The US appears to be on the brink of war with Iran, which, obviously, would be a catastrophe of biblical proportions.
Things didn’t need to get any more tense following a series of recent tanker attacks and Tehran’s Monday announcement that the country will soon knowingly violate key elements of the nuclear deal, but you know what they say, “when it rains Houthi projectiles it pours IRGC surface-to-air missiles”, so here we are confronted with another Yemen-based attack on Saudi infrastructure and a downed US surveillance drone.
Read more: Iran’s ‘Clear Message’ For Donald Trump
At times like these, citizens look to their leaders for guidance, which leaves Americans out of luck because the country doesn’t have any – leaders that is.
Take Lindsey Graham, for instance, who, instead of striking a measured tone, decided to go with this on Thursday:
Iran is a thuggish regime that only understands strength and pain. The blame for the current situation lies with the Ayatollah and his murderous henchmen, not the United States.
Forgive me, but I’m not sure that helps.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif was far more diplomatic. “We don’t seek war, but will zealously defend our skies, land and waters”, he said Thursday, adding that “we’ll take this new aggression to the UN and show that the US is lying”.
The “lying” bit refers to Washington’s contention that the drone in question wasn’t over Iranian airspace.
Of course, the only person whose opinion on this matters is Donald Trump and, unfortunately, he decided to weigh in, off the cuff, while seated opposite Justin Trudeau.
Here is Trump explaining that had the unmanned drone “had a man or a woman in it” (a hypothetical which makes no sense considering that unmanned drones are, by very definition, unmanned), this would be a very different scenario.
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“I have a feeling – I may be wrong, I may be right, but I’m right a lot – that it was a mistake made by someone who shouldn’t have been doing what they… did”, Trump explained.
He went on to suggest that perhaps it was operator error by “a general or somebody” being “loose and stupid” because, apparently, there’s no way Tehran would have green-lighted this.
If that’s the strategy here – to claim that this was the work of a rogue solider – the White House needs to find somebody other than Trump to pitch the story to the public because clearly, the president isn’t capable of making it convincing.
Asked whether he was preparing a strike on Iran, Trump went with his default response to all difficult questions:
There you go, America. “You’ll find out” if there’s a war coming.
Sleep well.
Lambaste him as we will, the president appears to be the bulwark against a war with Iran and the advocates thereof (Bolton, Pomps & BiBi).
The problem is that Trump appointed Bolton and “Pomps” and has manlove for BiBi to the point of helping him in his election. There is also nobody really leading the DOD right now. Maybe the joint chiefs can be counted on for advice, but it is mighty thin in the executive branch in the security area for the moment.
While not a fan of America’s stable genius ‘Disrupter-in-Chief,’ if he can stand up to the ‘Military Industrial Complex’ America was warned about by President Eisenhower (Gen., Ret.), that’s maybe the biggest accomplishment of his Presidency.
The Complex doesn’t win by fighting wars. The Complex wins with annual trillion dollar defense budgets.
Um, he has supersized the defense budget.
A ‘shootin’ war or threat of one justifies the massive defense Budget. HUGE!