Kissinger Was a Fortunate Man

 

Other people can heap Pelion upon Ossa regarding Kissinger's various infamies: as for me, I wrote a poem.  The unamusing thing about a person like Kissinger is that people you rather like and respect will have something nice to say about him in an obligatory sort of way. He faced exactly zero penalty other than the disapprobation of people whose opinion he wouldn't have given a fig for, for policies that lead to vast, unnecessary piles of human bodies. And like the stone that wards off tigers, you could be certain that the reason for it was human misery somewhere else was responsible for a correlating lack of it where it mattered. 

It actually shouldn't be very hard to admit that Kissinger's reputation exceeded himself. And in various corners where people could do just that, for the sake of propriety, they won't. And that sort of propriety was why Kissinger lead a very fortunate life. 

We Felt Our Mortality

 

We are a young country, the US, in some ways, and ride on the idea of our strength and sense of purpose as a leader among nations. The first country among equals (except we're not) as one might say "primus inter pares." The memorial logos, the sigils, the swag, often just show the World Trade Towers themselves, draped in flag-wrap. The buildings were not the tragedy--the loss of lives was.  We lost great people that day. We lost parents and children, leaders and caregivers, sinners and saints. All kinds of people. Office workers, police, firefighters, medics. 

But the pictures of the victims themselves is too haunting: and yet we see them, forever in our minds. And they get reposted on social media. 

We are losing them even today--people who inhaled too much of whatever makes buildings and are dying too young of what they breathed in. We are losing them even now, people who were there or their loved one was there and now it's 22 years out, and we lose people all the time. The narrative memory of what happened will fade. Except in what has been committed to print, video, etc.--but that memory is always a little short. 

Tragedies amortize. Tragedies fade. We said "Never again" but we don't step into the same river twice, or face the same sort of history as Memorex: just an echo. 

Twenty Years Ago, the US Invaded Iraq

 

Saddam Hussein was no hero and his statue rightfully was toppled ending an anti-democratic regime so many years ago, but the invasion 20 years ago was a war of choice and the US often blows off our dumbest choices, refusing to understand the how and why of our clearest fuckups. But our basis for war then was thin.  The US made choices during that war that impacted the country very negatively, and the US failed to understand why or how until it was too late. The cost was high. 

To me, the worst thing about it was the war of choice also lead to horrible choices at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere--the dehumanization of populations, the broken faith that we were supposed to be the good guys. That even now, we have a potential US Presidential candidate who sanctioned rectal feedings at Gitmo should appall us. He rose up in the GOP bestride a very horrific steed--the willingness to not just follow a multitude to do evil, but to lead a pack. Iraq was a proving ground of what was the worst in us. Our attempts to manage the government of Iraq by crisis, to use their tragedy to make bank should be taught in every classroom. It won't be, but it should. 

I'll Allow It!

 

Former President George W. Bush: “The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean of Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/UMwNMwMnmX

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 19, 2022

Yep. He said it. It's Freudian. We know. He knows. It still isn't enough. But anyway...

(Just to add, he once looked into Putin's soul. And he didn't see then what we all can see, now.)

Gaslighting and Gas Prices

 

The above screenshot from Twitter (because I don't think his account is liable to stay up forever as this situation progresses) shows Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the following statement: "The goal of Russia's special military operation is to stop any war that could take place on Ukraine territory or that could start from there. "

Great shades of "We had to destroy the village in order to save it." The kids who don't remember the Cold War might not know that one, as well, but they will probably recognize a few bars of what else the Russian narrative is trying to lay down--the potential of a dirty bomb made in Ukraine (if I knew that was coming, I'd have baked you all a yellow cake) and biowarfare labs (but were they dangerously on wheels, I wonder?).  There's even a laptop! (Is it Hunter Biden, secret Burisma NATO undercover spy's laptop? inquiring minds might indeed venture to ask at this idiotic point in time.)

It almost feels like the laziness of the Russian disinfo spree is to throw the US's own war lies back in our face, as if to say, well, why can't we do it as well? To me, it makes no difference. I was as opposed in 2003 to stupid big countries laying waste to smaller countries who didn't deserve it, so they aren't fucking me up, any.  And actually, I kind of did want the Bush Administration to get their feet held to the fire and still do, because of torture and indiscriminate killing of civilians and use of mercs like Blackwater and all that. I still do.

I was a baby during Vietnam and I still feel some kind of way about it. My father's working class neighborhood all went and a lot them had health issues including mental health issues from that. They drank, they got cancer, they lived recklessly sometimes and my dad doesn't have a lot of friends still alive in his early 70's. One of my mom's brothers went and he was a bad alcoholic and died in his 60s and I don't think those things weren't unconnected. I don't like stupid wars. They kill human beings, sometimes for a long time after we are still counting the death toll of them. 

Anyway, it isn't about NATO and it wasn't about WMDs and it isn't about preventing a war because honey, if this isn't a war I don't know what one looks like, and it had nothing to do with denazification because these assholes sent an actual neo-Nazi group into Ukraine. Probably to kill their Jewish president. 

It might make more sense for Putin to activate his deep-rooted sense of imperialism because Ukraine's pipelines exist. I mean, he doesn't have any use for the people. But just like the Iraq/Kuwait issue, there are other equities to consider? 

So with all this disinfo and intentional bullshit in the ether, this obviously one-sided decision to wage actual war by Putin's government and all that, and what are our journalists going to talk about? The gas prices going up like 50 cents over the past week. And isn't that a Biden problem? Let me turn to my bete noir, Sara Carter, for why this is fucking stupid. 

Federal land is already open for drilling, and all the portions of Keystone that bring oil from Canada to the US have already been built (and that oil is low-grade and not even fit for use in fuel anyway.)

Also the U.S. is a net energy exporter.

Learn what you're talking about. https://t.co/YlZvMgDy6R

— Matthew Chapman (@fawfulfan) March 7, 2022

She is literally wrong on every point. US oil companies can drill here, drill now, as conservatives have been saying since the Obama Administration, but they would rather price gouge. They are managing a finite and climate-disruptive resource in its end-stage.  Keystone XL isn't the problem. Whether we sanctioned Nordstream wasn't the Russian problem. Our addiction to fossil fuels on a dying planet and our love of money over human lives is. 

I'm getting sick of the gaslighting. I'm sick of the gaslit foo dogs of war. When you talk about scarcity--talk about renewables and why it didn't have to be this way. When you talk about Putin's invasion and war against Ukraine, talk about how it probably boils down to greed and backfired because Putin and his kleptocrat state never bothered to adapt to the 21st century, but we all have to. 

Every part of this debacle is everything I hate. Lies, greed, death and massive human stupidity. 

We Don't Live in Bipartisan Times

Sen. @ewarren is 25 minutes into a fiery speech on the Senate floor about voting rights and the filibuster. Go watch.

“Today’s filibuster doesn’t encourage debate, it promotes cowardice.” pic.twitter.com/Nn3RbA68Yr

— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) January 19, 2022

Professor Warren explains the truth--cowards can hide behind the rationale that "We can't get to 60, so what does taking a stand matter." That's what infuriates me about Manchin and Sinema right now. They are pretending that they are standing up for a principle of bipartisanship and not making the divide between Republicans and Democrats worse, but what they are really doing is failing to make a stand. Absent the filibuster, the votes fall where they may. 

We all know we'd be hard-pressed to find a Republican right now putting their vote on limiting state legislatures' ability to suppress voting because they are going to talk about federal power grabs and states' rights, and if that doesn't sound familiar! I'd love to make the Republican party expound at length on that subject so we could tell exactly where they stood. 

Please, have them defend everything from restrictions to mail-in voting to DeSantis' possible vote cops (I imagine crackers with bullet heads and necks exceeding their jawlines carrying blackjacks and being prone to saying shit like "You don't look like you're from around here" and "Who all is your people?"). In lieu of that, though, just based on our current composition in the Senate, I'd like Sinema and Manchin to put their vote where their ideals are supposed to be, let VP Harris settle the matter, and go forward with voter rights better protected.

Where we are now is at a stupid state where Senator Romney pretends it is a darn shame President Biden didn't reach out to him. If Senator Romney was so moved to think voting rights needed to be protected, he could have reached out his damn self. Senator Murkowski might be persuaded--but is she not a grown woman who understands politics? Ditto all GOP senators. If they have an opinion, fuck it, put it on the damn table, like grown people. But also, explain voter purges, and defend poll places miles from where some voters live, and long lines, and how unequal access impacts outcomes. And if that wasn't even the intent of such voter suppression laws in the first place. They need to be put on notice that they can't bitch about being called racist for supporting those "states' rights" bills if they can't defend the obvious demographic choices that made them what they are.  Put the GOP on the spot for what they have come to stand for, after the Voter Rights bill had been so universally approved-of not so long before. 

Our Better Angels and Our Greater Devils

 Colin Powell knew that the UN speech he gave to lay out the case for war against Iraq on the sketchy basis of their weapons program would haunt him to the end. He was an intelligent man capable of great insight and scrupulous honesty. That's what makes his fault a bit worse: how does an adult, experienced leader go and peddle half truths (and unsubstantiated nonsense) to set the stage for a ground war that he knew would be brutal, that he warned the Bush Administration about (albeit in terms like "the Pottery Barn" rule, which seems awfully flip in the aftermath, doesn't it?) , as if guilelessly led by "a bad crowd"? 

It's impossible. And yet, he was not the worst of the Bush Administration lot, at all; just at the time, so exceptionally disappointing. And also, I believe in his own way he understood the extent to which his reputation was used to promote a war of choice that was not legitimately reasoned, and I note his later support of Obama and his rejection of Trump--but they were low key. 

Could he have served his country better were he more vocal? See, I don't have responsibility to not be vocal, so I say what I want. His position was as a soldier with a respect for civilian leadership who ceded his reputation to the service of his CINC. Maybe he felt that he served best by offering his opinion, but leaving it to the person selected by 5 members of the Supreme Court elected by the people. Maybe he understood, at least since the time he whitewashed the My Lai massacre, He had a vantage to to a political window of how war history got made. 

I don't believe in hero worship. We're all fragile skin sacks barely containing the drama caused by mutant brains that perceive and personify and signify a lot--a blessing and a curse. Colin Powell was better than a lot of our kind are, and not better than he could have been. He was a trailblazer and the people who know him well liked him a lot, but I have noted how one can smile and be a villain, I've noted how intelligent people can be persuaded to get it all wrong and defend getting it wrong long past when it made sense. 

Our better angels sounded in him, and our greater devils also had their way. This man died at the age of 84, with Parkinson's and multiple myeloma, a cancer that sadly, specifically has implications for the immune system, and he died of "Covid-19 complications", which is more like, "COVID-19 was fatal to Powell because of his immunocompromised state". Which, because he was also fully vaccinated, means anti-vaxxers are using his example to wage their war on science. 

This is sadly typical, and not what he or we deserve, It is only too sadly what our greater devils do with themselves, finding a figure to make their mischief with. Once again, his profile is lent to a bullshit right-wing narrative.

But my sympathies and condolences to those who loved him. One could not regret his fault so much, were there not also so much to redeem. And for those whose care for him predated his Iraq/Bush era error, perhaps redemption was never even in question. But I could not post an elegy without a reckoning--this is just my way. 

(Adding: Notwithstanding, read about something like birth defects in Iraq, and see how you feel about anything at all about the US as a country.)

Things Could Have Been Very Different

The Taliban were weak and ready to surrender in 2001 when the U.S. passed on a deal to end the war in Afghanistan. Nearly 20 years later, the U.S. did negotiate a deal — but the balance of power was very different. It favored the Taliban. https://t.co/gI1u5mzMZM

— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 23, 2021

Here's part of the problem:

Messengers shuttled back and forth between Mr. Karzai and the headquarters of the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, in Kandahar. Mr. Karzai envisioned a Taliban surrender that would keep the militants from playing any significant role in the country’s future.  

But Washington, confident that the Taliban would be wiped out forever, was in no mood for a deal.  

“We don’t negotiate surrenders,” Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said in a news conference at the time, adding that the Americans had no interest in leaving Mullah Omar to live out his days anywhere in Afghanistan. The United States wanted him captured or dead.

As incredibly stupid and awful as I think the Trump Administration had been, it really is hard to compete with the steely-eyed ignorance and thick-skulled hubris of the Bush Administration. And of course, the Iraq War was dumb as hell and went on forever as well. What the hell does "We don't negotiate surrenders" even mean--we refuse to accept a win? They could have said--Mullah Omar turns up, you turn him over. It wouldn't have been super-satisfying, but it would have not been--this.

So many pundits, military "experts" and so on, people whose credentials have been made in participating in prolonging this tragedy, get to take up cable news real estate when they shouldn't be given the ground.

I do believe I will stay mad about this for a very long time.

 

Failure Has Many Fathers

 

Taliban Commander Who Led Attack on Afghan City Was Released From Prison Last Year, Officials Say - WSJ https://t.co/4qDJdyTyYc

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) August 16, 2021

The co-founder of the Taliban was captured under Obama and was released under Trump, and is now going to be the new leader of Afghanistan. Somehow, this is Biden's fault, because he inherited a withdrawal plan from Trump that was supported by the former guy until it looked bad, because that's how Trump rolls. 

But the problem was not just settling Al-Qaeda business and departing in Bush's first term, which always seemed like it should have been possible, but I think strategically, they fucked up Afghanistan in Bushworld because they really wanted to take a poke at Iraq. And if Afghanistan was wrapped up, the Iraq WMD crisis wouldn't have seemed as immediate.

 Leaving Obama to try and wind down Iraq according to the Bush-signed SOFA. Which wasn't leaving him with a great bunch of choices. Obama, to his credit, never tried to leave a mess in Syria--except of course, ISIS happened. 

And you know what Trump did with regards to our attempts to unfuck that. I'm not trying to place a partisan frame on what had happened, of course, just trying to smash the stupid lies Republicans want to tell about what they've been doing the last two decades. 

 (Just like the economy, re: unemployment and the debt, GOP does the damage, Democrats clean up.)

Mike (Klepto) Pompeo doesn't walk away from it. (Even if he'd rather be obnoxious about CRT and other stuff right now.)  The Bush Administration certainly shouldn't. They initiated the lie that kept us there--that we could fix it. That women and children depended on us. 

We were guilted into forever war. Biden is doing the honest thing. The buck is stopping with him. So for many lazy pundits, that means he gets the onus of failure? Pshh. I am not a goldfish. and can remember years of effort. Media pundits can and should do the same. 

Things Related and Not

 

It happens that a man can live a long time and do any number of appalling stupid things, like help facilitate a long, brutal, murderous war of choice and authorizing torture, and if he is capable of mustering a grin and fashioning statements that in hindsight seem ghoulish or hysterical depending on how you look at things (among the greatest hits, "I don't do quagmires", "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want to have", "Freedom is messy" and the convoluted mush that is the full "unknown unknowns" quote) and he will somehow receive surprising praise even in death,

He's still dead though, and the history he leaves behind him is still brutal. Some people will say that the Iraq invasion, and the way the justification was tied to 9/11, and the excuse made for appalling judgements of error and misrepresentations of fact were judgment calls by people who felt, after the enormity of 9/11, that they were doing the right thing. Others will say those choices were deliberate and, had there been no 9/11 to tie them to, would have still been made, if more slowly.

Unknown unknowns, right? 

Even after investigations and time, accountability is hard to come by. 

That's the frustrating thing, after the lives lost and damage done and still ongoing. And there was a lot of blame to go around. 

The Always-Denial Denial

Trump doesn't take responsibility. He does things, all right, but he lives in a universe of diminished consequences. People settle out of court, exhausted by him. He goes bankrupt (through his own incompetence and more than once), but still lives like some demi-royalty (whilst hard-working people can easily struggle through no fault of their own, but the machinations of folks just like Trump). He gets people to sign NDAs so they don't rat him out--even his own family. He creates a kind of squid ink of lies around himself so that there's a cushion of implausible deniability--sure, sure, he's clearly a racist, a con-artist, a half literate and a creep according to the fake news media--but what if he wasn't? 

Of course, he is those things. From his own mouth, he's a whore monger and a pussy-grabber; from his own mouth, he tells on himself about his racism and so much more. 

So, did he know about the bounties Russia had on US troops and UK troops in Afghanistan payable to the Taliban? Trump and already-proven liar WH spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany say of course he didn't. News reports are starting to really corroborate that of course he was told.  But what does it mean that Trump was told? Was he given something to read? Was he verbally told? Did he grasp the whole deal?

Who can say? We are presented with the appalling spectacle of a person who might not take in information whether read out or spoken, who is bellicose to allies and fawning before dictators, who has a probable vault of "perfect calls" that are by no means perfect, or are, in fact, "abominations":

The White House did not respond to a request for comment before this story published. After publication, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews said, "President Trump is a world class negotiator who has consistently furthered America's interests on the world stage. From negotiating the phase one China deal and the USMCA to NATO allies contributing more and defeating ISIS, President Trump has shown his ability to advance America's strategic interests."

One person familiar with almost all the conversations with the leaders of Russia, Turkey, Canada, Australia and western Europe described the calls cumulatively as 'abominations' so grievous to US national security interests that if members of Congress heard from witnesses to the actual conversations or read the texts and contemporaneous notes, even many senior Republican members would no longer be able to retain confidence in the President.

These two paragraphs of this CNN piece from Carl Bernstein (!?*) are from different universes; one, the spin universe of those who still think you can polish a wet one, and the reality of those who ruefully admit the solidity of the excreta is beyond burnishing. If the Speaker of the House had the will and the time, we'd be totally up for more impeachment trials, and I entirely wish it could be so. But it would take years to unscrew all of Trump's impeachable offenses (although please! they could try for some of AG Barr's!)

But here's something to ponder: just today, Iran submitted a warrant to Interpol for the arrest of President Trump and 30-0dd other folks for the hit on General Qassem Suliemani. Ok, it isn't gonna go anywhere, and nice, troll, Iran. But recall that this assassination occurred right in the midst of the impeachment, and Trump tried to minimize the resulting casualties from the subsequent attack on our bases in Iraq. He doesn't like to admit things (like, say, our current Covid-19 crisis) are as bad as they really are, because it reflects on him. He also doesn't know what to do about anything, so everything gets worse.

He's a bully, and ignoramus and a head case. Many Republicans are covering up for him. I guess they are also in extraordinary and even delusional denial.

UPDATE: * Because how many journalists have the presence to be about to bring down two presidents during their careers, right? And this glimpse into Trump's modus operandi should be fatal.

Some Kind of Imminent Threat, They Say

“There is no doubt that there were a series of imminent attacks that were being by plotted by Soleimani. We don’t know precisely when and we don’t know precisely where but this was real” pic.twitter.com/zu3lZ0IxYp

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) January 10, 2020

Sure you do! It apparently now means when you don't know exactly where or when an attack will take place but soon. Soon-ish. Really.

Now, it's possible that VP Mike Pence is having a little trouble with the concept of imminent:

Pence begins Trump's rally in Toledo by giving up the game about Soleimani strike: "When 1 American life was lost at the hands of Iranian-backed militias just a few short weeks ago, POTUS launched the first airstrikes against them in 10 years." (So long "imminent threat.") pic.twitter.com/a1E2IzVpyh

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 10, 2020

(Nope--retaliation would not be imminent because it's a thing that happened before. Someone needs to sit Mikey down and tell him to at least get the story half-right if he's going to start talking.)

But Trump knows very well what was going to imminently happen. Soleimani was going to blow up the embassy--but that was an "anti-Benghazi" because...just nope.

⁦@SenMarkey⁩ just said on @TheLastWord that during the briefing the Senate received about the reason for the Trump-ordered attack that killed Soleimani, there was NO MENTION of a plan to blow up our embassy. Trump’s lies are never ending. https://t.co/ynkWv0sGkX

— Glenn Kirschner (@glennkirschner2) January 10, 2020

Someone must have drawn a diagram for Trump in Sharpie, because he has been consistent with that--today, anyway. (His validation for the embassy story is the embassy protest of 12/31, though, which still sounds a bit like "retaliation" to me.)

The story just isn't straight. I guess Sen. Lee is going to try and walk this back a bit, but it sounds like the Trump Administration treated briefing Congress about the Iran situation a little contemptuously? (Is contempt of Congress a thing now? Shouldn't it be? Where have we heard that before? Is it a pattern we should be concerned about?)

In the NPR interview, Lee also disclosed that at one point in the briefing, an official “discouraged us from even having a debate on the Senate floor” about whether Congress should pass new measures constraining Trump’s authority to launch future military actions without authorization.

“That might somehow embolden the Iranian regime in future attacks against the United States,” Lee said, characterizing the argument the official made.

"Embolden the enemy"? I feel like we've been to this rodeo before, folks. Another thing that emboldens the enemy is thinking it's all inevitable anyway so what have they got to lose--just go for broke. You can argue any old shit; but we're either a democracy or not, even if pinheads like Sarah Huckabee Sanders are a little fuzzy on who is supposed to authorize war per the Constitution.

The more I hear "Shut up and trust us" the more I don't trust them and don't want to shut up.

TWGB: Very Fast and Very Hard

The thing with Trump and his unique pathology (I don't know what else to call it) is that he isn't exactly transparent about the things he prefers others don't see, but then he goes and threatens things like obstruction of justice or war crimes or whatever in public. His sense of right and wrong isn't like an ethical thing so much as an optical one. The payola shit like who he owes money to makes him look weak, but he thinks blowing up mosques might make him look strong.

Does he really have 52 Iranian sites he's planning to wipe out in the event of Iranian retaliation for the death of Soleimani? Here's the thing--maybe. And they may include world heritage sites. A lot of commentators have pointed out that this is like ISIS or the Taliban targeting things of cultural and historical value because he, like them, has no idea of the value of these things. But there's more to it than that.

He refers in the Tweets to Iran's civil unrest and the crackdown. I don't think he realizes that instead of highlighting the social division of Iran internally, he might be providing cause for some cohesion--to rally against us. He doesn't think like that.

We know some things about how Trump thinks, though--he telegraphed in 2011 and 2012 that he imagined that a desperate president might try to go to war with Iran to save his political bacon. We know guests at the "Winter White House" might have heard as much about Trump's big plans against Iran as the Senate did, and we know he spoke with friendly GOP Senator Lindsey Graham, but not the Gang of Eight.  This makes the rationale behind the move suspect--because when he and Defense spokespeople suggest that this move was "to prevent a war not start one" or to "prevent an immanent attack" which they for sure and really no honest have proof of, I feel like the public should be demanding receipts.

It's especially troubling when VP Pence (and why don't we have more information on his conversations with the Ukrainian president?) just bald-faced lies about how Soleimani might have been involved with 9/11 terrorists, because he seems to think the justifications (potentially true but requiring verification) aren't valid enough without a total lie thrown on top (which tends to suggest they weren't all that valid, right?). It actually appears the likelihood of immanent attacks was "razor-thin".  It also seems that Trump was presented with an array of options of retaliations towards Iran aggression and picked the most severe one.

This makes me think of the "madman theory"--the idea that some countries will only respect a power if they feel that the person in charge is so insane that they will do anything and are best left alone. It's associated with Kissinger and Nixon.

It doesn't work, though. "Fire and fury" didn't get Trump anywhere with North Korea. (Nor did reversing course.) It hasn't with China trade negotiations, and it won't here.

Iran has time to do whatever they mean to do--they don't have to respond "very fast and very hard". The thing with asymmetrical warfare is that it can be as slow and grinding as possible for the "weaker" side. They reply on their own terms, and there is a limit outside of total war that Trump can engage in. But one shudders when Secretary Pompeo mourns the lack of support Trump has from European allies.  Maybe Trump threatening them with dumping ISIS fighters back on their soil was....not good? Will Pompeo express the same amount of surprise at the lack of assistance we might expect from the Kurds? Does he not understand why our good friends in Russia and Turkey will look at us blankly, as well?

This choice seems to have been made as if in a world where events never had consequences (much like Trump's decision to shake down Ukraine). If Trump is going to ever learn anything, he'd have to come to some kind of understanding very fast and very hard.

But he won't--it's off brand. He will stand by his decision and his people will stand by him--however it turns out.

Acts of War

pic.twitter.com/VXeKiVzpTf

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2020

It's simple physics, right? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction--except life isn't physics. Qassem Soleimani may have been responsible for great quantities of grief and bloodshed--perhaps even that of hundreds of US servicemembers in a role of giving support to militias in Iraq. But unlike targets such as Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who led actual stateless terrorist organizations which were somewhat decimated as of the time of their respective assassinations, Soleimani was a top Iranian general, and that means something different. Even if Quds and the IRGC had been designated as terrorist organizations by the US, it's nonetheless a matter of perspective--to Iran, these are simply their military. It is not unreasonable to expect that Iran will view this as an act of war. That response might look like a direct declaration of war or it might simply resemble terrorist attacks--it's just not unreasonable to expect it.

This Tweet of a clipart flag is part of Trump's response. I assume a further briefing from Sec. Esper should be forthcoming. Sec. Pompeo's long distrust of Iran and probable counsel regarding this act are taken by me to be assumed, and I don't care if I hear from him outside of a congressional hearing.

I feel sheepish. Just days ago, I noted that there was a parallel between the pardoning and lionization of a war criminal with the 1990's black comedy Wag the Dog, which makes me feel a little unprepared for the idea that an actual war might possibly have been floated to deflect from impeachment (as opposed to a staged one, as in the film). However, as the little girl shooter Trump pardoned has hopes of becoming a lifestyle influencer, maybe we are living in wildly optimistic times for terrible people, and Trump hopes that as a "war president", he can avoid a Senate trial altogether. After all, you can easily imagine Pete Hegseth or some similar void/human hybrid meaningfully projecting into a camera that no one could ever imagine the injustice of trying this poor orphan for the murder of his parents this president while we are a nation at war.

It isn't so remote, after all.

And if no trial for removal, maybe no election, n'est-ce pas? After all, why change horses in mid-stream?

I don't have a lot of faith in Republicans at the moment to assume they will not fall, lock-step, into the manufactured moment. If this be war, why, why wouldn't they make the most of it? After all, for so many neocons, the desire to go to war with Iran was always the next step after Iraq, and if the pull-out from Iraq by Obama in line with the SOFA set by Bush wasn't a case of bellus interruptus, certainly the Iran nuclear deal was. But by God they kept their bayonets sharp! (Or whatever, I dunno, I feel like a metaphorical Vitamix at the moment.)

For myself, as a blogger who bounced along in 2007, I feel a little challenged--if you were blogging in 2003, what would you be doing? Because that's what you, a 2019 2020* blogger, are doing right now.

So here's me:

on fox right now responding to the soleimani news: karl rove and ari fleischer pic.twitter.com/y7bAAJpMSq

— Max Tani (@maxwelltani) January 3, 2020

I guess ripping on Ari Fleischer and Karl Rove, because son of a bitch, can't any right-winger ever be too wrong to put on tv ever? I can't even try searching for the clip on Fox because watching geriatric monkeys fucking a football has never been my brand of porn. But here we are. With Republicans looking for reasons why this nice clean dirty hit was great and good, and will have no repercussions and filthy godless liberals are shameless monsters for suggesting otherwise.

This tweet is simply drunk partisanship. Gen. Soleimani has killed hundreds and hundreds of Americans, and was actively plotting more. This commander-in-chief — any C-in-C. — has an obligation to defend America by killing this bastard. https://t.co/eQmiCgegxS

— Senator Ben Sasse (@SenSasse) January 3, 2020

And then again, I could be full of nonsense and Iran won't retaliate with force and we're not in the shit up to our armpits as things escalate in every direction. I can of course, consider such a thing. I just don't know that the Trump Administration considered their alternatives all the way, or saw the potential blowback as a price higher than what they might earn politically. I just don't know that this timing was necessary for any other reason. I don't know how this was necessarily "defensive" at this particular juncture. I have questions.


* Really?

Reaping the Whirlwind

WATCH: Thousands of Iraqi protesters furious over deadly U.S. airstrikes storm the American Embassy in Baghdad, breaking down doors and setting fires https://t.co/zS7HQXjDyF pic.twitter.com/MO3UnaG06q

— CBS News (@CBSNews) December 31, 2019

There isn't a lot that feel optimistic about, because ultimately, this is situation in in the hands of the Trump Administration, and I just have doubts about their priorities and especially where Trump's head is. Trump isn't strategic, he's reactionary. Trump's blowing up of the Iran deal wasn't strategic, for example, but because it was "Obama's plan" (even if it was a multilateral deals years in the making). Abandoning the Kurds to Turkey showed no strategy. And there's a real risk things can get worse because, as a wise person once said, "he can be baited with a Tweet."

So what kind of provocation does this look like to someone who already has other things on his mind?

The Democrats will do anything to avoid a trial in the Senate in order to protect Sleepy Joe Biden, and expose the millions and millions of dollars that “Where’s” Hunter, & possibly Joe, were paid by companies and countries for doing NOTHING. Joe wants no part of this mess!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2019

That was what was on his mind first thing this morning. He might be a little bit wrong about the benefit of a trial with witnesses to himself given the recent New York Times story that goes deep on Mulvaney, Pompeo and others in his inner circle knowing about his intention to stop the aid to Ukraine, and might not be fully mindful that the results of the dismissal of the Kupperman case regarding subpoenas means that Bolton et als are more likely to be compelled to testify, but that's because, I think, Trump has never internalized that he really can be found at fault for his own foul-ups, that they can be indelible and have lasting effects.

That's bad enough for a person reckoning with the political results of his conduct. But as for the results of his conduct with respect to our relationships with other countries, and the mission of our military and diplomatic forces? I wish there was more evidence that he thought hard and long about such things. He's not the one who directly catches the blowback.

UPDATE: You can see his eyes are really on the ball, here:

Remember when Pelosi was screaming that President Trump is a danger to our nation and we must move quickly. They didn’t get one Republican House vote, and lost 3 Dems. They produced no case so now she doesn’t want to go to the Senate. She’s all lies. Most overrated person I know!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2019

Not the little white ball he wanted to smack around the greens today, but the Senate trial he is demanding. And if that how he wants it, well? I reckon he'll get it.

Trump Doesn't Know Anybody

Wall Street Journal reporter Shelby Holliday has the best thread regarding Lev Parnas' Instagram account, because it destroys the idea that the recently arrested crime comedy team of Parnas and Fruman were completely unknown to Trump World. Lev Parnas actually has a long Trump history.

But Trump said he never knew these guys.  So weird!

Also, as we might have noticed earlier, former Trump attorney Dowd indicated that they were part of Trump's legal team and had attorney client privilege--how is that possible if he doesn't know them? Right?

But that's normal, Trump also doesn't know the State Department employees that are testifying against him right now. He doesn't know a lot--he gave this discursive speech of sorts today in front of people:

But we’re going to bring our soldiers back home.  So far, there hasn’t been one drop of blood shed during this whole period by an American soldier.  Nobody was killed.  Nobody cut their finger.  There’s been nothing.  And they’re leaving rather, I think, not expeditiously — rather intelligently.  Just leaving.  Leaving certain areas.  Leaving. 

We’ve secured the oil.  If you remember, I didn’t want to go into Iraq.  I was a civilian, so I had no power over it.  But I always was speaking against going into Iraq.  It was not a great decision.  But I always said, “If you’re going in, keep the oil.”  Same thing here: Keep the oil.  We want to keep the oil. 

And we’ll work something out with the Kurds so that they have some money, they have some cash flow.  Maybe we’ll get one of our big oil companies to go in and do it properly.  But they’ll have some cash flow, which they basically don’t have right now.  Everybody is fighting.  It’s not a big oil area, but everybody is fighting for whatever there is.  So we have a lot of good things going over there, and they’re going very well. 

He secured the Kurdish oil that Assad gets with the handful of hundreds who will ultimately remain in Northern Syria? Or he secured the Saudi Arabian oil with the extra couple of thousand people he sent in?  Or both, because he sees securing oil as very important, and maintaining allies--actual human relationships, as not as important? But maybe "we'll work something out with the Kurds so that they have some money". Because that will fix their being displaced, and their slaughtered people. Money. You throw money at them, champ. See how that will fix anything. You jowly orange peel fuck.  You low-lying fungal spore-cluster; you fetid earthen vomit.

He doesn't know. He doesn't know the policy advisors who would tell him to say anything but that bullshit. He thinks they are fighting over sand and oil, and not an actual place where humans have lived, and made history, because he only found this place right now.

He doesn't know these people. He doesn't know foreign policy advisors who would tell him all of this is wrong. He doesn't know anyone in his own home who will let him know he fucked it up. He will look in the mirror, and the face in the mirror will smile fakely and toothily back at him.

He doesn't know what any Ukrainian would have said to him in any situation. He doesn't know what the whistleblower really said, and why this anonymous person is still a blur to him. He doesn't know...

But if you listen to the wind blow through  him, the FOX News wind, the grievance, the stupidity--

You know him a lot. You really do. It isn't good. It isn't making America Great.

TWGB: He Ain't So Tough

The White House impeachment war room is a one-man platoon of the president himself — in the role of playground bully, wielding his shamelessness like a weaponized rubber kickball, ready to pummel into the mud anyone who dares to level a charge against him. https://t.co/hqkU2LCc2N

— Ashley Parker (@AshleyRParker) October 10, 2019

This is one of the things I think people have a hard time understanding: Trump does this schoolyard nickname thing not because he's strong or strategic. He's an ignorant reed blown by the fucking wind. If you look at stuff like "I'm not the puppet, you're the puppet" or "Liddle' Shifty Schiff" and think "shit, where does this guy come up with these retorts?" let's get real. The guy's a seven year old. Everyone is trying to respect his office and act like there's a fully-realized adult in there worth talking to. He's a full-blown reactionary, in the sense that he reacts/responds to stimuli. He doesn't understand all of it, no. He responds to it.

Take the disaster unfolding in Syria. He "went off script" on a phone call with Erdogan and somehow, gave the nod to Turkey to strike against the mostly Kurdish SDF. Trump once described himself as trusting people too much. Did he trust that if he threatened Erdogan's economy and made noises about how we'd sanction him and stuff, that would do anything?

Maybe, maybe not. He's now saying reprehensible shit about people who cleaned up ISIS like, "they didn't help us with Normandy". (They actually were apparently part of Allied forces, generally, however. Unlike Trump's father. If Trump wants to cite Khe Sanh, I might cite that I need to see his long form foot X-ray.) He's saying he doesn't care if ISIS fighters are dispersed because they will be heading to Europe--where he's threatened to dump ISIS fighters previously. Does he understand the kind of stochastic terrorism they might intend to wage on our Western allies? Does he think the world so big that doesn't have ripples here?

The better question might be: does he understand what allies are? He thinks we can form new alliances easily--which strongly suggests he doesn't understand the time, investment and cooperation that goes into any of it. It's all transactional to him. I don't think he even understands that this means his temporary allies of today (Republicans) can throw him over for a better deal (not being associated with him) if his name truly begins to stink. And it will. And it should.

His temporary allies of today in the Republican party also need to understand this is how he feels about you. Some people seem to have abandoned all principle in the fear of a series of mean Tweets, as if the vicious seven year old's taunts were somehow better than the considered opinion of people who have frankly, been around these issues far longer than he has and understand the stakes and stakeholders' concerns far more than he can understand them.

Today we hear, among other things, that there are dozens more claims of sexual assault made against Trump in a new book. Nearly life-long rumors of being a sex-pest don't actually jibe well with "family values", do they? These women aren't saying these things for money or acclaim and understand full well the shit they will catch in their personal lives for saying anything against a wealthy and powerful man. The simplest reason for their doing so is...it's their truth. Ask yourself what kind of man preys on vulnerable women and makes them frightened enough of him to keep that under wraps for years. It isn't a strong man. It's a weak man who deals with people as commodities. Their gratification of his temporary needs was a thing he took. He extracted the regular payment from them of their silence, and they have decided to stop paying it. Because they understand he isn't so tough--if they band together.

This sort of thing is his vulnerability. He tries to call himself "transparent" even if this is laughable. No political figure of the modern era in the US has been so protective of, say, their tax returns. Trump's lawyers have said he won't comply with the impeachment proceeding and it looks like they intend to block any testimony or deny the release of any documents.

There's no "soft-pedal" way to deal with that sort of thing. Subpoena everything, charge of obstruction for things withheld, contempt for people who side with President Tantrum-Haver. If he wants to cry victim, the point is--he is bringing this on himself by making it difficult, and if his phone calls and everything else are so squeaky clean and perfect, he shouldn't have a problem. But he clearly does, because why the ten potential charges of obstruction we already have in the Mueller Report? Why specifically deny the testimony of people like Ambassador Sondland whose statements should have confirmed "no quid pro quo" right? Unless that was a matter of messaging directed by the president, as opposed to the actual policy, which was all kinds of quid pro quo, maybe?

Every press conference it needs to be said: What is this administration hiding? Why does Trump lie? If this looks bad, doesn't it mean--it is bad? Every day. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

So when things come out like how Trump tried to "fix" things for one of Giuliani's clients, an Iranian Turkish gold dealer who violated US sanctions--what are we to believe? Even petty abuses of office out of sheer transactionalism paint a picture of what a corrupt, weak, unethical being this Trump is. He needs to be called to account on every single one. Every charge. Every thing.

Every single one. He isn't tough. He isn't good. He isn't smart. He isn't godly, even if opportunistic theocrats want to paint him as such. He is not king, because the United States has no monarchs, even if his minions want to talk about "regicide".

He is just a little, dumb man who watches a lot of Fox News, has a certain kind of wealth (and debt), and probably never looks at himself in a full-length mirror naked.  He ain't so tough. He's a gangster, and gangsters fall. That's all you need to know. Band together. He can't fuck us all up. This country isn't him. We're bigger than him, and older and better. We are great.

He just isn't.

John Dean's Trip Down Memory Lane

I was skeptical about the value of John Dean's testimony comparing President Trump's actions in office with Watergate, and still am. It's not that I think the comparison is wrong--I don't! It's just that even after Nixon resigned (and was pardoned) we still got Republican presidents even though the madness of the criminality proposed or actually engaged in by Nixon and associates is actually mind-blowing when actually contemplated.

So we got Reagan and-Iran Contra (and I never could swear the October Surprise conspiracy wasn't a real thing, either). When George H.W. Bush got into office, he pardoned the handful of Reagan officials that had been convicted, and it seems pretty unlikely that Bush was as "out of the loop" regarding that affair as he claimed.

George W. Bush's presidency should have been the final straw. The pre-9/11 intelligence. The Iraq War. Guantanamo. Abu Ghraib.

But how did Republicans treat Presidents Clinton and Obama? (Do I need to go into how Whitewater and Benghazi weren't about fact-finding but fault-finding?)

And now, you can't even get Republicans to read the damn Mueller Report (which, it was once crowed in front of tv cameras, exonerated Trump--until it didn't).

The double-standard view holds up even to this day, though. While I, or liberals in general, or even objective folks of goodwill, might Dean's comparison seriously based on the details we know of Watergate and the detail in the Mueller Report, and think, for example, a line of questioning intending to diminish his testimony based on an ad hom argument was poor, Rep. Matt Gaetz's description of Dean as having made a "cottage industry" of criticizing presidents will stick simply because he pointed out that Iran-Contra and, well, shit, half of what the Bush Administration did was worse than Watergate. There might be truth in it--but not to Republicans if they've never admitted it to themselves.

And after all, didn't Dean make money...on his books?

Look, Dean made a perfectly good swipe at Gaetz for possibly not understanding the rule of law issues involved because "Watergate was before his time". But I was still in diapers at the time, and I get it. The problem isn't when Gaetz was born, it's actually assuming you can treat Republicans like they weren't born yesterday. The environment of unaccountability they've created has served them well, and they aren't going to be shamed by something that happened 46 years ago, or 35 years ago, or thirteen years ago. Or a minute ago--unless you rub their noses in current events.

Where some might see the throughline from then until now, Trump loyalist conservatives will only see water under the bridge, because there is none so blind as those who don't want to see. Everyone is either dead and gone or alive and pardoned and reborn on cable news. It's a little harder, though, to get away from what's happening right now.  And now is what and when Democrats need to focus on.

This Photo Op Was A Good Trump Day

On a day when the "fake news" noted that Trump was the first president since 2002 to not make a visit to the troops, Trump snuck into Iraq to take selfies and complain about Democrats. Sure, it might have been in part to offset the looming news that his purported "bone spurs" explanation that kept him out of Viet Nam (as opposed to a "high lottery number") was just a convenient falsehood. Or maybe it was just to keep Trump occupied and not Tweeting while the stock market corrected itself back to the black.

I don't know what the rationale was for Trump making the journey, and I imagine that for those servicemembers that think Trump is a straight-shooter, this was a fine thing. It was a sign that he and the spouse cared enough for them to show their faces, even if Trump was now telling them that the Syria pullout meant that those stationed in Iraq would now be the folks responsible for action in the event that ISIS went on being a thing. But he explained this in his best trying not to be an entire crass orifice way, by suggesting that other countries were getting away with giving so little while we give a fuckton. "We're no longer the suckers" he explained, while negatively characterizing the entirety of their previous mission.

We're a different kind of sucker, I hate to interject, but feel might be necessary. We're certainly different if we're now taking cues from Turkey and Russia and Saudi Arabia, instead of necessarily guarding US interests first.  He spoke out against Democrats and signed hats for military members, which in actuality, makes this thing more or less a campaign rally, rather then a simple holiday message from a CINC. Of course, he had to make a Big Lie about being the president who gave the troops a raise for the first time in a decade, and overstated the raise by rather a bit, because he lies all the time. And then he used a video on his social media to politicize his visit to the troops and wound up inadvertently giving away secret ops data regarding the Navy SEALS.

Eh, but these are just the kinds of things we've accepted Trump is going to fuck up--right? On the whole, a day when Trump is only a total op-sec fail and an apparent click-whore, is just fucking Wednesday. I hope the troops that are Republicans enjoyed and learned from their up-close and personal Commander in Chief visit. I already have an idea how any liberal leaning troops might have felt about it. And I don't envy them. 

Hobby Lobby Must Give Back Ancient Arts'n'Crafts

There's something a bit curious, to my mind, about the story regarding Hobby Lobby making purchases of over 5,000 Middle Eastern artifacts in some dodgy deals resulting in the company having to pay a $3 million fine and give up the artifacts. It makes a kind of awkward statement about what ethics the business has.

After all, this was the company that made the argument that they could not possibly provide insurance that included birth control to their employees, because some of those employees might turn around and...obtain birth control. I find that argument fascinating in light of this purchase of looted antiquities, because surely, they could not have been unaware that much of this sort of merchandise is not merely plunder--but dealt by terrorist groups to fund, you know, more terrorism.

Ah, Vixen, you might sigh, you're comparing IUD's to IED's.  To which I could only respond, "No duh."