June 15, 2026
The Best We Can Get
Timothy Birdnow
The point this author misses is what Mr. Trump said a few days ago "America has no stomach for this".
Trump is right; we just don't have the balls to fight this war to it's logical end. It's a shame our people are so myopic because we need to finish the Mullahs; that would put an end to so much of the troubles in the Middle East. But Americans just don't want that fight because they would have to make some temporary sacrifices that aren't prepared to make.
Iran would not be Iraq. It would be much harder to invade with ground troops, but the people there are far more eager to embrace the end of their government than were the Iraqis, and a big problem we had was that Syria and Iran were aiding the insurrectionists. Iran would be alone in this - there would be no aid flowing from her Arab neighbors.
But it WOULD be much harder militarily. Iran sits on a high plateau, by and large, and is quite mountainous, easy to defend, which is why the Persians and the Parthians built great empires in the first place. They didn't have to worry overmuch about defense. Afghanistan taught us that mountain warfare is some of the hardest warfare possible and that would be true in Iran. But it would be fairly easy to set up a new government and we could even bring back the Shah to give it legitimacy. Still, it would be a tough slog.
But if we wrecked the infrastructure and took the islands in the Gulf the government would be very hard-pressed.
The problem is nobody has an appetite for this. We are going to let this historic opportunity slip by us.
The author states:
Any serious agreement after a military crisis requires discipline. Washington must know what it absolutely needs; what it can live with; and what it should not spend blood, money, political capital, and economic stability trying to obtain. The Trump administration, by contrast, has too often treated negotiations as another arena for pursuing objectives the war itself failed to deliver.
Perhaps but that is always the objective in post-war negotiations. We aren't demanding a unilateral surrender after all since we don't want to go the whole nine yards. We have to win at the table what we are unwilling to take on the field of battle.
I believe Trump is wrong in thinking he's going to get a good deal from the Iranians; they are people who believe in Taqqiya, holy lying, and they will restart their nuclear program in secret as soon as they are able. I suspect Trump knows it too but his options have always been limited and now, with the pressure of the midterms coming up, he has to cut his losses. At best he has to get a deal that gives the appearance of victory and prepare for round two down the road.
The author continues:
That is where the trap emerges. If America demands a perfect deal, the crisis stays alive, because no imperfect agreement looks sufficient. If it accepts a narrower deal, the administration must explain why the war was necessary only to return to limited diplomacy. And if it keeps striking while negotiating, diplomacy becomes the continuation of war by other means.
True enough but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Victory is a better thing but we are not in bad shape because we still have wiped out the Iranian navy, used up the majority of their missiles, and otherwise have disarmed them, and disorganized their internal workings by taking out so many of their leaders. If nothing else we bought precious time, quite a bit in all probability. Iran's nuclear ambitions are on hold for a while and they are going to find funding Hezbollah and other terrorist groups problematic for a while.
The President can capitalize on that and probably will. The problem is he has to get that message out over the din of the mainstream media who will call this a failure. Of course the mainstream media would have called the Revolution a failure after Bunker Hill, or called the Civil War lost after Bull Run.
The author also states:
This confusion has reached the American economy. The latest inflation numbers should be a warning to Washington: The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the all-items index rose 4.2 percent over the 12 months ending in May, and energy accounted for more than sixty percent of the monthly increase.
While the BLS (rather reminiscent of Blsht, eh?) is charting rising prices it is wrong to call this inflation. Inflation is not rising prices so much as increasing money supply causing rising prices. They are actually different things and prices drop back down after an event driven spike caused by external events. It doesn't appear the author understands this (and probably not the folks at BLS either). Inflation is a monetary issue - not a pricing problem.
Actually this author is correct but not for the reasons he thinks. A part of this IS inflation, a good part of it, as the Federal Reserve has started a new round of Qualitative Easing, pumping money into the economy in the last six months at an alarming rate.
As they economy had been doing quite well and did not require any "pump priming" one must conclude this is Jerome Powell's way of sticking the knife in Donald Trump's back and twisting. Powell is playing Nicholas Biddle to Trump's Andrew Jackson. Biddle tried to wreck the economy to influence the elections but Jackson won anyway and closed the Bank of the United States. Biddle did exactly what Powell is doing right now. Whether Trump can overcome this sneaky attack is another matter. At least he has the war to blame for the rising prices. But when the war is over and prices continue to rise...
At any rate I think it wrong to criticize Mr. Trump for his handling of this, although I think he should have gone after a lot more than he has militarily. It's clear the Mullahs have not learned their lesson and we should have made our point a bit more, uh, colorfully. But Mr. Trump has a keen grasp of the American mind and he understands what is possible. I trust him in many ways, and he knows what he is doing - I hope.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
11:00 AM
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