Memorial Day: We are fighting to get Trump out of a political jam

     "Though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, the frogs do not die in sport, but in earnest."
          Greek philosopher Bion of Borysthenes, born circa 325 BCE

We aren't at war with Iran because it advances American interests.

We are at war because Trump thought it was good politics.  

George Friedman, the American geopolitical analyst who leads the think tank Geopolitical Futures, writes that one understands the jostling of nations as their power rises and falls not by looking at leaders, but by looking at geography and national interest. Leaders succeed because they act on behalf of their nations.

I disagree. I watch events shaped by the selfish politics of leaders.

President Nixon, White House aide Bob Haldeman, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger sat in the Oval Office in 1971 and agreed that the Vietnam War was a mistake and they should cut their losses. They decided to pretend the war was being won for rest of 1971 and 1972 to avoid admitting a mistake prior to the 1972 election. They had agency. Ten thousand American lives was a good trade for an election victory, they decided. I was entering the draft pool in 1971. I might have been one of those 10,000. I lucked out. Someone else was in the 10,000.

Liberal media

Republican concern

Reuters

We are not at war with Iran because Iran might get a nuclear weapon. We had a nuclear deal in place negotiated under President Barack Obama, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and it did a better job of monitoring and containing Iran than will the agreement Trump can now make. We are weaker now, and Iran has better cards to play. Trump is scrambling to save face, to come up with something he can sell. It is show business and politics.

Iran demonstrated that it can block the Strait of Hormuz, that it can bomb the infrastructure of the Gulf States that the U.S. supposedly protected, that it can bomb our forward bases in the region, that it can force the U.S. to lift sanctions, and that it can get us to agree to return more frozen assets than Obama agreed to. Iran proved it possesses something better than a nuclear bomb -- an unusable tool that would invite immediate retaliation. Iran demonstrated it can hold the world hostage and cause crippling political damage to Trump. What is on the table now is whether Iran collects a toll and whether the U.S. pays reparations. Iranians have solidified themselves as the power that can open or shut the oil resources of the region at their discretion.The Gulf States now know that their glass cities of luxury survive at the pleasure of Iran, not the U.S.

So why did we do something so self-destructive to our interests?

--  Bibi Netanyahu has a political problem at home. To stay out of prison and manage a constituency at home he needed to be a super hawk within Israeli politics, and he needed to support settler expansion into the West Bank, which ensures perpetual conflict with Palestinians. Israel has a national interest of survival as a Jewish, not multinational, state and that requires close ties with the U.S. to achieve that goal, evern though it is contrary to the American creed of "out of many, one."

--  Netanyahu decided to team with the GOP in condemning an Obama deal, and it made the GOP the all-in-with-Israel party, while the Democrats became the Israel-but-with-reservations party, a position which pleased few people. It is Trump's nature to back his political friends, particularly ones with ample resources to contribute to the GOP and him personally, and that was congruent with his need to condemn anything Obama did. So Trump became the willing hostage of Netanyahu's interpretation of Israel's national interest.

--   Trump needed a diversion from Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, and he needed a big win to change the issue from Trump-the-Epstein-pal to Trump-the-Israel-helping-dealmaker. He thought Iran would work out like Venezuela, and he could replace an old, weak Iranian leader with a new, compliant one and that killing thousands of Iranians would accomplish this. Trump would have gotten advice warning him that Iran was capable of responding as it did, but Israel said there was an opportunity to strike now and kill lots of Iranian leaders, so the U.S. should seize the opportunity. That fit Trump's personality and political interest, so he did.

The New Yorker.  Trump will spin it as victory.

--  All wars eventually stop. This one will stop when Trump arranges something that he can spin as a victory, whatever that is, a story that will feed the narrative that he is great and that his predecessors, especially Biden and Obama, were weak and stupid. I liken Trump to a dog marking his territory with urine, fresh and higher up the tree trunk. Trump must be top dog.

The war with Iran was not fought to advance America's interests. It injured them, and we will settle for a weaker position than where we started. Trump will OK that, because it was not about our interests. He will pay a political price for his selfishness, but the U.S. will pay a bigger one. We have lost influence, credibility, alliances, national wealth, and lives.

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