Pete Hegseth says \u201cWe\u2019re winning, every day\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0He also says things like \u201cIt takes money to kill bad guys\u201d, as his Defense Department asks Congress for $200 Billion more to continue the War in Iran.\u00a0\u00a0$200 Billion:\u00a0\u00a0two years’ worth of Medicaid cuts reinstated;\u00a0\u00a0or building nine Ford Class Aircraft carriers.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0$200 Billion, the cost for six of the twenty years of the War in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the United States, led by \u201cthe man\u201d, Pete Hegseth, and the \u201cold man\u201d, Donald Trump, is slipping into a regional war with no clear end in sight.\u00a0\u00a0He\u2019s not wrong, we are killing \u201cbad guys\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0But we also proved what the Nuclear War theorists of the 1950\u2019s and 60\u2019s worried about.\u00a0\u00a0If you kill off the leaders of a government, who\u2019s left to surrender?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We think of the Pentagon as a \u201cmilitary place\u201d, building bombs, ordering troops around and such. But in reality, it has a lot in common with a college campus.\u00a0\u00a0They study, they collect data, and then they think about future actions. The most important things that the planners in the Pentagon do is to play out every possible scenario.\u00a0\u00a0If the United States bombed Iran, what would the military response be?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0If the United States dropped paratroopers into Greenland, what resistance should they expect, and what would the worldwide response be?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No one in the Pentagon, probably not even Pete Hegseth, should have thought that their quick \u201cdecapitation\u201d strike on Venezuela was the model for an attack on Iran.\u00a0\u00a0In Venezuela, we kidnapped the leader of a criminal enterprise.\u00a0\u00a0Like any good \u201cmob\u201d organization, once the \u201cGodfather\u201d was gone, another took his place, and the criminality continues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it definitely \u201cfeels\u201d like Hegseth and the White House thought exactly that.\u00a0\u00a0When faced with the overwhelmingly powerful United States and the planned destruction of Iranian political, social, and religious leadership:\u00a0\u00a0they thought Iran would fight for \u201ca minute\u201d, then sue for peace.\u00a0\u00a0The \u201cminute\u201d was up a long time ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In fact, the United States seems to be the \u201cbig dumb sidekick\u201d of Israel in the War with Iran.\u00a0Just last night, Israel launched a bombing mission against the Iranian natural gas fields in South Pars.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s another escalation:\u00a0\u00a0up until then both the US and Israel were \u201chands off\u201d Iranian oil and gas production.\u00a0\u00a0After all, when it\u2019s over, oil is the \u201cone thing\u201d in Iran that has value to the United States.\u00a0\u00a0Now Israel is blowing it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Israeli goals in Iran are not exactly the same as the United States.\u00a0\u00a0It seems that Netanyahu is forcing Trump to further commit.\u00a0\u00a0Like the fictional Godfather, Michael Corleone, said: \u201cJust when I thought I was out, they pull me back in\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0Israel crossed a line the US thought was inviolable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Iran naturally attacked in kind. (Didn\u2019t Pete give us the impression that Iran didn\u2019t have the munitions available anymore?).\u00a0\u00a0Now oil production and distribution facilities on both sides of the Persian Gulf are under threat.\u00a0\u00a0Trump said he \u201cdidn\u2019t know\u201d that Israel was going to launch their mission, but promises to \u201c\u2026massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas field,\u201d if the Iranians continue their attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s at stake?\u00a0\u00a0Already the twenty-four mile wide Strait of Hormuz, where twenty percent of the world\u2019s oil passes, is closed.\u00a0\u00a0No oil company, and no country, is willing to risk a $100 million ship, with two million barrels of oil, in the firing zone.\u00a0\u00a0Why should they?\u00a0\u00a0There already are burned out skeletons of tankers littering the Strait.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What Iran can do with one anti-ship missile, or a few \u201csuicide drones\u201d, or even a couple of suicide soldiers in a high-speed rubber dinghy, is virtually indefensible.\u00a0\u00a0Even using US Naval vessels as escorts doesn\u2019t \u201cfix\u201d the problem.\u00a0\u00a0But it does put American ships and sailors directly in the line of fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, the whole world waits, as Iran (not the United States) put\u2019s it hand\u2019s around the twenty-four mile \u201cneck\u201d of oil production, and starts to squeeze.\u00a0\u00a0Surely this scenario has been played out in the bowels of the Pentagon thousands of times.\u00a0\u00a0And, clearly, the US military doesn\u2019t have an answer.\u00a0\u00a0Meanwhile Americans face a twenty percent rise in gas prices.\u00a0\u00a0That will spread out into not just travel cost, but all the costs of goods getting to stores.\u00a0\u00a0In other words, it not just the Billions spent by Hegseth\u2019s Department that\u2019s costing us.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s means higher prices for the necessities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, the US is now sending in an \u201cMEU\u201d, a Marine Expeditionary Unit, consisting of 2500 Marines, and the USS Tripoli<\/em> amphibious assault ship.\u00a0\u00a0She\u2019s a cross between an aircraft carrier and a helicopter carrier.\u00a0\u00a0What is the mission for those Marines, when they finally arrive from Okinawa?\u00a0\u00a0Are they going to physically control the Iranian coast along the Strait, to keep drone and personnel launched attacks from the oil tankers?\u00a0\u00a0Isn\u2019t that what we (and Israel, for sure) are waiting for:\u00a0\u00a0US boots on the ground in Iran?<\/p>\n\n\n\n And once the Marines go \u201cfeet dry\u201d, what commitment do we make then?<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s a legal concept called a \u201cslippery slope\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0It means that once you make a single, pivotal decision, you have stepped onto an \u201cicy hill\u201d. Decisions after that slides you farther down the slope into the abyss.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s the old (bad) joke about the Korean War.\u00a0\u00a0It was a \u201cpolice action\u201d, but we ran out of police and had to send in the whole US Army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This slippery slope isn\u2019t covered in ice.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s covered in crude oil, oil that literally runs the world.\u00a0\u00a0How important is that?\u00a0\u00a0The US lifted the sanctions on Russian oil, allowing it to be sold worldwide, with the profits going to prosecute Russia\u2019s war against Ukraine.\u00a0\u00a0And now, Trump\u2019s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, is suggesting we take the sanctions off of IRANIAN oil.\u00a0\u00a0That would increase the world oil supply, slightly loosening the Iranian grip.\u00a0\u00a0But the money from those oil sales would go back to finance the Iranian war effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Isn\u2019t that \u201cgiving aid and comfort\u201d to an enemy, the Constitutional definition of treason?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"