In case you aren't already familiar with the blog of military historian Bret Deveraux, you should be. Here I'm linking to his recent post about the Iran war, which confirms much of my own thinking, but with greater authority and detail. Actually everybody with a whit of common sense can pretty much come to the same conclusions. This is nothing but a catastrophe, particularly for poorer countries -- the U.S. can endure it but the cost to our people is enormous. There's no telling where it will lead, but spiraling refugee crises, China taking advantage of the weakened U.S. military, Russia gaining the upper hand in Ukraine, widening regional conflicts -- all this and more is possible. But nothing good can come of it.
I'm not really sure what I hope for now. It would probably be best for Dump to declare victory and go home, which seems to be percolating as one possibility in his decaying brain. It would be a very bad outcome anyway -- the world would be considerably worse off than it was before -- but at least it wouldn't get much worse than it is already. Alas, most people think that's highly unlikely because just about nobody would buy it as a victory, while Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth and the Republican senatorial majority can't survive a defeat.
But then what's the next move? As Deveraux and I both are telling you, introducing ground forces, whether just on Kargh Island or in an attempt to capture enough territory along the Strait of Hormuz to eliminate the threat to shipping, would be utter folly. There aren't enough troops to hold even a fraction of the needed territory, and they would just be drone fodder. Actually I foresee a massacre.
Would they pile such insanity on top of their idiocy? You know they just might, and the New York Times will explain why it's necessary.
I guess the most incredible thing about this most villainous, treacherous and insane government in the history of the United States is that everyone in power goes along with it. Millions of us protest in the streets, but because "it's the way things are done," because "this is our government" and we can't say that it's truly gone off the rails, everyone--the mainstream media, most pundits, all of the Republicans--get in line to march off the cliff.
ReplyDeleteIt turns out that the Emperor's New Clothes" isn't just a story--it's a cautionary tale against a reality that has come true!
I've never heard anyone point out that "I was just following orders" didn't cut it as an excuse during the Nuremberg Trials. And their situation was less clear cut than ours. Those folks were under a legal system without a formal constitution telling them not to, and additionally, Germany's legal model was the Code Napoleon(sp.) which is less flexible than our Common Law heritage. That was a better excuse under their legal system than it would be under ours.
ReplyDeleteYou'd think that what's bad for those geese would be twice as bad for our ganders.
(I don't think a comment I wrote was sent. I'm sending a reasonable facsimile in case that happened.)
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised the I've never heard anyone point out that "I was just following orders" didn't cut it at the Nuremberg Trials. Yet those folks were more justified in claiming that than our people would be. Some reasons:
They were living under the German legal system, such as it was set up in the Wiemar Republic. I don't think it had a document like our Constitution that specified people's basic rights, hence no specific right to disobey illegal orders.
That legal system was based on the Code Napoleon(sp.) which was much more cut and dried than our Common Law heritage and left little wiggle room for exceptions.
By the start of the war Hitler's whims had become the de facto legal system, and the punishment no longer had to fit the crime; consequences for getting crosswise with Der Fuehrer could be severe.
Theft in various forms, destruction of property, battery, kidnapping, and murder committed under orders from the Trump administration are all crimes that cry out for justice. Who will be held to account?