try to negotiate Iran out of The Bomb, and even believe Iran when it said it had no nuclear ambitions. (How stupid can you get?) A new Free Press article, based on translated Iranian documents, suggests that Iran is closer than we think to having nukes. The evidence is indirect, but you have to be an idiot to think that Iran isn’t working hard to get nukes:
If Iran ever builds a nuclear bomb, then we’ll be living in a drastically more dangerous world. For more than two decades, avoiding that reality has motivated American foreign policy, with decidedly mixed results. Now, recent activities at a secretive office inside Tehran’s Ministry of Defense is stoking fears that we’re far closer to that day than many experts understand.
Two separate documents—about a half dozen pages written in Farsi—obtained by The Free Press reveal how Iran’s parliament, or Majlis, is significantly expanding the funding and military pursuits of the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, known by its Farsi language–based acronym, SPND. The pages of legislation, passed this summer, were downloaded from the parliament’s website, but are being detailed for the first time in the Western press.
While the new Iranian legislation doesn’t specifically mention nuclear bomb development, it clearly states that SPND’s mandate is to produce advanced and nonconventional weapons with no civilian oversight. The legislation, which The Free Press translated, states that “this organization focuses on managing and acquiring innovative, emerging, groundbreaking, high-risk, and superior technologies in response to new and emerging threats.”
The law essentially shields Iran’s defense department from any domestic oversight—while giving it a seemingly unlimited budget, though no specific numbers were given. When Iran’s parliament published the legislation on its website in May, it offered the most detailed accounting yet of SPND’s structure, which was largely kept secret.
. . . . The expansion of SPND outlined in these documents coincides with a shift in the U.S. intelligence community’s view of Iran’s nuclear program. A July report released by the top U.S. intelligence body, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), details how it can no longer verify that Iran’s nuclear pursuits are strictly for civilian purposes. U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials have also detected Iran engaging in computer modeling and metallurgy experiments—possibly through SPND—that could be used in nuclear bomb development, according to people briefed on the classified information.
Some worry Iran could use the Middle East’s instability, and the war in Gaza, as a pretext to further expand its nuclear capabilities—if not make a dash for a bomb.
“One decision [by Tehran] could get them very close to having that nuclear weapon—in which case, so many response options are taken off the table for the United States, for Israel, and for the world,” said Dana Stroul, who served as the Pentagon’s point person on Mideast policy from 2021–2023, at a roundtable in August. She said the ease with which Israel, the U.S., and its allies intercepted a wave of Iranian missiles and drones launched at the Jewish state this past April could steer Iran’s leaders to seek even greater military capabilities.
Iran has claimed, and is still claiming, that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. But who would believe such a lie?
*A print of the most famous photo of Winston Churchill, taken by portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh, was stolen from a hotel in Canada, but some diligent sleuthing recovered it. It’s worth knowing how Karsh got such a great picture, too (see below). Here it is; you’ve surely seen it. He looks like the bulldog he was always depicted as in editorial cartoons.
An excerpt from the NYT:
For three decades, a fierce-looking Winston Churchill, a hand on his hip, stared down guests in a lounge at the Fairmont Château Laurier hotel in Ottawa.
It was a legacy of Yousuf Karsh, the portrait photographer of royalty, politicians, artists, actors and authors who long lived in the hotel and operated his studio there.
Just over two years ago, however, a maintenance worker noticed something wrong. The frame on the portrait didn’t match those of other photos Mr. Karsh had permanently lent the hotel when he and his wife moved out in 1997.
The photo was a decoy, a poor inkjet copy of the print with an ineptly forged signature of Mr. Karsh that had been left behind by a thief.
Now, Churchill’s portrait may end up back in its rightful place.
The Ottawa Police Service said on Wednesday that an international investigation had tracked down the stolen photo in Italy and that it would soon send an officer there to retrieve it.
The police disclosed that a man from a small northern Ontario town was arrested in April and charged with the theft and various other crimes, including forgery.
. . . . The Ottawa hotel told reporters on Wednesday that it would display the portrait again — this time with better security. The area where it hung, along with Mr. Karsh’s portraits of Albert Einstein, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Casals and other notables, is closed for renovation.
And my favorite part of the story, which I knew:
The photograph, which came to be known as “Roaring Lion,” transformed Mr. Karsh from a local portraitist into an internationally known photographer of the famous. It was widely reproduced and appears today on Britain’s five-pound bank notes.
. . . . Mr. Karsh wrote that Churchill would not get rid of his cigar for the photo despite offers of an ashtray. So “without premeditation,” he plucked it out of the British leader’s mouth.
The unintended result was the defiant expression that came to symbolize Britain’s resistance against Nazi Germany.
“By the time I got back to my camera, he looked so belligerent he could have devoured me,” Mr. Karsh wrote. “It was at that instant that I took the photograph.”
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili, who has the easiest life possible, is still kvetching:
Hili: LIfe is a battle.A: With what?Hili: Oh, this and that.
Hili: Życie jest walką.Ja: Z czym?Hili: A to różnie.
*******************
From Luana:
From Cat Memes by Chris Ham:
From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:
Speaking of Iran, it’s still up to no good domestically, too. Killing protestors isn’t enough; now they have to arrest their families:
First, they killed her son for the “crime” of protesting. Now, they’ve arrested the grieving mother of protesting the killing of her beloved son.
As we approach the anniversary of Mahsa (Jina) Amini’s murder, the regime’s fear is palpable.
The Islamic Republic has kidnapped… pic.twitter.com/7oK4xcGqhL— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) September 12, 2024
From Barry, who says “this is a beautiful look”. Indeed! Sound up for the meows.
“The way she looks at me, I can’t”😭 pic.twitter.com/Lnhlh22W1J
— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) September 8, 2024
From my feed. This is absolutely hilarious, but I have no idea what show it’s from. Readers?
This show deserved an Emmy just for this scene alone pic.twitter.com/cHSuaVeXYv
— Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) September 14, 2024
From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:
Ten-year-old French girl gassed to death with Zyklon-B within an hour or so hours after arriving in Auschwitz. https://t.co/Qd5MuWJdwP
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 16, 2024
Two tweets from Professor Cobb. In the first one, I hope they didn’t kill the croc but simply relocated it. It doesn’t deserve to die for doing what natural selection made it do! But read all the horrific things in the thread. As Matthew noted, “Australia is trying to kill you!”
land where ‘tough’ is an understatement..
Australia is not for beginnersa thread
1. The absolute size of this cattle-eating crocodile caught in Australia. pic.twitter.com/D5OVjSumIZ
— Wolf of X (@tradingMaxiSL) September 13, 2024
Little did he know. . . (read the label below the disk):
imagine, you’re a kid working out your maths, you make a mistake, and 4000 years later, it’s in a museum 🙁. pic.twitter.com/hAIlAkJEvQ
— eric lai (@lucksmith) September 15, 2024
The show is ‘Malcolm in the Middle’, a very good one, with Bryan Cranston playing the father, long before he became famous for ‘Breaking Bad’.
I just commented this and there were more comments… I bet I was on the wrong item, so the will be a totalally random comment somewhere on this site. Oops.
Edit: Yup. Oh well, at least you can remove them.
I agree that it was a good show. In the UK it kept being moved in the schedule, which didn’t work too well for video recorders back in the day, so I don’t know if it “jumped the shark” like Happy Days in the end – the early series’ were the very definition of surreal humour.
Yes, I loved that programme.
It’s not President after President, it’s Obama and Biden. Trump out the screws on Iran, but as soon as Biden came in he opened the taps back up again to the tune of billions of dollars. The Iranian government should put up a statue to him.
As for the Trump shooter, do we really not know what his motives were? People talk about Trump’s extremist rhetoric, but no one (in the MSM) talks about how dangerous it is for the President, the Vice-President, members of Congress, and the media to be saying “Trump will end Democracy”. (Which is, by the way, ridiculous. He didn’t last time and he wouldn’t this time. The charge rests on claiming a riot was an insurrection.) It’s almost like they want this to happen. Will no one rid me of this priest?
No, I don’t think we know what his PSYCHOLOGICAL motives are. It’s a good bet that his ultimate motive was to shoot Trump, but we don’t know why. The guy could be all screwed up, he might just want to get attention, and so on. I’m baffled as to why you are so sure what the guy’s motives were, which apparently were to kill someone who wanted to end democracy. Maybe that’s true, but there is no tangible evidence for this save what you THINK were the motives.
I think it’s judicious to wait and see what comes out of the investigation.
It’s not ridiculous to think that Trump and his gang won’t end our democracy. They keep trying to distance themselves from project 2025 but nobody believes them. Every time I take a few minutes to read more of project 2025, the more concerned I am. Today I took a few minutes to read more of it and they actually want to get rid of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting! It’s all online, https://www.project2025.org/truth/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwrp-3BhDgARIsAEWJ6Szd5ctFBvGBqxKTQDUWWZIS5sSoMHhW5n_4BpV1VQH-xx1WED3O9hUaAmEbEALw_wcB
Evidence linking Trump to Project 2025: None.
Why read it? Nobody’s planning to implement it.
Ellen Degeneres : “If you had to be stuck in an elevator with either President Trump, Mike Pence, or Jeff Sessions, who would it be?”
Our Lady of the Immaculate Election Primary : “Does one of us have to come out alive?”
At ~10:22 in this apparently 2018 interview : youtu.be/g2qhDUVsghM?si=kPFy5_piaBfZL-ax
J.D. Vance said school shootings are just a fact of life. Perhaps the same can be said of attempts on Trump’s life. Maybe the GOP should sponsor a “Save Trump from Assassination Attempts Gun Reform” bill?
JD Vance said, “What is going to solve this problem? And I really do believe this is, look, I, I don’t like this. I don’t like to admit this. I don’t like that this is a fact of life. But if you’re, if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets, and we have got to bolster security at our schools so that a person who walks through the front door … we, we’ve got to bolster security so that if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they’re not able to.”
Hopefully the additional context is useful.
I, for one, do not love guacamole or anything to do with avocado.
THAT makes you even stranger than I know you to be, ha ha. Hey! We all have our things. Bananas are mine. I love the flavor, just can’t get past that consistency. Plus, there was a kid in elementary school used to chew up a big bite of that nasty yellow/off white fruit, chew it up and open his mouth to gross out all the girls. It worked!
Re a siege of Gaza.
The humanitarian law of armed conflict imagines that there are masses of civilians completely uninvolved in a conflict between two military factions duking it out and that it is simple to distinguish all three parties. Humanitarian aid (defined only as food, water, and medicine, nothing else) carried in unarmed transport bound for those clearly defined uninvolved civilians cannot be interdicted or stolen by the military factions. They must allow it safe passage through territory that either controls so that it reaches the innocent civilians caught up in a conflict not of their making. (Of course, neither military actor need provide or transport the aid itself. If the Red Cross or another NGO won’t step up, that is not our problem, says the military. We have other things on our plate.)
This idealized formulation doesn’t apply in Gaza (or probably anywhere.) First, the civilians have been militarized by Hamas — voluntarily, enthusiastically or not, doesn’t matter — and have thereby lost all the automatic protections civilians otherwise enjoy. The IDF shouldn’t, and doesn’t, kill them gratuitously but if it needs to kill them it can, and does. In a siege with a militarily legitimate goal, the same rules apply. If Israel discovers that Hamas is stealing the food for its own use and selling the remainder it can interdict the aid as part of starving Hamas. Civilian privation that results is no different from when they are used as human shields. Besides, hungry people are more likely to revolt and demand that their military warders surrender to the besiegers (who promise food that Hamas denies) than to simply lie down and die.
This was the rationale for unrestricted submarine warfare Germany and the United States carried out during the Second World War.* Even if a submarine had taken the suicidal risk of surfacing in the middle of an escorted convoy to stop a ship, boarded it, verified it was carrying only cans of SPAM and not incendiary bombs, and allowed it to proceed, how was the sub’s skipper or even the ship’s master to know that the meat was going to feed British children and not the aircrews of bombers incinerating German cities? Or to feed sailors who were going to try to sink the very submarine discussing this conundrum out in the Atlantic? And even if the meat got to the orphanages, would it just not free up other food to feed the military? It was all one seaborne supply chain. That’s what total war just is.
Natasha Hernsdorff has said that most countries observe most international law most of the time, which is all anyone can expect as a way of reducing transaction costs in the intercourse among nations. A siege of Gaza would be one of those exceptions if the military value is compelling, (to Israel.)
——————————
* It was only a war crime when Germany did it.
I’ve squeezed my last avocado. Never again. I’ve not made guacamole, but shall try soon!
So much to discuss that I can’t comment on it all, so I’ll make a meta-comment/question.
Israel is now fighting a war against Iran along five fronts: with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi’s in Yemen, the Palestinians in the West Bank (possibly Iranian-influenced), and with Iran itself. Yet Israel’s friends are conditioning their help, adding considerable friction to its efforts to defend itself. The entire world has watched Iran inch ever closer to a nuclear weapon over the past two decades. Will the civilized world continue to dither in inaction until Iran inevitably develops such a weapon? Will the civilized world act even then, when it becomes a menace not just to Israel but to the world itself? Or is Israel truly alone, as Bernard Henri Levy argues in his new book?
I have only questions, no answers, but all I am seeing so far from the great democratic powers is watchful waiting, with Israel serving as the canary in the coal mine. Are they waiting for the canary to die?
My answer would be “yes”. Several countries, most recently Germany, have cut off or slowed down military aid to Israel, and the US is no exception. The US and Germany happen to be the biggest suppliers of military material to Israel. Why would they taper it off?
While most people dismissed Trump as a raving fool during the debate, his opining that “Israel will not exist within two years” if Harris were to be president was not entirely crazy when you consider where Iran is with its nuclear program. I just revisited the transcript and, sure enough, in Trump’s stream-of-consciousness and argument-via-juxtaposition sort of way, he connected that statement to Iran.
“She hates Israel. If she’s president, I believe that Israel will not exist within two years from now. And I’ve been pretty good at predictions. And I hope I’m wrong about that one. She hates Israel. At the same time in her own way she hates the Arab population because the whole place is going to get blown up, Arabs, Jewish people, Israel. Israel will be gone. It would have never happened. Iran was broke under Donald Trump.” He goes on from there talking about the chaos sown by Iran in the Middle East, without ever closing the argument by asserting that it is Iran who he believes will blow the whole place up.
Can a nuclear-armed Iran be deterred, or does its ideologically and religiously-motivated hatred for Israel introduce new considerations into the traditional deterrence calculations? Whatever else one can say in criticism of Trump—and the ROOLZ do not allow a list of such length—I will say that he has a better sense of how men with power behave—and misbehave—in the world than does much of our establishment class. They are far too stuck in that WEIRD mentality of the Western, educated, industrialized, rich democracies. They can barely understand the working-class in their own countries, let alone the religious fanatics who despise the West.
I’m sure a President Harris would continue the lenient attitude to Iran. It mystifies me. The Ayatollahs do get people to chant “Death to America.”
Speaking of news, Ceiling Cat might want to see this: https://x.com/sciam/status/1835720861657305557?s=46