Creating Cracks In a Corrupted Coalition

It took four tries trying to get around a cowardly Republican House leadership, but there's a resolution now to end trump's failed war against Iran (via Claudia Grisales at NPR):

A bipartisan majority in the Republican-led House voted on Wednesday to end the war with Iran, the clearest rebuke yet of President Trump's handling of the conflict and the subsequent economic fallout.

The war powers resolution passed by a vote of 215 to 208, with four Republicans joining Democrats in support.

The resolution had originally been set for a vote two weeks ago, but Republican leaders sent House members home early for a May recess when it appeared the largely Democratic-backed measure had enough Republican votes for passage. However, the extended break didn't shift GOP support to kill the measure...

The vote is mostly symbolic. Democrats, despite multiple attempts, have been unable to pass a war powers resolution through the Republican-led Senate. Even if the measure passed in Congress, it would almost certainly be vetoed by President Trump, whose administration has questioned the constitutionality of the War Powers Act.

Still, Senate Democrats have been inching closer. Last month, they won support on a procedural measure to set up a war powers vote after a handful of Republicans broke ranks to join them. A final vote has yet to be scheduled.

Given how there are a number of anti-war Republican Senators - some of whom have nothing to lose going against trump's tirades and kneecapping - there is a good chance the Senate will approve the resolution.

It won't stop trump and his lackeys from pursuing more violence and stupidity against Iran, but it will put him on notice that he's not going to get help from congresscritters when (not if) he screws up even more in his overseas follies.

That Speaker Mike Johnson couldn't kill this vote outright signals how ineffective his leadership has been the last two years, and how meager a majority the Republicans control the House heading into a midterms that's screaming Blue Wave.

The voters have a chance here to ensure their anti-war, anti-tariff, anti-trump views gain position in Congress well enough to bring this corrupt trump rule to heel.

GET THE GODDAMN VOTE OUT, AMERICA, AND KICK EVERY BROKEN REPUBLICAN OUT OF OFFICE FOR GOOD.

Failing One War in Iran, Starting Another with Cuba

We're in yet another week of trump proclaiming a peace deal with Iran is in the works, and yet every sign that trump isn't going to gain concessions or any true victory the way he thinks (via David A Graham at the Atlantic):

Repeatedly over the past nine years, Trump has gotten rolled by counterparts during high-stakes exchanges. North Korea, Russia, Russia again, China, and China again have gotten the better of the United States. Trump has had to slink back to Washington without much to show except empty talk about friendship with whatever dictator has just run circles around him. He’s had some success in brokering agreements when acting as a third party (though not nearly as much as he pretends) but much less luck when his own government is a participant. The one glaring exception came when he was effectively negotiating with himself, getting his own administration to set up a $1.8 billion slush fund for his political allies.

(Absolute rage regarding that mess, but I digress)

The newest example of Trump’s artlessness is Iran. Let’s review the past few days: Trump posted on Saturday that he was close to striking a deal with Tehran that would end the war he started earlier this year and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. As the outlines of the agreement began to emerge, it looked both incomplete and bad: Trump had postponed discussing the hardest issues—matters, such as nuclear weapons, that led him to go to war—in exchange for opening the strait, which was open before Trump started the war. Hawkish Trump allies promptly criticized the deal, and despite histrionic pushback from Trump aides, the president had begun backing off claims of an imminent agreement by Sunday. “If I make a deal with Iran, it will be a good and proper one, not like the one made by Obama,” he posted. “Our deal is the exact opposite, but nobody has seen it, or knows what it is. It isn’t even fully negotiated yet.” Yesterday, in a sign that a deal might not be near at all, the U.S. military conducted what it called “self-defense strikes” against Iranian targets—directly contradicting the administration’s previous claims about having wiped out any threats to the United States in Iran.

Take a moment to notice how trump is obsessing over the nuclear deal in 2015 Obama made with Iran that trump impulsively tore up: A deal that in hindsight was working in spite of trump's refusal to accept anything Obama did as President (or accepting Obama as human, period). trump doesn't even know what the deal is, or even cares: All he cares about is that it'll be "better" than what Obama did. And trump is too clueless personally to comprehend how fucked he is:

First, Trump is unprepared. Some effective presidents (Dwight Eisenhower, George H. W. Bush) came to the White House with a history of deep engagement in public affairs and foreign relations, which made them ready to handle sensitive foreign negotiations. Others brought a formidable work ethic and a ruthless intellect (Barack Obama, Bill Clinton). Both types surround themselves with smart advisers whose input they take seriously. Trump is 0 for 3 on these conditions, which is one reason he wrote off the risk of Iran closing the strait in the first place: He both surrounds himself with less qualified aides than past presidents did and refuses to heed their counsel...

Second, as the roller-coaster weekend demonstrates, Trump is mercurial. Keeping one’s bottom line ambiguous in a negotiation is canny, but Trump doesn’t appear to have any bottom line in his own mind. He has cycled through different rationales for the war, including regime change and stopping Iran’s nuclear program, but hasn’t landed on one. Lacking a goal in the war means he also lacks a goal in the peace talks. Iran may be able to use that to its advantage, but even if its leaders are eager to make a deal, they will be understandably reluctant to agree to anything that requires a leap of faith, because Trump may change his mind at any moment, as appeared to happen amid Republican backlash in recent days.

Third, Trump is desperate for a deal, and everyone knows it. His misjudgments have led him to corporate bankruptcies and cheap sales in business, and he’s in a similar situation now. Every conflict between an autocracy and a democracy (however fragile this one may be) is asymmetric: Trump has to be concerned about public opinion, whereas Iran’s leaders have shown not only that they are indifferent to the suffering of their people; they are willing to massacre them by the thousands. But as the war drags on with no positive resolution in sight, and the U.S. economy looks shakier, Trump has become visibly more frantic to reach a peace agreement...

There is another reason that Graham doesn't note for why trump is desperate for a deal, desperate to crawl away declaring victory in a war with Iran he's clearly lost: trump wants to start another war with a visible target, one that the Far Right would be happy to see (even if most Americans don't want any wars at all right now). The likelihood of attacking - if not straight-up invading - Cuba keeps ticking higher (via Paul McLeary at Politico):

The Pentagon has spent months positioning the troops and weapons needed for the U.S. to launch a military attack on Cuba — all it needs is a final go-ahead from Donald Trump.

The president has floated an invasion of the island after economic and political pressure failed to topple the Communist government. But the Navy’s built-up presence in the region — the largest in the world outside the Middle East — would allow the U.S. to act immediately.

This is something that should get cleared with Congress, but Republican congresscritters have abandoned their role in government and so we're facing yet another unwanted war.

These strategically placed assets set the table for military action, from a capture of Havana’s leadership much like the seizure of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, to a series of precision strikes. And they open the possibility that the U.S. throws itself into the third international conflict of the Trump administration.

Cuba is “in a lot of trouble,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday at a full Cabinet meeting. “Having a failed state 90 miles from our shores is a threat to the national security of the United States.”

Cuba is a failed state thanks to decades of American sanctions and a more recent blockade on any oil/fuel getting to Cuba to keep their lights on, but of course Rubio's not going to admit to that. It doesn't help that Rubio is a Cuban expat whose entire political identity is tied into being an anti-Castro advocate eager to invade his family's old country: Exacting revenge against the Castro regime that drove the hardline Cubans out.

I've mentioned these anti-Castro types before: I met some of the original generation - those from the 1960s - at various political functions in South Florida when I worked in Broward County and was a McCain supporter. That generation was rabid in their hatred of anything they deemed 'Communist' or favoring their demon Fidel. Given how Rubio is from my generation, that hatred has passed down to the current generation in power, and they are still fantasizing about pulling off a Bay of Pigs that won't fail.

But that's the problem: Whatever promises Rubio and others are whispering into trump's ear to get him to sign off - the promise of an easy military victory, the hope of being more manly than the wimps who failed to recapture Cuba for wingnut glory - even something as simple as staging an invasion on an island 90 miles off the Florida Coast is going to be too hard for this administration. Back to McLeary:

But the administration faces a timeline to act. Many of the biggest warships deployed in the summer are approaching 10 months at sea, far beyond the usual six to seven months. This has caused defense officials to worry about overextending crews, and adds to the stress on a naval force that is also conducting a blockade of Iranian ships in the Arabian Gulf...

“These back-to-back long deployments will add up over time,” said a defense official, granted anonymity to speak candidly about military operations. “Keeping them out there so long creates more problems in the long run when it comes to refitting and repairing those ships once they come home.”

The prolonged missions come on the back of the record-setting 11 month deployment of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, which ended this month after sailing from Europe to the Caribbean for the Maduro operation and then to the Middle East for the Iran war...

But the long deployments take a toll on the crews and Marines, who had planned for a normal rotation and are now months past their initial scheduled return home.

With our military troops stretched thin already, do we really have enough manpower to go into a jungle-covered, mountainous region like Cuba to try and capture their officials and occupy the lands? And the problems with logistics are already showing with the current deployed fleet: We're already aware how supplies and food under Hegseth's command at the War Defense Department are mismanaged to the point of futility (if not starvation for the front-line troops).

All Cuba has to do is the same thing Iran did: Deny trump a quick victory, make enough strikes to bloody America's nose (it's obvious Florida would be a rich target to strike ports, utilities, and key transportation hubs to disrupt the state), and survive long enough for trump's declining poll numbers to sink the whole Republican Party by the midterms. P.S. Most Americans don't want to invade Cuba, making it likely trump's approval will go lower if he decides to.

This is an administration of Far Right Republicans looking for any kind of military success to justify their Alpha Male fantasies, driven at the top by a madman who wants to win peace prizes while bombing three to seven nations at a time. This is also an administration made up of the least-qualified people for the jobs they're handling, meaning they are making bad decisions into worse policy that will lead to disaster.

And our troops are going to be the ones paying for those bad decisions. At the least. In a fight with Cuba, that is something that can come stateside far faster and far bloodier than we could ever expect.

In a trumpian train wreck bound to get worse - WE WARNED YOU, AMERICA - by every moment, this is getting seriously worse.

This Is Not Victory, This Is Iran Punching Back

I'd like to blog about May The Fourth Be With You, but trump is making things worse as always.

After spending the weekend running around claiming "the war with Iran was over" and that the Strait was opened (aka lying as usual), today Iran made it clear who was in charge of this war and who was winning (via Luena Rodriguez-Feo Vileira and Bernard McGhee at AP News):

The United Arab Emirates on Monday said it came under attack by Iran for the first time since a fragile ceasefire took hold in early April. Authorities in the eastern emirate of Fujairah said an Iranian drone sparked a fire at a key oil facility, and the British military reported two cargo vessels ablaze off the UAE.

The attacks appeared to be in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. forces on Monday began offering to guide commercial ships through the critical waterway and reported that two American-flagged merchant ships had successfully transited. Hundreds of ships have been stuck in the strait since the war began.

Trump on Saturday said he was reviewing a new Iranian proposal to end the war but expressed skepticism that it would lead to a deal. Two semiofficial Iranian news outlets believed to be close to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said Iran sent a 14-point proposal via Pakistan in response to a nine-point U.S. proposal.

Trump, meanwhile, also claimed that the war has been “terminated” because of the ceasefire — an interpretation that would allow him to skirt the War Powers Resolution, which requires Congress to authorize military action that extends beyond 60 days. Trump called this law “unconstitutional,” and its May 1 deadline passed without action after lawmakers left town.

This war isn't going to end until one of three things happen: Congress forces trump to abide by the War Powers laws and shuts down military operations; trump is out of power and saner heads can prevail; or Iran obliterates enough oil production capabilities by our Middle East allies to where they scream loud enough for trump to withdraw outright.

Invading Iran with ground troops is out of the question: Our military is falling apart under Hegseth's misrule as I type this. trump getting a peace deal out of Iran is out of the question because Netanyahu and the Far Right wingnuts in Israel do not want peace with Iran under any terms.

I seriously wonder what will happen first: trump's willingness to lie and deceive himself into a nursing home; or our overseas military quitting in a mass mutiny over lack of food and coherent leadership.

The Grinding Down of Russia as Ukraine Keeps Fighting Back, May 2026 Edition

It's been some time since I posted anything about Ukraine's war of survival against Putin's Russia.

By most accounts, it's still going terrible for Putin and his meat grinder. I once mentioned that Russia's only true advantage over Ukraine was sheer numbers: that Russia had 134 million to throw at Ukraine's 34 million, an obscene "We Have Reserves" tactic that could still well work. Problem even with that: there's really only so many bodies you can throw into a war zone before you use up the ones that are able to fight; and are left with untrainable, unhappy, unwilling soldiers. There's also a limit to how many men - young, old, mere babies - you can conscript before crippling your nation's workforce in vital fields. Meanwhile, Ukraine is playing defense and can draw on everyone willing to protect themselves and loved ones from invading Russian hordes.

If you want more data: A link to the most recent analysis from the Institute for the Study of War.

With trump's war on Iran creating a global crisis with oil supply, Ukraine's been taking advantage by striking Russia's refineries to prevent them from capitalizing on the increasing demand for oil. Granted, it's not great for the rest of the world, but it's putting more pressure on Putin who can't generate any wealth or maintain his own war machines without it. 

In this, Ukraine's skill fighting with drones has made them one of the most invaluable military forces on the planet. As Sinead Baker notes over at Business Insider:

Now, partners want access to Ukrainian weaponry, to learn from its production techniques, and to integrate Ukrainian tactics into their own militaries.

Ukraine's armed forces are now "undoubtedly the most combat-hardened and the best at the moment in Europe," Michael Clarke, a former UK security advisor and now a defense analyst, told BI. And allies are paying attention.

Partner countries have long trained Ukrainian troops to fight Russia, but increasingly the roles are being reversed, with Ukrainians sharing their expertise with NATO militaries and joining their training programs, particularly on drone warfare...

Ukrainian troops have at times pushed back on Western training, explaining why some tactics are unlikely to work against Russia while also feeding front-line experiences back to their instructors. That know-how is reshaping how partner militaries train their own forces, trainers in a UK-led program told Business Insider.

On the opening of a new training camp for Ukrainian soldiers in Poland last year, Poland's defense minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, said, "This is not a one-way process," sharing that "we will be drawing on Ukrainian experiences."

If Putin thought conquering Ukraine would make the rest of Europe tremble, he's made things worse for himself and Russia by giving them opportunities to learn from Ukraine how to fight back. Putin's never really going to win this one.

Ukraine's drone capabilities were apparently scary enough that Putin put out offers of a temporary ceasefire on his nation's upcoming Victory Day to avoid any embarrassing drone strikes on his glorious parades. Peter Dickinson at The Atlantic Council explains how this exposes Putin's weaknesses:

For Putin, the annual Victory Day parade is no mere formality; it is the main event on the Kremlin calendar. This prominence reflects Putin’s efforts to revive Russian patriotism following the fall of the USSR and place the Soviet World War II experience at the heart of the country’s modern national identity.

During the Soviet era, Victory Day had not been the leading public holiday, with only four parades held between 1945 and 1991. Since the start of Putin’s reign, however, Victory Day has been elevated in status to the level of pseudo-religion, complete with its own saints, symbols, dogmas, and heretics. Indeed, it is no coincidence that enemies of the Kremlin are routinely branded as “Nazis...”

Since 2022, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has cast a long shadow over this spectacle. With Russia needing all available armor to replace heavy combat losses in Ukraine, finding enough vehicles for the parade has become increasingly challenging. In 2023, the Kremlin could only muster a single tank, sparking widespread mockery. “There are farmers in Ukraine with more Russian tanks than that,” quipped one internet wag.

This year’s parade is shaping up to be even more awkward. The Kremlin has already announced that due to the threat of Ukrainian drone and missile strikes, the event will proceed in a scaled back format without any tanks or military equipment whatsoever. Instead, the pageantry will be limited to columns of troops marching across Moscow’s central square. This dramatic downgrade represents a tacit admission by Putin that he can no longer ensure security in his own capital...

Five years ago, the entire notion of Putin seeking American assistance to protect Moscow from Ukrainian attack would have seemed absurd. This humiliating turn of events will not have passed unnoticed inside Russia, where rumblings of dissent are already becoming more audible amid a grinding war, deteriorating economic outlook, and escalating government restrictions on internet access. Putin’s obvious inability to protect his own showpiece parade will now underscore perceptions that the regime is rapidly losing control of the narrative and has become trapped in a war it cannot win but dare not end.

Starting an unpopular, unwinnable war just isn't the best way for dictators to show off, ya know?

As always, I suggest keeping up with Adam L Silverman at Balloon-Juice for insight and updates on Ukraine.

Slava Ukraini!

Hegseth: Starving Our Troops While Feasting on Steak And Lobster

Update: thank you again Steve in Manhattan for including this article in Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! 

The USA Today headline doesn't spell it out, but the lede does and the story gets even worse from there (via Cybele Mayes-Osterman):

Dan F. was alarmed when his daughter, a Marine aboard the USS Tripoli, a warship deployed to fight the Iran war, sent him a photo of a meal served on the ship. A lunch tray, two-thirds empty, carried one small scoop of shredded meat and a single folded tortilla.

A picture of a mid-April dinner on the USS Abraham Lincoln, shared by a service member with his family, was similarly unappetizing – a small handful of boiled carrots, a dry meat patty and a gray slab of processed meat.

Dan and other military family members worried that their loved ones deployed to the Middle East are going hungry are filling boxes with items they hope could help service members ride out prolonged deployments in the Middle East – homemade fudge, Jolly Ranchers, crossword puzzle books, playing cards, toothpaste, Girl Scout cookies and fresh socks. But mail delivery to military ZIP codes across the Middle East has been indefinitely suspended as of April, and packages in transit now hang in limbo.

Dan asked to go by his first name only to protect his daughter from retaliation.

It's less about the lack of shipping personal items to their loved ones abroad, and more about the U.S. military under Secretary of Steaks and Lobsters Pete Hegseth absolutely unable to run the army in any competent fashion.

I noted this last month when word got out our military strikes against Iran were running out of missiles, ammo, and other equipment:

So the money is there - you would think - for a lot of weapons production and resources getting shipped out to our armed forces. And yet, we're getting warning signs from our own Pentagon officials that things are amiss, that they're not getting all these weapons and material to fight the wars they're being asked to fight.

This is a serious question: Just where the hell is all our defense spending going to these corporations that are supposed to be manufacturing all this shit? What happened to all the resources that are supposed to be pouring into our munitions factories to pump out the missiles and bullets and body armor and helmets and battlefield supplies?

Now we're witnessing the other failures at simple logistics - logistics, one of the most vital elements of any great army - affecting our own armed forces, unable to feed our troops and sailors at the very battlefronts trump and Hegseth want to wage their wars. The U.S. military used to be great at logistics, putting us at levels of preparedness and effectiveness that no other military on the planet could achieve.

Within two years of trump getting back into power, and within two years of Hegseth purging our armed forces over "woke" and "diversity" in ways that have clearly disrupted our chains of command and ruined morale at the worst possible time; we can't even feed our frontline people. 

There's an old saying - attributed to Napoleon, but it's probably been out there since the days of Roman military might (the guys who perfected logistics to a science) - that "an army travels on its stomach."

From the USA Today article
The only recognizable food on that half-empty tray are the carrots

You feed any army that and you are going to bring that army to its knees.

WHERE THE HELL DID THE BILLIONS IN THE MILITARY BUDGET FOR FOOD GO, HEGSETH??? YOU are starving our people, this is YOUR accountability, YOUR responsibility running the armed forces, YOU better have a GODDAMN solution for this ASAP.

It Was Never About Getting a Deal Or Making Peace

So if anyone thought that last week's "ceasefire" between trump and Iran was staged, that the entire peace process effort that trump proposed to stabilize the global markets was gaslighting, that the negotiations being held in Pakistan was pure theater... you were correct (via Dan Goldberg at Politico):

Marathon negotiations (personal edit: doubt it) with Iran in Pakistan this weekend failed to produce a breakthrough that would definitively (personal edit: uh, ahahaha no) end the war, which is entering its seventh week.

Vance, who spoke early Sunday morning local time, said the Iranians refused to give assurances that they would not try to obtain or develop a nuclear weapon.

“They have chosen not to accept our terms,” Vance said. “The simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon.”

I'm not sure what Vance's trump's terms were exactly; but Iran knows the US are in no position to dictate such terms, and will deny any offer until the Ayatollah gets a deal - complete American humiliation in the Middle East and removal from the region as a global power - he can literally live with.

It's been noted that the US terms getting pushed were the same terms President Obama secured back in 2015, that trump infamously tore up in 2018 (all because trump cannot abide Obama achieving deals he can't).

In the meantime, you can tell trump took these negotiations seriously by... amusing himself with a UFC match in Miami and blowing off the no-deal situation:

Trump, who was watching a UFC fight in Miami while Vance briefed the media in Islamabad, has not said whether he would pick up where he left off last week — threatening to destroy Iranian civilization.

“We win regardless,” Trump said earlier Saturday. “We defeated them militarily.” (personal edit: /facepalm)

That trump kept his Secretary of State Marco Rubio with him in Miami to watch the fight instead of sending our most senior foreign diplomat to aid Vance in the talks underscored just how messed up and self-destructive this is: A farce pretending to be a mockery of a sham.

This was never about securing a new peace deal to pacify Iran as a Middle East threat. This was never about reopening the Strait of Hormuz. This was all about pleasing a worried and stressed out global financial market terrified of rising global oil prices triggering economic collapse.

And even then, trump and his lackeys screwed THAT up.

You can tell it wasn't about reopening the Strait because when it became clear how much of a disaster Vance's failure was, trump came out and ordered US naval forces in the region to stage their own blockade to keep ALL ships going in and out, doubling down on what Iran's already done (updates from NBC News):

TRUMP THREATENS BLOCKADE: President Donald Trump said that "effective immediately" the U.S. Navy will prevent ships from passing through the Strait of Hormuz, accusing Iran of extorting them. He had previously criticized Iran for blocking the critical oil shipping chokepoint.

trump's trying to bully every other nation that wants the Strait opened to come in to fight Iran and do his dirty work for him. But that hasn't worked yet and likely won't work this time.

An absolute mess, all started and escalated by an idiot who thinks he's a genius deal-maker.

'A Whole Civilization Will Die Tonight'

It doesn't look like trump will chicken out of this threat. The bully wants to prove he's serious.

Seriously, what the fuck is this. This is completely deranged, and anyone who can’t say so is a coward.

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— Angry (@angrystaffer.bsky.social) April 7, 2026 at 8:30 AM

In case the Bluesky skeet goes away, here's a screen capture from Angry Staffer

Dear fellow Americans: We knew. We knew what kind of a monster trump was the first time around, and 77 million of you still voted to bring that thug back. 

There's 284 million of us able to vote, yet not all of us did, and not enough of us voted the SANE choices - neither Hillary or Kamala - when we had the chance. Goddamn us all. "Ooh, Hillary wasn't good enough!" FUCK YOU, SHE WAS GOING TO BE BETTER THAN trump! "Ooh, I don't trust Kamala!" FUCK YOU, SHE WAS GOING TO BE CLEARLY BETTER THAN A CRIMINALLY-CONVICTED SEX-OFENDING trump! 

A number of you who openly voted for trump even with the knowledge of his graft and his sins... you KNEW he was a monster and you brought him back anyway! Cowards.

And now, we as a nation are openly committing war crimes against not just Iran and not just Venezuela and not just most of South America as we bomb their fishing boats, but essentially the whole world as this escalates into Middle East chaos - there's Israel happily bombing Lebanon (again) into submission! - and economic collapse.

And there's a palpable fear out there that trump now might actually go nuclear - even just one warhead dropped on a major city - on Iran.

Dear fellow Americans: We ARE the baddies this time. Some of y'all are fucking reveling in that today.

Goddamn us.

To those of us still willing to stand against fascism and stupidity and godless wars: keep fighting against trump and his lackeys, and keep fighting against the cowards among the GOP ranks who know how bad this is but won't do anything to stop it.

Stop the stupidity. Stop the hate. Stop the wars.

Heading Into Bomb Everything Day

Welp, there goes Easter this year.

I had to check but yes this is real

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— Anna Bower (@annabower.bsky.social) April 5, 2026 at 8:27 AM

Just in case the Bluesky skeet disappears, here's a saved photo

It's been said that when people drop curse words, they tend to be more honest about what they're saying. In that moment, their frustration and rage make it harder to be civil - there's no filter for polite conversation - and they speak blunt about their intentions.

With trump - a person notorious for lying nearly every time he opens his mouth - this exposes his frustration and rage all right. Also his bullying and viciousness. Also his willingness to commit war crimes to win a fight he shouldn't have started and arguably can't finish.

I'm seeing the usual calls from the sane side of the political spectrum that now would be a good time for the people in a position to do something - 25th Amendment time! - about removing trump from the big chair even if it's only temporary. That his madness and his dementia are getting too obvious to ignore.

But I saw this coming the last time around. Nobody in trump's Cabinet or Joint Chiefs or in a Republican-controlled Congress is going to invoke the 25th to stop this shit. None of them have the nation's best interests at heart, only their own.

There's a possibility by Tuesday some people in trump's orbit may talk him out of a massive war-crime bombing campaign. But trump has been escalating his threats even after he backs off (aka TACO or Trump Always Chickens Out), and it's been clear for weeks now that if he can't get the Strait opened sooner rather than later the global economy will collapse... and he'll get the blame no matter how much gaslighting he and his wingnut media allies try to use.

The odds of trump making this a long drawn-out war just got worse.

We're screwed. 

Our Military Implosion

Update: Thank you Batocchio for providing another link at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up this morning. As the attacks on Iran seem to be intensifying this morning (April 7th) into full-scale genocide, please everyone stay safe but please also keep standing against this stupid, globally destructive war. 

Also Update: Just posted my thoughts this morning (April 7th) about our slide into genocide. Goddamn trump and every idiot who supported him.

The damage being done to our nation's military - not by our enemies but by our own leaders - in the middle of a goddamn war is a straight-up nightmare (via Tom Nichols at the Atlantic): 

The United States is in the middle of a major war, but that didn’t stop Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Thursday from firing General Randy George, America’s most senior Army officer. George was the Army’s chief of staff, and he was cashiered along with another four-star general, David Hodne, and Major General William Green Jr., the top Army chaplain, in what has been a rolling purge by Hegseth of senior officers—particularly those close to the Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll.

Firing the Army chaplain in particular is a hell of a move, something that's never happened before, and allegedly by someone in Hegseth who claims to be of Christian faith. A little more on that later.

Why were these men fired while U.S. forces are fighting overseas? The Defense Department has given no official reason for their dismissals, but likely they are the latest victims of Hegseth’s vindictive struggles with the Army, which he feels treated him poorly—the service “spit me out,” he said in his 2024 book—as he struggles in a job for which he remains singularly unqualified.

Hegseth began his tenure by acting against what he sees as a Pentagon infested with DEI hires. He pushed for the removal of the then–chairman of the Joint Chiefs, C. Q. Brown, who is Black, and he fired a raft of female military leaders, replacing them all with men. But dumping the Army chief of staff in the middle of a war, without explanation, is a reckless move even by Hegseth’s standards. George is a decorated combat veteran who was slated to stay in his job until 2027, and he has never publicly feuded with Hegseth—despite having good reason to do so.

This is where firing the Army Chaplain becomes an issue, because Green - guess what - is Black. Hegseth didn't see the man's qualifications as a preacher or an officer: all he saw was a "Woke" hire and let his racist world-view push Green out the door.

Making this all worse is how Hegseth - fulfilling trump's own dark hatreds - is clearly attempting to redesign our prestigious armed forces to reflect his own recklessness, viciousness, and disdain for others.

Trump and Hegseth have been on a clear mission to politicize the U.S. military, and to turn it into an armed extension of the MAGA movement. Hegseth regularly proselytizes, both for Trump and for his right-wing evangelical beliefs, from the Pentagon podium. He has intervened in Army promotions, recently culling four colonels—two Black men and two women—from the list for advancement to brigadier general. (This may be the tip of the iceberg: NBC is now reporting that Hegseth has also canceled the promotions, across multiple services, of at least a dozen minority and female officers.)

...Even in less dangerous times, the public would still have a right to answers about such an unprecedented purge of the senior U.S. military ranks. These officers are all people with long and distinguished records of service; none of them has been charged with any wrongdoing, and none of them has been accused of any kind of incompetence or disloyalty. They all seem to have committed only the offense of being part of a military institution that Hegseth—who still harbors obvious bitterness about his undistinguished and ultimately shortened military career—wants to restock with MAGA loyalists.

Instead of maintaining a military that spent decades developing a genuine system of merit based on qualifications and understanding of how things work, Hegseth is switching that out for a system openly based on toadying, ego-stroking, and posturing. Granted, some of that does happen in any organization, but at least the Defense Dept. tried to keep that on the down-low to avoid incompetency blowing everything up. Hegseth wants that as Standard Operating Procedure.

And while the U.S. military has a rather scary history of religious fervor among the ranks, they've tried to keep it moderated and leveled out between the various faiths (and among different Christian beliefs). Hegseth doesn't care about that: He's openly pushing the Christianist evangelical platform of Holy War in a way we've never seen from our political leadership in previous wars (not even during the GWOT versus the Taliban and Iraqi Sunnis). Today, a major scandal erupted when he staged a Good Friday prayer service... that failed to invite the Catholics - a world church currently criticizing the unjust war against Iran - to one of their major holy days (from Jennifer Bendery at HuffPost):

The Pentagon has invited more than 3,500 employees to attend a Good Friday service at its in-house chapel. Except it’s only for Protestants, not Catholics.

“Just a friendly reminder: There will be a Protestant Service (No Catholic Mass) for Good Friday today at the Pentagon Chapel,” reads a Friday email sent by Air Force leadership, a copy of which was shared by an employee.

“I guess so the Catholics know their kind ain’t welcome,” said this employee, who requested anonymity to speak about internal communications. “It’s so ridiculous.”

A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed it is not hosting another, separate religious service for Catholic employees.

I'm Unitarian, and even I know - well, I have my ex-Catholic dad as a source - that Good Friday is one of the Big Ones, especially where they perform the Stations of the Cross. Even the Pope does it (well, when he's young enough to handle carrying the heavy crucifix). To exclude the Catholics from a Good Friday service - even one meant for Protestant service - is a huge insult to that church. Considering how many Catholics are in the U.S. armed forces (roughly 1.8 million Americans in uniform or families or base employment) this could well have serious effects on morale.

And as Nichols noted earlier, Hegseth is clearly waging a war on women in the military, allowing sexism to affect the chain of command. He's risking our armed forces at the worst possible time for the dumbest (and selfish) reasons (from Edith Olmstead at the New Republic):

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s rampant racism and sexism extend further than we previously knew.

Hegseth has made efforts to block or delay the promotion of more than one dozen female and Black officers across the Army, Air Force, Navy, and the Marines, according to nine U.S. officials familiar with the process who spoke with NBC News.

“There is not a single service that has been immune to this level of involvement by Hegseth,” one of the U.S. officials told NBC News...

The apparent reasons to block these promotions varied but seemed to have nothing to do with conduct—more with the identities of the officers and what they represented to Hegseth.

These are qualified officers: People who have served in the military for decades, who know how things work and how to get the best out of the personnel under their commands. Hegseth is kicking out people who know their jobs, all because Hegseth doesn't know his own job.

This ongoing war - not just the war in Iran, and South America; but the Culture War against America's move towards social justice - is going to get worse, and it's not going to end until these goddamn wingnuts from the Far Right are out of power forever. Pray for that.

trump and Republicans Starting Fights They Can't Finish

I'm not an expert on war, so I try to look for those who are to get insight on how things are going once a moron starts an oil war against Iran. I found this assistant professor - Bret Devereaux - at North Carolina State who provides some input: 

I am going to spend the next however many words working through what I think are the strategic implications of where we are, but that is my broad thesis: for the United States this war was an unwise gamble on extremely long odds; the gamble (that the regime would collapse swiftly) has already failed and as a result locked in essentially nothing but negative outcomes. Even with the regime were to collapse in the coming weeks or suddenly sue for peace, every likely outcome leaves the United States in a meaningfully worse strategic position than when it started.

Now, before we go forward, I want to clarify a few things. First, none of this is a defense of the Iranian regime, which is odious. That said, there are many odious regimes in the world and we do not go to war with all of them. Second, this is a post fundamentally about American strategy or the lack thereof and thus not a post about Israeli strategy. For what it is worth, my view is that Benjamin Netanyahu has is playing an extremely short game because it benefits him politically and personally to do so and there is a significant (but by no means certain) chance that Israel will come to regret the decision to encourage this war. I’ll touch on some of that, but it isn’t my focus. Likewise, this is not a post about the strategy of the Gulf states, who – as is often the sad fate of small states – find their fate largely in the hands of larger powers. Finally, we should keep in mind that this isn’t an academic exercise: many, many people will suffer because of these decisions, both as victims of the violence in the region but also as a consequent of the economic ripples...

Equally important, Iran was not a major strategic priority. This is something that in a lot of American policy discourse – especially but not exclusively on the right – gets lost because Iran is an ‘enemy’ (and to be clear, the Iranian regime is an enemy; they attack American interests and Americans regularly) and everyone likes to posture against the enemy. But the Middle East is a region composed primarily of poor, strategically unimportant countries. Please understand me: the people in these countries are not unimportant, but as a matter of national strategy, some places are more important than others. Chad is not an area of vital security interest to the United States, whereas Taiwan (which makes our semiconductors) is and we all know it.

Neither is the Middle East. The entire region has exactly two strategic concerns of note: the Suez Canal (and connected Red Sea shipping system) and the oil production in the Persian Gulf and the shipping system used to export it. So long as these two arteries remained open the region does not matter very much to the United States. None of the region’s powers are more than regional powers (and mostly unimpressive ones at that), none of them can project power out of the region and none of them are the sort of dynamic, growing economies likely to do so in the future. The rich oil monarchies are too small in terms of population and the populous countries too poor.

In short then, Iran is very big and not very important, which means it would both be very expensive to do anything truly permanent about the Iranian regime and at the same time it would be impossible to sell that expense to the American people as being required or justified or necessary. So successive American presidents responded accordingly: they tried to keep a ‘lid’ on Iran at the lowest possible cost. The eventual triumph of this approach was the flawed but useful JCPOA (the ‘Iran deal’) in which Iran in exchange for sanctions relief swore off the pursuit of nuclear weapons (with inspections to verify), nuclear proliferation representing the main serious threat Iran could pose. So long as Iran remained non-nuclear, it could be contained and the threat to American interests, while not zero, could be kept minimal...

But that was the situation: Iran was big and hostile, but relatively unimportant. The United States is much stronger than Iran, but relatively uninterested in the region apart from the uninterrupted flow of natural gas, oil and other products from the Gulf (note: the one thing this war compromised – the war with Iran has cut off the only thing in this region of strategic importance, compromised the only thing that mattered at the outset), whereas Iran was wholly interested in the region because it lives there. The whole thing was the kind of uncomfortable frontier arrangement powerful states have always had to make because they have many security concerns, whereas regional powers have fewer, more intense focuses...

The gamble was this: that the Iranian regime was weak enough that a solid blow, delivered primarily from the air, picking off key leaders, could cause it to collapse. For the United States, the hope seems to have been that a transition could then be managed to leaders perhaps associated with the regime but who would be significantly more pliant, along the lines of the regime change operation performed in Venezuela that put Delcy Rodriguez in power. By contrast, Israel seems to have been content to simply collapse the Iranian regime and replace it with nothing. That outcome would be – as we’ll see – robustly bad for a huge range of regional and global actors, including the United States, and it is not at all clear to me that the current administration understood how deeply their interests and Israel’s diverged here.

In any case, this gamble was never very likely to pay off for reasons we have actually already discussed. The Islamic Republic of Iran is not a personalist regime where the death of a single leader or even a group of leaders is likely to cause collapse: it is an institutional regime where the core centers of power (like the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps or IRGC) are ‘bought in’ from the bottom to the top because the regime allows them access to disproportionate resources and power. Consequently if you blow up the leader, they will simply pick another one – in this case they picked the previous leader’s son, so the net effect of the regime change effort was to replace Supreme Leader Khamenei with Supreme Leader Khamenei…Jr.

trump - thinking entirely in terms of individual power, projecting his own desire to be an autocrat onto other world leaders - totally believed a decapitation strike would work and everybody else would clean up his mess. And like anyone who's ever bankrupted a casino - which is almost nobody else because trump is the only one to ever do that multiple times - trump had no ideas what the odds were and what the costs would be.

The gamble here was that because the regime would simply collapse on cue, the United States could remove Iran’s regional threat without having to commit to a major military operation that might span weeks, disrupt global energy supplies, expand over the region, cost $200 billion dollars and potentially require ground operations. Because everyone knew that result was worse than the status quo and it would thus be really foolish to do that.

As you can tell, I think this was a bad gamble: it was very unlikely to succeed but instead always very likely to result in a significantly worse strategic situation for the United States, but only after it killed thousands of people unnecessarily. If you do a war where thousands of people die and billions of dollars are spent only to end up back where you started that is losing; if you end up worse than where you started, well, that is worse...

Once started, a major regional war with Iran was always likely to be something of a ‘trap,’ – not in the sense of an ambush laid by Iran – but in the sense of a situation that, once entered, cannot be easily left or reversed.

The trap, of course, is the Strait of Hormuz and the broader Persian Gulf. The issue is that an enormous proportion of the world’s shipping, particularly energy (oil, liquid natural gas) and fertilizer components (urea) passes through this body of water. The Gulf is narrow along its whole length, extremely narrow in the Strait and bordered by Iran on its northern shore along its entire length. Iran can thus threaten the whole thing and can do so with cheap, easy to conceal, easy to manufacture systems.

And here we come back to what Clausewitz calls the political object (drink!). Even something like a 50% reduction in shipping in the Gulf, were it to persist long term, would create strong global economic headwinds which would in turn arrive in the United States in the form of high energy prices and a general ‘supply shock’ that has, historically at least, not been politically survivable for the party in power.

And so that is the trap. While the United States can exchange tit-for-tat strikes with Iran without triggering an escalation spiral, once you try to collapse the regime, the members of the regime (who are making the decisions, not, alas, the Iranian people) have no reason to back down and indeed must try to reestablish deterrence. These are men who are almost certainly dead or poor-in-exile if the regime collapses. Moreover the entire raison d’être of this regime is resistance to Israel and the United States: passively accepting a massive decapitation attack and not responding would fatally undermine the regime’s legitimacy with its own supporters, leading right back to the ‘dead-or-poor-and-exiled’ problem.

Iran would have to respond and thus would have to try to find a way to inflict ‘pain’ on the United States to force the United States to back off. But whereas Israel is in reach of some Iranian weapons, the United States is not. Iran would thus need a ‘lever’ closer to home which could inflict costs on the United States. For – and I must stress this – for forty years everyone has known this was the Strait. This is not a new discovery, we did this before in the 1980s. “If the regime is threatened, Iran will try to close the Strait to exert pressure” is perhaps one of the most established strategic considerations in the region. We all knew this.

Except trump and Hegseth and Rubio and others in that broken, inept White House. None of them even read a Cliff Notes version of Clausewitz's writings, and jumped headlong into a fight without knowing who it was they're really fighting, the terrain they're fighting in, and the reason for fighting in the first place. It wasn't just that they were fools and rushed in: They were morons who rushed in without a goddamn clue.

If you read through - I recommend you do - the rest of Devereaux's thesis, he goes into the probabilities of escalation, the likelihood of U.S. naval vessels getting sunk by an Iranian military that's been planning this kind of war for 40 years, and a continuation of global economic chaos that augurs poorly for our nation. Our own military is struggling with military equipment build-up. The Defense Department is so wary of falling recruitment numbers that they're upping the maximum age of enlistments for guys in their 40s and scrapping restrictions on marijuana users. Talk about enacting the draft is making the 20-something MAGA crowds angry at trump, which could trigger a schism in the wingnut ranks.

We're heading into a regional Middle Eastern war again, with fewer exit ramp possibilities and almost no chance for victory.

All because too many media pundits accused the Democrats of being more war-hungry than trump and a rabid Republican base that's been starting wars since the 1980s and doing a piss-poor job of finishing them. No, I am never going to forgive those media assholes for that.

What I think is going to happen? This war will get out of control: Because trump doesn't know any better; and because Iran knows they don't have to beat the US, they just have to outlast trump and his handlers even if that takes another decade.

Gods help us, the ones who didn't want this war at all.

The Strait Story

Let's get straight to the point: trump and his pro-war lackeys had no idea what they were really doing starting a war with Iran (via Phillips Payson O'Brien at The Atlantic): 

Astonishingly, President Trump and his aides were caught unprepared when Iran, under air assault from the United States and Israel, retaliated by targeting shipping in the Persian Gulf region and specifically through the Strait of Hormuz. Military planners have pointed out for decades that the waterway—through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes—is highly vulnerable to Iranian assault. But the Trump administration acknowledged in classified briefings, CNN reported last night, that it did not make provisions for a closure because officials assumed that such a move would hurt Iran more than the United States.

In its failure to anticipate Iran’s reaction, the administration ignored a dynamic that former Defense Secretary James Mattis, a first-term Trump appointee, was fond of pointing out: Once hostilities begin, “the enemy gets a vote.” U.S. leaders have drastically underestimated the Iranian regime’s ability to survive, adjust, and strike back. Just two weeks into a war that began at a time of the president’s choosing, the U.S. appears uncertain about what to do next.

You can see the lack of intellectual and operational awareness with trump and everyone in his chain of command - Secretary of Voguing Pete Hegseth especially - when it comes to war planning just by noticing the map of the Strait of Hormuz.

via Wikipedia Commons

It's the geographic bottleneck of politics. I've got no training in military strategy or tactics, and even *I* can tell that narrow gap is a major hinderance to any naval operations. No shipping can slip through that 12 mile gap without detection, and Iran is in a prime position to threaten every oil tanker trying to get out of the Persian Gulf.

They've done this before, by the way. The "Tanker War" during the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s saw Iraq try to tempt Iran to blockade the Strait in order to draw the United States into their fight. Iran tried to avoid that by targeting Iraqi tankers only, delaying any American intervention until 1987 when the Iraqis accidentally struck the USS Stark, giving Reagan's government the excuse to go after Iran (which unfortunately also led to the tragic downing of an Iranian airliner Flight 655).

So considering anyone with a basic understanding of geography, and anyone with a memory of recent history - the 1980s weren't THAT long ago - you'd think there would be enough people even among the neocons and war chickenhawks in the current White House who would have at least done some planning into securing control of the Strait to ensure the flow of trade (oil) would continue unabated.

That - alas - would require someone in trump's administration to be genuinely competent at this point.

trump and Hegseth and every other person involved in this mismanaged war effort simply didn't think or even care to think where the long-term consequences of their actions would lead (as if they ever did).

You can tell they operated on the ass-umption that their "decapitation strikes" - taking out the Ayatollah and any Iranian military chain of command - would lead to the immediate collapse of Iran's government and willingness to fight. That it would lead to the Iranian citizenry - already in decades of protesting the harsh regime of hardliner Shia clerics - rising up in mass protest to overthrow whatever was left to leave a power vacuum to trump's (and Netanyahu's) liking.

It never occurred to trump's circle that Iran's military and leadership have been planning for this kind of situation for decades: Having witnessed the tactics of our armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, believing they've been in an existential fight against American hegemony since 1979 actually since 1953 when the CIA installed the Shah, and moving into more modern warfare methods such as drone bombs and cyberattacks (some of which the US military haven't adapted against yet). 

It hasn't occurred to our government's leadership - not just trump but let's face it most of our Presidents since the Second World War - even with the evidence after Afghanistan / Iraq / hell, Vietnam that bombing a population into submission doesn't work. The Iranian people may be tired and frustrated and willing to rise up against the Ayatollah including the new guy replacing his dead dad, but they're not going to do it while trump and his underlings are bombing schools, museums, and desalination plants.

I've often criticized Duyba's failed war effort in Iraq, pointing out that he and his people may have had a Plan A for going in and forcing regime change, but they had no Plan B when their attempt to install a puppet leader fell through. Considering what trump and Hegseth and the rest of the clowns are doing with Iran, there doesn't even seem to be a Plan A with them.

So, to the 77 million of you who voted for this shitgibbon to return to power: WE WARNED YOU. GODDAMN YOU, WE WARNED YOU and you were too butt-hurt about libruls and diversity to realize the damage you were bringing back.

And now a lot of things will get worse: The price of gas obviously, economic instability here and abroad, the likelihood of troop deployments and thousands of American families watching their loved ones go into harm's way - for arguably no reason at all this time save for the vanity and cruelty of trump and his lackeys - are just the immediate pain points we'll feel. We'll be feeling all of this months or even years down the road.

Gods help us. AGAIN.

How Can Our Own Military Be Running Out of Ammo?

Update: Thanks again to Batocchio for sharing this article at Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! And did Italy just beat the US in baseball this week???

As much as the ongoing deaths of civilians and soldiers horrify me as trump pushes the United States into more bombings and more war with more nations, another thing irking me is the revelation that our military is woefully unprepared for most of this, especially in terms of supplies. Susie Madrak over at Crooks & Liars has the details:

Inside the Pentagon, there was deepening concern Sunday that the Iran conflict could spiral out of control, said people familiar with the situation. “The mood here is intense and paranoid,” one person said.

Senior leaders are worried that the fighting will extend for weeks, further stressing limited U.S. air defense stockpiles.

“I don’t think people have fully absorbed yet, like, what that has done with stockpiles,” one source added, noting that it often takes two or three air defense interceptors to ensure that an incoming missile is stopped.

The president’s senior military adviser, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, warned the White House last week that munitions shortfalls and a lack of broad military support from other U.S. allies would raise the risk to any operation in Iran and to the U.S. personnel put in harm’s way.

Granted, the government under Biden has been shipping out a lot of reserve firepower to places like Ukraine, but our own military should have been stockpiling newer gear, ammo, defense systems, tanks, planes, helicopters, and other equipment to fill that void. 

I went digging for information about what's going on with our military manufacturing, and by the looks of it there's hundreds of billions of dollars getting pumped into all that (via Jake Kaufman at Defense and Munitions, a trade magazine):

The President’s FY ’26 National Defense Budget requests $1.01 trillion, a 13% increase from 2025. However, at the moment, Congress has passed $831.5 billion for the Department of War’s Defense's discretionary budget. Outstanding budget considerations going through Congress could bring that final number up toward $893 billion...

You would think $893 billion would pay for a lot of bullets...

The budget includes an additional $1.3 billion for industrial-based supply chain improvements and an additional $2.5 billion for missiles and munitions production expansion. The budget also includes significant new investments of $200 million for automation and artificial intelligence (AI). It breaks down to shipbuilding, munitions and defense supply chains, and air and missile defense alone accounting for 50% of the total enhancements...

So the money is there - you would think - for a lot of weapons production and resources getting shipped out to our armed forces. And yet, we're getting warning signs from our own Pentagon officials that things are amiss, that they're not getting all these weapons and material to fight the wars they're being asked to fight.

This is a serious question: Just where the hell is all our defense spending going to these corporations that are supposed to be manufacturing all this shit? What happened to all the resources that are supposed to be pouring into our munitions factories to pump out the missiles and bullets and body armor and helmets and battlefield supplies?

Where's the fucking money, Lockheed Martin???

Blood and Ash the Price We Will All Pay For This

Again, I woke up to war this year. This started around 2:14 AM EST (via Amir-Hussein Radjy at AP News):

Two residents reported hearing the sounds of strikes echoing across the capital. A resident in the area of Mehrabad airport reported the sounds of “two heavy explosions” shaking windows just over half an hour ago. In central Tehran near Vanak, another resident reported the sounds of “blasts and war” coming at almost the same moment.

The more comprehensive AP report by Brian Melley:

The U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Saturday in a massive operation that President Donald Trump said killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei while targeting military capabilities and aiming to eliminate the threat of Tehran creating a nuclear weapon.

There was no comment on Khamenei by Tehran, while Trump urged Iranians to seize the moment and “take over.”

In counterattacks, Iran fired drones and missiles at Israel and aimed strikes at U.S. military installations in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar. Exchanges of fire continued into the night. Iranian state media, citing the Red Crescent, on Saturday evening said at least 201 people had been killed and more than 700 injured.

Iran has also been attacking civilian targets in Dubai and other parts of the Arabian Middle East. Iran is threatening to blockade the Strait of Hormuz if they haven't started already, something that can easily cut off a massive amount of oil needed for global energy needs, spiking gas prices here in the U.S. as well as other nations.

At the moment, it doesn't look like trump and his gung-ho war buddies are going to commit any troops to a ground invasion, contenting themselves with a massive bombing campaign alongside Israel to perform "decapitation strikes" to destabilize the regime. Essentially the same thing trump ordered when using the military to capture Venezuela's president a month ago.

Thing is, any serious attempt at regime change is going to NEED boots on the ground and an occupying force to rebuild things. trump may have captured Maduro but all that did was promote Venezuela's Vice President to the top job. If the US bombing did succeed in killing Khamenei - who was 86 and dying anyway - all we've done right now is promote another cleric to the Ayatollah job and that person is hiding in the deepest basement he can find.

And even then, our nation's track record at nation-building after war and occupation hasn't been all that great post World War II. We tried in Afghanistan and failed (trump made sure of that). We tried in Iraq and failed (lying us into war over fake WMDs made sure of that). The biggest - the most horrifying - argument in the halls of power in DC over trump's campaign against Iran is how there's no real plan involved. Tom Nichols at the Atlantic spells out the hazards:

To think about the possible courses of this war, we should start by clearly understanding three realities: First, Iran is a terrible regime that deserves to fall. The regime recently murdered thousands of its own citizens who were seeking freedom from their oppressive rule, and no one should be shedding tears for the mullahs hiding in their bunkers.

Second, “success” is not impossible—if by “success” we mean the fall of the ayatollahs and the rise of a better, more humane, pro-Western government that does not seek to destabilize the Middle East; dominate Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen; and eradicate Israel. But the path to that success is exceedingly narrow and mined with significant hazards. Destroying the regime’s capabilities is relatively easy, but nothing permanent—as Americans learned in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan—is achieved by bouncing rubble and piling up bodies. Destroying the regime itself is a far trickier business; dictatorships have a high pain tolerance, especially when the hapless citizens, not the leaders, bear the brunt of that pain.

Third, the president has not offered a strategy, or identified any conditions that would signal that U.S. goals have been achieved. Yes, he has vowed to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, but beyond that, he seems to be arguing for just inflicting military damage on the regime, on the assumption that enough ordnance on enough targets will weaken the grip of the ayatollahs. Once the theocrats are on the ropes, the thinking seems to go, the people of Iran will finish the job of regime change for us...

America twice had its hands full in Iraq, a nation of 37 million, even with the assistance of several countries. The U.S., France, and Britain managed to subdue tiny Libya, a nation of 7.5 million, and left its dictator to be raped and beaten in the streets. This time, conditions are different and more challenging: The target is two and a half times the size of Iraq, America has exactly one openly declared ally in this enterprise, no serious armed rebel force exists in Iran, and no coalition of nations is assembling to march into Tehran...

In short, the United States and Israel - both driven by neocon fantasies of purging the Middle East in blood and fire - are doubling down on the chaos thinking a shinier better world will emerge. That we will be - yet again - "greeted as liberators" even though we're destroying the village nation in order to save it us. This is in spite of the evidence that we're going in mostly alone, going into a territory and terrain far harsher than we've dealt with before, and with no real clue where the exit doors are when it's time to flee for our lives.

All of these problems were ones I'd pointed out back in 2019, during trump's first reign of error, when it was clear even then that going to war in Iran one way or another was a bad idea. Nothing had changed since then, except for trump's growing dementia, arrogance, and desperation to *win* at something to confirm his own self-worth at everyone else's expense.

Topping all of this is the fact trump's actions are illegal - he does not have authorization from Congress for this - and that we're already getting reports from Iran of high civilian casualties (aka war crimes). There is no other way to say this, America: WE are the bad guys here.

And GODDAMN every media pundit who proclaimed trump 'a dove' while defaming Hillary and Kamala as warmongers. You lied to yourselves as well as to the nation about who the real warmonger has been - and which party (hint, not the Democrats) has profited from these wars ever since 2001.

Without a clear agenda, without true and honest goals, without a sincere desire to do what is right for the poor suffering citizens of Iran - and the other lands that trump and his thugs would desecrate for their own greed and lust - this war that has begun poorly will end much worse, with more suffering and dismay than our own nation will be willing to bear.

Goddamn every one of you bastards who supported trump the last ten years, because the next ten years of blood and ash are the price we're all paying for your fear and rage. 

Waking Up to A War

trump just dialed up international outrage to 11 during last night (via Carrie Kahn and Scott Neuman at NPR): 

President Trump claimed overnight that the United States carried out airstrikes in Venezuela and "captured" President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, following a series of explosions and fires reported around Caracas in the early hours of the morning.

In a post on Truth Social published early Saturday morning, Trump said the U.S. had "successfully carried out a large-scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro," adding that Maduro and his wife had been "captured" and flown out of the country. Trump said the operation was conducted "in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement" and announced a news conference for 11 a.m. EST at Mar-a-Lago.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a post on X that Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been indicted in the Southern District of New York on drug, arms and conspiracy charges...

The Venezuelan government swiftly accused the U.S. of launching what it called a "grave military aggression" against the country. In a statement posted on Telegram, the government said U.S. forces targeted civilian and military locations in Caracas as well as in the nearby states of Miranda, Aragua, and La Guaira, calling the attacks a "flagrant violation" of the United Nations Charter.

On state television, Venezuela's Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said government and military officials had been killed by U.S. strikes across Venezuela. She added the government does not know the whereabouts of President Maduro and his wife and demanded proof of life...

Many Venezuelans have been sharing videos — which NPR has not independently verified — showing multiple explosions across the metropolitan area, including near a military base close to the presidential palace, Miraflores.

This is a major escalation from the ongoing bombing strikes of various civilian boats over the past months where trump and his administration were claiming - but couldn't prove - as drug smugglers operating out of Venezuela.

This is a direct attack on another nation's soil, going against any number of treaties with our allies in the region if not the whole world. It's a legal gray area at best, at worst it's a signal to other dictators and warmongers - like say China towards Taiwan - that it's open season on anybody they want to "arrest".

This is a violation of our own Constitution, which specifically set the power to declare acts of war - and the capture of "enemy combatants" - to Congress under Article I Section 8:  To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water.

This is, above all, causing greater tension between a belligerent United States and the rest of Central and South America that trump keeping bullying. Colombia's president Gustav Pedro had earlier accused trump and his thugs of illegal strikes on his nation's fishermen, and is calling for an emergency UN session now to bring international pressure against the United States. Brazil's president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is on record that this attack "crosses an unacceptable line" violating Venezuela's sovereignty.

This is also yet another black mark on the United States' long and troubled history of meddling, interfering, outright destroying the rights and protections of our southern neighbors ever since the Monroe Doctrine gave us an excuse to do all that. 

This is also something a majority of Americans didn't want. Politico back in December reported on a Quinnipiac poll showing 63 percent didn't want any military action even as trump's administration beat the war drums and bombed fishing boats (via Gregory Svirnovskiy):

Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to military action in Venezuela, according to a Quinnipiac poll published on Wednesday amid an escalation of U.S. pressure on President Nicolás Maduro.

Sixty-three percent of respondents told Quinnipiac they are against military action against Caracas, which President Donald Trump has repeatedly declined to rule out, with just 25 percent expressing support. And 53 percent of respondents said they opposed the administration’s use of military strikes to kill alleged drug smugglers in international waters...

Americans also expressed concern with the president’s expanded executive authority, with 54 percent saying he has gone too far in wielding the power of the presidency, 37 percent saying he is handling it about right and 7 percent saying he has not been aggressive enough. The results were split along partisan lines: 96 percent of Democrats and only 11 percent of Republicans reported concerns regarding the president’s power.

If trump and his Republican buddies think that sparking an unwanted war is going to make most Americans line up and accept all the flag-waving and patriotic fervor, they're wrong. If anything this will divide the nation further, and spiral the Far Right demagogues into further anti-Latino hatred.

There are several reasons trump is doing is, not of them good (or lawful). This is trump doubling down on a questionable - and self-destructive - War On Drugs that's been in operation since the 1970s and solving nothing about our nation's drug habits; This is trump demonizing Latinos as criminals to justify escalating a mass deportation scheme that the courts keep finding as inhumane and illegal; This is trump seeking personal gratification as a "great military leader" to salve his wounded ego.

There is no sign that trump or his pro-war allies on this - Hegseth, Rubio, Miller, other chickenhawks among the GOP elite - have really thought out the long-term ramifications of this, of the global chaos this act of war will unleash and make worse.

Gods help us. Seriously. I know I keep saying this, but this is NOT GOING TO END WELL.

Russia Rushing Toward Collapse (w/ Update)

Holy shit things are moving fast. 

Last night, the head of the mercenary Wagner group turned against the Russian military they were working with in Ukraine, seizing a key command HQ and twisting the knife into Putin's corrupt rule. The early hours of the turning created a lot of chaos, as Adam L Silverman the Intel expert at Balloon Juice tried to make sense of the early reports, conflicting stories, possible staged grievances, and other picture postcards:

As  I write this Prigozhin, supposedly leading Wagner, has announced that he’s moving on Moscow to deal with Minister of Defense Shoigu and the senior military staff/leadership who have failed Russia, the Russian people, and Vladimir Putin with both how they’ve prosecuted the reinvasion of Ukraine and how they’ve misled Putin. Not a coup, just a long overdue violent annual performance eval. In response the Fortress Plan – the security crisis action plan for municipal defense – has been activated for Rostov on Don and for Moscow. And the FSB, the Russian successor to the Soviet KGB, has either opened a criminal case or actually charged Prigozhin for violating the laws regarding not disparaging the military during the Special Military Operation and/or calling for armed rebellion. I’ve also seen reports that the St. Petersburg Police and/or Russian Special Forces have raided Wagner’s St. Petersburg offices.

Silverman adds among the Twitter feeds he's relying on for commentary that:

Other than videos and some audio released on social media THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE THAT THE RUSSIAN MOD BOMBARDED A WAGNER REAR BASE OR THAT WAGNER, LED BY PRIGOZHIN IS MOVING OUT OF THE DONBAS, THROUGH RUSSIA, AND TOWARDS MOSCOW!!!!!

(This is presented in the BOLD CAPS LOCK mode that he's working with)

In Silverman's opinion, if Prigozhin was triggered by something it wasn't any kind of attack. Personally, my money is on the likelihood that the Russian military wanted to take direct control of the Wagner units to counter-attack Ukraine's counter-attack currently underway, and Prigozhin didn't want to deal with their sorry asses anymore (Update: I was kind of right. Prigozhin was refusing to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense that would have taken away his control over his private army).

Silverman then spools together a Twitter thread by Tatiana Stanovaya, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, which I'll copy here:

Here are a few insights into the situation surrounding Prigozhin:

1️⃣ For a long time, Prigozhin has been out of direct contact with Putin, yet he’s believed he was acting in Putin’s interests “by default”. His significant contributions in the war enhanced his sense of exclusivity and privilege.

2️⃣ The President’s administration maintained the stance that unless explicitly directed, it wasn’t feasible to openly confront Prigozhin, despite a strong inclination to do so. In fact, they had even convinced themselves of his usefulness.

3️⃣ As I’ve previously stated, the atrocities of war can drive people to the brink of sanity. Even the most loyal players, who are dependent on the Kremlin (which doesn’t imply complete manageability), can lose their sense of proportion. This is especially true when there appears to be no response to the continual attempts to escalate the situation.

4️⃣ Now that the state has actively engaged, there’s no turning back. The termination of Prigozhin and Wagner is imminent. The only possibility now is absolute obliteration, with the degree of resistance from the Wagner group being the only variable. Surovikin was dispatched to convince them to surrender. Confrontation seems totally futile.

5️⃣ The impending end of Wagner has satisfied many in power. He had become excessively anti-state, which is intolerable during a war. However, a significant number of those outside of power now lament the loss of a character like Prigozhin, who had begun to appeal due to his daring and audacity. Consequently, political repercussions are expected.

A crucial point to note is that many within the elite will now personally fault Putin for letting the situation escalate to such extremes and for his lack of a timely, adequate response when to many it was evident that Prigozhin was pushing the limits of Kremlin’s tolerance. Therefore, this entire saga is also an undercut to Putin’s standing...

Even if Putin puts down Prigozhin's betrayal/coup attempt, this weakens Putin's own standing. He'll also be eliminating one of the few effective fighting forces he has in Ukraine, as the Wagner mercs will either flee or refuse to fight under the command of Russian generals they know are corrupt and inept.

The flip-side of that - as I was waking up to this morning as Prigozhin's attempt is still ongoing - is if Wagner succeeds in overthrowing the Russian military command or even Putin himself, utter chaos reigns. A demoralized army - already broken by a meat-grinder war in Ukraine - will have no idea who's truly in charge. Unless Prigozhin is primed and able to assume full command - and show any tactical and strategical skill needed to maneuver a large-scale military offensive - he's simply going to take over a bad job and make it worse for Russia.

The political implications of this coup are enormous. As long as Putin is in charge of anything, Prigozhin won't be able to dictate terms to the government (the "legislature" and "courts" however legitimate they are). There's also the reality of the oligarchs allied to Putin, and determining which way they'll jump (which will always be to favor their own pockets).

When I woke this morning, this was the current reporting from the international newswire Reuters: TANKS - okay, maybe just one so far - ARE ROLLING ONTO MOSCOW.

ROSTOV-ON-DON/VORONEZH, Russia, June 24 (Reuters) - Russian military helicopters opened fire on Saturday afternoon on a convoy of rebel mercenaries already more than half way towards Moscow in a lightning advance after seizing a southern city overnight.

President Vladimir Putin vowed to crush an armed mutiny he compared to Russia's Civil War a century ago.

Fighters from Yevgeny Prigozhin's private Wagner militia were in control of Rostov-on-Don, a city of more than a million people close to the border with Ukraine, and were rapidly advancing northwards through western Russia...

Prigozhin, whose private army fought the bloodiest battles in Ukraine even as he feuded for months with the top brass, said he had captured the headquarters of Russia's Southern Military District in Rostov after leading his forces into Russia from Ukraine.

In Rostov, which serves as the main rear logistical hub for Russia's entire invasion force, residents milled about, filming on mobile phones, as Wagner fighters in armoured vehicles and battle tanks took up positions.

One tank was wedged between stucco buildings with posters advertising the circus. Another had "Siberia" daubed in red paint across the front, a clear statement of intent to sweep across the breadth of Russia.

In Moscow, there was an increased security presence on the streets. Red Square was blocked off by metal barriers.

"Excessive ambitions and vested interests have led to treason," Putin said in a televised address, comparing the insurrection at a time of war abroad to Russia's revolution and civil war unleashed during World War One.

"All those who deliberately stepped on the path of betrayal, who prepared an armed insurrection, who took the path of blackmail and terrorist methods, will suffer inevitable punishment, will answer both to the law and to our people."

Putin's saying this while on Twitter - instant news whether you want it or not - the observers are chortling "Moscow in 3" (either hours or days, they haven't agreed on which) as an ironic echo to Putin's 2022 decree of taking Kyiv in 3 days.

Kiev in 3 days has become Moscow in 3 days.

— Darth Putin (@DarthPutinKGB) June 24, 2023

This is all still chaos. Meanwhile in Ukraine, the fighting hasn't stopped. Russian troops are still holding their defensive positions in the Donbas and southeastern half of that country. Unless Putin decides he needs his troops back in Russia to stay in power, or if Prigozhin takes control and orders them back to consolidate himself, this war isn't going to be over anytime soon.

But if Putin does indeed fall from power, this seriously changes everything. He has tied himself into so many elements of Russia - the political corruption and the economic corruption and the religious corruption and the cultural corruption - that there is no idea what could rise up to fill that void.

Putin's dream of empire is still a nightmare for the rest of us, even as it crashes down around him.

Update: Not more than six hours after I blogged this, there's a tentative peace deal between Putin and Prigozhin. Via Reuters:

Heavily armed Russian mercenaries who advanced most of the way to Moscow began turning back on Saturday, de-escalating a major challenge to President Vladimir Putin's grip on power, in a move their leader said would avoid bloodshed.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former Putin ally and founder of the Wagner army, said his men reached within 125 miles (200 km) of the capital. Earlier, Moscow deployed soldiers in preparation for their arrival and told residents to avoid going out.

The Wagner fighters captured the city of Rostov hundreds of miles to the south before racing in convoy through the country, transporting tanks and armoured trucks and smashing through barricades set up to stop them, video showed...

The office of Alexander Lukashenko said the decision to halt further movement of Wagner fighters was brokered by the Belarusian president, with Putin's approval, in return for guarantees for their safety.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Prigozhin himself will move to Belarus under the deal. Peskov said Lukashenko had offered to mediate because he had known the mercenary leader personally for around 20 years...

To have Putin's puppet regime in Belarus broker this deal is merely one part of the overall humiliation brought to Putin's table. Throughout this crisis, Russia's own military failed to respond in full against a "turncoat" private army, highlighting the low morale and poor discipline plaguing the regular forces. Prigozhin made faster advancements marching into Russia within 24 hours where it took him and his Wagner brigades over three months to achieve anything at Bakhmut.

Despite all the assurances between the two sides ("We ARE struggling together!"), how can there be any trust now between Prigozhin and Putin? Prigo's gonna have to watch every drink handed to him and sleep with one eye open and avoid tall buildings for however long Putin's on this Earth. Putin is going to have to deal with the consequences of a failing military that may still mutiny themselves if he cracks down too harshly on them for this failure, and worry that Prigozhin's popularity with a Russian population that worships basic competence can still undermine him.

It should be noted that making any kind of deal like this is a mug's game. A deal with a Russian is no deal at all. The question is, which Russian is going to break it first?