All I can say is “WTF,” or rather the words it stands for. If you’ll recall, when Trump announced the American attack on Iran, he implied that our intervention would lead to regime change and freedom for the oppressed Iranian people: He said to those people: “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.” Since then he’s been canny about regime change, never explicitly saying that it’s one of the goals of the war.
Nevertheless, Trump’s repeated assertions that there has already been regime change implies further that this was a goal. But his statement is mendacious, for he simply means that by assassinating the Ayatollah and his son, there’s new leadership in Iran. That’s true, but the new leader of Iran is a hard-liner who clearly wants to carry on with the theocracy.
Perhaps because I read Masih Alinejad’s X feed every day, and have been doing so for years, I am desperate to see her aspirations met: democracy in Iran and an end to religious control of the government and violent oppression of dissidents and protestors.
Now, however, Trump is not only canny about that goal, but seems to have repudiated it. If he bombs all of Iran’s infrastructure, as he’s threatened to do, that is an attack on the people of Iran. It also won’t endear us to the people, most of whom previously wanted U.S. intervention to promote freedom. The lates report from the WSJ says this:
Here’s an excerpt bit from the WSJ, followed by Trump’s proclamation on Truth Social:
President Trump escalated his aggressive rhetoric toward Iran, threatening to wipe out the entirety of the country’s civilization if Tehran doesn’t cede to his demands by 8 p.m. Tuesday. “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Note his bogus claim that “we have Complete and total Regime Change”, with “less radicalized” people in charge. That’s a baldfaced lie.
More from the WSJ:
Trump’s message marks an escalation of his aggressive rhetoric toward Tehran. He has threatened to strike all of Tehran’s power plants and bridges. Under international law, the military is allowed to strike civilian power plants and other key infrastructure only if it contributes to a military operation and civilian harm is minimized.
Under international law, the military is allowed to strike civilian power plants and other key infrastructure only if it contributes to a military operation and civilian harm is minimized.
This could of course simply be posturing: Trump’s unused strategy of blustering and making threats he has no intention to carry out—a way to force Iran to sign on to a ceasefire. We don’t know. But if the “extortion, corruption, and death” will finally end, so will the hopes of the Iranian people and those of us who want to see them living free.
We’ll see what happens this evening.
My prediction (based on no evidence) is that JD Vance was hoping to make it through the midterms and then have Trump removed. This way Vance would finish out the term, it wouldn’t count towards his two terms, and the GOP wipeout that everyone predicts Trump would be blamed for would cushion any backlash. Perhaps it would even be seen as courageous .Everyone on Earth can see Trump’s brain melting away and the irony of having complained about Biden’s cognitive abilities while simultaneously ignoring (or enabling) Trump’s own dementia would be lost of no one.
Of course, that timeline might have to be fast-forwarded now.
Wow. That’s quite the prediction!
Donald Trump is not demented. That’s not how demented people act or talk. He might have something else wrong with him — I confess to being curious about it — but assuming that he is speaking the way he is out of dementia will lead to an incorrect prediction of what he will do. If you want to say he is “demented” in the same way that school-children insult one another by calling them “retarded”, or that some insult trans activists by calling them “groomers”, OK, fine. I’ll leave you to it.
Do be wary of medicalizing behaviour you don’t like by insulting people you don’t like with medical terms that don’t mean what you think they mean.
(I have no idea what was wrong with Joe Biden’s faculties, either.)
I agree. Trump is not demented in the sense of Alzheimer’s disease. His behavior really hasn’t changed qualitatively since he entered politics. He’s acted like a person with antisocial/narcissistic personality disorder for decades. One possible reason for the seeming escalation in unhinged ranting is that he is experiencing less external controls on his behavior. Indeed, his consiglieres could even be egging him on. Now, if in the future it turns out that he suffered from some illness that affected his brain, I would not be surprised. The simplest explanation, however, is that this is his lifelong pathological behavior sans guardrails.
And if you are ever going to hang him for crimes, you have to be sure he wasn’t a half-wit at times.
My comment was intended to be a conspiracy theory aimed at why people, specifically our supposedly very intelligent VP, who should know better continue to placate and enable Trump, so I won’t make too much hay over the turn that the conversation took, except to say:
1) I have no ethical concerns about “medicalizing” his behavior. In fact, I think that it should be done when people talk about politics and political motivations because it is how lay-people THINK and therefore how they ACT. Nobody should be expected to adhere to an ALWD style guide on how to have conversations. 2) He’s demented and it’s as plain as day. He is absolutely worse that he was last term, which was absolutely worse than 10 years before that. Go to YouTube. Watch some old videos. Watch his rally speeches. This is way beyond “he has fewer guardrails” (which he does, but that doesn’t make him less demented). 3) Maybe he isn’t demented. Maybe he got shot thought the head with a railroad iron and nobody told us. It doesn’t matter. The outcome is the same.
What I see is reduction in his vocabulary, which wasn’t very sophisticated to begin with, and what seem to be lower inhibitions, more than would be expected for a normal person his age. What would be the best name for that? Senility?
I like your optimism. I’ve considered this a best-plausible-case outcome.
IMO:
The Don is a winner-identifying loser, a “transwinner”. His identity delusion is no less existential than a TRA’s. He will not, can not, accept that he is a loser in any respect. So far he has managed to blame others for his many personal, business, and political failures. Now that he is running out of runway in Iran, as indicated by the steadily decreasing intervals between his “deadlines”, he must do something soon to flaunt his winnings. Being a shameless bully he will use any means necessary. In his existential struggle he will destroy anything and anyone rather than accept defeat. He will not, can not, stop himself.
Either Vance will replace him, the military will mutiny, or he will indeed unleash hell on Iran (plausibly even tactical nukes). Go Vance, preferably by due process.
Even if Trump is posturing, his eruptions are reckless. His lack of impulse control is a big problem, and one can only hope that adult conversations are taking place behind the scenes. Even so, the world has little choice but to take his words seriously. I wish someone would take away his social media privileges. Unfortunately, he owns the company.
Well, tonight IS TACO Tuesday! I guess we’ll find out which chicken will blink? More than likely it will be the tiny handed dictator, DON (OLD) who will back down by making up some ridiculous story regarding Iran and give then another 10 or whatever more days!
Members of the military and members of his own party have publicly spoken out against these actions, and I expect there are those who privately signal the same to the WH. There are also reports now of Iranians placing themselves at civilian targets as human shields, although I don’t know how large those groups are.
All of this will provide the Orange One needed cover to walk it back, saying that others have simply talked him down.
It’s like we are all living in a toxic relationship, trying to placate and distract an abusive boss.
Sounds a lot like the antique threats of razing the ancient capital and salting the earth. My guess is that he is talking himself into a thing that he knows might be the biggest throw of the dice in his life.
Like Kober, I hear the echos of the past in his threats. However my thought was Genghis Khan, who had no hesitation to carry out death and destruction at enormous scale. These threats from trump are so outrageous, I wonder if any sane people behind the scenes have some control. I read our VP is in Hungary stumping for Orbán. This situation is madness.
Genghis Khan sent large armies (the Mongol hordes) to do his biding. Trump isn’t sending large armies into Iran.
Yes JD is in Hungary explaining that he does not want to tell people how to vote but that they should vote for Putin’s poodle. If Orban loses the new government might be a little less Trump inclined.
I recommend reading Timothy Snyder’s article this morning, linked (I hope successfully below). I have sent it to my senators and congressional representative and urged them to speak up. I also sent it to all of my friend and relative groups. I urged all to read it ASAP and to send it to their Representatives. I urge all readers to do so as well.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-president-speaks-genocide?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=310897&post_id=193484450&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=ks2c2&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Japanese civilization survived fire raids, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. British and French civilization survived Hitler. Ukrainian civilization survived Stalin. Even Cambodian civilization survived Pol Pot. Iranian civilization is rather likely to survive.
We had the Taliban and ISIS emerging from western and Russian meddling in mideastern affairs. Who will come out of the chaos in Iran if Trump is going to do what he has threatened to do?
I’m surprised that the Iranian regime doesn’t make a deal, and then renege on the deal in 2.5 years after Trump is gone.
I think Trump will cut off the regime’s oil income next.
He could have done that from the start, without the war. He could have seized tankers carrying sanctioned Iranian oil.
He did seize some other tankers.
Maybe Iran would have started arming the tankers. I don’t know.
The Great Orange Satan got it wrong.
Persian civilisation survived nearly 50 years of the Ayatollahs, and it will survive the Great Satan’s lifetime.
I don’t think Trump meant anything by “civilization” other than “opposite of the stone age.”
“I’m going to bomb them back to the stone age” = “I’m going to destroy their civilization”
I promise he was not thinking of Xerxes and Thermopylae.
Nor was he thinking of Gen. Curtis LeMay and Vietnam. But he should have been.
–The International Military Tribunal at Nuremburg
Seems relevant, somehow.
What bugs me about the whole situation is the concept of Iran “opening up the straits”. It is not like doing so requires a positive action, like opening a closed door. The default condition of the straits is open.
The only thing we need Iran to do is to refrain from attacking transiting ships.
My solution would be to let the IRGC know that every time they attack a transiting ship, we will destroy something important of theirs.
I presume we all want the Persians to be able to form a government that is more or less a productive part of modern civilization. That will be a lot harder if they have to rebuild all of their infrastructure.
He and his cabinet cronies have already committed enough war crimes to outdo the Nazis. He might have immunity in the U.S. but no other country will put up with that rubbish. He will never be able to leave the U.S. because he will be arrested and taken to the International Criminal Court. Those who are carrying out his orders should take heed.
That’s not how the ICC works. Your government can declare any foreigner persona non grata and not admit him to your country or invite him to visit. Even if you had already granted him an entry visa or diplomatic permission you could stop him at the immigration counter in the airport (or in the jetway) and turn him back. But your coppers can’t just arrest willy-nilly any foreigner for imaginary war crimes imagined in your mind to have been committed somewhere else. And they can’t kidnap the head of a foreign government and send him to a kangaroo court in some Muslim country in Europe.
The ICC has to meet for a gab-fest to decide if there is credible evidence for a head-of-government war crime. Then it issues a warrant under which a country that is a member of the ICC would have to be willing to have its police enforce, should the individual turn up on their soil. But countries finesse their obligations here by not permitting entry of such persons anyway, to avoid the embarrassment of having to arrest someone they had just permitted entry. ICC warrants work better when a deposed or retired president took refuge in exile in a country before the warrant was issued, and now the police have to pretend to go looking for him before he escapes. “Buggah! Missed him by that much!”
The United States does not accept the legitimacy or jurisdiction of the ICC (or any foreign entity) over its citizens (except when a visiting American commits a crime inside a foreign country.) The ICC can pound sand. The wrath of God would descend on any jumped-up country that arrested any American citizen on an ICC warrant and tried to send him to The Hague. It’s your countrymen who should take heed.
President Trump has no need to seek refuge in any foreign country, though. He hasn’t done anything wrong that would cause even spiteful Democratic politicians to want to hang him. His “offences” are political, not criminal, and political “crimes” are best punished at the ballot box, not by vendetta. The purpose of the criminal investigations pursued against him after his first term was to try to keep him from being able to run again. Now that he is gone forever in Jan 2029 no matter what, the Dems won’t bother with him.
Right. That’s not how it works. Please get your facts straight. There are at least two reasons why the ICC is a non-starter for Trump. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court
Outdo the Nazis?
Really?
I am no fan of Trump, but statements such as this accomplish nothing, save to eclipse the real problems of Trump and his administration.
And if you really believe this, I suggest you speak with some of the people who experienced the Nazis first-hand. Better hurry: there aren’t too many left.