I have felt squeamish about saying that the U.S. has a "glass jaw."
It felt disloyal and un-American to report a dangerous weakness in my country's ability to defend ourselves.
Trump revealed it in Paris.
Let me explain: "Glass jaw" is a boxing term for a fighter who is knocked out easily from a punch to the face. It means the fighter has an easily discovered vulnerability.
Iran did not need to invade the U.S. to win a war with us and get us to withdraw from the region with its regime intact, its control over the Strait of Hormuz enhanced, its regional influence increased, it being promised some $300 billion for reconstruction, and the U.S. now putting pressure on Israel to stop its attack of Lebanon. It did not need to capture our Capitol. It just needed to rattle our stock market. Trump isn't particularly sensitive to the costs of war or to inflation. But he cares about the stock market.
Take 59 seconds to watch a bit of this press conference in Evian, France, where he praises the genius of the stock market:
He told reporters that "every time we said something amazing, like 'we're going to settle,' the stock market went up. And every time we said something negative, like 'guess what, we're not going to be able to settle,' it would go down, very big. . . "
Trump said, “If we didn’t do this deal, we could have dropped more bombs for another three weeks,…four weeks, two years….you would never have the Hormuz Strait open. . . ."
The stock “market would have, instead of going up….would go down at levels that nobody ever saw before, maybe, except for 1929. I did not want to see economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened.”
Trump tells lies with ease, but not everything he says is a lie. He is accurately describing the stock market over the past months. The stock market rose and fell on war news, as did oil prices and therefore oil stocks.
There is an odd silver lining to this glass jaw, and Trump's frank admission of it. Anti-war voters of both parties can reflect that a transactional president, one who entered a war because he thought it might be easy and enhance his popularity, with the potential bonus of grabbing some cheap oil as a spoil of war, is not psychologically and morally committed to pursuing the war for decades. I don't doubt that Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon genuinely thought we had some moral obligation to defend democracy, capitalism, freedom, and Western Civilization to stop Soviet and Chinese communism. We had a duty, so the Vietnam war persisted even when it became unpopular.
Trump doesn't appear to have a sense of duty or honor or responsibility to any higher principle. He was in it for the money and the glory. If this is a loser on both counts -- and that is how it is working out -- he stops and leaves Bibi Netanyahu and Israel-hawks in both Israel and the U.S. surprised and disappointed.
The war is a loser, and Trump is cutting his losses.
4 comments:
It's almost like Trump completely disregarded literal DECADES of war gaming and strategizing by experts who universally concluded that attacking Iran short of a full-scale ground invasion would lead to exactly this situation. A situation in which Iran closed the Strait, and the hypothetical economic superweapon they would wield became a reality. Until the world gets off fossil fuels, basically everyone is at the mercy of Iran now.
The exciting news is that now That Operation Epstein Distraction has been concluded, we can now move onto whatever disaster comes next.
Defeat is better than pretending it isn’t defeat. Too bad we strengthen Iran so much, but we did so face the truth. Let’s hope Cuba isn’t next now.
I think it's worth adding Dubya to the list of presidents who entered wars out of perceived moral obligation, even if he was misinformed, ultimately at great cost. Nor did we loot the Iraqi oilfields which some critics posited as our motivation
One thing I don't understand (okay, one of many) is who ARE these boobs reflexively--yet effectually--shouting "Sell!" or "Buy!" in response to Trump's yo-yo'ing war bluster. Money brains including our host must know. Who's fooling whom?
I think there’s a good chance he will do something in Cuba. Even though we had an agreement with the USSR in 1962 not to invade, he will tear that up. He knows he lost in Iran and desperately needs some kind of win. So, Cuba is sitting there ready for invasion. How could he lose?
The question is what is there to gain? Tourism, casinos, Trump Towers? What’s the point? He’ll make up something to keep his MAGA people happy. I expect it to happen and fairly soon. I hope I’m wrong.,
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