Oh no, it’s easy. Just ask any Republican. All you do is just turn the place into glass, see? Just like we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. Piece of cake. All that is required is a Republican level of stupidity.
Top of the replies to Trump’s tweet are some of his own tweets from the past:
Literally every decision Donald Trump has to make is decided by him asking himself: “How can I benefit personally from this?” I believe that issues of ethics or morality have absolutely zero weight in his thinking, and his actions are only ever tempered by what he feels he can get away with.
It’s clear that the idea of an opinion poll boost from going to war will be in Trump’s mind, and that is the most dangerous factor in this Iran affair.
I disagree with the conclusions here. Basically, to me, Trump is an isolationist, and I think most of Trump’s base is too. On the other hand, however, he’s essentially clueless about foreign policy, and allows (or has allowed) himself to be guided by the war hawks in his administration. A lot of folks accused W of this, but I think in the case of Trump it really is him being lead by the nose wrt foreign policy, especially the confrontational policy. Some of it is Trump trying to do a good cop/bad cop thing, with himself as the supposed good cop holding back from folks like Bolton. I honestly don’t think Trump wants war, and that a war would hurt him. What he DOES want is to pressure the other country’s into doing things his way. The problem, however, is that his cluelessness wrt foreign policy means that folks like Bolton have a huge impact on our stance and what we are doing…and I think they are moving us closer to confrontations that only they want. This is the problem with electing a president who doesn’t know what he’s doing and has to rely so heavily on others who can use his ignorance to move him and the country where they want him to be.
Trump doesn’t have any principles. Everything he says or does is an act. He only talks like an isolationist because he thinks in general that will sound good to his base. If he thinks attacking Iran will be an appealing show for his base, he’ll do it.
Trump thinks that America’s coffer is being padded with “tariff money” that we wouldn’t otherwise have.
But Trump is a genius! That’s part of his plan . . . ‘to be seen to rely so heavily on others who can use his ignorance to move him and the country where they want him to be’. And all the while it’s really him who’s directing things. It’s pure genius!
Oh ye of little faith.
Trump says this is his strategy, too:
Trump may not actually want to go to war, but I also don’t think that Trump is being led by Bolton to do anything he wouldn’t be doing himself. Even back in the campaign Trump boasted that the as president his primary negotiating tactic would be to leverage the military and economic power of the United States to bully any country that disagreed with him into submission. That has been his tactic with Korea, (I have a bigger button than you), and with regard to trade negotiations (I’ll tariff you to death), or with the immigration crisis in Mexico (stop immigrants or I’ll invade). So this isn’t just Bolton.
Trump is against war, sure. He doesn’t actually want war with Iran, I actually believe that.
The only problem is that he also believes that if you’re a tough guy, you can just threaten the weaker guy, and the weaker guy will always back down. Then you win easily without having to fight.
It’s the exact same strategy he uses on the Chinese trade deal, it’s the exact same strategy he uses on the NAFTA negotiations, Korea, Europe, and on and on.
But the problem here is that everyone knows that he’s all talk. He doesn’t actually want to pull the trigger, he’s just bluffing because he doesn’t want war. Which means he’s not the tough guy in this movie. What happens when you threaten the other guy and he doesn’t back down? Now you either have to follow through on your threats, or humiliatingly back down yourself.
So which course of action is Trump going to choose? Following through on a chancy and avoidable military action, or look like a fucking chump? Your guess is as good as mine, it depends on what they say that day on Fox News.
And even if they weren’t, Trump’s abrogation relieves Iran of any legal or moral responsibility.
It is the stench of Trump’s defecations which have extinguished hopes for peace. Only an American jingoist would blame Iran.
I don’t necessarily think the Iran deal pullout is worse, but I’d agree to that statement with regards to an armed conflict with Iran: it would be bigger when you weight for obviousness, since the strength of the Iraqi insurgency was not inevitable or knowable: even though Iraq was obviously an own goal due to its pointlessness, the size of the blunder was not known until later.
I respectfully disagree. Everyone knew that invading and occupying Iraq would destabilize the entire region, which it did.
So, interesting developments this weekend. But the key point is, even though Iran has decided to increase their production of enriched uranium, they’re still (for now, at least) abiding by some of the terms of the Iran Deal, and they’re being forthright in informing the relevant international authorities of what they’re doing, and exactly why they’re doing it.
Iran comes out of this looking far more mature and reasonable that Trump et al. do. Good job, US. :rolleyes:
Which, sadly, is a very low bar to clear.
Have we mentioned that Tom Cotton went on the news to fearmonger about Iran, and democratic senators with access to the same information accused him of exaggerating the evidence?
That’ll be the same Tom Cotton who, with 46 fellow Republicans, tried to undermine Obama’s Iran negotiations with a letter and got his ass handed back to him, gift-wrapped, by the Iranians who demonstrated a greater knowledge of US and international law than Cotton and company had.
Joke’s on Iran (and everyone else who signed the treaty assuming that the word of the US was worth a damn), Cotton was 100% right. Republicans did blow up the deal!
Aaand guess who’s back to enriching uranium?
Oh, the irony!
A cynic might think that TrumpCo has achieved the desired outcome. Step 1 of it, anyway.