Like Marriages, Wars are Easier to Get Into Than Out Of

I think General McChrystal has presented the most thorough and insightful analysis of Trump's Iranian fiasco of any out there. It is well worth your time to read https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/opinion/trump-iran-general-mcchrystal.html?smid=nytcore-android-share (if you hit a paywall, pay - this article is worth it!).

Without doubt, Iran has been a bad actor, supporting Hezbollah and oppressing people with sharia law.  Whether that warrants starting a war with no endgame is another question.

There are two reasons that Trump can't simply declare victory and go home: Iran and Israel. Iran is fighting an asymmetrical war; this is not WWI trenches or WWII tank battles. This can range from drone strikes to computer hacking to terrorist attacks and who knows what else.  Israel will do what Israel wants to do. Period. Neither Iran nor Israel is on Trump's timetable. 

                

There is a long history of distrust between the West and Iran, not just 1979 but 1953 and 1941. You might also listen the the four-part series from The Rest is History podcast about the fall of the Shah and the Iranian Revolution. https://therestishistory.com/episodes/fall-of-the-shah-part-1

Other thoughts ----

Cutting the head off  the hydra is poor strategy. Every time an Iranian leader is killed, a new one (or two) turns up. This is not Venezuela with a traditional central government.

Pete Hegseth talks about "silly rules of engagement". Throwing out rules is a two-edged sword and a very dangerous one in the Middle East. 

Make no mistake, this "preventative" strike is a war; it became that with the sinking of the Iranian ship off the coast of Sri Lanka. 

Trump's standard operating procedure of erratic behavior then moving on to the next reckless, ill-conceived project may be stuck in a real quagmire this time. Iran also is not Greenland.  Sadly, the global economy is impacted, and that means people and nations with less resource than the US are going to truly suffer, not just be inconvenienced.

        

Murder Most Foul

 Tackled, beaten, and shot - No other word for it than murder.

The jack-booted thugs in ICE costumes are shredding the Constitution daily and have no respect for human life.  Granted they are hastily recruited, ill trained, and poorly led, but that is not really an excuse.  They (and their  counterparts in  Border  Patrol, Homeland Security, etc) follow the lead of their master whose power "is limited only by his own morality", the life-long cheat, bully, adulterer, whoremonger, and grifter who sells autographed Bibles to his brain-washed minions. Our nation is imploding because of the demented and dementia-ridden Beast in the White House, who is friend of our enemies and enemy to our friends on a global scale. 

Heaven help us. 

The Madness of King 47: Wrecking the Republic

 

Looking to basic physics Newton’s Third Law of Motion states:  for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction force.  It would appear that politics in America adheres to physics rather than philosophy or morality. Neither party want to make things right but pushing back to the center and some semblance or normalcy after the other party has been too far in one direction or other.  This leads to increasing extremism. Beware the pendulum

Now the push is into sheer madness. At this point this should be visible now even to some of his supporters. There is no other word for the extremism of President 47. Do not say his name for he feeds on hearing it like fire feeds on oxygen. He thinks in terms of absolute power…but was already corrupt before he took office.

From the silliness to the Gulf of America to the vile comments on Rob Reiner’s death to strafing survivors of a boat struck by missile to ICE murdering a mother in her car.  It gets worse every day. This is  megalomania of the Nero/Caligula variety -  boundless evil.  There will be a judgment, possibly of  a  Nuremburg type, definitely of an eternal nature.