Regime Change, Fast Food Style
The 2003 Iraq War looks like a well-planned operation compared to what the Trump administration launched in the dead of night.
Forty-seven years ago, a generation’s worth of investment in the emperor of Iran, the Shah Reza Mohammed Pahlavi, as opposed to the people of Iran, meant that when the Islamic Revolution took place within that nation, there would be hell to pay for America and Americans. As everyone knows now, our embassy compound was seized and dozens of staffers held hostage for 444 days. Ever since, we have been in a simmering Cold War with that nation, as they supported Islamic extremists committing terrorist acts and we supported Israel, an apartheid state that regularly lashed out at its neighbors, both near and further afar.
Israel’s current leader, Benjamin Netanyahu (who has reached a Putin-like length of time for his tenure in office), has spent the last twenty-five years warning of Iran’s dangers and begging the United States to join him in a war. Nobody’s taken the bait. Even Donald Trump, our aged leader that almost certainly is suffering from substantial cognitive decline, blew up last year in an expletive-filled rant that both nations need to stop fighting. However, something changed in the last couple of months, and the man whose minions repeatedly promised us that he wouldn’t be a “warmongering president” has suddenly become a warmongering president.
I suspected from the moment that Trump parroted Bibi’s infamous 2012 United Nations speech at the State of the Union Tuesday night that this was coming, but I did not believe he’d start attacking mere hours after breaking off talks with Iranian negotiators in Oman. Shame on me, I guess, for not remembering that if there’s one thing our dipshit president is good at, it’s making sure we cannot relax on the weekend. Ever.
We’ve been running airstrikes with the Israeli air force for just over a dozen hours, and as I write this, there is reporting from the BBC, based off Israeli sources, that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been killed. Less reported on is that 85 Iranian girls were killed by a missile strike inside their elementary school. Retaliatory missiles launched from Iran are raining down in Arab nations, increasing the death toll of innocent people in America’s war of choice. Now, while I will shed no tears for the murderous Khamenei, I cannot and will not defend the many, many wrongs being done here:
Going to war with no Congressional input or vote in both houses, which the Constitution requires
Going to war with no ground forces or a plan for what happens next besides telling Iranian rebels: “Take over your government”
Going to war side-by-side with the Butcher of Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu
Going to war, again, for regime change despite our absolutely horrendous record on this front
Going to war, especially, because our president was best friends with a sex trafficker and almost certainly participated in some of his sex
Going to war with no threat to us—despite whatever Bibi has said for decades, Iran is no closer to fielding a working nuclear weapon than they were in 2001—and against a nation whose economy has been destroyed by our sanctions.
A decade ago, Secretary of State John Kerry, at President Barack Obama’s behest, reached a solid, enforceable nuclear agreement with Iran. Netanyahu, who did his best to undercut Obama at every turn, helped torpedo key parts of the treaty, while simultaneously buttering up Donald Trump’s nascent presidential campaign, because he saw he could manipulate Trump. As referenced in the headline, this is regime change, fast food style. This is Netanyahu’s fondest wish, expressed in various forums for three decades, and to get there, he linked up with the McDonald’s-loving president to launch another American coup against Iran, without any ability or desire to do anything after eliminating the Iranian leadership from the air.
You can bomb away the “Supreme Leader” and the defense minister, and the head of the Revolutionary Guard, but all that means is dozens of lower-ranking wannabe despots grabbing for power and a complete lack of order. That was what happened in neighboring Afghanistan in 1989, and it gave us the Taliban. That’s the real issue here, the fact that we have a genocidal maniac partnered with a weak, vain, narcissist deciding to wage war, and that the narcissist is used to cheap thrills. Cheap thrills where you don’t put troops on the ground, where you blew up buildings and machinery from the sky, and where you can preen and posture on social media. Donald Trump loves to play at being the big boy President without showing any actual leadership.
I have no idea how this will shake out, and quite frankly, I doubt anyone does. The chaos president has inflicted a new level of instability to a region that has known little else for a century. The only thing that is guaranteed is that the innocent deaths of civilians will continue to grow in the days to come, and that should be the real story here, as it was all so unnecessary. What I don’t expect to occur, even though it absolutely should, is a War Powers Resolution in Congress and impeachment hearings for Trump, Vance, Rubio and Hegseth. Subverting the Constitution by enabling the latest metaphorical McDonald’s meal for Donald Trump is not a small thing, and there must be accountability if the Constitution is to have any meaning at all.