ARE WE WINNING YET?

 

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL TODAY:

The preliminary deal ending President Trump’s four-month war with Iran is welcome but brings with it hard truths. Mr. Trump made a terrible mistake starting this war. He prosecuted it recklessly and in open defiance of the law. The United States is emerging weaker — militarily, diplomatically and economically — and will pay strategic costs for years to come.

The details of the deal are unclear, but the announced framework suggests that Mr. Trump has won few of the terms he insisted that he would. It is a humiliating comedown for him and the nation he leads.

Since the war began, he has said the United States would achieve “total and complete victory” and that Iran must agree to “unconditional surrender.” He suggested that regime change would occur. He said that Iran would be permitted “no enrichment” of uranium and that “the United States will, working with Iran, dig up and remove all of the deeply buried” near-bomb-grade nuclear material that it already holds.

None of this appears to be true. Iran’s hard-line government remains in place. The specifics of the nuclear agreement will apparently be negotiated over the next two months, but the terms seem likely to resemble those of a 2015 deal that President Barack Obama negotiated and that Mr. Trump canceled in 2018. He described the Obama agreement as the “worst deal ever” and said it put Iran on “a route to a nuclear weapon.” He criticized it for failing to force Iran to stop supporting terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and for loosening economic sanctions. Yet his destructive war seems likely to leave him with a similar deal. 

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I did not check my mail this morning before I posted about Trump's Memorandum of Understanding with Iran. This is from Dave Miller, and it relates to this post, so I'm inserting here: 

"President Trump lost. 

The war he waged against Iran promises to conclude in a humbling whimper with the signing of a cease-fire agreement later this week. 

The United States is left weaker—diminished militarily, strategically, economically, and perhaps morally. 

The war, which the United States fought alongside Israel, accomplished none of the goals that Trump named at the outset. Instead, it only empowered the hard-liners in Tehran and arguably emboldened them to someday seek a nuclear weapon. Despite that, the president was so desperate for the war to end that he repeatedly backed off his threats—allowing Iran to call his bluff—and upbraided his close ally Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for responding to attacks in the region in a manner that jeopardized the negotiations." 

The above is from Jonathan Lemire in The Atlantic. 

Before you all go crazy on your keyboards, here's the salient question for us today. Is anything Lemire wrote untrue? If your answer is yes, tell us exactly what that is and why. 

To help you consider the above question, here's a list of the earliest goals POTUS Trump enumerated for the Iran War. 

Unconditional Surrender & Regime Change... Unfulfilled. 

Abolishing Nuclear Ambitions... Unfulfilled. 

Obliterating the Missile & Drone Industry... Partially fulfilled. 

Annihilating Naval and Air Power... Mostly achieved. 

Reopening the Strait of Hormuz... This is harder to ascertain. Before the war, the Strait was wide open. Once it was closed, it became an additional goal. Before the war, up to 3,000 ships a day were transiting there. No one knows when we will, if ever, reach that number again. 

 "Thank you for your attention to this matter!" --D. Miller

 Thanks, Dave!

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Trump trashes everything that came before him so that he can step in, make changes that are not necessary and not wise, and then try to con Americans into thinking he saved the day. It's part and parcel of his insecure, narcissistic, dishonest need to be praised. 

In reality, of course, Trump and his extremist, right-wing allies almost always makes things worse. There was absolutely no need to kill the accord that the U.S. and four other nations negotiated with Iran 10 years ago, which was successfully constraining that country's nuclear ambitious. But Trump killed it because, IMO, he's a racist who has sought to nullify any and all former President Obama's achievements, and because Netanyahu, a documented war criminal, has never wanted an accord with Iran.  

Trump unleashed DOGE to eliminate federal "waste and fraud," but very little of either was uncovered, and his cronies fired thousands of federal workers who had to be rehired when administration clowns realized that their expertise was needed. His tariff program was a chaotic mess. He lied about the Kennedy Center being in bad shape so that he could mess with it and then shamefully angled to steal its identity---which led to nobody wanting to perform there anymore.

Basically, many many things Trump has touched in his life have ended up badly. His casinos went belly-up, his merchandising of wine and other goods failed, and he ran a sham university to teach people his business skills. To top it off he is ruining our government and our standing in the world.  

Like the Hollies song, “He’s King Midas in Reverse,” everything he touches turns to dust. #ETTD!