Trump's Iranium Quagmire
I wrote the following editorial (verbatim) over the weekend—mostly on Saturday—as my lead-in for the Monday headlines. I wrote it because we have just passed the 100-day mark of Trump’s war against Iran and because I expected things to now go hotter, not to cool off. I wanted to get it published just before that happened. The war, however, got a slight jump on me, and missiles started flying this evening (Sunday or, at least, that is when I first read the news about fifteen minutes ago before heading off to bed).
So, I’m publishing the editorial this evening without any changes at all, so you can see what my thinking was about Trump’s quagmire in Iran before any news came out about Iran launching missiles at Israel and Israel intensifying things in Lebanon, etc. At this late evening hour, it SOUNDS like Trump’s schmeasefire finally went up in flames. Tomorrow may look different, but that’s what it sounds like, having skimmed the headlines. It’s 10PM and I have to get to bed for work in the AM, so we’ll see where thing are later tomorrow…
At the 100-day point in the Trump-Israel-Iran War, President Trump looks as stuck in one place as President Putin has looked for four years now in Ukraine. That quagmire also became evident enough in about 100 days, just as George HW Bush declared victory in what was called a “100-Day War” in Iraq then wound up stalled for years in a quagmire that never found the weapons of mass destruction he claimed were there.
With the 100-day point in the in Trump’s Second Iran War now stuck in Trump’s Schmeasefire, nothing has been gained on any of the objectives Trump has talked about. Iran is now saying, as I warned in my last Deeper Dive would now become abundantly apparent to the whole world that the United States is now a “deflated power.” As they make that statement, Trump is claiming Iran has been decapitated.
To build some trust in the analysis of the quagmire the US is now stuck in (again), I want to show how I laid out the quagmire Putin would be stuck in when he first invaded Ukraine as I called the war all along the way. I’m going to lay out the fact of what I said back then about a clearly badly failing war in Ukraine that was far from clear to most back when I was making those statements. I want to do that as a corollary to what I am saying now about Trump’s imperial quagmire.
Clearly of these invasions of nations that did not attack the invader, even going back to the Bush Wars, have gone as leaders of the big guys planned. I each case the underdogs held up far better than the attackers believed was possible. We need to take an imperial lesson from that:
Prior to Putin’s “Not-War” in Ukraine, I used to write A LOT for Zero Hedge and RT, I was a paid feature writer for about a year with RT and interviewed on their television station. So, I was making about $1,000 a month just off the articles I did for them (back when Biden unconstitutionally fired me from my regular job for refusing the Trump kill shot). RT loved my criticisms of the US so much, several of which were most-read features, that they finally asked me, after Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, to become part of a television panel on the Not-War.
That was where we parted. I had enjoyed working with their editors at their London branch and had no problem writing US criticism where it was due for whomever was willing to publish it, WHICH CERTAINLY WAS NOT THE MAINSTREAM PRESS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! However, I knew they would hate what I had to say about Putin’s internationally illegal invasion of a nation that had not attacked Russia—as preemptive as anything George Bush ever did, which I also railed at back in the days—and I didn’t want, even in any token way, to be a part of a program that would seek to make Putin’s imperial quest look justifiable.
I also didn’t want the US government during a time of war where the US had sided with Ukraine to see that I was getting $1,000 a month, modest last that figure was, wired straight into my bank account from a major Moscow bank. Most of all, I knew I intended to write fiercely against this imperial quest to restore parts of the old Soviet empire back into Russia’s grasp, and felt it would lack integrity to be collecting pay from Moscow while attacking Putin’s Not-War. I resigned from the world I was doing with RT, and used my membership, while it lasted there, to publish critical comments about all he hypocrisy in Putin’s war, the assassinations of his critics and, especially to scoff at the certain failure that I predicted for his quagmire of a war.
The same can be said for Zero Hedge, which is a publication founded by a father and son who come from a former Soviet satellite to create one of Putin’s sly propaganda publication. Putin, as the former KGB head of disinformation in Easter Europe back in the Soviet days is one of the masterful, highly trained liars in the world. You don’t reach top status in disinformation, which is a euphemism for lying, without knowing how to sell lies as facts, which is why they use the word “disINFORMATION” for their lying propaganda. The best lies are wrapped in a lot more truth than lie, like a pill you want a dog to swallow, you insert it into a very tasty piece of raw meet.
Zero Hedge, by all appearances if the front door for a Russian troll farm where I imagine former Soviets sitting in their dull bedroom with the sheet over the window, a pack of cigarettes rolled up in a t-shirt sleeve, and a mostly dead-solider bottle of vodka on the small desk where they hammer out their midnight troll bait.
Once I started relentlessly criticizing Putin’s miscarriages in Ukraine, the trolls got extremely hot. I battled them relentlessly with lots of barbed criticism of their own hypocrisy and idiotic claims about Putin’s certain quick victory for a couple of months until Zero Hedge hypocritically (having complained about times when they were censored or banned on Twitter) banned me from commenting on its site and stopped giving any of their usual promotion to the articles I had been publishing there for years; and, of course, banned me from publishing anymore. (There was no lack of integrity in my sharply criticizing Russia while still publishing article on ZH because they never paid a dime for anything I ever wrote there. So, to me, it was just a hostile marketplace of ideas.)
The trolls did their best to lacerate everything I said about how that war would go from the start; and, yet, today I can honestly say that EVERYTHING but one prediction I made happened as I said it would, and here is how that went: (And nothing they said went as they were certain it would.)
When Putin was lining up all kinds of heavy military hardware along Ukraine’s eastern border, he said it was just for war-games. I agreed with Biden who claimed he had intel that showed Putin was definitely going to invade, and I said why. The trolls pounded me severely for being so “stupid” to side with Biden (whom I couldn’t stand, but I don’t make my predictions based on whom I like). They said obviously I was a liberal Biden supporter, with zero basis, given that I already hated Biden for firing me over the vaccine and for turning the US into the pages of George Orwell’s 1984 faster than I ever imagined would happen. I had spent many article railing against Biden, too, even on RT and Zero Hedge, but that was suddenly all forgotten. AND THEN PUTIN INVADED just like I said he would.
When Putin did invade, he publicly stated he was only going in about ten miles to reinforce local resistance to Ukrainian abuse in the Donbas region and would stop there. Is said he was lying and would go all the way to Kyiv. The trolls at Zero Hedge and critics at RT, where most had loved my writing when I was critical of US military adventurism and misfires, and elsewhere said I was wrong—that Putin didn’t want regime change and didn’t want all of Ukraine. He was nothing lie GW Bush. I said, “What do you think all those “Zs “on his tanks are for? ‘Zoom!?’ They are to say, ‘Zelensky, these tanks are for you! We’re coming to get you.’” Putin immediately stormed right past his fake line and went all the way to Kyiv.
I said Putin would lose at Kyiv because the Ukrainians were fighting for their existence and their freedom while Putin’s troops didn’t even want to be there and were largely stuck in the mud. My critics said I was nuts because Putin was way stronger than Ukraine, way smarter, and would slaughter them for being so foolish to resist (as if they had no moral right to defend their internationally and even Pre-Putin Russian-recognized boundaries like any other people would do on this constantly warring planet. Russia came out and stated that I was right about regime change—they were going to topple the current regime and place a more cooperative Ukrainian government in place. Putin lost faster than my trollish critics ever imagined he could and rapidly retreated with no regime change achieve.
Some of Putin’s sudden retreats were almost hilarious in how much they looked like a Russian version of the Keystone Kops. I even said how one of the most ridiculous ones of all would play out: When Putin formed a now infamous massive line of tanks to attack, I said the dumb tank formation was proof Putin was stuck in a quagmire—that it was the dumbest maneuver in the history of war because the tanks were lined up for slaughter. In a practically prescient manner, I said Ukraine could easily take them out with mere hobby drones. Since use of small drones in war had not happened for anything other than maybe occasional spying, my critics scoffed at my stupid fantasy and said Putin was wisely and patiently lining up his tanks so he wouldn’t even have to fight because the Ukrainians would see they were overwhelmed by an unstoppable force, so they would surrender. And look at what happened next:
I wrote a letter to the White House asking why they were not already shipping thousands of drones to Ukraine to take out those tanks by dropping grenades down their open turrets. The scheme was a no-brainer. The situation was pregnant for such an answer, especially because no major warfare had ever before been attempted with hobby drones! I pointed out that thousands of units of cheap hardware could overwhelm single units of expensive hardware, and even Ukrainian children could safely fly the drones in through the treetops undetected. The US government could not even envision such a thing. (I am certain my letter had nothing to do with what happened next.)
The strategy of war turned on its head, and the Ukrainians took the obvious move and started bombarding the tanks with tiny drones and turned the tanks all around so they fled. You never saw tanks scramble so fast in so many places and get stuck because their own tanks were blocking them from retreating. It was a slaughter, and Russia became a laughing stock. And warfare was forever changed.
When Putin started opening his silo doors to flash his nuclear hardware in hopes of intimidating Europe and the US from helping Ukraine, I said he was bluffing. My critics said our help would result in WWIII, forcing Putin do drop “the bomb.” I said there was no way Putin was that dumb. It was all saber rattling. Here we are four years later, and he hasn’t used a nuke yet. I’m not saying we could never get there, but standing up to him has resulted in him being stuck essentially in one place as badly as Russia was in Afghanistan.
The little guys stood up better than any of my numerous critics at Zero Hedge and RT believed they could, arguing strenuously that Ukraine would be obliterated in a month or two if they didn’t surrender. Standing against Putin showed you cannot simply let dictators take over greater parts of the world in imperial conquest just because they have nukes without putting up some serious resistance because, if you do, all will be lost to the one lunatic willing to use his nukes. Now, I hope we’ll get rid of nukes forever, as Reagan started to do and George Bush unfortunately ended; but, until we do, detente seems to work better than anything else to stop nuclear dictators from encasing the entire world in an iron curtain.
That said, standing up to nuclear dictators is a tough and extremely dangerous call that can go seriously bad. If it does go bad, I put the moral failure entirely from the start on the shoulders of the imperial invader who is flashing his nukes and threatening everyone while starting wars of imperial expansion and/or consolidation in multiple other nations, as Putin has done all along Russia’s southwestern perimeter to try to cobble some of the old empire back together. He doesnt’ have to threaten nukes.
Putin’s imperial ambitions, which my critics also argued strenuously with me about, were proved shortly after they argued by Putin’s long invasion speech in which he obsessed on “the Great Catastrophe,” as he called it, of the Soviet Union’s collapse and used it to justify taking Ukraine back. That was in spite of the fact the leaders of the Soviet Union had given Ukraine a vote to succeed or join in writing as an agreement with Ukraine back when the Soviet’s got Ukraine to join the USSR. They had to include that provision as a way of avoiding a worse war of conquest way back then, but they never allowied it to happen until the Soviet Union collapsed.
Putin’s imperial invasion was also in spite of the fact that the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had given Crimea to Ukraine to be included in its boundaries (being from Crimea, himself), knowing Ukraine always had the right to vote to succeed, which it was offered finally a chance to do when the USSR collapsed and the Russian Federation was coming into being, AND UKRAINE VOTED TO SUCCEED, TO NOT JOIN THE FEDERATION. So, it’s boundaries were internationally legitimate in every way, including every Soviet and post-Soviet Russian way and were recognized globally and by Russia until Putin became imperially ambitious and started carrying on about righting the “Great Catastrophe.”
Putin is now paying a heavy price for his ill-gotten land grab by seeing Russia relentlessly pummeled on the inside, as close to him as Moscow, seeing 350,000 of his own soldiers slaughtered (MORE THAN UKRAINE HAS LOST) and seeing his own popularity finally crash to now that the war is coming home to rest as well as his economy lying in shambles. The Russians have lost the freedom to even talk openly about it, having finally gained such freedom when the USSR collapsed, with the most outspoken Putin critics stuffed back in gulags as per the old Soviet practice or given some nice Beryllium Borscht as another throwback to the old days. (And that is why you don’t want unconstitutional emperors, who change the constitution so they can stay in power, in charge, Trump being one who would like to do the same!)
Ukraine is taking huge losses, too, but they are defending their own land. I would take those losses defending my land and my freedom to the bitter end, too; so how can I blame them for doing what I would do if Russia attacked Idaho because it has a lot of Nazis hidden in the hills? Much as many in the US hate Nazis for the same reason Russians do (having lost many lives to fighting them in the trenches in WWII), that’s a lame excuse for imperial invasion, but you always need some kind of window-dressing to sell the invasion to the public.
HERE’S MY POINT: Four years down the road, Ukraine has gone exactly as I said it would in terms of the overall picture. I defy anyone to look back at my writings back then and pull out anything factually where I predicted something about how that war would go and show I turned out to be wrong. You can disagree with my beliefs about Russia, but you cannot show me where my predictions about the outcome of the war were wrong, except the one thing I noted above, which was that I did think Russia might use a tactical nuke at the dam near Kharkiv, and it did not. Other than that, everything has gone as I thought it would, and Putin has gotten virtually nowhere for almost the last three years of that war. In fact, Ukraine keep pushing back inside his own boundaries with some pretty big successes.
The war has resulted in inevitable major losses for Ukraine because it is trying to defend itself against a much stronger invader; yet, it is resulting in even bigger losses of soldiers for Russia because Ukraine is fighting for its existence on its own turn out of a deep and bitter memory of how oppressive Russia was to Ukraine for the better part of a century, and they are doing so with a lot of heavy assistance. Its citizen soldiers have deep motivation to keep their land, though, of course, there are always some that don’t want to enjoin the war. Russia’s soldiers, on the other hand, don’t even want to be there at all. They want to go back to their own land, and many are essentially held with guns to their heads to keep them on the front lines. They know if they retreat without orders to do so, they will be shot in the back.
For Ukrainian soldiers, Ukraine is as far back to home as they can go! I predicted from the start that, with or without US and European help, Ukrainians would fight to the last man and woman standing. My critics predicted that, too, but blamed it on US intervention. I still disagree. The Ukrainians will do everything to hold on against their invader. The US and European help only makes a difference as to how many of the invaders they take out and whether the Ukrainians all die by losing or possibly some live on still in their own land after a long and very destructive war of attrition BECAUSE they are going to fight to the bitter end, even without the help. They have proven their resolve to do so. I would do the same if Russia were attacking the US. The Canadian would probably do the same if Trump attacked Canada, as he has vaguely and irrationally threatened.
So will the Iranians!
And that brings us to the crux of why this is and will remain a quagmire for Trump unless he decides to destroy them entirely.
Ukraine has so far gone exactly as I expected, and Iran is also going as I’ve said I expect it will all along the way, too! Both wars are invasions of a small nation by a superpower nation, and I do not expect Iran will cave in on the nuclear issue anymore than Ukraine caved in to Russia in what many thought would be an easy victory for Russia. I’ve already said regime change is a lost goal for the US, just as regime change in Ukraine quickly proved to be for Russia. They lost that objective in about a hundred days.
I have said repeatedly Trump is lying about how badly Iran wants to make a deal all along the way. They don’t. That has always proven to be right. If we’re going to take them over and decapitate their regime as Trump wants to pretend he has done, they want to inflict as much pain as they can on the way out.
Both Putin and Trump started their invasions expecting quick and relatively easy victory. Both were dead wrong because they failed to comprehend how motivated the ones being invaded would be to hold out against them.
Show me where everything in Iran hasn’t gone as I’ve said. My writings on the subject are all right here. I don’t take my positions to be popular with anyone. In fact, they often make me very unpopular, whether on markets, politics or wars. I take them because I believe them to be correct as to how things will go whether I like that outcome or not and whether I belive the path I say will be taken is wise or not. (In fact, it often is NOT wise; but the world is not wise.) I’ve held my views on these wars consistently, and I have nothing to apologize for on the claims I’ve made about these wars so far.
My point now is that things are going to get rougher in the MiddleEast, unless Trump chickens out, which he has shown he is deftly capable of many times. The Iranian regime is not going to chicken out by caving in on the uranium. They have shown their resolve just as many times as Trump has chickened out from his braggadocios threats. There position isn’t what changes. Trump’s is.
Trump’s latest dance has been to attempt a little crab walk sideways ahead of his chicken dance to see he can sell the idea that he does’t really need an agreement from Iran to end enrichment and turn over all of its enriched uranium, having said from the outset that was essential. He tends to test things that way and say, if it brings a huge outcry from his supporters, that he never actually said he would do that. It seems to have escaped his dim mind that, if his new claim were true, it only means he didn’t really need this war in the first place either.
Naturally, the many other little Eastern European nations that finally managed to free themselves from Russia after decades of dictatorial servitude that ended back in the eighties are not about to go back under the thumb of the former disinformation chief over Eastern Europe who served the KGB in its top ranks. So, of course, all of those nations will defend themselves to the last man and woman standing, whether they believe they will win or not, whether the CAN win or not. Those nations, like Ukraine, experienced an entire lifetime of horrors under Russia that reinforce their will to remain independent and free of their former overlords.
So, if Russia doesn’t back down from his invasions, PUTIN is going to take the world into another world war. I am not saying he should not fight against NATO expansion, but the only thing he has accomplished with his stupid war is giving far more backbone and resolve and greater membership to NATO by proving in the minds of those little nations that they need a BIG ALLIANCE. By invading Ukraine, he has given them every reason to fear he might do the same to them and find some other Nazi excuse as his canard for the another not-war.
Likewise, Iran, is a nation being invaded, having not attacked the US homeland. It is now fighting for its existence, which is different than all of its past fighting for terrorist reasons. Those were about its own Islamic imperial quest and its hatred toward Israel and the US; so, they are far from innocent victims, but Trump’s war has made the situation existential for them. The US is fighting for oil and control, as it proved in Venezuela and done so many times in the Middle East, so it is nowhere nearly as motivated. Typical NeoCon obsession. After all, according to Trump, he already solved the Iran nuclear problem, so how denuclearization of Iran be the true reason? Nuclear threat is just the reason (likely even factual) that sells the war like Nazis in Ukraine.
You see, it doesn’t make any difference to me whether it is the US that starts an imperial war to control oil or gain turf—a NeoCon policy Trump has continued unabashedly—or Russia that starts an imperial war to rebuild Putin’s dreams of the former Soviet empire. The only ones who can stop the war are the invaders. Otherwise, those wars will continue until one side achieves a decisive military victory; and that, as we are seeing, is a lot harder than many believe when the other side is existentially and patriotically and, in Iran’s case, even religiously motivated..
I”m consistent on this: All imperial wars are equally unjustifiable. I’ll make no excuse for either the US or Russia. Both Putin and Trump are clearly obsessed with empire building, and both of their nations have a long history of imperialism, which I am against, no matter who does it because I believe that stance has integrity, regardless of what excuses those superpowers use (and they ALWAYS have excuses that sound good) for going in for their next land grab.
So, Trump started yet another imperial war that does not serve the average American’s interest one iota, but it will cost every average American a small fortune in inflation and economic destruction under the ever-growing volcanic mountain of debt. That is what MAGA got for its unquestioning support of the “Peace President,” as Trump ridiculously named himself—just one more stupid imperial war. And this war that he started will be as much of a quagmire for the US as Ukraine is for Russia.
That is why I wrote all of last week that the stock market is stupid to keep falling for Trump’s claims that it is nearly over. That will only be true of Trump retreats or actually does obliterate Iran, but that latter path will bring a whole lot more destruction to the US and the world, too.
Like all of the United States’ wars since its one justifiable victory in WWII, there is still no decisive victory in this war, even though the Peace President declared victory last summer and then declared it again about ten days into his second war in Iran. All the average American gets out of this venture is a clear loss to a much smaller player with a much bigger mountain of debt for us. And that loss is what started last week to price into the stock market!
(The headlines below share the story of the war as it was when I wrote everything above. I’ll capture the current headlines and those that come out tomorrow morning and send an update.)
Economania (national & global economic collapse plus market news)
100 days of the Iran war: How global markets and the economy have been affected, in charts
Wars & Rumors of War (including cyberwar, civil unrest and revolts)
Trump Says He Never Promised No New Wars
At Hundred-Day Point, Iran Mocks United States’ “Deflated Power”
Trump claims Iran is ‘virtually decapitated’ as war enters 100th day