Thursday, January 2, 2020

New Year starts with a bang

Well the Moron has just put over 5000 US troops and 7000 US contractors in the firing line.  Wag the Dog strategy.  War for partisan internal politics.  Popmpom and the neocons now apparently have control of the Idiot's brain.


Not only Suleiman, but also Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Hashd al-Shaabi, and a member of the Iraqi National Council, who was said to be in line for Iraqi Minister of Defense.  Several other high ranking Hasd al-Shaabi leaders killed.  The attack was reportedly done by attack rotary wing on a convoy traveling on the Baghdad Airport road.
Mr. Thucydides on Line 1... An addendum from FDChief

Mike has given us the bare facts, but I want to add a note on just how geopolitically moronic this is.

Leaving aside the purely moral questions of murder-by-drone (and I suspect that a drone is more likely to have been the Angel of Death here rather than an Army aircraft...) any politico-military act by a Great Power can and should be judged by the cost versus the benefit of the action. So, let's look at those here; first, what are the benefits?

1. Taking a powerful Iranian piece off the board.

Fred Kaplan has a pretty good summary of the larger view of this action here (he also calls it an "act of war" eliding, I think, the reality that the U.S. and Iran have been in a cold war since Trump's abrogation of the JCPOA). Bottom line is that the Dead Guy was effectively the combined Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the CINC of Special Operations for Iran. This was a decapitation strike and, as such, a successful one.

2. Reminding everyone, especially everyone in the Middle East, and especially everyone in Iran, that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Not that anyone really needed that reminder. But this is an in-your-face example of the Ledeen Doctrine. As such it raises as many questions as it answers, and we'll discuss that below. But there's no question that this is a sort of "you're not safe anywhere" gesture to anyone thinking about giving Uncle Sammy the side-eye.

3. Aaaaand...that kinda runs me out of "benefits".

Seriously. I'm not sure what else this does, other than ratchets up the US-Iran cold war.

OK, so...what are the (direct) costs?

1. Rachets up the US-Iran cold war.

Which in itself isn't a good thing, but my real concern is that it could lead to a US-Iran hot war, and there's simply no "good" result of that.

Look, the United States at this phase of it's existence is a "status quo" Power. Stability and regularity are its friends, chaos and uncertainty its foes. Like any status-quo Great Power, it benefits when it can work with smaller regional powers to exert its influence. When it's forced to respond to troubles thrown out by regional instability it risks - as it has found - getting mired in endless sapping brushfire wars and profitless imperial adventures. Status-quo Powers are not usually good at "responding", they're not designed to be nimble or flexible. They do best when they can surround themselves with buffers of client and proxy states that can be bribed, wheedled, intimidated, or some combination of all three, into doing the Power's dirty work for them.

What We the People should have learned from the last 19 years is that "regime change" in politically un- or under-developed polities is unlikely to produce more stability. The Clintonistas tried to "save" Somalia and just knocked it further into the tules. The Bushies knocked the Saddam cork off the Iraq bottle and produced the unholy clusterfuck that this move is part of. The Obamites went along with defenestrating Ghaddafi in Libya and produced an even-more-failed-state.

Removing the mullahs from Iran won't produce a "better" Iran (from a US policy standpoint). Whoever follows is going to be 1) Persian, and, as such, convinced of Iran's place as the regional middleweight power, and 2) reminded that the US has not been a good thing for Iran since back in the 1950s - he, she, or they will remember Mossadegh and the Shah and the Gulf War and, now, this.

2. Replaces the Dead Bad Guys with...some other bad guys we don't know.

The Trumpkins make much of how the Dead Guy was a Bad Guy, but...c'mon. Seriously? This was fucking Napoleon? How "irreplaceable" a military-political genius was this joker? It's not like the IRGC is some sort of modern-day Alexander's Companions. They've made trouble in the Middle East and...what? Like it's that difficult to make trouble in the Middle East? Like it takes some sort of 12-dimension-chess-master? The cemeteries are full of irreplaceable men.

And - as we found with Ghaddafi and Saddam - sometimes the people who replace the guys you kill are madder, badder, and more dangerous to know.

I said this succeeded as a decapitation strike. But who knows? It may turn out to be a "Yamamoto shootdown"; a little revenge drama that has no impact on the military organization it's targeting. Only this one wasn't in the middle of buttrump nowhere Southwest Pacific but at the freaking Baghdad Airport, which brings us to...

3. Punks the Baghdad government and every Iraqi regardless of political affiliation.

Imagine how you would feel if your neighbor kicked your door down, walked into your kitchen, and shot dead the guest your cousin had invited in.

You might not like the guest, or your cousin all that much...but that? That's a punch in your face. That's utterly contemptuous of you and your home. The neighbor has, to put it bluntly, just shown that you are his bitch. If you don't respond with force, well...you are.

It's one thing to know that the strong do what they can. It's another thing to have your nose rubbed in it.

Seriously, I have no idea how the current government in Baghdad survives this if they don't make every American persona non grata and order the whole nutroll out of their country within 30 days. Hell, you'd think that they'd demand the extradition of the drone operator and everyone in their chain of command on murder charges. They won't...but why not? I mean, it kinda WAS premeditated murder.

3. Bogs the US even further in the Middle Eastern/Sunni-Shia War of Religion mire.

The one thing that everyone here has tried to make a Trump Positive is his supposed longing to #endendleswars. How the hell does this do anything to do that? I mean...you want to whack this dude? Fine. You can't find a way to get him to turn up in the Baghdad Marriot with a fatal heart attack, two labradoodles and a boy toy wearing a full wetsuit and stripper heels? Instead you choose the most ridiculously in-your-face fuck-you to every Masud and Amina between Gibraltar and the Celebes?

-----------

We've had discussions here that always seem to come back to the "Well, sure, Trump talks bugnuts shit, but that's just Trump..." thing. But I think this is a perfect example of WHY it's a problem. This doesn't strike me as something that was the result of some sort of deep foreign policy analysis. This feels like Trump gets pissed off at these pesky little Persians fucking with HIS embassy and making the news like he was a girly-man Jimmy Carter sorta wuss and calls down to his CIA Iran desk and says "Goddamn it, find me some Iranian sonofabitch to kill!" so he can look Strong and Commanding. This really is Foreign Policy by Tweet.

I'm not trying to say that he's somehow breaking U.S. Middle Eastern policy. That's been a shitshow since we stepped into the French and British colonial shoes after 1945.

But the feckless bastard has found ways to make it an even bigger shitshow, and after Bush I wasn't sure that was even possible.

What a fecking mess.

Update 1/4/20: Oh, for fuck's sake...
OK, so...the part where this whole idiocy is "Foreign Policy by Tweet"?

1) Fifty-two hostages? The 1979-1980 "Hostage Crisis"? Seriously?

2) "Iranian culture"? You're advertising that you're gonna war crime Iran by targeting cultural heritage sites? Why not bomb Coventry Cathedral, too, bubba, so you can bag the sweep. Jesus wept.

3) No more threats, hunh? I guess you're King of the Playground now, Spunky.

IF one of my troops had actied this stupid I'd have had the sonofabitch pulling extra duty until he ETSed. Since the POTUS is in the chain of command,...

Update 1/5/20: No, duh.

Like I said; this was fucking inevitable.

Anyone but a complete goddamn moron or goddamn Donnie Trump - but I repeat myself - could have seen this coming. KNEW this was coming the minute the warhead of the Reaper missile detonated. Does it mean that the GIs will have to do a Saigon-embassy-un-ass the joint? Maybe. The Baghdad government knows damn well that the GIs are the only militarily effective force in their country, and that if the GIs go it'll be a matter of time before the Sunni rebels re-rebel (the ridiculous Islamic State panic masked the reality that, in Iraq, anyway, the IS was more-or-less just the continuation of the Sunni resistance to the US occupation that began in 2003.

But the hell with tomorrow; today the Iraqi pols have only one choice, and that's between giving Uncle Sammy the finger, or being his tool. No Iraqi pol is stupid enough to think that being a Quisling is going to get him anywhere after this past week. Trump has made it cleat that his entire geopolitical approach to the Middle East is summed up in the sort of thing one of his goobers would wear on a T-shirt at one of his Nuremburg rallies; "Kick the ass. Take their gas."

IF I thought that Trump was serious about #endingendlesswars, that he'd simply tell the guys to grab a hat and not let the door hit them in the ass?

Fine.

But whacking Solemani and sending paratroops to Kuwait and not even feinting towards repealing the AUMFs?

Nope. He's not even trying. He's pulling your leg just like he pulled the poor bastards' legs who "invested" in his fake university. That's who he is. That's what he does.

WASSSSSSSSSSSSSF.

58 comments:

  1. Let me start off with...

    Well, fuck!

    Nope, that didn't help me, either.

    No, the pearl clutching on Twitter has everyone hopping like fleas on a hot frying pan fearing Iran, "gunna unleash hellshitfireandmoreshit!!!"

    smh

    I like your take, Mike, Iran is going to nod, and say, "alright, we got you, and now we know what options you will exercise."

    Iran isn't going to act out...right away...oh no, that would be uncharacteristic of them.

    No, I have the feeling Iran is going to just nod over their tea, smile, and offer us a cup of ice...because they are going to cut us with thousand micro-cuts.

    and

    We won't even know the significance of it till we're way past the point of doing anything to prevent the damage.

    God, we're such fucking amateurs...smh

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    1. Yep. What gets me about this is the weapons-grade stupidity of HOW it was done. Like I said; you wanna whack this guy? You make sure you do it in some sort of insidious way and tuck John Bolton's business card into the frilly girlie panties you've dressed his corpse up in.

      Instead we pick the loudest, dumb-fuck-est, most buttrock way to wax the guy...AND a bunch of pols from the host nation whose complaisance (at least) we need for any sort of policy progression in the region...

      If the Iranians have any sense they'll sit on this and wait for some nasty, dirty, down-low opportunities to, say, back up the sewers on the Trunmp Tower Istanbul, or dry-gulch a couple dozen sailors on leave in Doha.

      And the best-worst part of it is...what the hell does Trump do if he gets his war? The entire goddamn US foreign and military policy establishment couldn't figure out how the hell to "solve" Iraq, which is about a quarter the size and complexity of Iran. Even let's assume that the Iranians are stupid enough to go to a hot war...then what? How the hell does the US end up with a "better" outcome?

      It's not just that this is Amateur Night. It's like Amateur Night in the Home for the Feeble-Minded.

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  2. Apparently you guys haven't heard the worst bit of news of this week yet. Not only did we piss off the Kurds (our only reliable ally in the region) but we've decided to send a brigade of the 82nd Airborne to Iraq to "stabilize the situation."

    The only thing those poor young soldiers can do is make very angry people more angry and to give them somebody to shoot at. Oh, and provide justification to send more troops into the region when they get shot at. WASSSSF!!!!

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    1. Let's reach back into the Memory Hole to...mmmm...let's see...oh, yeah! April, 2003! To the tortured city of Fallujah...when my old compas, the White Falcons of the 1/325 shit the fucking bed by shooting into an unarmed crowd and kicking off the Sunni Uprising.

      Fallujah. Derry. Rule #1 of COIN; paratroops make shitty occupiers. Duh.

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    2. Well, it looks like I picked a bad time to quit sniffing glue.

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  3. The only benefit I see is that the Iraqi Parliament meets Saturday (tomorrow) to discuss and potentially vote on kicking all US Forces out of country. They do not want to be in the middle of a shooting war between the US & Iran. Iraqi Kurdish, Sunni, Secularists, & Christian MPs may or may not vote for it (perhaps at their peril) but they are hopelessly outnumbered in Parliament - roughly almost two to one by Shiite politicos (216 members out of 329). Hopefully the Moron will salute smartly, about face, and start evacuating all...safely.

    I agree with FDC's costs. But I would add that Adelson and other of the Moron's guys with big pockets are now going to dig deeper. Would also add that the Koch Bros and US oil companies who will get windfall oil profits, gouging the rest of us.

    Big question IMM is what retaliation will Iran take? Sheerahkhan's "And I have learned one fact: Beware the Law of Unintended Consequences!" should be in all the minds of DoD, DoS, CIA, congress critters, and other govt depts. The new guy, as FDC mentioned, will be just as bad or worse. BG Esmail Ghaani (aka Qaani) is the new guy. He is reported to have been "one of the most prominent military commanders during the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s and who has served in the Quds Force for many years." He was Suleimani's Deputy.

    https://en.radiofarda.com/a/khamenei-appoints-hardliner-general-to-replace-soleimani/30358646.html

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    1. Don't forget Donnie's handler. Putin is grinning from ухо to ухо at the thought that his profits from petroleum sales are going to skyrocket.

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    2. Right now, Iran is engaging in high level diplomacy with Russia and China to see exactly where they will draw the red line in retaliating against the USA. I do not have high hopes that they will try very hard to restrain the Iranians.

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    3. One thing to keep in mind is that - I think - the Iranians have learned that the way to deal with the Yankees is, as Kipling said:

      "Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan
      brown,
      For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the
      Christian down..."


      ...and revenge is a dish best served cold.

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  4. Another cost I should have added is that this is going to make it harder for any future Democratic Prez to reinstitute JCPOA. They will never trust our yoyo political system. The Moron has fucked us forever from trying to end this 40-year hot/cold war.

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    1. Sven's last post made this point; what sane foreign polity will ever trust the US again? We've already proven that We the People are bone-stupid gullible mooks willing to install a fascist "...because he tells it like it is!"

      If I was the foreign minister of Japan or Namibia or Bolivia I'd make damn sure that the US left it's driver's license before giving it more than a beggar's mite of a chance...

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    2. I suppose the only sensible way for foreign policy with the United States now and in the future is to not expect any reliability.
      Every single diplomatic deal should first see the U.S. meet its obligations fully before the foreign country meets its own. There's no reason to trust any treaty that requires permanent adherence to obligations from the U.S., such as Article I of North Atlantic Treaty.

      Moreover, all offences need to be met with equal force, and ideally be tailored to hurt in domestic American politics. The U.S. sabotaged a pipeline project in Europe by sanctioning the pipeline-laying company. Europe needs to answer by sanctioning American companies, preferably those who are situated in red or battleground states, and the pain has to become obvious real quick (before the elections).
      The same should apply to trade policy.

      The lesson needs to be that any 'America first' policy that's trying to win a zero sum game is an obvious losing strategy and the only sensible way is to return to win-win cooperation and at least some reliability.

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  5. What really fucking galls me is the seemingly-unkillable "Donald the Dove" trope, the ridiculous credulity that the press and the public seem to have for Trump's #endendlesswars bullshit.

    You wanna really "end endless wars", dumbass?

    Repeal the fucking AUMFs.

    It won't stop the idiotic "PWOT" as Ranger likes to call it. But it'd be a good start.

    The fact that the GOP-controlled Congress never even feinted towards that between 2016-2018? Tells me that we're mining a rich vein of bullshit.

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    1. That Donald-the-Dove is alive and well. There are some whackjobs on the net claiming it was Grammy Nancy that pulled the trigger.

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    2. Yeah, despite all evidence to contrary...the best the media can is both-side'ism

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  6. Does Trump or Kushner have any high value property in the Middle East? If so, I would not go near it if a truck filled with high explosives could get within 100 meters of it.

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    1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Towers_Istanbul

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    2. Ivanka had a tower built in Baku. But it's a dump and a poor target. They got hosed by the Azerbaijani real estate slicksters who put the far from downtown and the airport, and also got hosed by local contractors. I think they have pulled out of there and also out of Tblisi?

      But I believe the threat is worldwide and not just in the mideast. Africa, South America, the Far East. They would have trouble doing anything in Britain and the the US, especially NY and FL. But it looks like they have some properties in Panama, Brazil, the Caribbean, India, SKorea, and the Philippines.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trump_Organization#/media/File%3ATrump_Organization_properties_worldwide_map.svg

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  7. Add the UAE to my rant above. But he's probably insured to the hilt. I hope they are raising his rates thru the roof as we speak.

    Speaking of Britain, the Moron never notified Boris Johnson of the strike on Suleimeni, and yet Britain has over 500 troops there that became targets as soon as the news hit the streets in Baghdad and Basra. And doesn't the Bundeswehr and Spain have troops there? None were informed, except probably Bibi.

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  8. My standard complaint about the illegality of cruise missile diplomacy under North Atlantic Treaty and other treaties applies to this as well. This is irrespective of what party POTUS belongs to.

    The other thing I'd like to mention is that Americans tend to get a pass on the official sanctions for their foreign policy. Their UNSC veto power protects them, and their allies protected them from most diplomatic fallout as well.
    Yet there were often other, unofficial sanctions. The whole AQ mess from the 90's to the 00's was directed at America (and by association its European allies) as an unofficial sanction on American foreign policy in the Gulf region (especially the humiliation of Arab Iraq, the cooperation with the kleptocratic regimes that oppressed the salafists and most of all, Christian troops in the country of Mecca & Medina).

    There's good reason to expect backlash once more. There's little reason to expect that pouring oil into the fire will reduce future burns.

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  9. I think Iran will let this pass

    The political fallout is going to be bloody enough for us, and what's is a better revenge than watching your enemy slit his own throat trying to cut you...yeah, I think we're kind of fucked here, and we did it to ourselves.

    Lord God in heaven, save us from ourselves, but most of all, save us from Trump.

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    1. Well, as my man Thucydides said; the weak suffer what they must. Iran knows that they are "the weak" in this situation. But, as always, the problem is leaving a live enemy behind you. They won't JUST lie down; the IRGC and the mullahs will continue to try and find ways to do the US a disfavor when they can.

      What really chaps my ass about this is my personal opinion that there's no reason that the US and Iran should be rivals instead of working together in the Gulf region. The real bad actors there, IMO, are the salafi jihadis and their Saudi pals, and the Israelis; the salafis because of their affection for the 8th Century, and the Israelis because of their unwillingness to confront the reality that they have become the apartheid South Africa of the 21st Century and will do anything to anyone rather than change that.

      Jim Wright reposted a rather thoughtful rumination about all this the other day, and it's worth the read: https://www.stonekettle.com/2017/04/the-hubris-of-ignorance.html

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    2. The Iranian government is pretty much a tyranny with some marginally influential elections.
      The Saudi, Qatari, Bahreini, Omani, UAE, Kuwaiti governments are kleptocractic tyrannies. Jordania is a dictatorship at the very least.
      Egypt is mostly a military dictatorship; a military with a state.
      Israel is hyperaggressive and approaching an Apartheid state and would have been outlawed, bombed and invaded like Iraq decades ago if it hadn't close ties to the West and the "Holocaust" moral club.
      Syria has a minority-backed government at war with a sizeable minority (Arab Sunnis).
      Turkey is very, very close to being a single party dictatorship, and the corruption of said party has become obvious.


      The next 'nice' countries to pick as friend for NATO or EU are Tunisia and Ethiopia. One might also wish Lebanon good luck.

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    3. Yep, I like Jim, cuts through the nonsense, and gets right to the point.

      unfortunately, American's as a generality, are fucking clueless, susceptible to snake-oil salesmen who will proffer a simple, all-to-easy plan of success, and does anyone ask for specifics?

      nope!

      Here's my vote!

      63 million American's bought into trump's and the Gop's simplicity...

      aaannnndddd

      here we are, today.

      WASF

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    4. Sven: No argument re: many of the polities in the region range from "not a government I'd want to live under" to "holy shit, that's just evil". That's a problem...but it shouldn't be a US problem except as the US needs to or wants to have dealings with those governments. Iran's theocracy is not, to my mind, notably worse than the Saudis'. If we can pal around with the House of Saud...well...

      As a Great Power, the US should be able to find ways of dealing sensibly with regional powers outside bombing and/or invading them. But that has never been our strength, and we seem to be getting worse at it the more we rely on kinetic energy as a form of policy.

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  10. General Ghaani stepped up immediately and took control of the Quds Force. No time needed to familiarize himself with the job as he has been a deputy commander to Soleimani for over 20 years. Although while Soleimani focused mostly on Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen; Ghaani’s direction was to countries in the the east like Afghanistan and Pakistan. Which makes sense since his hometown is Mashhad near the Afghan border. However, he also was the finance guy for worldwide Quds operations so is familiar with all the players and their contacts. He was also linked to arms shipments to West Africa. Which I at first thought weird, but it seems their are many isolated Shia communities in Senegal, Nigeria, Mali, & Chad. I recollect that there were Shia or a branch of Shiism in East Africa, i.e. Zanzibar, and coastal Tanzania & Kenya.

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  11. FDChief regarding your 1/4/20 update: The Moron did not get that on his own. What freak in the Pentagon would provide Trump targeting options that include Iranian cultural sites. Trump may not care about the laws of war, but DoD planners and lawyers usually do. They well understand UNSC Resolution 2347. Something rotten in DoD, does PomPom have inside men within, like Cheney used to have with his Office of Special Plans?.

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    1. Christ I hope not. My faint hope is that is Trump talking out his ass and the USAF/DoD targeting people are not really feeding him actual historic sites.

      But who knows? The only real question is how deep the rot this adminstration has started has gone.

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    2. The Geneva conventions are supreme law of the land in the U.S. by force of the U.S. constitution. The GC outlaw targeting civilians (protected persons), and you won't find military targets at sites of cultural significance. Those are mostly mosques, palaces and mausoleums in Iran.

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    3. Eh...we tend to treat the Geneva Conventions as solid gold when it comes to other countries

      but for us?

      There more like suggestions rather than laws.

      Else, we'd have an entirely different country, and government right now, if we did follow the Geneva Conventions to the letter of the Law.

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    4. You have a law enforcement problem.

      NGOs should have the right to sue the government into complying with U.S. law, including courts having the option to jail the executives who could but don't change policy till they comply. Send send them to jail for every illegal act that led to people getting killed as if it was manslaughter - with NGO acting as prosecutor.

      That would end cruise missile diplomacy and many other illegal policies.


      The German cabinet was saved from jail in 1999 (Kosovo Air War) only by a supreme court ruling that bent the constitution beyond recognition.

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  12. https://www.eschatonblog.com/2020/01/the-neverending-friedman.html


    bb

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  13. "Fifty-two hostages? The 1979-1980 "Hostage Crisis"? Seriously?"

    It's beyond my understanding why Americans don't get often laughed at for still having Iran Derangement after 40 years. The U.S. has bullied Iran for 40 years for revenge, including mass killings and helping a war of aggression against Iran.
    The score has been settled 30+ years ago already. To still be so deranged signals a lot of bad characteristics.

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    1. One word: NeoCon's

      They have been humping the "Bomb Iran" ever since the first day of the Hostage taking...and it's not just bomb Iran, it's bomb everything in Iran.

      Every mosque, every town, every military site, everything.

      NeoCon's want revenge

      Iran is their idol, and once it's burns to the ground, and every Iranian mullah and Iman is shitting themselves if discovered in someone's water basement like Catholic priests in Elizabeth's England...then, and only then will they be happy.

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    2. Sadly, Sven, I see this as a huge political plus for Trump with his GOP CHUDs; "Finally! We got a Presnit who's gonna nuke them ragheaded bastards for kidnappin' them hostages what that wuss Carter woon't nuke 'em for! America, FUCK YEAH!"

      This is the kind of thing that reminds me that 1) Trump is a functional moron who stopped learning anything in the 1980s, and 2) all this is primarily to fire up the GOP base; it's domestic politic, not actual "Foreign policy".

      And, of course, everything "started" with 1979. 1953, and twenty-plus years of tortures, disappearances, and executions under the Shah vanishes down the memory hole as if it had never been.

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    3. I'm often in Tank-net forum, and I don't believe that's how the Fascists there think.

      Simplistic hatred of Iran is frowned upon - they understand that the pseudo-imperial meddling is largely nonsense.
      There are few voices in favour of such jingoistic aggressiveness, and a lot more Fascists who will rationalise just about everything if the lying moron did it.

      Their capacity to tolerate crap and still stick to an unsuitable leader of theirs is the real problem, not the warhorniness at the base. That takes a year of more of competent lying (Neocon style) to build up.

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    4. The problem is rather that the press is desperate to find something positive to say about the Fascist administration, for the sake of 'balance'. And they can be counted on to just L O V E war porn and discussions about war with some ultra hawk debating against some 'centrist'.

      I can tell you the entire tone, the setup of discussions, the things that get looked at are different in Europe (though England is turning into the 51st state under Murdoch influence).

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    5. I'm not sure that the internet fora are a good way to assess the average red-meat Republican wingnut whackjob. The simpleminded places like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram may be better, and from what I can tell there's at least a strong minority of weapons-grade stupid and aggressive in the GOP fever swamps. That's who Trump hearkens to, so they tend to be more influential that then actual size in the GOP...

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  14. From Miz Betty:

    "Trump is now claiming that the Iran Revolutionary Guard is a threat to America.

    Odd, that didn't stop him from laundering their money through his failed hotel in Azerbaijan.

    Maybe Trump just kills people when he can no longer squeeze a buck out of them.

    https://vanityfair.com/news/2019/04/t... "



    Here is another, an older link: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/13/donald-trumps-worst-deal

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    1. just

      fucking

      Great

      /sigh

      Why do I get the feeling there is a cabal of very rich people playing chess with everyone's lives?

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  15. Another point about this worth mentioning; the Shia strain of Islam is...different...from the severe austerity of several Sunni versions, including Saudi Wahhabism. I've described them as the "Catholics of Islam", complete with smells-and-bells, or, in the case of the Shia, elaborate shrines and saints in the form of martyrs.

    One huge big fat hairy deal to Shiites is martyrdom-through-assassination. One of the most important figures in the Shiite pantheon (if you will and they wouldn't, but, still...) is Imam Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law that Shiites consider his rightful successor. Ali was assassinated in 661. The Prophet's grandson, Imam Husayn, was captured and executed by the Ummayids in 680 along with his entire male family members. He's remembered as the focus of the Abbasid revolt that brought down the Ummayids. Assassination and martyrdom are huge triggers for lots of Shiites.

    Point being...the bodies of the guys drone-whacked last week were toted first to Karbala (Husayn's shrine) and then to Najaf (Ali's shrine) accompanied by hundreds of thousands of Iraqis including Abdulmahdi, former PM Maliki, and pretty much everyone who's anyone in Iraqi politics. Obviously, the idea is to link these jokers with OTHER Shiite martyrs...and to link our boy Trumpy Bear with Yazid (the Ummayid SOB who had Husayn whacked) and the Kahrijites who murdered Ali.

    Final point being - I can't reiterate enough how operationally brainless this was. You wanna snuff Solemani, you make sure he's found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy or a stack of Karl Rove bondage porn. The one thing - the ONLY thing - you DON'T do is make it an in-your-face obvious hit on supposedly neutral territory where you've spent the past umpteen years killing people and breaking shit after a war you lied your way into.

    FUCK!

    As a GI I understood that I was serving an empire that asked me to do imperial things. All I asked for was that I not be asked to do STUPID imperial things, pointless, thoughtless, idiotic, not-in-the-imperial-citizens-best-interests kinds of things.

    Like this.

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  16. Iraq's parliament has spoken. They voted for expulsion of all foreign troops from Iraq. Non-binding perhaps? In any case the outgoing prime Minister Abdel-Mahdi is in agreement. Will the govt wait for a new PM to be installed? Has a formal request to the US Embassy been issued? I doubt it, as I thought Ambassador Tueller had left country after the earlier demonstrations at the Green Zone.

    Kurdish MPs stayed neutral and did not vote. Hopefully they will not pay a price for that later. Kurdish leadership, including KRG, PUK, Gorran, and smaller groups, all attended Soleimani funeral ceremonies.

    Kata’ib Hezbollah militia announced yesterday that US forces are the target starting tonight.

    Ayatollah Sistani, Iraq's most senior Shia religious leader, preached restraint. Will they listen?

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    1. I'll have to look that up. I saw headlines that AMERICAN troops got expelled, not all foreign ones. Anyway, good for Iraq. Hope they expel CIA as well. Their army officer corps is no doubt compromised by DIA/CIA, though.

      BTW, the reports about 100,000+ people mourning Soleiman are what concerns me the most. I didn't know the guy, but he was apparently some celebrity. I don't remember that kind of crowds after any of the drone war assassinations. This is different.

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    2. Like I mentioned in the comment above - the procession through Karbala and Najaf is really important. The Iraqi Shia are formally shoving these guys into the Shiite martyr pantheon. This isn't just some rando droning. So, yes, this IS different, and serious, and not good in the sense of US-foreign-policy-not-good.

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    3. Sven -

      There are conflicting reports on the vote. First ones I saw said "all foreign forces".

      Latest seems to say "The Iraqi parliament decides to end the security agreement with the coalition forces ... voted to end the American military presence and confine arms to the state". That's a bit confusing. But a detailed news article should come out soon.

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    4. The Intercept has some more info on what the dude did and what he aspired to be.
      Seems he was a self-promotor, kinda like Petraeus / MacArthur style. The rather gullible part of the population falls most easily for that. This forms my preliminary opinion why there are such crowds and what kind of people are in them.

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    5. Sven; is the "dude" Solemani? If so, well, yeah, I'll bet. The first thing you learn in an autocracy is to play your value to the autocrats up as high as it can go. I'm totally not shocked that he was playing the mullahs and their wingnut supporters for all he was worth...

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    6. Sven- I read that intercept article also. You are right about the self promotion. He is very good at it though, better at it than the Moron. And he knows his place, no hint that he would ever seek more power than what he had.

      If Trump got blown up, would his funeral have the the hundreds of thousands, or millions, of mourners that Soleimani had in Najaf, Karbala, Ahvaz, Mashhad, and will soon be at Tehran and Kerman. I think not. Most Americans would be celebrating in the streets.

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    7. I wouldn't say exactly "celebration", but I will echo Clarence Darrow: "All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction."

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  17. It's long past time to do away with the War Powers Act. This sucker is close to 50 years old. Enacted to reaffirm the power of Congress in making war. But has turned out to have exactly the opposite effect. Definitely not suitable when there is a moron in the White House. Since when does a tweet signify "consultation"? And this antique piece of paper is definitely not suitable for the age of dronestrikes and cyberwar.

    https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/warpower.asp

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    1. Well, if Twitter is a channel of official state communication, it's clear that it can't be left to the caprice of some boy-nerd CEO. Gummint gotta step in to ensure that it is a reliable conduit of orders and information between the branches of government...

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    2. Problem with the WPA is that it just doesn't work for an empire.

      So perhaps rather than fiddle with the law, it's time to divide the DoD.

      There can be one outfit, let's call them the troupes metropolitain, that will have all sorts of pretty citizen-soldiers and tanks and guns designed only for the biggest of military adventures, the wars declared by Congress every century or so.

      And then there will be the troupes maritimes, the scruffy imperial legions with their battered second-hand equipment and nameless "volunteers" who fight and die in constant pointless cabinet wars that occasionally get a story on Page 3 (below the fold) when a whole battalion is lost or some entire city full of dusky foreigners is put to the sword.

      Sure, it'll be squalid and ugly.

      But at least it'll be honest.

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  18. Any bets on whether Dumbfuck there Thinks that this is Iran's doing?

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/al-shabab-attacks-military-base-kenya-lamu-county-200105053818358.html

    Al-Qaeda, Iran...ragheads, amirite?

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    1. You're right. The Moron has got people double checking that trying to pin it Tehran. The idiot already retweeted a claim from a wingnut internet troll that Qassem Soleimani was responsible for the attack on Benghazi Libya in 2012.

      His faithful sidekick Pence, claimed earlier in the week that Qassem Soleimani gave support to the 9/11 attack.

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  19. Sven -

    "Military spokesman for Iraqi PM: the decision to withdraw foreign forces from Iraq involves combat forces & air support. International Coalition support for training, arming, & logistics will continue."

    http://mobp.as/eCglq

    I don't see it as settled yet though. Will any coalition country allow their trainers and logisticians to remain without the protection of combat units?

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    1. Sure, why not. Much of the training missions - and all of the German one - was in the Kurdish area and meant to help the Kurds against daesh. There's little reason to think that Kurdish hospitality isn't enough safety.

      NATO countries already withdrew their training missions or are in the process, though. This includes Germany. Daesh is toast as an overtly battling territory-controlling power in Syria anyway.

      I must say I like the 'backlash' so far. Western forces leaving Iraq looks fine and overdue to me.

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    2. The bottom line is that if 50-60% of the country turns on you it's unlikely that a company or battalion of joes will help you. I think this depends more on how worried the Baghdad government is about Sunni rebellion. The Kurds and Sunnis all abstained from yesterday's vote; they may not like it but they weren't going on record as defending the invaders.

      So as Sven points out, foreigners in Iraqi Kurdistan are probably OK. Elsewhere? Probably not, regardless of how many guards there are in the towers.

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  20. What's ridiculously depressing about this is to see people like Karl Fucking Rove and Bloody Bill Kristol all over the "news" waving their dicks. What? Being utterly, disastrously, horrifically wrong about Dick n. Dubya's Iraq-a-palooza doesn't immediately disqualify you for opining about this?

    Jesus wept.

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