That's the world we live in now. Just breathtakingly stupid motherfuckers wielding power and influence that is galaxies beyond their ability to manage or even properly make use of.
I hate so much 2000's election. W Bush shit on the Constitution to such a degree that now Trump can get us involved in a military affair, not with the explicit consent and will of Congress, but with a fucking tweet.
Gwb you started this, that and the rigged supreme Court. If I were of voting age back then I would've rioted. I asked my dad why he didn't, despite being a huge 2A proponent, and all he could give me was less respect for him.
I thought Reagan started all this? Or Nixon? If only we could agree (not that this matters literally at all at this point) in who actually started us down the path of fascism. It's so hard to keep the demagogues in order these days...
Or we could just agree that shit's fucked and we need to do something about it without trying to point fingers or blame on any specific person in the last 60 years who is already dead and long gone.
I honestly think that he's trying to get Iran to blockade the Strait of Hormuz to drive up the price of oil, to the benefit of Russia and also U.S. oil producers.
Also, we all forget he tried to gin up a war with Iran in his first term. Wartime presidents tend to stay in power, and he knows this - wartime protests would also give him an excuse to use the military at home like the blunt instrument he sees them as.
This isn’t the US’ war, why would Trump be making any demands?
Because he sees a chance to profit. His war or not, Trump wants his cut. Or else. He's got a right on his cut because he's the president. The best president ever. Everybody knows that.
Israel and trump appear to be claiming to have defeated the Iranian air defense, and achieve air supremacy over the Iranian capital.
If that's true then Iran is in deep trouble, and inviting them to surrender wouldn't be unreasonable. I very much doubt that it is true, but that's what they seem to believe
The US has had air supremacy in every conflict it has been in for a long time and it hasn’t won a single one of them. It would topple the Iranian regime with a ground invasion, but air strikes won’t do that. And the US would certainly lose an insurgent war just like it did everywhere else.
From what I've seen from western media, Iran is a paper tiger and are pretty thoroughly getting their shit smashed in. How much is distorted or kept from us, difficult to say.
The claims of Iran shooting down (multiple) F-35s seem unsubstantiated and bogus. The pictures of them are very obvious fakes. Those air defenses they have/had apparently weren't up to the task.
That said, as duplicitious as Trump and Netanyahu are, an invitation to surrender looks like an obvious trap.
It is so strange, according to him the US is not in this fight ... but Iran has to surrender?
And then what? This is as clueless as was the "democratization" of Iraq.
If Iran surrenders, (to the US? to Israel?) what happens?
Will just the religious leadership be arrested?
Tried and banished to an island near Antarctica?
Will the populace just shrug and embrace a democracy?
Will Iranians get to see peace within a year? Or will we see a second Afghanistan rise up that falls in the same pit of oppression within 10 years?
Should Iran give up all its nuclear and military material, go oil only and be a vassal state of Israel or the US?
Will there be no one anymore who gives Israel the evil eye? Or is given the evil eye by them?
Somehow I doubt if Iran would surrender or was conquered that Israel would demilitarize itself...
Nor do I think the religious caste will EVER give up their power flowing through Iran, though Qatar is vying to become a replacement nozzle.
Or Chump envisions playing "good cop" with Iran...
I'm going with the first one as the second requires some level of planning and strategic thinking that Mafia Don Mangolini simply does not possess and simply could not comprehend if someone attempted to explain it to him.