Trump pretty much said what I’ve been saying – there is no actual government in Iran; just various factions striving for control. We, of course, want the faction that will deal with us to win…and my guess is that, for now, that faction is back door asking us to hold back – and so Trump has extended the ceasefire while still keeping up the blockade. This is because the faction which hates us the most is the one that needs money the most…that is, you can’t pay your goons without cold, hard cash.
I’ve been saying forever that you can’t take our enemies at face value. They don’t actually believe it. I mean, sure: there are always fools who can be suckered into believing just about anything. But those who call the tune never do. As Hitler’s armies approached Moscow in 1941 the whole Soviet leadership took off running…except for Stalin, and that because he knew if he fled he’d be killed almost immediately by the rest of the leaders. So much for being Communist stalwarts…they weren’t: they were sucking Russia dry to live better than the Czars and when it looked like the game was over, they ran (with sacks of money and fake identities). So, too, with the Nazi leadership. Most of it just took off running or, if cornered, killed itself. True believers would have crawled out of the rubble and insisted on having their say – proud of what they had done and ready to defend it against all comers. But what it did was Himmler…shave off the mustache, grab the fake ID (made months before because he knew it was over) and try to make to a cache of cash and gold so he could get the heck out of Dodge.
The fanatic faction in Iran is lead by men who know they have no way out – if there isn’t a Mullah regime under their control, then they’ve got nothing. No place to hide. No money, either. Nothing. So, might as well keep it up and hope for the best. But they will run for the hills if the end really does come…because they don’t believe it. Never have. It was just a rationale for obtaining money, power, what have you. This does make for a rocky ground for Trump to go over…but he also holds every last advantage. There is nothing Iran has that the world needs…it is even finding out that it doesn’t need Iranian oil. Time is very much on our side here.
Democrats managed to get their gerrymander through in Virginia – via mail in ballots which went +45 for the referendum in a State that looks like it went overall +4 for it…meaning that without those sacks of mail in ballots, the measure would have gone down to flaming defeat. And, of course, the Democrats held back their reporting until the rest of the State was in…because they weren’t sure just how many votes they’d need. Trump’s DOJ should open an investigation into it – I’m sure it is rotten to the core. But it is also going to spur Florida to just take those seats away.
Meanwhile, we simply must win 2028 so that we have control of the 2030 census. An honest census is going to lock Democrats out of the House and the Electoral College for a generation. It is the win it all election. For both sides.
Trump’s DOJ indicted members of the racist hate group, SPLC. And about time. But what is coming out is what we suspected all along – the SPLC was paying for “racist right wingers”. The Charlottesville protest was their op…and we’re now all betting that most of the BLM/Antifa actions were bankrolled the same way. And there’s more than an even money chance that this is how the J6 riots originated.
The Mets are now 0-12 since Mamdani gave their mascot a hug. And 45-71 since the raised the Pride flag at the start of a game last season.
There is a great deal of dishonest stupidity out there. When Trump announced the cease fire a host of voices rose up saying that Iran had won – they controlled the Straight, had Trump over a barrel and were now in a stronger position than ever. There was just one fly in the ointment here: it was nonsense.
The first requirement to control a waterway is to have a navy. Even shore positions aren’t enough. You have to be able to get out on the water and stop the traffic. Iran has no navy. They didn’t have much of one before the fight and after it they had nothing. We had spent weeks systematically destroying anything like a sea going ship. Meanwhile, we have the most powerful navy in the world and a significant portion of it is parked right off Iran. If anyone is going to control the straight, it is us. And easily.
But that didn’t stop the stupid liars – when the Mullah regime absurdly claimed it has ordered a US warship to depart and it had complied, the stupid liars were everywhere going, “see? We told you!”. Except they didn’t order anyone to do anything. They can’t. They lack the capability to seriously damage a US warship…and any attempt to do damage would mean instant death to anyone who tried. That is, opening fire on us just tells us where you are and so allows us to kill you. Fanaticism can get you a long ways but it takes fanaticism of a rare level to press a button which will result in your instant death without any real chance you’ll kill the enemy.
Aside from slick enemy propaganda, I think part of our problem here is that it has been so long since real American victory that nobody can recognize it. Take a look at this:
Thus the American people heard of Dewey’s victory in Manila Bay. If this happened in 2026, we’d have headlines saying Dewey was now doomed because the Spanish army in the Philippines was 30,000 strong and could mine the harbor yadda yadda yadda. But those who bought that paper knew we had won – we controlled the sea. Whatever the Spanish army wanted to do, it couldn’t stop us from coming ashore where and when we wanted. That was the reason Dewey was ordered to attack the Spanish fleet at Manila the instant war was declared…because that was game over for the Philippines. The only thing the Spanish could after their fleet was destroyed was kill people…but, being civilized, they didn’t do that. The Spanish authorities in the Philippines capitulated quickly. The Mullahs are barbarians and so are quite willing to keep killing even when its pointless…but that doesn’t mean we haven’t won.
The bottom line is that the Mullah regime lacks the military capacity to alter the course of events. Even if we decided to, say, take Bandar Abbas to seal our control of the Straight, there would be nothing the Mullahs can do. They can’t stop us from coming ashore and they could not eject us once we are ashore. The Iranian army is some 300,000 strong but it is already heavily degraded (lost in the shuffle was a lot of American and Israeli targeting of Iranian military vehicles and ammunition stores) and if it came out en masse and surged against American positions at Bandar Abbas it would simply be massacred. The amount of intensely coordinated firepower we’d be able to inflict on them would simply kill them all before they could even come to grips with us. The larger risk to Americans would be in the aftermath trying to clear away the bodies before they became a health hazard.
Now, it is clear that Trump prefers not to commit US ground forces in Iran. I don’t want us to, either. And I do want this thing wrapped up quickly. Trump wants a deal – but if the Mullah regime is really that stupidly insane they won’t take a deal, then they’ll be swiftly destroyed. This is not going to be winning the war – that is already won. This will just be getting rid of idiots who won’t admit they’re beaten. Had to do it with Japan and Germany in WWII. They were decisively defeated by late 1943. Any sane person would have called it quits by then and taken the best deal possible from the victors…but they kept at it until we were forced to reduce both nations to junk heaps. So be it. Their choice. What they wanted. If the Mullahs want that, they’ll be obliged.
The ceasefire doesn’t seemed to have ceased much fire…but I’m gonna trust Trump on this as he’s earned that. Plus, one must understand a couple things:
Iran hasn’t had a government since 1979. Its all just factions which have absolutely no consent of the governed. The Mullahs have been the primary faction but the whole thing is various politico-economic-religious groupings competing for power and wealth within Iran. When we went in and started decapitating this beast, it then fell to third and fourth tier members of these groups to pick up the torch, as it were. These people will be unsure of themselves, unsure of their fellow faction members and none of them will initially be able to impose their will upon everyone. So, when Trump talks of negotiating, he’s probably working in terms of trying to find the faction which can emerge triumphant and become the transitional government of Iran.
The Mullahs did create the functional equivalent of the Hitler Youth and the Waffen SS in the Republican Guard. For 47 years now, this has drawn in Iranian youth (not all of it, but a substantial portion) and relentlessly propagandized them. Now, don’t get me wrong: this doesn’t mean they’re all true believers. One thing which should actually surprise nobody is that in 1945 when the Soviets started imposing Communism on eastern Germany, the people they found most apt to become bright, shining Commies were Hitler Youth leaders. Things like the Hitler Youth draw to leadership those who most want to be part of the Ruling Class…and they’ll turn on a dime if necessary to keep on the inside. But, also, you do create a class of True Believers…the kind of kids who were fighting to the last teenager in 1945. Iran has some of these as well. They will not accept a ceasefire…they’ll keep firing missiles until they run out of them or they’re killed.
Trump’s goals are not what his critics think they are – they are highly strategic. And, in the end, the Mullahs were just in the way…Trump wants American control of the seas and global trade. That is the long term issue here…this means that Trump isn’t worried if a de-fanged, quasi-Mullah regime remains in Iran. American domination of the oceans and trade and, here ya go world, an open Hormuz courtesy of us, is the real end result. This does require a peaceful Iran, of course – and a destroyed Hezbollah, as well…and thus we haven’t agreed to a ceasefire in Lebanon.
We’ll see if he can pull several rabbits out of the hat here. I think he will.
The war has completely exposed how hollow NATO is and that European leadership is universally disgusting…even the so-called Right in Europe is mostly craven. Even if we get a change in government over the next few elections in Europe, we know that when push comes to shove, they’ll still side with the Globalists and the Islamists…and will continue Europe’s trajectory towards being overtly anti-Semitic. Sure, Labour only got 35% of the vote in 2024…but if you add up Labour and all the even worse parties in the UK, you find that more than 50% of the British people are evil and/or stupid. So, too, in France, Germany, Spain and on and on. Heck, there are rumors that the Turks provided the anti air weapons which shot down our jet last week. Not only do I want us out of NATO, I want us to become in policy overtly hostile to it. I might agree to some sort of alliance with Poland and Romania, but that is about it. But I’m also increasingly Isolationist…because the world is so disgusting. Even if currently governed by friendlies (like Japan and Israel) there is still the prospect that the next election will return a raving lunatic anti-American government…so, why sign in alliance with people who might vote to become America’s enemies? Better to cut it all out, build that 600 ship Navy and call it a day.
The bastard who stabbed Iryna was ruled not competent to stand trial – likely because the local establishment doesn’t want a trial at which it will come out just how hideously cruel and incompetent they are. The Feds say don’t worry too much – the murderer is in federal custody and they’ll be holding their own competency hearing. Meh. Look, guys, if a man can stab a defenseless woman to death then of course he’s insane…but he also knew exactly what he was doing. Such a man is precisely who you most want in jail for the rest of his life, if not executed. Its far more important to keep him locked up than it is to keep anyone else locked up…because that lunatic might just decide one moment that its time to stab again for no reason at all. And it doesn’t matter if you “cure” him in jail – he still has to stay locked up because (a) we can’t ever be totally sure of such a cure and (b) he took a life…if he is ever really cured, then the only they he’ll want is to sit in jail until death in atonement for his crime. If he ever wants out, then that is proof he ain’t cured.
Reminder: Bill Clinton left our boys hanging in Somalia.
Obama left them hanging in Libya.
Biden left them hanging in Afghanistan.
There isn’t a foul enough word to describe a CinC who does that.
As of this moment its got 1,000 reposts, 5,000 likes and nearly 31,000 views. That’s in under 5 hours and, keep in mind, I’m a minor account on X. Not an “influencer”! So, I struck a real nerve here. There are Lefties and Never Trumpers commenting – all coming in with stupid lies. So, a second nerve was struck.
The first nerve is that Americans – actual, patriotic Americans – are tired or losing. We’re tired of our boys and girls going into harms way and being hung out to dry…left to die, allowed to be killed…and if they do manage to win, being hauled up on war crimes charges. The worst of the three events I posted was the infamous “black hawk down” incident. Keep in mind that was a carefully planned event by our enemies. They were looking for exactly that – shoot down one of our ‘copters so they could jump up and down on it and drag American bodies through the streets. In the savage mind, that is victory. Our response should have been to inflict punitive damage on the city and people of Mogadishu. Let them know that while they might at times get a lucky shot in, the response by us is so horrific that it isn’t worth it.
Instead, Clinton pulled the plug – not just giving the enemy a propaganda victory, but an actual victory. That is what set the stage for all which followed. Reminder: we had just won the Gulf War in 100 hours of ground combat. The Elder Bush, IMO, wrecked that a bit by not compelling the Iraqi army to unconditionally surrender but there was still no doubt in the global mind: going toe to toe with us just kept graves registration busy. Mogadishu changed all that – it inserted into the global mind the concept that if you kill some Americans and make it difficult, we’ll cut and run. The whole plan that Saddam had in 2003 was to have his forces fade into the crowd and then create a score of Mogadishus until we quit. The Younger Bush was a bit more stern in that he wouldn’t just bug out like Clinton did, but he also went along with the “don’t hit them too hard” concept which had been prevalent in American military thought since Korea. This lead to the morass, the collapse of Bush’s support…and the ushering in of Obama who not only showed he’d cut and run, but he’d actually bend over backwards to help our enemies grow stronger.
Americans aren’t afraid of casualties – we’re just tired of forever wars ending in defeat. We will pay any price and bear any burden…but only if it gets us somewhere. Keep in mind that we won’t always be able to do what we did yesterday – devote massive resources to get one man out. Sometimes the exigencies of combat will prevent us from doing that. But by doing it – and whacking the heck out of the Mullah’s goons in the process – Trump let the world know that you won’t Mogadishu us into running away. That when Trump says we’re fighting to win, then we are, indeed, fighting to win.
And that is the other nerve – the Left and Never Trump nerve. Make no mistake about it, if they believe in any sort of a god, they were praying all day for our man to be killed or – even better – captured. They were hoping for an American defeat. For our humiliation. For one our sons to be paraded around like a trophy – alive or dead. And if alive, tortured until he agreed to make an anti-Trump statement on TV. Don’t get into an idea that they wanted a good outcome for America…they wanted a bad outcome for America. And, sure, a lot of it is animus towards Trump but keep in mind why they really hate him: he’s a brash, American patriot. That is the key to understand TDS…it is actually ADS. America Derangement Syndrome. A lot of people have for so long supped on garbage lies that they really think that America should be defeated. Should be humiliated. They hate my comment because the stark contrast between Trump’s muscular Americanism and the cowardly retreats of their heroes infuriates them. It punctures their bubble. It lets them know that we know they’re the bad guys in all this…and that is something they can’t stand; they want to be the good guys…but they can’t be. Not without repentance and admission of error…something no Lefty or Never Trump will ever do (except in rare instances).
The divide is really between Patriot and Traitor. Not that Trump symbolizes America – you can hate Trump and remain a Patriot – but that what Trump is doing, rebuilding American greatness, is something all Patriots support, even if they take exception to the methods Trump uses. The Left and Never Trump don’t just hate Trump, they hate America. They want an America hollowed out, drug addicted, flooded with illegals and at the beck and call of a Global Elite which is increasingly enthralled to Chinese Communists and Islamists. They want us depressed, impoverished, weak and frightened. They believe the world is a better place when America is degraded…and they hate Trump for trying to restore American greatness because they hate American greatness.
We are winning a decisive victory over the Mullahs – their regime will soon be no more. The Gulf States, faced with Mullah insanity, are finally lining up with us. For all the money we give to Israel, it is a pittance compared to what we give to NATO, and in Israel we have brothers and sisters in arms who are every bit as good as America’s warriors. The world is learning the lesson forgotten…the lesson of World War Two: we’re not just a Great Power, we’re the only true Great Power. As long as we are patriotic and lead by Patriots, we can’t be defeated. Ever. By Anyone. We will leave the Traitors on the ash heap of history. We will Make America Great Again…and the world peaceful and prosperous as we do it.
The Iran war has been a major revelation showing us how the entire Global Ruling class has a vested interest in keeping the Mullah regime going. Now, just why is that? Well:
A lot of them are bribed. The Mullahs pay them off. Never forget that the Ruling Class is corrupt and greedy – throw a couple bucks at them and they’ll dance to your tune.
Peace in the Middle East would be a catastrophe. Reminder: the continued chaos there justifies the continuation of migration to Europe…gotta get those poor people outta there, right? If there’s peace, there’s no justification for replacing French and British voters.
They really hate Israel. Of all the geopolitical events since 1945, Israel is the one they’ve come to hate the most. It is rich. It is powerful. It has the only growing Christian population in the Middle East. It is the only Middle East nation where Muslims are able to vote in genuinely free elections. It is a standing indictment of not just the Muslim world, but of the entire Third World…showing that starting from war and poverty you can lift yourselves up and very rapidly. You can have a free and law abiding society.
Combined with this, the Ruling Class has been importing Muslims by the million and in order to keep them voting for that Ruling Class, hating Israel is a requirement. Even if one of them would prefer to support Israel, the potential loss of votes – and the turning over of their nations to patriots – is something not worth the risk.
Combine all that and you can see why they are so invested in the Mullah regime. Make no mistake about it, the Mullahs have not closed the Straight of Hormuz. They can’t. They lack the physical means to do so. But the Mullahs said it is closed and the Global Ruling Class went along with it and ordered the ships to stop sailing…because they hoped it would spike oil prices and force Trump to back down. What they didn’t understand was that Drill Baby Drill had already made the USA independent of the global oil market…we have had price spikes, but those really are just people being greedy. Charging the higher price because they can, not because they need to…in the USA, there is no shortage of oil or natural gas. To be sure, lots of countries are running out (I hear that Thailand is already rationing gasoline), but we aren’t. Trump is right when he proclaims we don’t need the Straight – it is Europe and Asia’s problem if it is closed. We can go on like this for a while – and the longer it goes on, the more the USA will be decoupled from the global oil and gas market…that is, our prices will start to drop, rapidly, even if the rest of the world is paying $20 a gallon for rationed gasoline.
Now, how will Trump wrap this up? I have no idea. It won’t go on much longer, though. Don’t pay much attention to alleged statements from the Mullah regime – in reality, there is no regime. No real government. Just various factions – mostly led by third and fourth tier people – vying for survival. Any idiot can put on a dress uniform and appear in front of a camera with a flag in the background to make a statement. What appears to be happening is the continued rapid degradation of every Iranian military asset – including tanks, vehicles and ammunition supplies – while Trump people talk to various Iranian people, trying to find the guy who will cut a deal…that is, bury the Mullah regime and become the transitional government. The continued bombing is important because day by day the various factions have less to bring to the table…and now it appears we’re hitting the ability to censor the internet and television. That is, the Iranian people are now getting access to non-regime news. The longer the factions hold out, the less their leverage…the coup de grace would be US occupation of strategic Iranian territory. Everyone is focused on Kharg Island, but I’m thinking Bandar Abbas and environs. But, that is all up to Trump and his people. We’ll see how he brings this to an end.
A Spanish girl in government care was raped by migrants. Not getting proper help afterwards, she attempted suicide which left her paralyzed. Then the government pressured her in to “assisted suicide” and her organs were harvested. You really need to think about that one – and not get angry at the migrants. To be sure, they all need to be flogged and then hung…but they aren’t the problem. The problem is the host of people – doctors, nurses, lawyers, bureaucrats, politicians, orderlies, etc – who made it all happen. The evil of the Nazi regime – or the Stalinist regime – wasn’t Hitler (or Stalin) it was the army of faceless operatives who made it all happen. The clerks who fill out the forms. The officials who sign the forms. The end-use operatives who carry out whatever is written on the forms. There was someone who filled out the form for the girl’s suicide…typing away at a computer screen, making sure there were no typos and all the relevant information was accurate…and what that clerk was doing was having a poor, suffering victim killed…to be harvested for organs and then forgotten about. After all, looking up at the clock, have to get this one done before lunch today!
The evils of the modern world are only possible because people go along with them. With a shrug. And it is just those people who must be severely punished. The insanely evil can’t do it unless (allegedly) decent, hard working people agree to help. We have to figure out some way to make such faceless actors indictable – and then convict them and subject them to something really horrific. It is the only way to drive home the absolute moral requirement that nobody cooperate with evil. Ever. Even for a minute.
UPDATE: All yesterday a growing love between Americans and Japanese flowed through social media. Appropriately it started with a shared love of barbecue. But it looks pretty awesome…some samples:
Japanese version of Country Roads. Very much worth a watch!
Japanese apparently like country music:
Japanese thanks Trump for the Pearl Harbor joke because, in his view, it finally completely buries the WWII hatchet. We can josh with each other, even about the bad things, because we’re friends.
Trump may be playing a much deeper game than even his supporters suspect – that the Iran conflict is just one piece of a global puzzle designed to make NATO useful, or no more while at the same time imposing American dominance not just in the Naval sphere, but in the whole of global maritime commerce. Think about what he’s concentrating on – Panama, Greenland, Hormuz…some of the major choke points for global seaborne trade being taken under American power with a US President who wants a massive revival in American shipbuilding (once again, all true strategists concentrate on logistics…the movement of people and goods…Trump wants us in control of it). The NATO aspect is, crudely, poop or get off the pot…is NATO of any worth at all? Can NATO do something as simple as control a maritime trade corridor? If it can’t or won’t do that, what is the point of it?
And what, then, the point of the UN?
Things are moving on a deep level here…and I’m interested to see how Trump wraps it all up. The war with Iran will probably finish up to at least the main elements in the next seven to ten days. But the long term ramifications of it might be quite surprising and take some months to shake out.
There’s a non-zero chance that in the California jungle primary it is two GOPers who face off in November for governor. Naturally, Democrats will do all they can to ensure against this – but the seven Democrats in the race are all morons and egotistical…they might not be able to get enough of them to back out.
Latest propaganda line out of Tehran is that the more Mullahs we kill the stronger Iran gets. This is like me winning a fight by letting the other guy bash my face in. Its a bold strategy, we’ll see if it pays off.
The late Cesar Chavez – of United Farm Workers fame – appears to have been a guy who liked to abuse young girls. It isn’t all confirmed but it does look pretty bad for his reputation…and if it is true, then we have to keep in mind that everyone – and I mean everyone – around him must have known it was going on and kept their mouths shut because, at the time, Chavez was doing the Ruling Class’ bidding. Why tear him down now, years after his death? Because he was opposed to illegal immigration…and so the Left is unpersoning him posthumously.
Biden’s CIA identified “motherhood” and “homemaking” as indicators or racist extremism.
But it wasn’t just a brand new thing – essentially, since 1945, the things of the West have been considered by our Ruling Class as the markers for evil. They’ve been at war with them since the end of World War Two…it is just out in the open now.
That is a picture of a man who is pretty much universally denigrated in the history books: Joseph Joffre, Marshall of France. He was in command of the French army for the first two years of World War One and the massive slaughter of those two years is laid at his feet and condemns him before the bar of history as a man who pointlessly sacrificed French youth for nothing. And, indeed, he made his mistakes. On the other hand, who hasn’t? Even when we consider the greatest commanders, we still have Napoleon blowing it at Waterloo and MacArthur being caught with his pants down hours after receiving word of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
You can’t get past the number of French soldiers who died and that will always remain a horror but in judging the actions of people, one must always first place yourself in their shoes. Joffre was an experienced officer with a background in engineering and logistics. In other words, on paper exactly what you want. He was also a man who was impossible to panic – no matter how bad things were going, he was going to remain calm and rapidly issue decisive orders. Anyone who knows history – especially military history – knows that calmness plus the willingness to act are crucial in war. History is filled with generals who either lost their nerve or simply became paralyzed with indecision. Better a bad decision gets made than no decision at all. In sum, Joffre was not an idiot, nor in inhuman monster. He was presented with a puzzle and did his best to solve it.
His first puzzle was trying to figure out the best way to deploy his armies at the start. Can’t use hindsight! He only knew for certain that the Germans were coming and would likely make a significant effort in Belgium. But in those days of armies moving no faster than marching feet, he knew he’d have time to watch any such move develop. He could have deployed his main armies along the borders with Belgium. But what if the Germans then decided to advance south of Belgium? It is like that in war: trying to guess through a fog what is best. Taking one thing with another, Joffre’s decision was to launch the French attack in what amounted to the center of the German line – the idea being to split that line and flank the Germans marching into Belgium. This is, actually, a pretty good plan. There was only one major flaw: the power of defense.
The French hadn’t fought any major military action since 1870 – when machine guns were unknown, field artillery was much less lethal and the primary firearms were single shot rifles. The French had, of course, kept abreast of military developments but reading a report isn’t fighting…and they just had no conception of the power of a dug in enemy. The Russians knew it as they had fought the Japanese in 1905. The Brits knew it as they had fought the Boers in 1901. The French had no idea. Of course, neither did the Germans, who also hadn’t fought a major engagement since 1870. They were, together, military babes in the woods…and they both launched their armies right at each other and both got a massive and bloody wake up call. But the Germans were able to keep advancing because, as it turns out, they had placed almost their whole army into Belgium and simply had overwhelming weight of numbers. Given this, the French and their British allies were compelled to retreat…but only until they got themselves reorganized to stop the Germans. Which they did, at the Marne.
Whole libraries have been written about that battle which marked the highwater mark of German advance in 1914 and their forced retirement after the French counterattack. Who did what, which orders were given by whom are matters of deep study; mostly trying to show that someone other than the commander, Joffre, had been decisive. What was it, really? After the war, Joffre was asked who had won the Battle of the Marne and he answered, “I cannot say for certain, but I know who would have lost it, if it had been lost.”
After that, Joffre’s puzzle was how to expel the Germans from France – which is of course what you want to do if you’re a French officer and German’s occupy about ten percent of your country. Joffre tried this method and that – each time modifying the program a bit based on lessons learned. But, in the end, under Joffre’s tenure, the magic talisman to break a line defended by barbed wire, trenches, magazine rifles, machine guns and artillery was not discovered. Various important steps were taken – including the development of aerial bombing while the first French tanks were created in 1915 – but the total mechanism for crossing a bit of ground swept by enemy fire and breaking through an entrenched enemy force was not found by the time Joffre was kicked upstairs in the aftermath of the Battle of Verdun in 1916. Naturally, the efforts Joffre made were costly in lives and this, as noted, is laid at his feet and used to condemn him…make him out to be some sort of insensate monster fruitlessly sacrificing French lives.
But what else was he supposed to do? Just leave the Germans alone to build their strength until they could attack? Surrender? The enemy had to be expelled…Joffre and every other officer involved had no idea how to do it. You can only think it over, come up with ideas and then try them out. And, in the end, the ideas tried out by Joffre (massive heavy artillery – which Joffre had wanted pre-war but was denied the funds to procure – tanks and planes) were put together by his ultimate successor, Foch, and the deed was done – the Germans were defeated and expelled from France.
I bring all this up because I think we have a problem in our society in that we tear down those who do – and honor the guys in the peanut gallery who never do anything. Especially in light of the response to our campaign against Iran we’re seeing this. For forty seven years everyone sort of sat there and left the mullah regime alone – there are probably lots of reasons for this (all bad) but the bottom line is that today we have those who let this cancer fester upset at the man who proposes to excise it from the global political situation. The past forty seven years show what you get when you aren’t willing to at least try. If the fact that getting the Germans out of France was to be a bloody business prevented French action, then the Germans would still be there…the war might have gone on much, much longer with an ultimately higher cost in lives. Something had to be done both back in 1914 and here in 2026. And all honor to those who are willing to do something, even if they make mistakes doing it. Better to have a mistake than to have a drift.
Things must be done. Someone has to come up with the moral courage to act…and often act on very incomplete information and with no certainty they’ve come up with the right response. As Wellington put it, the whole art of war is getting at what’s on the other side of the hill – you don’t know what’s there, but you must do it. We’ve been half a century so fearful of that other side of the hill that we’ve essentially done nothing – and worse than nothing because we have killed a lot of people (had a lot of ours killed, too) and expended huge amounts of money while essentially cowering over on our side of the hill.
Trump is doing what should have been done on November 4th, 1979…and every day since. We’ve got a regime in Tehran which is mere social pestilence upon the global body politic. It had to go and must go. Trump just has the courage everyone else lacked (when they weren’t bought by Iranian or other foreign money – there is that, as well). The glory is his – he looked at the situation, realized it had to be solved and has decided to solve it. His opponents are in the wrong – not just on technical aspects, but in the larger moral requirements of being human.
Our enemies – foreign and domestic – are upset that an American sub sank an Iranian warship. It was sneaky!
Like, do you guys even know what a submarine is for?
For the record: it doesn’t matter if the ship was armed. Doesn’t matter if it was close or far from home. It was a warship – it was a target. It was sunk and that’s all there is to it…if you’re upset about it then I direct you to complain to the nearest Mullah hiding in an Iranian tunnel…they sent that ship to see in whatever condition it was. It should have been fully ready for war – warships are always supposed to be fully ready for war. If they’re not, then the commanders of those ships are the criminals, not the people who destroyed them.
Some people are saying that the Geneva Convention requires us to rescue the survivors of a torpedoing and to that I answer…what the heck are you talking about? The Conventions don’t mention submarine warfare and, indeed, it is the one area of warfare which has practically no treaty or legal coverage. Deliberately so: no nation which employs submarines would ever limit them…they are there to suddenly destroy, without warning and then sail away to find the next target. Warning the target or bringing succor to the survivors merely makes submarine warfare useless. This was disposed of as an argument by the Nuremburg tribunals where we tried to nail Doenitz for unrestricted submarine warfare – no less than Fleet Admiral Nimitz scotched that by pointing out to the tribunal that he had issued the exact same orders right after Pearl Harbor. Maybe subs should never have happened – but they did and in war time, their targets are anything on the seas. Anything. At any time.
We are being treated to a heavy dose of defeatist propaganda. Well, we are if we listen…as for me, I’ve muted most accounts on X which start off with “breaking” because I’ve found that what comes after is 99% nonsense. Merest clickbait unsupported by facts or even by common sense.
How is the war going? We’re sending B-52s. We don’t send B-52s into an environment where the enemy in any way contests control of the air. They are great planes. We’ll probably be flying them into the 2040s…but they are no match for anything like a modern air defense system, let alone a modern fighter. They go in when the skies are clear and we have a large target we want heavily degraded. That’s how the war is going. That is how we know we’re winning.
We’re re-establishing full diplomatic relations with Venezuela if you want a clue about how this thing in Iran will come out. Turns out that being America actually gets results. We haven’t tried to be America since Truman fired MacArthur.
Noem got the boot…and a new job with Rubio’s State Department. So, she clearly upset Trump a bit, but not all the way. She has a clear shot to get herself back into good graces. We’ll see how she does in the new role. Meanwhile, Senator Mullin is named as replacement and he figures that the babies of illegals need to be deported, too. So, Democrats may have semi-collected a scalp here, but they’re not going to like it long term.
It is getting a little funny, looking at the opposition: they are just shotgunning out every possible justification for opposition.
The 1953 coup!
US keeps bases in the Middle East!
Trump promised America First!
Israel is the bad guys!
Jews control Trump!
We’re running out of missiles!
Iran wasn’t a threat!
We killed a Mullah during Ramadan!
Blah, blah, blah.
The first thing for any American to consider in relation to Iran is this: what is peace?
Nobody in the opposition will answer it – nor even consider it. Because to consider it is to understand, and the opposition doesn’t want understanding…they just want it stopped. But the bottom line is that the Mullah regime is dedicated to destroying the United States. That they can’t and never will have the power to do so is neither here nor there – it is what they want and what they predicate their foreign and military policy on: destroying us. As long as this is Mullah policy, they will never cease to attack us. Sure, almost all attacks are by proxy, but that doesn’t change the reality. So, once again, what is peace? Where’s the compromise point? What is half a loaf for both sides?
There isn’t one. Unless the Mullahs surrender their dream, there can’t be peace. Trump tried to convince them to do so short of war – and with the example of Maduro as a test of both American capability and Trump’s will. The Mullahs ignored it. And probably with some justification – ever since 1979 in every confrontation it has been the USA which climbed down. Republican or Democrat, Left and Right, everyone was always on the side of an accommodation with the Mullahs. They probably expected that whatever Trump decided to do, it wouldn’t cut at the vitals of the Mullah regime. They bet wrong. And now there will be a change in Iran – we can’t say with certainty exactly what will emerge post-war…but it won’t be what came before. Some sort of compromise will be made by whomever emerges as Iranian leadership. Some modification away from “Death to America.”
Personally, I’m confident that Trump has this well in hand. For instance, in the FY 2026 budget was a big increase in missile procurement…after years of this being neglected, we suddenly did a big bump. Now we know why: Trump wanted the means in hand not just to attack, but to sustain an attack over the long term. This shows that Trump is thinking strategically (fake strategists concentrate on military moves…real strategists concentrate on logistics). Given this, I’d be shocked to find that we haven’t already assessed the situation on the ground in Iran…doubly shocked if we didn’t have special forces on the ground there by now trying to find if there are people willing to storm Iranian government offices. In the end, I expect a change in Iran…even if an alleged Mullah is in charge of the transition, it will be a Mullah who got the message and knows its time to wind up the Islamic Republic – sort of like in Venezuela where the regime is still technically in power, but the moves are already being made to allow for a successor government.
It is like waking up from a dream. Or a nightmare. That is, a world where we were a helpless, blundering giant – able to kill but never able to obtain our strategic ends. A world where a corrupt Ruling Class grew fat off of war while the world fell further into barbarism day by day. In a burst of military action, that whole thing came tumbling down. This could have been done at any time – a real, genuine aerial campaign to destroy the regime’s ability to wage war. We’ve had this ability all along. We built it in World War Two…and for all the bombs we’ve dropped since then, we’ve never done what we’re capable of (the closest was in the 1991 Gulf War…but even there we didn’t hit at the regime’s ability to control Iraq; it was still a half measure). The Mullahs never had a chance – our capability is so far beyond what they could comprehend, let alone build. China and Russia are now probably in a funk…realizing that any strategic assets they have only exist as long as we want them to…and that no matter how much they hurry up trying to match us, but the time they can stop us we’ve moved on to the next generation of capability (word is that the Israelis – and, therefor, us – had hacked into Tehran’s traffic cameras…we essentially knew where everyone was in real time…everything is tracked by camera in China…they now know they’ve merely built a system to let us know where everything is).
God bless our troops. God bless President Trump. May our victory be swift and peace restored.
There’s a lot more, of course. The mullah regime has been the focal point of terrorism in the world since 1979. They fund it. Arm it. Train it. Facilitate it across borders. They are a pestilence which needed to be squashed out the gate. But, we didn’t. Jimmy Carter was given full justification for war against Iran on November 4th, 1979 and he chose to negotiate with them…to play a game they set up where they were the aggrieved party and the USA had to offer reparations for its sins. And then President after President let it slide…mounting numbers of death, more and more terror and oppression and yet it was hands-off on Iran.
I don’t know why. Sure, there were bribes. Clearly to this day – perhaps even to this minute if we haven’t blocked all the Iranian bank accounts – people have been getting paid to toe Iran’s line. Also, there was idiocy. People built up a bizarre fantasy world where the West in general and the USA in particular was the cause of all the ills in the world and so any entity standing against the West and the USA were the good guys. I can’t adequately describe the level of insanity one has to have for this to seem like a rational idea…we’re dealing with savages who hang people for being gay and stone women to death for showing a little ankle. People who do this are obviously evil…but wash it through an Ivy League degree and all of a sudden a 73 year old coup in Iran excuses it all. But even with all that, I can’t see why we didn’t just take them out.
We are overwhelmingly more powerful. Not just a bit stronger – overwhelming. We have absolute aerial superiority. Complete command of the seas. Vastly more money, manpower and manufacturing capacity. It doesn’t matter how brave and dedicated the regime’s servants are – power is power and we have vastly more than Iran. There is no negotiation with this disparity of power – it is we say what we want, perhaps give them a bit of what they want (if it suits us) and if agreement is not made, the regime is destroyed. And any fool can easily see this is the outcome…but only if the Iranians know there is an American government which is serious. That has been the missing element. Again and again we have simply rolled over for the Mullahs. Republicans and Democrats, hawks and doves…everyone has been eager to kowtow to mullah bluster.
The mullahs decided we were still bluffing – the lesson of Maduro did not take hold. Just yesterday the mullahs were still full of shouts and threats. But this time, today, it was all different – because Trump doesn’t bluff. He’ll wheel and deal. He’ll move in a complex dance with alternate velvet gloves and iron fists..but in the end when he says “it will be thus”, that is what it will be – and he never demands something that is out of reach. The mullahs could have made a deal. Heck, per Trump the remnants still alive right now can make a deal…but the deal is no nukes, no more terrorism and the Iranian people get to run their own lives. However they want. Trump hasn’t said what sort of new Iran there must be – rightly so because it isn’t our call to make. Monarchy. Democracy. Heck, even Islamic Republic, if the Iranians want it. But it has to be what they want, and must never threaten America or American interests again.
This is yet more of Trump getting us back into the real world. A world where we simply are top of the heap. Hate it all you want, it is what it is. Even in our currently weakened state, we still outshine everyone, and by a lot. Trump is resetting the world: letting it know that you don’t want to defy us. Argue with us all you want. Hit us hard in the give and take of negotiations. Press for every ounce of advantage against us. Fine. And we’ll play the same game. But defy us? Threaten us? Attack us? Not a good idea. You will lose. And very badly.
And how are the Democrats responding? Other than Fetterman, even worse than you’d expect. They are condemning it. That is, condemning the effort to rid the world of a half-century old pestilence. We’ll see what judgement the American people render on it.
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