EAllusion wrote:Aaaand Trump is tweeting more insane stuff.
The United States just spent Two Trillion Dollars on Military Equipment. We are the biggest and by far the BEST in the World! If Iran attacks an American Base, or any American, we will be sending some of that brand new beautiful equipment their way...and without hesitation!
He has, what, about five adjectives in his vocabulary?
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
honorentheos wrote:We probably need to examine how much of Trump's behavior here is erratic and individualistic, and how much of it is really tied in to a small but real contingent of American politicians, media, and voters who are pretty happy with his figurately punching Iran in the nose.
There's several reports, with slight variations, indicating that the Pentagon showed Trump a list of possible responses. The one that he picked was meant to be the crazy one designed to make the other options look reasonable by comparison. But Trump, pushed by his aides who want aggression against Iran, went with it anyway, sending the Pentagon into a scramble.
The sourcing on these stories is thin enough that you have to take it with a grain of salt, but the underlying idea of it certainly is plausible. Trump going for the option that looks the most "tough" regardless or morality or long-term consequences is definitely the instinct you'd expect.
His then taking to Twitter and threatening to commit war crimes seems more like him flying off the handle than anything.
People's motives are complex, and it's absolutely possible that he felt good about this option because he thought it would distract from his domestic troubles. It can both be true that he's surrounded by sycophants who desperately want war with Iran and that he's giving in to their advice because he thinks it is good for himself politically.
I generally agree, though it's difficult to know how much of this is due to Trump or other people's individual motives aligned to bring about the decision to take out Soleiman let alone how to try and predict what that indicates for decision making going forward. How all the various factors stack up in this are probably going to be debated by historians for a long time to come. Right now, it's probably most helpful to recognize there are unique, Trump-flavored aspects to these events but it isn't all easily packaged up into, "Trump is crazy and if we could just get rid of him things like this would stop happening." Trump and his twitter-baiting (in more ways than one) are certainly unique to him but I don't think it's realistic to view the trajectory we're heading into as purely a manifestation of Trump. Not any more than one can claim Trump's presidency itself is independent from being a manifestation of some kind reflecting the state of the electorate.
ETA: At least some sources I've read suggested missions targeting Soleiman had been drawn up for months, and that the intel used to carry out the strike was available to realize it because this was on the table for a while. So again, while I suspect there were surprised parties in the Pentagon who didn't think Trump would take the most audacious option for retaliation, there were absolutely parties - and ones as high up as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State - who were delighted with the decision.
Last edited by Guest on Sun Jan 05, 2020 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
It's certainly possible that almost any elected Republican was going to get us into a shooting war with Iran given how much of the foreign policy establishment in Republican circles are former Iraq hawks who want war with Iran. It's not unlike predicting that an elected Republican might appoint an EPA head that will be hostile to the idea of global warming. That might be a crazy-pants thing to do if you gauge mainstream academic opinion, but it absolutely is mainstream enough in Republican leadership to have a realistic chance of happening. A vote for Trump was all but a guarantee for that to happen. Kasich? Probably not. Most other Republicans? Good chance. Aggression against Iran is like that.
I don't know how much more or less likely Trump would be to take us down this path. I do know he has been exceptionally reckless and incompetent about it.
One of the stories out there is Trump discussed the strike in advance with Lindsey Graham while golfing. Anyone who doesn't think Graham was a push in the direction of taking out Soleiman rather than a voice urging reflection and a possibly less provocative response doesn't know Lindsey Graham. It's details like this that I think history will continue to reveal, and it's quite possible Trump could have been talked into a less provocative option had the board been laid out differently.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
Lindsey Graham does seem to be less likely to encourage announcing Nazi-style war crimes in advance on Twitter, then announce himself above the Constitutional order in a follow-up tweet.
EAllusion wrote:Lindsey Graham does seem to be less likely to encourage announcing Nazi-style war crimes in advance on Twitter, then announcing himself above the Constitutional order in a follow-up tweet.
I feel like people who imagine themselves smart and sophisticated look at stuff like this and think, "Hahaha! What a buffoon" while also thinking that anyone deeply alarmed by this is a chicken little because it's just bluster and everything will be fine. And being wrong time and time again in the Trump era hasn't stopped them from thinking this or thinking themselves smart and sophisticated for thinking it.
EAllusion wrote:Lindsey Graham does seem to be less likely to encourage announcing Nazi-style war crimes in advance on Twitter, then announcing himself above the Constitutional order in a follow-up tweet.
Whatever the conversation was, I suspect the main thrust was Graham encouraging Trump to take strong, decisive and aggressive action which likely supported the option of taking out Soleiman using military drones rather than considering either a less politically absolute target or more covert ops-based action that left the US with a better relationship with Iraq. I suspect at this point Graham has cut bait on Trump's twitter-baiting.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
honorentheos wrote:We probably need to examine how much of Trump's behavior here is erratic and individualistic, and how much of it is really tied in to a small but real contingent of American politicians, media, and voters who are pretty happy with his figurately punching Iran in the nose.
What makes it worse is that Trump isn't just "figurately punching Iran in the nose." He is, in effect, figurately punching our allies in the nose as well, and undermining almost every reasonable effort to bring sanity and peace to the Mideast situation. There is a dismaying number of American politicians, media and voters who seem to be happy with that too.
No precept or claim is more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
“If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.”
― Harlan Ellison
I wonder how many Americans will have to die for Trump's political stunt.
"One of the hardest things for me to accept is the fact that Kevin Graham has blonde hair, blue eyes and an English last name. This ugly truth blows any arguments one might have for actual white supremacism out of the water. He's truly a disgrace." - Ajax
I wonder how many Americans will have to die for Trump's political stunt.
How many died before his stunt?
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
