Human beings have almost made their environment unliveable. The raging climate disaster, several incident wars in Gaza, the Ukraine, Iran. The world on the brink of economic collapse while the few few super-rich billionaires still enjoy their la dolce vitas.
There are, in addition, some who accelerate entropy even more. The destroyers of empires, the narcissists, the war criminals.
In the country where I live, the obvious signs of a genocide must under no circumstances be called by their name. There has been only one unique, incomparable genocide in history: the one Germany committed through its own Nazis.
The most stunning feeling when standing in front of a sun undergoing its total eclipse by the moon is how orderly the universe functions. No increase in entropy is noticeable when it comes to the alignment of celestial bodies, expected by scientists way before the event. Causality. Newton’s mechanics with Einstein’s general relativity not even thought of.
People who tried a cardboard box camera obscura for the first time were somewhat disappointed of the rather unimpressive result. Many small children trying to make sense of it with proud young parents explaining the cosmic event.
Here where I live, the sun was covered by the moon at about 82%. It wasn’t possible to catch a photo which would show that. There was a slight change of light, everything became somewhat pale.
Whatever went wrong in Trump’s Iran war, Carafano spins the legend that everything was planned.
“Iran War Turns into Trump Middle East Triumph. We are about to see the biggest reshaping of the Middle East since Moses led the Jews out of Egypt.”
Honestly, that’s how the piece start.
Both Maximalists (“the wanted regime change”) and Minimalists (“Nothing will be achieved; Trump has dragged the U.S. just in another endless war”) were wrong. Trump’s “I did it my way” will change the Middle East forever – but “in a good way.”
What narcissists like Trump usually do when the results of their actions turn out unfavorably—and I have mentioned this here before—is to claim that it was planned that way from the start: reduce cognitive dissonance. In Carafano, he has now found someone who decisively fosters this mental strategy.
Even Trump’s waffling (isn’t that term negatively connoted?) becomes a strategy. Read this about “Procrastinators”:
“They are impatient and confused by what they see as Trump’s waffling, vacillating between negotiating and punishing the regime, overlooking the deep conviction behind his strategy, a sincere humanitarian streak which abhors needless loss of life—ours and theirs. Since he has largely accomplished our war aims, Trump can take a more measured approach to get to the end-state he wants without unnecessary loss of life and needless destruction.”
“The victor gets to define victory.”
Carafano continues,
A good fight has a “theory of victory,” a logical, feasible, suitable, and acceptable means to justify calling a win in war. That guidepost is the best measure of success.
The real test of “is Trump winning” is if there are signs that the long-term peace structure the president is seeking to replace the overshadowing threat of Iran is emerging. Everywhere you look in the region—the answer is yes. (Emphasis added.)
Well, my answer is a decisive “No!” And I am by no means alone. Even the Gulf monarchies have lost, I’m afraid, any confidence in Trump.
“The spin doctors can spin whatever the damn well please, but the historians are going to write that Trump is the most consequential force in reshaping the Middle East in modern memory.”
There will be historians but they will come to different conclusions. As those who consider Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will as both brilliantly orchestrated but deeply dangerous. Just propaganda, really.
“The request from a senior officer at the US military command carrying out President Donald Trump’s war with Iran came in an email: We need ideas.
‘We are looking for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran,’ an officer in US Central Command’s intelligence branch wrote in a message sent Wednesday to a broad group of military analysts, according to a source familiar with the message. A second source also said that a senior US military officer sent the message last week soliciting new ideas for how to deal with Iran.”
Over the past weeks I was, sometimes unconsciously, wondering whether Donald Trump and his administration of experts is hiding something. Is he really so clueless? What is the deeper meaning, a strategy, of signing such a vague Memorandum of Understanding which almost everybody considers a frank surrender? Iran won the war.
The above leak, which military officials said was unusual over email, seems to prove that there are no reasonable options available to Trump to force Iran into a deal on his terms.
Of course, there is always the nuclear option for any American president, God forbid.
The Iranians know that Trump has run out of ideas. They appear to have the upper hand in the endgame. They have a clear aim: Force Americans out of the Gulf region.
I have written about the above before, when American President Donald Trump had signed the worthless Memorandum of Understanding with Iran in Versailles. Contrary to what Trump thought (but maybe sensed), it was—as political commentators worldwide observed—a document of capitulation signed at a site of great historical significance. Stupid.
Worthless it was as the hostilities soon resurfaces with tit-for-tat attacks which became for increasingly impatient Gulf monarchies, previously strong allies of the Unites States, unbearable. The ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz threatens their business model: oil, tourism, shareholder capitalism.
Even their citizens are increasingly threatened by Iranian missiles and drones mainly targeting U.S. military bases but maybe soon also desalination plants.
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