Today is the cruelest day: Tuesday, March 3, 2026, and National Pancake Day (free pancakes at IHOP). Here are two versions I’ve had: a blue-corn blueberry pancake with piñon nuts served in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and a cherry pancake with sour cream I ate in Gdańsk, Poland. The world has a great variety of pancakes!
It’s also 33 Flavor Days, celebrating the anniversary of Baskin-Robbins, Canadian Bacon Day, National Cold Cuts Day, National Moscow Mule Day (an excellent drink when made properly), National Mulled Wine Day (ditto), World Wildlife Day, National Anthem Day (“The Star-Spangled Banner became America’s official anthem on this day in 1931), and Purim, the Jewish holiday commemorating the saving of the Jews from annihiliation by Queen Esther (you may remember our last pair of ducks named Esther and Mordecai, who produced a brood of six that fledged last year). Here is the pair. As I posted yesterday, we have a new pair of mallards that are not Esther and Mordecai.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 2 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Trump is sending more U.S. troops to the Middle East and now predicts a more extended war: a month or more. (Article archived here.)
The Pentagon said on Monday that more U.S. forces were headed to the Middle East, amid reports that President Trump declined to rule out sending ground troops into Iran and promised that still bigger waves of airstrikes against that country were coming, in further signs of an expanding, lasting war.
In his first public event since the strikes in Iran began on Saturday, Mr. Trump predicted the attacks against “this sick and sinister regime” would go on for at least a month. “Right from the beginning we projected four to five weeks, but we have the capability to go far longer than that,” Mr. Trump said at the White House. “We’ll do it.”
Listing his objectives, Mr. Trump said, “We’re destroying Iran’s missile capability, and we’re doing that hourly.” He added that the strikes were “annihilating their navy” and ensuring that Iran “can never obtain a nuclear weapon,” and that the country cannot continue to sponsor militant groups across the Middle East.
Internationally, he claimed, “everybody was behind us, they just didn’t have the courage to say so.”
Qatar’s ministry of defense said its air force had shot down two Su-24 bombers coming from Iran, the first report that Iran, which has fired missiles and drones at its Gulf neighbors and Israel in retaliation for the Israeli-U.S. assault, had also sent warplanes into their airspace. President Trump spoke about the war at the White House in his first public event since the strikes began.
Jake Tapper of CNN reported that Mr. Trump had told him in a phone call on Monday that the huge U.S. and Israeli airstrikes against Iran that began early Saturday could soon intensify. “We haven’t even started hitting them hard, the big wave hasn’t even happened,” Mr. Trump said, according to CNN. “The big one is coming soon.”
And the New York Post reported that the president had said in an interview: “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground — like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it.”
Now in his objectives he doesn’t even mention the Iranian people or regime change, while his announcement of the attack added that the Iranian government was now there for the people to take. He may now have realized that the other objectives are easier to attain. He also apparently remarked that he’s not ruling out U.S. “boots on the ground.” That would thrown American opinion wholly against the war—once body bags start coming back to the U.S. At least he has listed a few attainable objectives, but preventing a nuclear weapon for all time? That would require regime change.
*Over at the Free Press, Elliot Ackerman makes “The case against the war.”
. . . President Trump’s strategy of regime change relies on Iranian citizens returning to the streets. Once our air strikes cease, Trump has urged those everyday Iranians to “take over your government,” telling them in a video on Saturday that “this will be probably your only chance for generations.”
We’ve seen regime change before, but not like this. In the lead-up to the Iraq War, then–Secretary of State Colin Powell evoked what’s sometimes called the Pottery Barn Rule: You break it, you own it. Trump’s strategy rejects that logic. Trump’s rule is: We break it, you own it. His message to the Iranian people is clear: Our obligation does not extend past the opportunity we’ve provided for you to topple your regime and replace it with something better.
Trump has already employed a version of this strategy in Venezuela—except in Iran, he’s pushing this strategy to the limit, using it in a high-stakes region, one with a longer and deeper history of resentment toward the United States. In an interview on Sunday, the president said that he would be open to talks with Iran’s post-Khamenei leadership. Perhaps he’ll cut a deal with the ayatollahs, much as he’s done in Venezuela with the government of Delcy Rodríguez. If Trump and the new Iranian regime fail to strike a deal, that leaves only one pathway for success. The regime must topple.
But will the ayatollahs go quietly? Will it be possible for popular street protests to displace violent regime hard-liners? The specter of further American air strikes makes it unlikely that the regime can again repress its people through slaughter on a scale like in January. But what if a significant number of Iranian citizens reject the demands made by protesters? What if the regime still maintains real, durable support? The Arab Spring offers several dire examples of popular protests for democracy mutating into deadly civil wars, chief among them the decade-long civil war in Syria. A civil war in Iran on the scale of Syria would be catastrophic.
. . .If the operation in Iran remains limited, swift, and successful, like the operation in Venezuela, these objections may amount to little. But the enemy always gets a say in war. Already, three U.S. service members have been killed as a result of our strikes. Should the Iranian regime continue its fight against the United States, a key part of their strategy will be to inflict maximum U.S. casualties. This could quickly erode an already fragile base of support for the war.
Trump has made himself particularly susceptible to such a strategy. He has yet to really sell this war to the American people. He didn’t seek congressional approval for the war or make his case in a national address as presidents have often done. Likely, Trump would say this was because he wanted to maintain the element of surprise, but interacting with Congress and the American people aren’t niceties. They are necessities. War is fundamentally a political act. A president who doesn’t wage politics while also waging war may find himself quickly losing a war on the home front, particularly in a republic.
Yes, these are good questions and valid concerns. Civil war, or war of the people versus the military, would be horrific. All this is in the air. Do these considerations mean that the U.S. and Israel should not have attacked Iran? How can we know without a crystal ball?
*Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has started up again (Hezbollah broke the cease fire, agreement which it’s been doing sporadically), and Lebanon has pledged to stop Hezbollah’s fighting after Israel killed a big Hezbollah official. From the Times of Israel:
Israel said Monday that the head of Hezbollah’s intelligence arm was killed in an overnight strike and Beirut said it would ban the terror group’s military activities, hours after the Iran-backed organization fired rockets and drones at Israel, leading to major retaliatory strikes.
The IDF confirmed that the overnight strike in the Lebanese capital killed Hussein Makled, whom it called “the head of Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters.”
The military said Makled was responsible for “forming the intelligence picture using various intelligence collection tools to provide the Hezbollah terror organization with intelligence assessments regarding IDF troops and the State of Israel.”
“He also closely cooperated with senior commanders in Hezbollah who planned and advanced terror attacks against Israel and its citizens,” the military added.
The terror group’s overnight attacks — which it said were in retaliation for the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei in the opening minutes of the joint Israeli-US assault on Iran on Saturday — led to waves of Israeli airstrikes across Lebanon, including in the capital.
. . . In a statement after a cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Lebanon rejected any military actions launched from its territory “outside the framework of its legitimate institutions and affirmed that the decision of war and peace is exclusively in its hands.”
This “necessitates the immediate prohibition of all Hezbollah’s security and military activities as being outside the law, and obliging it to hand over its weapons to the Lebanese state,” he said.
Salam ordered the military and security agencies to take “immediate measures” to implement the cabinet decision and prevent “any military operation or the launching of missiles or drones from Lebanese territory.”
*There are now twelve countries involved in the Middle East conflict, and Iran seems to have made a big misstep in attacking its Arab neighbors.
The Iranian regime, decapitated in the first hours of the U.S.-Israeli campaign that started on Saturday, has responded by striking at least nine countries across the Middle East, unleashing a truly regional war.
The apparent calculation was that, by targeting rich Persian Gulf monarchies that hold sway with the Trump administration, Tehran could force Washington and Israel into a rapid de-escalation.
Iran’s expectation was that, by squeezing oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and disrupting air traffic, it would cause unbearable pain to the Gulf nations that depend so much on expatriate workers, tourism and overseas trade.
So far, this calculus seems to have backfired. Gulf states, rattled by volleys of Iranian drones and missiles targeting their hotels, ports and airports, are concluding the Iranian peril must be confronted. Rather than seeking an offramp, the prevailing mood in the Gulf—at least for now—is that the Iranian regime can’t be allowed to get away with this unprecedented onslaught on its neighbors.
“Iran is coming to the countries and people of the Gulf and saying: ‘You know, I am actually your number-one threat.’ This has long-term implications, regardless of whoever is actually in power in Iran,” Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the United Arab Emirates president, said in an interview. “Targeting Gulf states is completely irrational, and very shortsighted.”
Iran has struck all six of the oil-rich Gulf Arab states, including Oman, which had mediated nuclear talks between Tehran and the Trump administration. It also hit Jordan, Iraq and Israel. At first, all the Gulf states publicly opposed the U.S.-Israeli assault on the Iranian regime, which has already resulted in the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the killing of many Iranian military and intelligence commanders.
The mood changed quickly once the brunt of the Iranian response targeted cities such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the U.A.E., Doha in Qatar, and Manama in Bahrain, inflicting widespread damage to infrastructure and civilian casualties. In the U.A.E. alone, Iran killed three people and injured 58 after firing 165 ballistic missiles and 541 drones, most of which have been intercepted, according to the Defense Ministry.
“Many people in the Gulf woke up Saturday pissed off at the United States and Israel, and went to sleep pissed off at Iran,” said William Wechsler, director of Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council in Washington and a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense.
Reading the news about the Middle East is an emotionally exhausting experience, as news like this seems good: Iran has alienated neighboring Islamic countries, and hasn’t advanced its aims by attacking them. I wondered what the deuce was going on when Iran started bombing civilian targets in those states, a blatantly stupid move. But of course the people of Iran remain under the thumb of the theocracy, and there’s no sign that they’ll “take control” of their government (how could they?), nor that the regime will stop its drive to get a bomb. This is an emotional roller-coaster for many of us Jews, but imagine how distressed and confused the Iranian people are!
*Finally, a small WaPo poll (1,003 people texted) show that Americans generally oppose the strikes on Iran.
More Americans oppose the strikes than support them, the flash poll found. Perceptions of Trump’s goals vary widely, though a clear majority say his administration has not clearly explained them. Still, about half think the U.S. military’s actions will contribute to long-term U.S. security.
The survey was conducted Sunday between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Eastern, coinciding with reports that three American soldiers were killed and five others were seriously wounded.
The results (note the potential bias: only people with cellphones that can accept texts could answer:
There are several questions; here’s one more:
Three-quarters of Americans are concerned about the possibility of a full-scale war with Iran, including 40 percent who are “very concerned.” Those worries are similar to a Post poll after the U.S. and Israel struck Iran’s nuclear facilities in June. Today, about half of Republicans (51 percent) say they are at least somewhat concerned about a full-scale war, rising to 80 percent of independents and 93 percent of Democrats.
I’m in the “somewhat” column here:
Trump needs to keep in touch with the American people more often and more explicitly. I think he should hold a press conference in which he actually responds to questions. If he keeps his own counsel or keeps changing the timeline, he’ll lose much more support from America.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili needs her body fed before her soul. And Szaron shows that he is clearly an educated cat.
Szaron: Have you read Plato’s “The Symposium”?
Hili: No, but I could eat something too.
In Polish:
Szaron: Czytałaś „Ucztę” Platona?
Hili: Nie, ale też bym coś zjadła.
*******************
Fromn Cats Doing Cat Stuff:
From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices; short people closure!
From Stacy, whose caption is: “Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. It’s been going on all day. The boulevard was shut down. Notice the flags. 
“
From Masih: Two Iranian women blinded by the regime, and still defiant! Kudos for the brave women of Iran.
To those who call themselves anti-war in the West: Look at these two women.
They were unarmed. They protested the killing of Mahsa Jina Amini for not wearing appropriate hijab and the regime answered with bullets aimed at their eyes.They wear the scars of a dictatorship that… pic.twitter.com/SaRzjUWIdn
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 2, 2026
Also from Stacy, a sarcastic post put up by Peter Boghassian:
But Cenk gave some plaudits to the late Ayatollah. Oy!
I criticized Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei a thousand times. He was oppressing his own people and preventing democracy. But there’s one thing you can’t take away from him, he died on his own two feet, instead of kneeling to Israel. That took courage. He didn’t bow.
— Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) March 1, 2026
Yep, the Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Chicago is back—not just supporting Iran, but celebrating its striking a U.S. base. As usual, they are without a moral compass. They are merely against America and the West.
The Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at the University of Chicago is celebrating Iranian missiles hitting a U.S. Navy base in Bahrain. They included an upside-down triangle🔻—a symbol Hamas uses to denote targets
CC @FBIDirectorKash @EDSecMcMahon @HarmeetKDhillon pic.twitter.com/gjAMk2iPxa
— Jessica Costescu (@JessicaCostescu) March 1, 2026
From my feed: Cuteness quadrupled. I visited this breeding center when I visited Chengdu.
Adorable baby pandas on their morning run in Chengdu, China.pic.twitter.com/xH8tYwTGJH
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) March 2, 2026
One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
A Norwegian Jewish woman and her young son were gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz, part of the 53% of the train’s occupants that were killed immediately. https://t.co/eXMl76OWPL
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) March 3, 2026
And two from Dr. Cobb. First, an amazing proto-whale skeleton (a transitional form) found in Egypt. See the video in the original post.
37 million years old whale spine found in the hot dunes of Egypt. This is a complete skeleton, the first-ever find for Basilosaurus, a large, predatory, prehistoric archaeocete whale uncovered in Wadi El Hitan, preserved with the remains of its prey.Original post
— Massimo (mirror) (@rainmaker1973-m.bsky.social) 2026-03-01T15:47:35.478Z
Juvenilia from the bollard site:
Grow up.#WorldBollardAssociation
— World Bollard Association™️ (@worldbollardassoc.bsky.social) 2026-02-28T22:27:16.478Z
One more link that may be of interest to readers: ward carroll (retired naval aviator) hosted sal mercogliano (former merchant mariner) in a videocast yesterday which in first 10-15 minutes, after brief discussion of the three strike eagles shot down, includes updates and background on shipping through Strait of Hormuz. Good visuals and information as of mid-day march 2. Url should be
I asked Claude ai why Tuesday was the cruelest day:
It’s simply a running joke by Jerry Coyne, the blog’s author! Every Tuesday, Coyne opens his daily “Hili dialogue” post with the phrase “Welcome to Tuesday… the Cruelest Day.” It’s his own personal, tongue-in-cheek label for Tuesdays — not derived from any broader cultural saying. It’s just part of his signature blogging style and humor that regular WEIT readers have come to expect.
Nope. It’s derived from the first line of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”.
You mean it’s a variant? The Waste Land I know has “April is the cruellest month”.
Yes, a variant meant to show that Tuesday may be the week’s most dispiriting day. AI doesn’t know everything!
A BIRTHDAY THOUGHT Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus. -Alexander Graham Bell, inventor (:
663 Mar 1847-1922)
Two mothers each had a son named Raymond. As time went by the mothers established a cattle ranch for the boys. They named it ‘Focus’ because that is where the sons raise meat. A triple pun!
The suggestion that Iran could develop in to a civil war between the government and the people, such as what happened in Syria, is unlikely. In the latter case, Assad’s government was aided by Hezbollah and Iranian forces, which helped him massacre his own people. There are no forces in the region likely to prop up the government of the mullahs. If they want to suppress a popular uprising, they will have to do it themselves. If the Revolutionary guards can be suppressed, the ranks in the army may well back the people.
Yes Starwolf, indeed. I think the Libya model is scary though. And consider Libya is one of the most culturally/socially uniform/cohesive countries in the M.E. – they’re all Sunni… well… Libyans from west to east.
Unlike very multi-cultural Iran which has MANY different peoples.
So that’s a factor in a possible break up and a worrying one.
D.A.
NYC
Well, I can’t see the Wapo article on the poll, so I can’t see how they chose their sample. It’s been shown repeatedly, though, that press outlets polls seem to follow their bias.
And that whale skeleton is misidentified. It’s clearly a Krayt Dragon.
The Washington Post article is archived here: https://archive.ph/cFiik
A BIRTHDAY THOUGHT Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus. -Alexander Graham Bell, inventor (:
663 Mar 1847-1922)
“Students for Justice in…” (sigh). Those upside down red triangles that group are so fond of (as “targets”) always amuse me. In Japan you see that symbol on windows in a line down most buildings. They mean “fire window” (which means it can open).
Paltards are appropriating Japanese fire prevention culture!
Idiots.
D.A.
NYC
It baffles me that Trump is even having this war.
Despite his many significant flaws and unsuitability to even be president, Trump had been quite canny about staying out of wars. Wars abroad are associated with the political down-turn of presidencies in the recent past, and I thought he knew better to just stay the hell away from them.
I’m glad he’s doing it, and many Iranians the world over are too.
Yes Doug, there’s a difference between a long, bleeding occupation like Iraq/Afgh verses a “shake up” like Venezuela (a good idea I think) and this, which has lesser downside potential (for us) and a lot of possible upside for Iranians and the world.
A bigger picture of this though, is the China situation. As much as we can degrade the Axis of Ill Will (Nial Ferguson), the better.
We never, EVER want to take on China, but there is a competition, a cold-ish war on and the further we can keep them from Taiwan and other adventures, the better.
D.A.
NYC
Anything new on the girls-school bombing? There was some thought that it was an errant Iranian rocket.
It seems that the Iranian rocket theory was mistaken: https://newlinesmag.com/running-notes/investigation-debunks-claims-irgc-bombed-iranian-school/
I keep watching the news but there’s nothing definitive yet.
“But Cenk gave some plaudits to the late Ayatollah. Oy!”
Cenk Uygur is a “political activist” that has been existing in the commentary ecosystem for some time now, and for the life of me I can’t understand why. He’s an oafish, boorish lump of a man, devoid of any charisma or insight, and has lost every debate I’ve ever seen him participate in (usually culminating in him shouting incoherently at his interlocuter). There doesn’t seem to be anything there that would translate into making a living by thinking and talking about politics, or anything else for that matter. Watching him try to be a public figure is like watching a moose try to climb a tree.
He’s yet another one of these folks that make me wonder “Who is funding you? You are obviously just a mouthpiece for some nefarious organization.”
I can’t understand why anyone would listen to him.
Perhaps it is because intelligence, like so many phenomena in this world is distributed in a Gaussian manner. People at the extreme ends of the distribution are relatively rare. And when someone observes a person at the extreme ends lower end of the distribution, like this Cenk Uygur fella, it is like observing a rare creature.
Another aspect of this is that it is always reassuring for stupid people to know that there is someone on the spectrum whose stupidity exceeds theirs, giving them the warm feeling that they are not the worst dumbass in the room.
“Do these considerations mean that the U.S. and Israel should not have attacked Iran? How can we know without a crystal ball?”
You can’t know without a crystal ball. Target your adversary’s military capabilities and its will. The decapitation strikes were the initial salvo in the latter, but the former is easier to control, especially when facing an inferior force. This is why the Administration is focused on three core objectives: 1) eliminating the ballistic missile threat, 2) sinking the Iranian navy, and 3) destroying what remains of the nuclear program. These are the chief capabilities that can threaten us, commerce, and Iran’s neighbors. Now that enemy air defenses appear mostly neutralized, you will see the target set expand.
If you can destroy fielded capabilities and production facilities, then the adversary’s will doesn’t matter. In other words, regime change is not a core military objective—and circumstances might leave the Iranians to go it alone. If a new and hostile regime starts reconstituting its military force, then you go back and destroy it again. We contained Saddam Hussein for over a decade; forward air power presence and “mowing the lawn” sufficed before the ill-considered invasion in 2003. That debacle is what one gets when academics and policy wonks who like “endgames” have too much influence.
Political plans are a different matter from military. Would the Administration like to see a regime change? Of course. But between the start of a war and the successful installation of a new regime, there are a million unanswered—and largely unanswerable—questions. That doesn’t mean that planning is irrelevant. Planning provides the brainstorming and the preparation for a litany of possibilities, most of which will never happen, others which will have been unforeseen. What matters is the capacity—both mentally and materially—to assess situations as they change and to rapidly shift course if a window of opportunity opens. Rigid planners who fear charges of inconsistency and loathe uncertainty do not belong in this business. And while people might not like to hear it, Trump’s abilities to thrive in chaos of his making, turn on a dime, and to be decisive are strengths in this setting.
But, like with every person, one’s strengths can also be their greatest weaknesses. A leadership team needs balance; I think Marco Rubio and General Dan Caine provide that without bringing substantive weakness to the conference table.
“Planning provides the brainstorming and the preparation for a litany of possibilities, most of which will never happen, others which will have been unforeseen. What matters is the capacity—both mentally and materially—to assess situations as they change and to rapidly shift course if a window of opportunity opens. Rigid planners who fear charges of inconsistency and loathe uncertainty do not belong in this business.”
This is very well written and could apply to many situations in life. Many of us would do well to heed this as we confront the threat?/opportunity?/who knows what? of AI in the coming years.
You are right. Trump needs to employ a full court press to explain to the American people why we are in Iran. So far, the operation seems to be going well, but there is a huge risk that the U.S. will end the conflict prematurely, leaving military assets and infrastructure in place, and leaving the regime intact.
The Presidents remarks yesterday did not mention regime change as part of the strategy. I have heard others talk about regime “collapse” instead of regime “change” under the idea that the U.S. will collapse the leadership, but that it’s up to the Iranian people to execute the regime “change.”
The administration is rightly sensitive to the prospect of getting involved with long-term “nation building,” which indeed might be a quagmire, but to truly end Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, we really do need regime “change.”
Why does the president need to ask for support from the American people? He needs to do this in order to reduce the pressure on the administration to end the Iran operation quickly. We want it to end quickly, but not too quickly. The administration needs enough time to remove all military and IRGC assets, and potentially to remove the theocracy from power.
I agree with you, Norman.
“… it’s up to the Iranian people to execute the regime “change.””
30,000 or more were just killed, and at least 100,000 injured trying to do just that – all stopped by soldiers stationed on street corners with machine guns. Why are we not parachuting tons of guns and ammo to areas that we know are anti-regime to at least give them a fighting chance?
And why the reluctance to embrace regime change as a worthy goal? 47 years of terrorism, repression, murder, bad faith negotiating, and international destabilization is not long enough for people? Perhaps we should wait until one of the 11 nuclear bombs worth of enriched uranium the Islamic Republic brags about retaining is used to obliterate a US city or Tel Aviv before we take our gloves off?
Is there some ordained rule inscribed in diamonds with gold filagree somewhere that proscribes regime change even when we are talking about fundamentalist Jihadi terrorist lunatics with nuclear bombs and hypersonic missiles?
Jeezum Crow.
Without regime change, what’s the point? In Venezuela, Trump found a Maduro government official who would divert oil sales toward the US.
First, what are the chances of finding a new Iranian regime from the old that will cooperate? They’re religious fanatics, not Maduro types.
Second, even Venezuela, there’s been little improvement to the lot of the average person.
Norman, I understand the desire to take the case to the American people. I agree. But I will also offer this: The degree to which history will vindicate the wisdom of major military action is inversely correlated with U.S. public support leading into or at the outset of major hostilities. This is by no means an infallible measure—the 1991 Gulf War being a minor conflict yet major exception—but it’s a good rule of thumb going back to the Revolution.
Roger, which “Iranian people” would you like to arm? (We’ll set aside how well that worked in Afghanistan and Syria.) Would it be the Kurds? The Azeris? The Baluchis? Primarily Persians, maybe? And ignore the ethnic strife? What about the ones affiliated with MEK? The monarchists? Other secularists? Dissident elements within the current ruling class? What about the rural populations who support the theocracy? How would you deal with them?
Regime change is a beautiful notion in theory. We snap our fingers, the bad guys are gone, and we all live happily ever after. Let’s see how things play out as more of the inner circle dies. A sense of imminent death has a way of focusing the mind, exploiting preexisting animosities among the leadership class, and shattering what little trust might have existed. Norman is correct. Regime collapse will suffice—but it will bring its own problems if refugees pour out of the country and warring factions battle for control. I’m greatly looking forward to seeing Turkey and Iraq respond as the Kurds start to march.
As I said earlier, if you destroy the military capability, it really doesn’t matter who controls the ruins. I know the humanitarian crowd will cringe at that naked realist view, but blowing things up is easy. It’s bringing people together that’s hard. Once U.S. Democrats and Republicans can sit down to dinner with each other without disgust, I’ll trust their judgment on building bridges in other cultures.
“Roger, which “Iranian people” would you like to arm?”
I told you – the ones who are anti-regime. That would be the secular (bare) plurality who were doing the dying recently, who are not anything like the people in Syria or Afghanistan. It would also include swathes of the police, the military and lower echelons of the IRGC, who are not out killing people at the moment, and some of which have joined the resistance.
The further you get from those who hold the reins of power, the less support for the regime you see, according to the experts. The fact that they were barely eking it out economically helps, and they are not even being paid of late.
Let the people who are trying to overthrow the lunatics decide who to arm. There is a window of opportunity that should not be squandered, and I, for one, can not see why arming the secular faction that wants Iran to rejoin the Democratic society of nations is a bad idea in any scenario.
On the lighter side, I am delighted to see pancake day. My strong preference is for just plain, unadorned buckwheat with a healthy pat of butter on top and dark maple syrup. These pancakes bring back memories of my comfortable 50’s U.S. childhood and my father cooking them on a saturday morning. He only did pancakes and waffles on the griddle and of course hamburgers on the grill.
I look forward to the comfort of making buckwheat pancakes for breakfast this weekend.
Yum.
Blueberry pancakes at the North Rim Lodge overlooking the Grand Canyon. Maple syrup, of course.
Please don’t forget the side of hash browns. They made the real thing there.
Share the view with the hummingbirds. Too bad my pictures of them were lost long ago, or I would be able to digitize them and send them to Jerry.
Of course, last time I had that meal there was some decades ago. Things may have changed since then…
I prefer bacon over hash browns with pancakes. But by all means dark maple syrup!
Well, then your preferences are better suited to Israeli breakfasts than mine. There are many non-kosher restaurants where bacon can be found, but I have not found any place that serves hash browns.
I’m not sure, if Iran has targeted civilians in its neighboring states deliberately. Jamming and spoofing can cause drones and missiles to miss.
Iran is targeting oil infrastructure though, which the gulf states will use it to side with the stronger side.
There is a real possibility for the Iranian regime to outlast the epic fury, since Trump is more sensitive to political pain.
See…”reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:”
Perhaps you have names right there for the 2 ducks lounging around in the pond.
Eva and Harry.
Good point. I agree with that.