The last few weeks have been positively insane.
The off-again, on-again war in Iran has been spectacularly mismanaged. The President of the United States is conducting a war like a befuddled hamster trying to escape from a maze. He goes around and around with no possibility of freeing himself.
Trump needs to send in troops to take Kharg Island and dominate the land around the Strait of Hormuz. Cut off all Iranian revenue. He also needs to bomb Iranian infrastructure: bridges, train stations, airfields, roads, and water treatment plants. This is a war against an implacable enemy fueled by fundamentalist, fanatical, revolutionary religious fervor, seeking to become the hegemonic power in the Middle East, dominate the Sunni Muslim world, and destroy the Abraham Accords and any reconciliation between Arabs and Jews. Surely this theological Frankenstein cannot be allowed to acquire a nuclear capability that shields its aggression. And just as surely, the President needs to step up to the plate. We have been at war with Iran for forty-seven years. We need to end it on our terms.
Unfortunately, Trump is more concerned with maintaining power in Congress so that he is not impeached for corruption, prosecuted after leaving office, and possibly sent to prison. The big house instead of the White House. (I did not make that up.) It has been argued that this was the reason he ran for a second term. His prime-time crazed rant, absent of evidence, this time may finally wake up some of his cultish followers to his bat shit crazy 2020 election loss obsessions. Because Trump can never lose? Right? J.D? What do you say?
Shortly after Putin's war began, I said that the Europeans needed to mobilize and prepare to fight the Russians. They, too, are acting fearfully. That will get them nowhere. They need to send troops into Ukraine and kick Putin out. Issue an ultimatum. Conscript an army. With the aid of the Ukrainians, Putin could be evicted in short order. Dictator-bullies respond to force. History has taught us that lesson very well. I will not bore you with examples; just trust me. Putin has stated his raison d'être—the restoration of the Soviet Union, the collapse of which he considers the greatest tragedy of his life.
But Putin knows he cannot use nuclear weapons. Finally, the Germans are rearming (isn't that a frightening thought?), but they have the wherewithal to defeat the Russians, especially with their French and British allies. They must not wait for the mercurial Trump to leave them twisting in the wind if they do not meet his transactional agenda. (We know he is a crude, money-grubbing, gilded parvenu.) Trump, however, was right to make the Europeans spend more instead of freeloading on American largesse. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. The perfect cannot be the enemy of the good. Yada, yada, yada. Sometimes clichés and memes work well. Originality in all things is not possible. It may not be possible at all. There's nothing new under the sun. Okay. I talk too much.
These days, immediacy has become the public's default expectation. There is less patience for results to emerge over time. Social media, television news, and diminished attention spans all push us toward instant conclusions. People can no longer concentrate on a book. They prefer doomscrolling on X, Facebook, or Instagram, where snippets of information appear by the minute. I do, too. But I am old and have read many books.
If one looks back to World War II, which for America lasted four years, battlefield losses did not provoke roundtable discussions on CNN. People waited for the next day's newspaper to report the news. They then went back to their lives, clipped ration coupons, and hoped for better news tomorrow. Columnists wrote weekly columns that allowed people time to think about what they had read and form their own opinions. They did not simply tune in to their favorite network to confirm what they already believed.
I do not know whether that was better, but it left more room for thought. Yet here I am sounding off and expecting people to agree with me. Or not. Well, mostly agree.
