Regardless of what the President says, Iran is in formal or technical compliance with the agreement. The result of today’s remarks will be to further muddle US strategic communication, to further irk and annoy US allies who are parties to this agreements, to irritate Iran, and to punt the whole thing to Congress. It will be up to Congress to decide if they impose new sanctions that force Iran out of the deal. Or if they just change the law so the President doesn’t get upset that he has to recertify that Iran is in compliance every 90 days. This last one is the real issue. The President just doesn’t want to do it. And it makes him upset and angry when he has to do so. Whether Congress would do so or is even able to do so give the dysfunction within the GOP majorities in both chambers is another matter entirely.
Open thread!
SiubhanDuinne
He’s already certified it twice. What has changed in the last 90 days?
Ruckus
It really isn’t fun watching a being with the mind of a snotty, over indulged, 7 yr old brat try to
runruin a country is it?? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
This is the trouble of being the sole superpower. Our crazy problems don’t affect us, they affect the rest of the world as well. I really hope the rest of the signatories tell us to fuck off and keep the deal in the interests of peace. I think Adam has said as much that would be the likely outcome.
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
90 days. And his ability to be a sane moral human. Oh wait that hasn’t changed.
Amir Khalid
Trump is just itching to start an armed conflict somewhere, isn’t he, just so he can cover himself in
bloodglory as a war president.Adam L Silverman
And we’re underway!
GregB
President Greg Stillson wants the missiles to fly.
Cheryl Rofer
@SiubhanDuinne: His last certification was extremely reluctant. All his advisors told him he had to, and he agreed in the last five minutes. My theory is that
1) Certification means he is agreeing with the IAEA inspectors, who are a bunch of furriners.
2) It is Obama’s agreement, therefore the worst in the history of the world.
feebog
So what happens if congress just ignores the whole thing? No new sanctions, no changes in the law, nada?
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: Nothing. Read the Daily Beast article I linked to. He just doesn’t want to have to do it. It personally upsets him.
Adam L Silverman
Whoever wrote this speech knows absolutely nothing about the Iranian Revolution other than it happened, it involved Muslims, and it involved taking the US Embassy personnel hostage.
eric
1983 and 1984???????
Barbara
I will hand it to Obama here: we are only one of many parties to this agreement and Trump will never convince the others to change it for his own political convenience. Several will be positively gleeful if the US were to try to reimpose sanctions on US companies, because that would create more opportunities for them. The only sticking point is banking. The US effectively controls most international banks by making Federal Reserve access contingent on following US sanctions. But I am pretty sure those sanctions would have to be reimposed legislatively at this point.
Corner Stone
He’s having trouble reciting the words on this horrific speech.
FlipYrWhig
I’ve never fantasized about beating a person bloody before. Trump is such a horror that it activates something very dark and primal in me.
Corner Stone
Tranqed Trump is boring Trump. What’s with the faux history lesson?
Adam L Silverman
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: The real issue isn’t what Britain, Germany, France, China, and Russia do. It’s what Iran does. And beyond that it’s what the DPRK does. What no one seems to be able to get the President and his enablers on this to understand is that part of why Kim is doing what he’s doing is he doesn’t believe anything the US, and specifically the President, is saying or doing is trustworthy. Trying to abrogate the agreement by undermining it even if Iran is in compliance is only going to fuel Kim’s view of the US.
Cheryl Rofer
Also links to 9/11 and Osama bin Laden.
Not reading very well and sniffing.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: Agreed. And what’s worse, at least for me, is it is spreading to many, many other people. All of his Cabinet, for example.
Barbara
@Amir Khalid: There would be no glory in a war with Iran. It would be horrible in every way. Seriously, the US has not faced an opponent like Iran since WWII, and yes, I mean that. A large, well-trained, well-equipped national army that has fought a much more brutal all out war (with Iraq) than the US has in recent memory.
eric
I approve of this speech. Ahmed Chalabi
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@FlipYrWhig:
There’s no shame in that. We’ve all been there at some point in the last year. Just the other day I had the urge to waterboard some “Respect the Flag” assholes. Would never do it, I know its wrong, but that’s how mad I was at them. These are people who don’t actually understand what the flag is supposed to represent. They don’t to deserve to live in America.
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman: Why would anyone believe anything we say? About anything?
Adam L Silverman
@feebog: Then we’re back here in 90 days. According to all the reporting the real issue is that the President just doesn’t want to certify and recertify. It makes him angry. His inability to understand what the agreement is and what it does versus what he thinks it should do, as well as his conflating the settlement of the court case with Iran and belief that the subsequent judicially required return of their money was actually some sort of cash bribe up front as part of the JCPOA is all contributing to this problem.
Corner Stone
Obviously, he cares more about the “kesh, bundles of kesh” than he does about any other aspect of the Iran deal.
Corner Stone
Heavy water? Is that like big water? Ocean water?
different-church-lady
He looks completely haggard and exhausted.
Good.
I hope when he looks back at his (hopefully truncated) presidency he thinks, “I hated every minute.”
Spanky
@FlipYrWhig: You’re very late that game, IMO. Go on back to the end of the line. It’s a looong one.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: He seems to be fighting the urge to swing side to side, which is where the teleprompters are at most of his speeches. I think the one out ahead may be so far away he’s having trouble reading it. It’s been reported he needs glasses, but won’t wear them in public out of vanity. He’s squinting a lot.
Adam L Silverman
Spirit of the deal! Drink!
Also, BINGO!
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
Now he’s claiming they violated the agreement. Intimidated international inspectors! Many people who believe Iran is collaborating with North Korea. Disses Obama. Fuck this guy.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Gotta have a list of grievances as part of a bill of indictment.
Corner Stone
Ah, here goes the IRG part.
eric
ISLAMIC!!!!
different-church-lady
@FlipYrWhig: You are not alone. I never advocate violence, but much to my own dismay I keep finding myself thinking, “This man needs to be punched — that’s the only thing that would ever get through to him.”
Betty Cracker
I had to move my worldwide headquarters outside because my husband is home and is watching the orange fart cloud’s speech, and I cannot abide his (OFC’s) voice. Y’all let me know when he shuts up, please.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: He ALWAYS faces the teleprompter screens. I am wondering if they have one square in front of him.
Corner Stone
I hope SecDef Mattis has a plan in place to either re-fortify our installations in the ME, or one to get them the F out of range.
GregB
The Syrian dictator is propped up by his dear friend Vlad.
I assume the Iranian hardliners are taking this as the greasing of the skids for all out war.
Thanks moron America.
mouse tolliver
I had to put him on mute. I’m sick of his face, sick of his voice, tired of hearing him always complaining. He has yet to give a speech that’s uplifting without being self-aggrandizing. It’s always negative. I can’t remember a time when the president had to put himself in the news every goddamn day. There’s always a rally or a photo-op. And if he doesn’t have one of those there’s an insane tweet storm attacking people or threatening to do something terrible. America is not supposed to be this way. We’re not supposed to be thinking about (worrying about) the president at all times.
El Caganer
@Corner Stone: The technical term is yuge water.
Amir Khalid
@Barbara: @Barbara:
You know that, and I know that, but Trump …
Corner Stone
@different-church-lady: I could not stop at just one.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Exactly.
Corner Stone
This has broken down into incoherence.
Betty Cracker
@different-church-lady: Still hoping for “strokes out on the crapper mid-tweet,” which would not afford a retrospective, however wistful.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: No. Heavy water experiments were part of some of the earliest attempts to develop nuclear weapons.
Also, a heavy water experiment gone wrong is what gave Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Flash, his super speed.
Chris
That article about McMaster really captures the whole mess. Iran is complying, but they’re angry that Iran is complying, because their problem with Iran was never that it wasn’t complying, their problem with Iran is that it’s Iran and they really want to punch it, if not militarily then at the very least by sanctions which will serve no purpose other than to loudly announce that they don’t like Iran and can show that they’re Being Tough on Iran.
(Our entire national security strategy increasingly seems to come to this. That was the reason for all the torture crap, too. “I’m not going easy on those terrorists! I’m giving them the spanking they deserve! Because I am a Tough Guy!”)
Adam L Silverman
@Betty Cracker: 2020. Unfortunately.
Corner Stone
He’s begun to stop paying attention to the words on the screen and has started ad libbing to fill the gaps where he loses where he was.
Mike in Pasadena
@Adam L Silverman: Maybe, just maybe, the U.S. should not depose the leaders of other countries and install brutal dictators in their places. The shah and his henchmen were so awful that it is little wonder there was a revolution.
Adam L Silverman
Whoever wrote this speech (rhymes with Mephen Stiller) knows absolutely nothing about Iranian history, especially since the 1979 revolution. As well as Iranian socio-cultural understandings of modern Iran.
Chris
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Well, they do affect us. But not as obviously as, say, a medium sized country whose fuckups result in being invaded and having their government deposed. It’s still vague enough that our people still treat it as background noise, even when it’s really, really not.
different-church-lady
@Corner Stone: 65.8 million, perhaps?
Cheryl Rofer
Adam L Silverman
Also, this is why we don’t let Army captains who are deemed so toxic they’re shipped off to a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), which were basically Islands of Misfit Toys, make policy and/or develop strategy:
Eljai
So help me Dog, if I hear one reporter lending credence to this dumpster fire of speech I may start throwing large objects off my balcony. It’s a good thing I have to leave for work. In the interest of public safety, it’s best I turn off my TV now.
p.a.
Won’t watch, but wondering about his pronounciation- no need to know substance: default setting is ‘horrid’. I’ve always pronounced ‘eeer ron, eeer rock’ not ‘eye ran, eye rack’. Either correct? I know a former Army Civil Affairs who was there, and she says ‘eye rack’.
different-church-lady
@Adam L Silverman: The actual answer is “never”, but at least by January 2021 there’s a chance he’ll no longer be blathering on our behalf.
Humboldtblue
@FlipYrWhig:
Really? Fuck, I’ve thought of that nearly every day since Reagan was elected and it spans legions of right wing fuckbags.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
Far more than just Kim don’t believe it.
Cheryl Rofer
Another good WOTR article
Chyron HR
I assume when Clinton wasn’t busy holding down Harvey Weinstein’s victims, she was forcing noted pacifist isolationist Donald Trump to declare war on Iran.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Chris:
I actually meant to say that while they do affect us, they affect the rest of the world as well. Whoops.
That’s what happens when you don’t proofread :)
Chris
@FlipYrWhig:
I know exactly what you mean.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: Cotton was only a captain? That explains a lot.
dmsilev
@Corner Stone: So how long until he announces that he’s cutting off Obamacare subsidies for Iran?
Amir Khalid
@Cheryl Rofer:
I suspect he doesn’t bother to look at his speeches until it’s time to deliver them.
Corner Stone
This speech opened with Trump saying his highest priority was the security and safety of every American citizen. I felt a collective spiritual spit take from every single person thinking about Puerto Rico.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: They do. They have a single one in front of him. It is likely just on the edge of where he can make out the words, hence the squinting and straining. And it is bothering him that he can’t rotate side to side. Standing still is hard for him.
Brachiator
MSNBC is reporting the France and the UK convinced Trump to show some restraint in this new position on Iran. Also, foreign policy experts were scrambling to try to get their voices heard
Either way, I think that Trump will probably talk a harder line at an upcoming rally among his supporters and nut jobs. This may end up inflaming things again.
The response from Iran is not happy. Trump’s stupidity is isolating Iranian moderates. What a dope.
The MSNBC Iran correspondent rightly notes that the Iran deal was a base, a starting point for future negotiations. But Trump insists on throwing everything away and starting from point zero. Idiot.
The Moar You Know
@Corner Stone: Deuterium oxide. Vital component for nuclear reactions.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: What do you mean broken down?
japa21
One of the things that got me, and Adam I would like your opinion, is that he seemed to diss the intelligence community again when he asked them to reevaluate the possible connections between NK and Iran. He basically accused them of not doing a good enough job so far. Reminds me of the Bush administration pressuring the iC to provide them with the information they wanted rather than the truth.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
And rarely then.
Chris
@Barbara:
Don’t forget that the Iranian military has spent the last fifteen years with a front row seat to two major American wars. They’ve had all that time to observe how the U.S. military works, to adjust their own plans in view of that, and probably even to test some strategies through their proxies in various Iraqi and Afghan insurgent groups. Imagine fighting an Iraq or Afghanistan style counterinsurgency, in a country that had actually planned for it.
Amir Khalid
@Adam L Silverman:
In those circles, knowing or understanding anything about Muslims is probably regarded as suspicious.
Spanky
FWIW, the stock indices are up about .2% so far today. Fairly steady throughout the day, and fairly average on a day-to-day basis. I’m not sure what this means. Are the markets now so acclimated to Trump that they pretty much ignore him? I find that hard to believe, given that history has shown them to be a pretty skittish herd.
Mike in Pasadena
@FlipYrWhig: My fantasy is that he strokes out so badly that he becomes a living vegetable wracked by painful bedsores and no painkiller can relieve the pain. In fact, because he cannot talk, or write, or nod/shake his head, his caretakers do not even know he is in pain. And noboddy is responsible for his situation except Trump himself.
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman: He started reading slowly but at least keeping the bullshit on the prompter straight. At the end, he was tired, and tired of reading the words in front of him. He started skipping places in the speech and using ad libs to paper over the gaps. He then started putting one part ahead of the place it was supposed to be.
So, yeah, it was garbage from the start but it certainly got worse before he was done.
A Ghost To Most
@Betty Cracker: I’ve stopped watching national news, so that I don’t have to see or listen to him. That “man” is fucking with the mental health of a shit-ton of people.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Adam, it has to be absolutely infuriating to you as a professional to watch such out-and-proud ignorance on display.
Chris
@different-church-lady:
What makes it really dark is that it’s not even him I feel that way about. It’s all of them. Every piece of shit who voted for this guy specifically because they wanted to harm people. I routinely find myself feeling that way about people who’ve done nothing but blurt out the usual stupidities or viciousness on the Interwebs. And I know I’m not the only one. Kind of hard to see how a nation goes on when its two halves hate each other this much, but I also don’t see how the hell else I’m supposed to react to people who are this sociopathic and this single-mindedly obsessed with hurting me and millions of others.
Ruckus
@japa21:
That truth stuff is such a messy concept. The truth is what it is, not what they want it to be. That alone is enough to make them abhor the truth. It’s difficult, no impossible to have an agenda like conservatives have/want if they have to use the truth. The truth doesn’t fit into their world view. It’s not just a square peg in a round hole it’s an inconveniently shaped peg that won’t fit into their bigoted shaped hole.
schrodingers_cat
Where are the fucking BS bots who argued that HRC was more hawkish than T.
Certified Mutant Enemy
It’s a good bet Donald Trump knows nothing about the agreement other than Obama had something to do with it.
Ruckus
@Chris:
Perfectly stated.
ETA With one exception. What about the people who voted for this guy because they are so stupid as to think that a president doesn’t need to be any smarter than a garden slug?
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Amir Khalid:
Many in the Republican party wan’t a war with Iran.
Amir Khalid
@p.a.:
‘eeer ron, eeer rock’ is correct. I remember that Obama got jumped on for pronouncing “Pakistan” correctly (pa-kiss-tahn), and Joe Biden got it for correctly referring to the people of Bosnia as Bosniacs.
Corner Stone
@Certified Mutant Enemy: Poppycock! He demonstrated clearly expert knowledge of 1979, 1983 and 1984. Of course he has mastered the finer parts of the current Iran Deal.
Chris
@Mike in Pasadena:
Yeah, no joke.
But even with that general principle accepted, Iran-1953 still stands out as an exceptionally stupid maneuver. You’ve got an oil-rich democracy that borders the Soviet Union, overflowing with anti-Soviet sentiment and with plenty of goodwill towards the United States, and you just blow up the democracy and piss away all the goodwill with a military coup, just so that a few corporations could get a foothold in Iran. That’s fucking insane.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: @A Ghost To Most: Same here. These days I do watch Snooze Hour and BBC World News but have to switch off the TV when his Orangeness comes on my screen.
Ruckus
@Certified Mutant Enemy:
Still very valid and it saved typing.
BBA
@different-church-lady: I stand by my prediction from months ago: Trump is going to die in office. Whether that’s in 30 days or 30 years, I don’t know.
schrodingers_cat
@Amir Khalid: In Dotard America, ignorance is a virtue.
Adam L Silverman
@Mike in Pasadena: No argument here.
Cheryl Rofer
@japa21: @Miss Bianca: Trump quoted, indirectly, a number of people whose explicit or transparently covered desire is for war with Iran. The ideas that a better deal can be negotiated, that the IAEA isn’t adequately doing inspections, come from a small number of warmongers. The other partners in the deal, our European allies, the Israeli intelligence service, even McMasters and Mattis, have said that those ideas are wrong and fantastical. Trump would like the intelligence community to agree with the warmongers.
One thing he is lacking is a special intelligence unit, as Donald Rumsfeld had, to tell him he’s right.
Edited for clarity.
Amir Khalid
@Certified Mutant Enemy:
True. Who can forget John McCain and what he did to that poor defenceless Beach Boys song?
rikyrah
@Cheryl Rofer:
What’s that got to do with Iran?
9/11 was Saudi Arabia’s baby.
Adam L Silverman
@p.a.: Iraq hould be pronounced ihrawq. Iran should be pronounced ihrawn.
Ruckus
@Cheryl Rofer:
A special intelligence unit for drumpf. Wouldn’t that just be someone who knows where the milk and cookies are stored?
rikyrah
@Barbara:
Keep on saying it.
Iran is NOT NOT NOT NOT Iraq.
The Persians ARE NOT PLAYING WITH YOU.
It angers me, the delusions of those who want war with Iran. I see it steeped in White Supremacy, their desires and assumptions about Iran.
Cheryl Rofer
@rikyrah: People who want war against Iran have long claimed it was complicit in 9/11.
rikyrah
@mouse tolliver:
TRUTH
Chris
@Ruckus:
I have less and less tolerance for them either as time goes by. But my general position’s always been that I can forgive stupid people (eventually), but not actively ill-intentioned people, which is what most of the GOP base is at this point.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Send everyone who voted for Dotard and Stein to fight in Iran.
Cheryl Rofer
I don’t see how the US could sustain the wars currently in progress, up readiness against North Korea, and start another war against Iran. We just don’t have that much military. Wondering if Adam agrees.
Miss Bianca
@Cheryl Rofer:
Yeah, we haven’t seen *that* movie before. *Head desk*
This is the only ray of hope I see in this dismal scenario.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
I wonder if it all goes back to those people who overthrew “our” choice for leader of their country. How dare they question our motives or our desires to steal their oil, or their generations of self government, or……….
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Cheryl Rofer:
Which makes zero sense. Iran hates Al-Qaeda even more than the USA.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: He did two tours. Got out as an O3 then used his GI Bill money to go to law school (Harvard I think). His second tour was assigned to a PRT. Every O3 I knew assigned to a PRT was terrible. The one assigned to our PRT will spend the rest of his life in the penal barracks at Leavenworth for stealing funds. You didn’t get assigned there if you had career potential. You got assigned there because no one trusted you to be a battle captain on the staff or to command a company. The only place worse they could send you was to one of the Afghan Hands teams.
Everyone highlights, because he highlights, that he’s got two Bronze Stars. Neither have the awards for valor. Bronze Stars without the awards for valor are basically end of tour awards in a lot of units in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 16 years.
rikyrah
@Cheryl Rofer:
Even though 15/19 highjackers were from Saudi Arabia.
Bin Laden – Saudi Arabia
The version of Islam spread around the world to teach hate for West – WAHABBISM-, bought and paid for with Saudi money
You know, everytime I hear a Republican talk about how bad Iran is, I go back to a scene in Syriana.
They have a meeting of the ‘ FREE IRAN’ policy group – and, it’s nothing but a room full of White men.
Adam L Silverman
@japa21: Yep, that’s exactly what that was.
JMG
I know nothing about Iranian politics and suspect maybe there are only about five non-Iranians on earth who do understand it. But their government has to know all it has to do is sit tight and keep complying with the agreement to drive Trump around the bend and split the big power coalition. Iran is in the catbird seat here. Its dismal government can now credibly claim the moral high ground as the injured party.
schrodingers_cat
@Ruckus: The specter of the British Empire still haunts the Middle East. We have just continued in Mummy’s footsteps. And I am sure Iran, like India hasn’t forgotten that lovely experience. We will be welcomed with candy and flowers. Not.
Ruckus
@Chris:
People so stupid as to believe the racist crap coming out of his pie hole? If they really were that stupid, they wouldn’t have the ability to continue to breath without assistance. IOW they aren’t that stupid, they want the bullshit he’s spreading, they want someone to pay for the life they should have been given because they are white. IOW there might be 12 people who are that stupid. The rest are that bigoted. Fuck them.
Adam L Silverman
Radical Viking Terrorism!
Also, fixed:
Chris
@rikyrah:
That was a good movie. Sadly pretty much spot on.
Josie
@Adam L Silverman: I suspect that this unmentionable speech writer knows very little about anything except the voices in his head. He is one of the most detestable and dangerous people around Trump.
Chris
@Ruckus:
Shit. Sorry, I misread (or rather confused you with something I’m reading in another tab, this is what happens when you have too many of them opened) and thought you were referring to people who were too stupid to vote at all.
Yeah, no. Nobody who voted for him gets any benefit of the doubt, really.
Brachiator
@Cheryl Rofer:
I used to think that people who wanted the US to sit back and watch Israel attack Iran were whispering into Trump’s ear. But this is worse, maybe. And crazy. A direct confrontation between the US and Iran? Damn.
The warmongers are getting bolder.
Cheryl Rofer
Federica Mogherini, the foreign policy chief for the EU, is now slamming Trump.
Adam L Silverman
@Chris: We taught them directly. The single biggest block of Iraqi Arabs in the Iraqi Army came from the Badr Corps or Badr Brigades, the militia arm of the Iraqi exile (in Iran) Shia religious political party SCIRI. The Badr Corps were stood up and trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The leaders of the Badr Corps, who are now the generals of the Iraqi Army, all receive pensions from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Everything we taught the Iraqi Army was being taught, directly, to the Iranians.
Adam L Silverman
@Amir Khalid: I’m sure.
zhena gogolia
@mouse tolliver:
Absolutely right.
Aleta
@Amir Khalid: He and the Rs want voters to feel threatened by nuclear attack on the US going into the 2018 elections. (And by terrorist attack, attacks on overseas military, etc.)
And wants to be seen commanding troops and ordering bombs, for his ego as you say, and also for ad material. They want intn’l war to be the material for his coming campaign speeches, because his other wars on AAs and immigrants have been a mixed bag for his image. (He’s still attacking, but keeps losing parts of those battles to the resistance,, so I suspect that theme will be assigned to to the local farm teams–govs, state legs, Congressional races.) Just a guess.
Cheryl Rofer
Stan
@Chris:
Well yes. But it kinda tells you what the real basis of our foreign policy is doesn’t it?
Lyrebird
@Adam L Silverman: Gee, you think it might help to know how dirty our hands are before starting another mess? Or perhaps to be aware that this (Iran) is a culture where, at least in times of war, they clear land mines by making little boys run over them???????? YA THINK???
–one disturbed mama.
Chris
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t know exactly at which point the United States started seeing the British Empire as a role model instead of a nemesis (to the point that Dinesh D’Souza can word-vomit entire books accusing Obama of being guided by anti-colonial rage against the British Empire, and nobody even thinks to note how incredibly fucking weird it is that in George Washington and Benjamin Franklin’s country, this is being used as an insult), but I think it’s a pretty major milestone in the theme of American Foreign Policy: How It Got So Fucked Up.
Aleta
@Adam L Silverman: The point is to demonize and dehumanize, not accurately inform.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: I had a standing request from LTG McMaster’s XO before he became the National Security Advisor for all my deliverables – regardless of who they were done for. I take a small amount of solace in that he’s read everything I’ve written on what is going on in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Israel, and a whole bunch of other places.
Beyond that it is what it is.
schrodingers_cat
T wants to make the United States an international pariah. He is making good progress. Comrade Vlad must be pleased.
Chris
@Adam L Silverman:
Oh, yeah. And then there’s that.
@Stan:
Unfortunately, pretty much.
tjmn
The car in front of me at the drive-through had a bumper sticker with “Hillary for prison-2016” on it. I really wanted to rear end that car just for gps. I didn’t follow through because who knows who would be on a jury of my peers. I do know that I am suffering from drumpf fatigue. BTW, the car’s occupants did seem to be of draftable age. There is that.
Timurid
@Cheryl Rofer:
Fetal position [x] assumed
Ruckus
@Chris:
No worries. I sometimes reread my comments and wonder who the hell wrote that. I’m working on my editing. I’m not working all that hard at it mind you.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: Well Barbara Ledeen is one of Grassley’s Judiciary Committee investigators…
schrodingers_cat
@Chris: Its not just D’souza though,many Balloon Juicers are fans of the Queen, her dogs, the liberal Empire and Kipling. We can has cultural affinity or so I was told. Hitler’s genocide was beyond pale. Churchill’s genocide in Bengal by mass starvation; well there are many sides to the issue.
Adam L Silverman
@Barbara: @rikyrah: This is not correct. The Iranian military is not structured, nor is its planning intended to, fight a conventional war against the US. Rather the plan is to pull everyone out of the population areas, go to ground in the less to least accessible rural areas (often mountainous and forested), and organize everyone into irregular cadres to fight an unconventional war.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It’s Trump, so ask yourself what’s the most stupid and laziest thing that can be done and that’s what Trump is going to do. So it sounds like Decertify Iran, piss everyone off and then no sanctions or military action as the Iranians go at a nuclear program with a passion now.
Ruckus
@tjmn:
There won’t be a draft. Someone in the current government will know someone who contracts this kind of work and will want to hire them because business always knows better than government. It won’t go well because anyone who knows and is friends with anyone in the upper part of this government is a moron, very unprofessional and has only one scruple, money. So of course it will be a disaster and be extremely overpriced. I think you can see where this is going.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: That is definitely weirder.
Some years ago, a group of foreign policy wonks was being assembled, and they asked me to join. I turned them down because Michael Ledeen was part of it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@tjmn: Let humor sustain you and put a “Trump – Putin 2020” sticker on your car.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: We’re not out of Schlitz, as the saying goes, because we’ve run out. We’re out of Schlitz because we’ve decided we’re never going to make new Schlitz. For those who haven’t worked with the military, Schlitz is slang for resources – money, personnel, and/or equipment.
The ways and means just aren’t there. If they ram through this meshuganeh tax cut it’ll be even worse. Largely because I expect it’ll push quickly into a huge recession. War on the Korean peninsula alone will require resourcing unlike anything we’ve done for decades. Beyond even the high water marks of Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom combined. War in Iran similar to this. War in both places? Absolutely insane.
We have 3 corps. One in Iraq. One preparing to go back. And that’s the same two corps as the 3rd one is allocated for Asia-Pacific. That’s it. 8 Divisions, give or take, and a couple more in the Reserves. And one of those is always in Iraq now. And one getting ready to go. Maybe 24 brigade combat teams. Of which one is allocated to AFRICOM, one to NORTHCOM, a couple for Iraq, a couple for Afghanistan. 7th Fleet is already a mess. Our aviators have been flying combat missions non stop since 1991. We’ve got no gas in the tank and we’ve decided we don’t believe in producing more gas.
Ruckus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I fail to see the humor in that. I’m trying but nope, no humor.
Chris
@Adam L Silverman:
To add to this: it kind of boggles the mind that these are the same people who refused to even talk to Iran about items of mutual interest (counterterrorism efforts, anti-drug efforts, etc) because “we don’t talk to evil!” had no problem training an entire army of Iranian proxies to take over Iraq for them.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks. That’s about what I thought, but you know the details better than I do.
What are the generals going to tell Trump when he wants his war?
catclub
@Adam L Silverman:
When there are no actual violations, no terms of the deal you can point to, this is what you come up with.
Is he pounding the podium with a shoe, yet.
Chris
@schrodingers_cat:
People “many sides”‘d the British in India? I don’t remember that. Being a fan of Churchill for some other parts of his government I can see, but the general liberal line I’ve encountered on British colonialism was always against it.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: Actually that’s how the Iranians see it. Even those that want actual change in how the Iranian government is structured and functions view US hostility as the US being mad at Iranians for the type of government that the Iranians chose coming out of the revolution of 1979. From their perspective we’re mad at them for daring to allow and to continue to allow the rule of the clerics.
catclub
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: annoy more people with “PUTIN – trump 2020”
Chris
@Cheryl Rofer:
::hands Trump a paddle ball:: “Here, play with this.”
Adam L Silverman
Well this is reassuring:
schrodingers_cat
@Chris: No many sides, to Churchill and the Bengal famine. Some excuse making of how Gandhi only succeeded because Britain was liberal and so on.
This is my response:
1. Britain was not liberal in India. India was a police state, with no freedom of speech or assembly.
2. Reducing the entire freedom struggle to one person is simplistic and it tells me that all your (any one making this argument) knowledge of the Indian freedom struggle comes from watching the treacly Attenborough (sp?) movie, Gandhi.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
I was pretty sure. Most people don’t like it when you dis their government unless they like it less than you do. Especially one that they were OK with after overthrowing the one you imposed upon them. Not a terribly hard concept to understand, unless one is so full of their own bullshit that it colors their entire outlook. Not naming any political parties here………
Cheryl Rofer
Declaration by the Heads of State and Government of France, Germany and the United Kingdom
They stand together on the JCPOA.
trollhattan
@catclub:
I’m fully ready for shoes to be flung at him. Make it so, press!
Chris
@schrodingers_cat:
Frequently grave-spinning MLK probably agrees with this, too.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
More important that who is going to tell him, who is going to get him to understand?
This is easy, I’m going with no one.
Wapiti
@schrodingers_cat:
In Saint Petersburg, where they always were.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: I was approached to be one of FDDs first post-doctoral fellows. I turned them down, they didn’t want to take no for an answer.
I was approached by an executive headhunter via email while deployed in Iraq for a the Deputy Director/Executive VP position at a Middle Eastern Studies think tank. I was really interested until I found out it was Pipes’ think tank.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: I don’t know. The general officers/flag officers know they have a problem. This is why they’ve been pushing for regular order and proper procedures on budgeting and acquisitions. Primarily for the DOD, but for everything so that the country can have at least some semblance of budgetary and fiscal normalcy. What Congress has done for the 8 or 9 years makes it very hard for the DOD to do its budgeting and planning.
All of that said, I’ve never met a senior military official who ever says no when asked if they can do X by civilian authority. Even if X has absolutely nothing to do with the military or a military operation. Even if there are no resources for X. Its just part of the professional culture.
Wapiti
@Ruckus: I long believed that America jingoism holds a special sort of hate for the foreigners who oust us: Iran and Cuba head the list.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: I guess they can’t say no. But saying anything else to a war with Iran is a recipe for disaster, very likely on multiple fronts.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Ruckus: Got it find it since this will be going on for a while.
Not to mention laughing at them really pisses them off.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: I expect they’ll try to roll him on the options. Of course the Iranians may make that difficult. I fully expect more stunts with small boats in the Shat al Arab and Persian Gulf. And we’re now seeing a sudden reemergence of EFPs in Iraq. EFPs were the exceedingly lethal IEDs of choice for the Iranian backed militias from 2007-2009.
schrodingers_cat
@Chris: One thing I will say in favor of the Queen, giving the finger to T was awesome.
catclub
@Wapiti:
Surprising that Vietnam is not on that shit list.
Chris
@Wapiti:
The fifteen-year-old American butthurt at Iraqi “ingratitude” to us for “liberating” them comes to mind, too.
@schrodingers_cat:
THAT is a fucking fact.
Cacti
@Wapiti:
And yet, we’ve managed to forgive Vietnam for handing us our most embarrassing defeat of the 20th century.
Weird.
Chyron HR
@Cacti:
Well, maybe Iraq should have come up with something as delicious as pho.
ThresherK
I haven’t tuned in. Any mention of Hans (I Got Iraq Right) Blix in the speech?
On the TV anywhere?
Chris
@Chyron HR:
What’s wrong with kebab, shawerma, hummus, dates, and all that jazz?
schrodingers_cat
@Chris: Me likey! Plus Persian cuisine is not too shabby either.
Cheryl Rofer
@ThresherK: Many people in my Twitter stream are talking about Iraq generically. I haven’t seen anything specifically about Blix.
Cheryl Rofer
different-church-lady
@Chris: For the record, as far as I’m concerned it’s limited to him. There may be others in his vote-share, but I’d take those on a case-by-case basis. Grandma sucked into the Fox Borg is not going to get the same treatment as Tiki-Nazis.
Perhaps dope slaps at minimum?
different-church-lady
@Wapiti:
No, a lot of them come from Colorado and… oh, wait, you meant that St. Petersberg…
Raoul
@Corner Stone:
Could be said about: Health care. Taxes. Abortion. Anything the GOP touches. Trump is the volcanic tip of the heap, but the whole party is incoherent, spiteful, dangerous and stupid. We may just unglue as a country.
Raoul
@Brachiator: Of course, starting over would not be point zero. There are negative points on this scale, even if Trump is far too moronic to grasp that.
Waynski
@Adam L Silverman: @Wapiti: By saying ihrawk and irawn I hope you are making fun of just Trump and not the good folks of New York and New Jersey, because we didn’t vote for him. Neither did the folks “down Flahda” his other home state. Linky to electoral map.
Ajabu
@Adam L Silverman:
I believe that would be Elvis Pedro, wonderful guitarist and US Marshal in St. Croix.
I’ll call him and see what Trump said —as soon as they get the fucking cell towers up again!
germy
Chris
@schrodingers_cat:
Middle Eastern food is some of my favorite cuisine in the world. More so than Southeast Asian, no offense to them.
germy
Chris
@different-church-lady:
Fair. People react to this in different ways. I just can’t do that. Even relatives, in my case, piss me off enough that it’s going to be… interesting… to see how well I can hold my temper at the family reunion this winter.
schrodingers_cat
@Chris: I like both, but to me Indian food, especially my mom’s cooking (from the west coast of India) is the best.
ETA: Especially, the fresher than fresh sea food.
Raoul
@Adam L Silverman: Your readiness assessment sounds a lot like we’re headed for a very sharp, very painful end-of-empire reckoning if Orangemandias gets his war(s).
End of empire was not so great for Great Britain, but our collapse may be worse. Of course, now the rump Britain is in their Brexit post-empire melt-down. Fun times.
Miss Bianca
@Ajabu: Holy shit, and here I thought you were totally snarking. Man, I learn something new every damn day around this joint!
Raoul
@Cheryl Rofer:
That I do not know. But as someone upthread predicted, I concur: Erik Prince will provide a very sizeable invoice as a ‘solution’ that will make him super-extra rich, and Academi/Xi/Blackwater will be a colossal, evil fuckup.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@schrodingers_cat: I think a lot of Americans have no clue about British rule in India–like the 8 major famines in the 19th century, with deaths in the millions–except for one, the only one with truly effective aid and support organized, for which the governor of Bengal was criticized, because he spent too much money keeping people alive. That leaves aside religious abuses, unpunished assault (sexual and otherwise), excessive taxation, suppression of local trades and industries to support industries in the UK, to say nothing of the corruptions visited upon the remaining puppet states within the subcontinent. It’s all glorious jewels and beautiful silks and incense, with elephants in the background.
I know I know very little, when it comes down to the details, but I think I’ve learned enough to know that if there were any blessings received at all, they were subject to a great deal of highly toxic admixtures, not the least of which was that the local people somehow deserved this exploitation as the result of being inferior and defective in some way that could never be explained except by “You’re not one of us, so you can never be as good as us.”
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat:
Or from that Harry Turtledove alternate history story in which the Nazis conquer India and hold it easily because they were willing to just shoot Gandhi.
Chris
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio):
I think a lot of Westerners don’t realize this, period. People vaguely remember that it was bad, but not why or how. The general consensus seems to be that it was paternalistic and non-democratic and that’s not cool, but there’s very little appreciation for just how savage and oppressive it was, and how much of a human toll there was to it. I’m told that some historians have started calling the 1870s famine “the Victorian Holocaust,” but I’m pretty sure most ordinary people would still recoil in horror from the shrillness and obvious hyperbole in that phrase – even though, really, it’s kind of spot on. And of course, lots of emphasis is put on how, while white colonialists were assholes, they also brought a lot of good things to the colonized world, taught them (insert long list of things which, as often as not, they didn’t actually teach the natives at all).
When people really cut loose, it’s usually on somebody else’s colonialism. The Belgians in the Congo seem to be the most popular target, one of the few cases where the pop memory of colonialism really does match the horror that it was in reality. I have no idea how that translates in Belgium itself, and if they have their own “evil foreign colonialist” equivalents, though I suspect they do.
Citizen Alan
@schrodingers_cat:
I always thought that the people who say India could only have gotten its freedom because of Britain’s liberalism meant that Britain was unwilling to do the things that, say, Germany under Adolf Hitler would have done if India had been a German possession rather than a British one. Whether that’s a fair or accurate statement is not something I can judge since I don’t know enough about the topic, but that’s what I think most people mean when they talk about British liberalism in this context, i.e. not as bad as Hitler.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Gandhi was assassinated one year into India’s independence and India didn’t fall apart . Unlike Pakistan, which did after Jinnah’s death, who died in 1948 an unsuccessful battle with cancer, because it was a one-man show.
Chris
@Raoul:
I’ve had a loose theory for some time that we’ll see a completely privatized war at some point in the not too distant future. Like, not only a war in which contractors play a massive role as they did in Iraq, but one in which the entire war is waged by contractors paid by the U.S. to do the work that the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps won’t be involved in at all. Seems like the logical next step after the All Volunteer Force for a population that loves war but hates its consequences, and a government that can’t get enough of 1) privatization and 2) the military-industrial complex.
(That may be overestimating the contractors: the MIC is full of moochers who only want to do the profitable parts of a war while letting Uncle Sam pick up the tab on the rest, like FedEx. But then again, with people like Erik Prince in the equation, there may just be enough contractors out there arrogant enough to think they don’t need the government’s help with anything).
d58826
@Adam L Silverman:
Haven’t seen that term in years. Never in the military but remember it from
I guess the military just co-opted the phrase. :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schlitz_Brewing_Company
schrodingers_cat
@Citizen Alan: You think that the British in India were not brutal? Who do you think the Nazis learned their techniques from?
ETA: I just recently saw photos of how the British collected the body parts of Maoris for “decoration”.
Concentration camps too were first used by the Brits in the Boer War.
The idea of the superior race? What pray tell is the White Man’s burden.
ETA2: My conclusion is simple
Liberal : Did not commit genocide against people of European origin. Did not start wars with other European nations in the twentieth century.
schrodingers_cat
@Chris: Like the East India Company?
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: Ah yes, the old “but but but but the railroads”.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: India was taxed heavily for those. Paid for with blood, sweat and tears to paraphrase a famous British person.
Chris
@schrodingers_cat:
Exactly like that, yes. (I was thinking it before Erik Prince said it, but he made it literal).
I also strongly suspect that if that kind of war happened, and the outcome mattered at all to the U.S. government, it would end up stepping in to clean up Erik Prince’s shit-show, much as happened with the original EIC.
Chris
@schrodingers_cat:
I haven’t read enough Hannah Arendt, but from what I’m told, this is actually central to her concept of totalitarianism. That the Germans and Russians were basically doing in twentieth century Europe, what a bunch of other Europeans had done in nineteenth century The-Rest-Of-The-World.
schrodingers_cat
@Chris: And continued to do until they left those countries or were driven out.
Dave
@Adam L Silverman: And despite the fact that anyone halfway competent and informed can see this and the oncoming disaster nobody, barring what would be damned near a miracle, will do anything about it until after the fact.
Bill Arnold
@Adam L Silverman:
I hope there is some pride too. (And very good to read that, thanks, softened today a bit. Assuming “he” is McMaster.)
Re McMaster, from pics he seems interestingly dangerous, in a pays-close-attention way (haven’t watched video of him moving though), and now you’ve confirmed that he’s a serious reader.
Re Mephen Stiller’s rhyme mate, grr. Haven’t figured that one out yet.
Adam L Silverman
@Bill Arnold: Yep, that’s him.
There’s video of him working a heavy bag while a brigade combat team commander in Iraq. He’s dangerous if he needs to be.
J R in WV
@Humboldtblue:
For me it started with R M Nixon, who lied over and over until the day he resigned. Followed closely by Ronny Raygun, who didn’t ever know whether he was lying of telling the truth. Because he didn’t know anything.
Now we have Trump. President* Trump. I’m not really into misspelling his name, just Trump says it all. Such a bastard. I’m not afraid of him, but of his supporters at home and abroad (Putinesque people abroad).
barb 2
@schrodingers_cat:
My question when shitgibbon gives a speech — who gains? Who benefits? Most often Putin is the winner. Another speech with more evidence that Trump is a Putin puppet.
I also do not watch the news or listen to network TV — I cannot stand to hear shitgibbon’s voice. The creep really is an alien — not a product of a solid American education of the era when he was being schooled. How on earth did he pass the NY state regency exams? Those are or were given in High School. He may have a “college degree” but I really doubt that he did any of the work himself to earn the degree (study, tests, writing papers etc.).
J R in WV
@Cheryl Rofer:
Accusing any nation state other than Saudi Arabia is pretty stupid. Almost all the hijackers were Saudis, the organizer and chief terrorist was a Saudi millionaire. Saudi Arabia as a nation and as a people hates Iran, as they have serious religious differences as well as the obvious Iranian hatred of monarchy government.
Trump is waltzing on thin ice here. I hope we get to watch him fall through before he causes millions of deaths of innocent people.
Duane
@Miss Bianca: It wouldn’t take long for trump to form a “special intelligence unit.” Gorka and Bolton are available.
There’s plenty of power hungry war mongers out there.
Ksmiami
@different-church-lady: I hope he strokes out soon
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
No. England committed genocide in many colonies, from Ireland, right next door and until very recently, to India and Bangladesh in your personal history.
But you knew that…