Day 8 of the joint US-Israeli War on Iran with no immediate end in sight. Far from buckling, the Iran military is getting intelligence from Russia and launching a steady stream of drones at targets all over the Gulf Region in retaliation to the joint missile strikes. The US and Israel are now contemplating putting boots on the ground that would seriously escalate the number of casualties in this war. So far 6 US service personnel have been killed in Kuwait, a number Donald Trump casually swats away as growing anger from his base mounts on talk shows. He also denies the US is responsible for the deaths of over 100 girls when the US accidentally bombed a school, blaming it on Iran.
Things aren't looking too good for our cocky Commander-in-Chief. A weird skin rash on his neck also revealed that his ear mysteriously healed completely after the shooting during the summer of 2024 when he claimed part of his ear was blown off. That's either amazing plastic surgery or he lied. I would go with the latter.
All in all, it has been a bad week for our deteriorating president who is struggling to keep up a totally unnecessarily offensive against Iran, which is refusing to surrender. At one point, Donald imagined himself as the new Ayatollah, kind of like when he suggested himself as Pope when Francis passed away last year.
Unlike Venezuela, Iran is well armed, has support from Russia, North Korea and probably China, and can carry on this war indefinitely. The US military has already changed its forecast to 100 days when Trump previously gave a time estimate of "four weeks or less." This is largely because he doesn't know what the hell is going on. At roughly $900 million per day, that's quite a bill he is racking up. If he puts troops on the ground that cost will soar through the roof and he will be pleading to Congress for additional funding.
So far, Congress has let him have his way. Efforts by Democrats to curtail his war powers came up short in both chambers. Both votes were close but just enough to allow Trump to continue his war effort undaunted. It makes you wonder what Republicans hope to gain from this war as they are already trailing badly in polls with the prospect of losing both the House and the Senate this Fall a very real possibility. Yet, they continue to refuse to challenge Trump's seemingly unlimited executive authority.
Looking back over the last six decades, the last Democratic president to start a war was Lyndon B. Johnson with his ill-advised Vietnam War. Many thought we had learned from that mistake. Richard Nixon spent most of his truncated two terms trying to pull the US out of the war only for his succeeding Vice-President Gerald Ford forced to evacuate in ignominy on April 30,1975 with the Fall of Saigon. Images that were permanently ingrained in our heads.
But we didn't learn our lesson, every Republican President since Nixon and Ford has launched wars in one part of the world or another, supported insurrectionary efforts and civil wars, carried out extralegal renditions and executions in the name of protecting our freedom. From what no one knows for sure, as the reasons for these military incursions and extralegal activities vary depending on the situation. A partial list of engagements include Grenada (1983), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq again (2003).
The only war a Democratic president got engaged in of his own volition was the civil war in the former Yugoslavia when Bill Clinton agreed to the joint NATO bombing of Serbia in the wake of the massive humanitarian crisis in Bosnia. He was roundly vilified for this by members of his own party as well as virtually the entire Republican party for meddling in other people's affairs. Not to mention Russia has long used this as an excuse for its imperious actions.
Yet, the same Republicans didn't bat an eyelash at the wars their presidents engaged in, nor are they doing so now despite a man who promised his faithful that he would never repeat the mistakes of his predecessors. Five Republicans did rebuke Trump for his incursion into Venezuela, but only Rand Paul voted for curbing the President's authority in Iran, with Democrat John Fetterman canceling him out by voting against the resolution.
As this war drags out I'm sure there will be much deeper consternation within the Republican party, especially as it draws closer to the midterm elections. Trump is trying to use a combination of George Bush's WMD claims and Bill Clinton's ethnic cleansing claims to justify his attack on Iran but the claims hold very little water. It is going to be a very hard sell to voters, which has led some to think Trump might actually try to suspend elections or at least interfere in them to suit the Republican Party. It has become that dire for the GOP.
Republicans have lost one special election after another since Trump returned to office and took a recent beating in Texas that left them aghast. They are no longer so sure the gerrymandering will work to their benefit. Democrats have done such a good job of matching candidates to the demographics of these races that there is a very real possibility that James Talarico may slip the Texas US Senate seat out from under John Cornyn, who finds himself battling a MAGA insurgent candidate in the primaries.
This war is definitely not helping Republican efforts to retain their hold on Congress but their President doesn't seem to care. He blithely dismisses any criticism for his actions, believing that he has the full support of his party faithfully behind him as this "prayer meeting" suggested. And you thought Iran was a religious extremist state! No amount of thoughts and prayers is going to save this party come November, which makes a coup a very real possibility.
War Secretary Hegseth has flushed all the high-ranking generals that questioned his war efforts and replaced them with sycophants. As a former US Army officer eloquently put it on Medium, the current top brass in the Pentagon is operating from the seat of their pants, failing to understand the logistics of sustaining a war like this in Iran. The US could well run out of firepower within weeks, as the investment has been in high-cost military hardware that generates massive profits for defense contractors. We actually have a rather limited supply of artillery shells, HIMARS rockets and air-defense interceptors. So too Israel, which relies heavily on US supply.
This means the US and Israel are now trying to hit up Europe for reinforcements as it knows its time is limited in this war. The problem here is that Europe has given much of its supply to Ukraine in its ongoing war against Russia. This is what happens when you let your dick do the talking rather than your brain.
Understandably, Europe doesn't want to get involved in a war with Iran as it has no bearing on itself. Not only that but Trump laid out no probable cause for this war. He simply acted on the impulse of his buddy in Israel who saw an opening to take out Iran. The belief was that Iran had given so much of its munitions to Russia that it had little left to defend itself. As it turns out that doesn't seem to be the case. Just ask the Gulf States which have come under heavy bombardment as Iran tries to take out American military bases in those countries.
China must really be licking its chops right now, watching all this play out. It doesn't have to lift a finger. It can let the US and Russia essentially destroy themselves from within, due to their imperious minded leaders, while it moves straight ahead in developing AI technology and military hardware at a fraction of the cost and doesn't have to use it. Not to mention all these new trade agreements it is signing with the EU, Canada and other countries that will soon have it sitting on top of the world, able to exercise the "soft power" the US had so long done.
The US lost its moral position as the "leader of the free world" long ago. Now it is losing its economic position. It is hard to imagine what will come of this massive power shift in the years ahead but the US will no longer be in the driver's seat, as much as Trump likes to think he is "King of the Road." It's ironic as the country Republicans fear most is China. Yet, they have inadvertently done everything possible to strengthen Beijing's hand.
Are we winning yet?
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