UPDATED 8:53am: We said last week the risk, once started, is Trump chickening out. As of this morning our time, Trump chickened out. Trump always chickens out (TACO). Which, here, long term, is disastrous.
"President Trump has created the conditions for another quagmire in the Middle East, and the question is whether American military excellence can rescue him from his own impulsiveness and incompetence.
"Here is the present situation, in a nutshell: The United States and Israel have established absolute air dominance over the nation of Iran. ... The intention of the air campaign is clear: to destroy the regime’s capacity to harm its neighbours while also creating the conditions for a revolution on the ground. ...
"So why, then, is Trump lashing out at American allies? Why was he 'shocked' that Iran struck Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait in response to American attacks?
"Perhaps the answer lies in a Wall Street Journal report from last Friday. According to The Journal, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned Trump that Iran might attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz and Trump shrugged off the threat and launched the attack anyway. ...
"But Iran did not capitulate. ... Instead, it has effectively closed the strait, and it’s reportedly done so without choking off its own oil exports. In other words, while other nations can’t ship oil through the strait, Iran still is.
"Iran ... could well emerge from the conflict with its regime intact (and perhaps even more hard-line) and its power over the world economy undiminished. ...
"Trump launched a major war on his own initiative while announcing competing and potentially contradictory war aims. Is the goal regime change? Unconditional surrender? Or is it much narrower — the destruction of Iran’s missile and drone forces, sinking its navy, stopping its nuclear programme and destroying its ability to wage war through its proxy forces, including Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and the kaleidoscope of allied militias in Syria and Iraq. ...
"Even when wars are carefully planned, with allies brought on board and a majority of the public in support, they are still highly volatile and unpredictable. ...
"My great concern is that Trump has [instead] created the conditions for failure. ... And now, dismayed that the war has not resulted in the regime’s immediate capitulation or destruction, he’s flailing about, once again threatening the viability of NATO if our allies don’t come and bail him out from a war they did not start and did not ask for.
"As an American, I want our forces to succeed, once they are committed. I want to see the military open the Strait of Hormuz as quickly and painlessly as possible. I want to see the Iranian regime collapse and replaced by a democracy. That regime is loathsome. It’s an enemy of the United States. It deserves to fall. If it does, I will cheer its demise.
"At the same time, however, my patriotism can’t blind me to reality. This is not how our democracy should go to war. Trump is not the right man to lead our nation into battle. People I respect applaud Trump for his courage in taking on Iran. But I don’t see courage. I see recklessness. I see thoughtlessness.
"I see a man who plunged a nation into a conflict without fully comprehending the risks. I see a man full of hubris after achieving success in much more limited military engagements. And he’s now counting on two of the world’s most competent militaries to essentially bail him out.
"He’s counting on them accomplishing a mission without clear precedent in military history: destroying a hostile regime and forcing its compliance entirely from the air and sea, and to do so quickly enough that the economic pain doesn’t overshadow the military gains. ...
"Trump has only himself to blame. He led America into an unconstitutional war. And now he’s compounding that sin by proving to be every bit as reckless a commander as he is a president."~ David French from his column 'Trump Has Only Himself to Blame'
"Either Donald Trump holds his nerve, crushes the Iranian regime, rides out the oil shock and reopens the Strait of Hormuz, or he and America are finished, exposed as unserious, fickle and incapable of forward planning, a superpower manquée felled by drone-wielding barbarians."~ Allister Heath from his column 'This is a turning point in history, the moment the West could be lost'"Morally it was entirely justifiable to attack the Islamic Republic of Iran. ... Whether or not it was tactically correct [or strategically mapped out] ... only history will tell.
"As much as those against the war will be wanting Trump to lose, to embarrass him, this is a very narrow and suicidal position. ...
"Overthrowing the regime would be a success; weakening it so it falls due to domestic pressure (including from the Kurdish north) would be a partial success --- but emboldening it even if its ability to project abroad is significantly weakened, would be ... a victory for the regime, and a victory for its proxies.
"For it would embolden Iran and its proxies to attack not just in the Middle East, but beyond ... This would make us all less safe, it would embolden Islamists across the world to promote their ideology, and for a few to be willing to use force to terrify us all. ...
"At this stage the biggest risk is that Trump chickens out, and wants a 'deal.' There is no 'deal' with those who want you dead, who want your country dead and another dead. As much as the international law purists want pontification from the Western world about the legality of the war on Iran ..., that horse has bolted."~ Liberty Scott from his post 'Whether your agree with it or not, the US has to win in Iran'
"But as with Bush II's Iraq War, the question to come is: do they know what the hell they're going to do next. With this administration, that's unlikely .... So it will need every circumstance to go the way of those Iranians celebrating [in these photos]. As Eliot Cohen says, 'Something of an exercise in ambivalence here. I would like to see the Iranian regime go down hard -- and am not confident Trump knows what he is doing.'
"Let's [still] hope with crossed fingers for a lion of freedom to arise from the attacks."~ PC from the 2 March post Iranians: Yearning to breathe free!
UPDATE: Posted last night from the White House press corps, and now going viral on Twitter:
6 comments:
All good arguments but there are two problems with the post.
1. I've heard all this before about Trump for almost ten years, which was why Hillary was going to destroy him in 2016, why his hick crew of lawyers would get crushed by the brilliant band on Mueller's investigative drew, why he'd destroy the economy by 2018, why he'd be impeached, why he was finished in 2021 and would soon be broke and in jail, why he was yesterday's man in the GOP and wouldn't even get the chance to win their nomination, let alone the 2024 election and ...... on and on and on and on....
2. David French. Really. Don't quote him. Ever. On any subject, let alone Trump. He's been bought and sold by the NYT and now peddles every piece of rubbish the Manhattan mob believe in, including much he used to argue against in his glory days at National Review and The Weekly Standard, especially all the Christian stuff he says he still believes in.
As to Iran, well I said last year after Midnight Hammer that I'd been waiting 46 years for a US President to strike back at those bastards...
https://nominister.wordpress.com/2025/06/22/deserves-got-everything-to-do-with-it/
....but that to really change anything he'd have to decapitate the regime, starting with killing the Ayatollah and working his way down at least five layers of management on both the Mullah and IRGC/Baji militia side...
https://nominister.wordpress.com/2025/06/27/irans-leaders-must-die/
... but that even then it was a stretch because nobody's ever done regime changed from the air before and it's supposed to be impossible. Could his erratic approach screw it up? Of course, but no other President, including French's fave, GW, was even willing to try.
I watched Trump talking to the press on the tarmac yesterday. It's quite obvious he has NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON, yet, in the next instant I see footage of people giving him a standing ovation as he walks into a room. I'm just not sure how to hold both these things in my head at the same time. I think we all agree that the Iran regime needed to go. But isn't it transparently obvious that this is operation EPSTEIN HAMMER? (Not withstanding that he'd already destroyed Iran's nukes, remember that?) I've been trying to preserve my faith in humanity, but I've been driven to the conclusion that people that think there is ANY PLAN are PROFOUNDLY STUPID. There, got that out...deep breaths.
David French eh.......a great summation of his genius and eloquence
https://thefederalist.com/2026/03/09/david-french-suffers-an-apparent-brain-injury-over-james-talarico/
You start by saying there are two problems with the post, then proceed with commentary that is mostly unrelated to the post.
The only relevant issue from the post is this: will Trump follow through and remove the Iranian regime or not? I really hope he does, but it's not looking great based on the evidence presented above.
You've barely commented on that, instead broadened it to a general partisan defence of the man, and an attack on those who have criticised him, now and in the past - including on matters completely irrelevant.
… then proceed with commentary that is mostly unrelated to the post.
The post leads with quotes from one of the most unhinged partisans in the American journalistic world, David French, and which makes up about a 1/3 of the whole thing. I say “unhinged” not because of his relentless attacks on Trump but because the TDS is so bad in his case that he’s actually done 180’s on a whole bunch of unrelated stuff, like his Christian beliefs. Moving from National Review to the god-forsaken New York Times is not the worst of it, merely a symptom.
I am not going to take at face value the comments of such a charlatan and be debate-framed into responding only to his specific points - any more than I would argue about climate change or the future of humanity with someone quoting Paul Erlich or Michael Mann by simply ignoring all that they had got wrong in the past.
As to the other quotes from Allister Heath and Liberty Scott, I’m good with those: could have practically written them myself - but they are not the same as French’s “Muh Trump is a Thupid, Ignorant Buffoon” beat.
As to the “partisan” claim, I’m one of those who lambasted Trump on an almost daily basis on Kiwiblog through 2015-2016 and predicted that he would crash and burn in the primary, let alone against Hillary. I still stand by some of those but on others I was obviously wrong given that he won, which caused me to look a bit deeper into the reasons why he won - which is why I could predict he’d lose in 2020 and win in 2024.
By contrast French and many others appear to have learned nothing at all, which is why I’ve “barely commented” on “the evidence” because I’ve seen such “evidence” in the past and it turned out to be crap - largely because although it’s a fact that Trump goes back-and-forward on various topics, that fact hasn’t proven to be much use in predicting what he would actually do, and more than a few “facts” have been merely assertions and opinions.
Which brings me to this:
As of this morning our time, Trump chickened out. Trump always chickens out (TACO).
I expect this from the Lefty trolls over on places like Kiwiblog but not here.
It’s childish, simple-minded taunting.
It’s actually the sort of thing Trump does with opponents and I thought we're supposed to be better than him.
It’s a brain-dead talking point crafted by unknown geniuses in the US Democrat Party who should have remained in Corporate HR and Marketing departments, and who apparently want to mimic Trump because they think that’s how he won.
It’s demonstrably wrong on various issues where he has most definitely not chickened out, like tariffs, the Southern Border, and illegal immigrants - to the dismay of this blog of course, but not a TACO. And that includes these actions that we’re arguing about here, where he’s obviously doing exactly what he said he would during his election campaign.
Now it may be that he winds up negotiating an end to the war that leaves the surviving IRGC fanatics, Mullahs and Basij milita in charge, which will suck. But calling that a TACO is just stupid when most people understood in advance that regimes have never been changed by air attack alone. Would he be TACO if doesn’t send in US troops on the ground - or would that be a sensible response in light of the debacles of Afghanistan and Iraq?
Think of it this way: was Harry Truman doing a HACO when he accepted that he wasn’t going to get unconditional surrender from the Japanese if he killed the Emperor or otherwise demanded he be held responsible for the war and war crimes - as many Pacific vets did, including an Uncle of mine from the NZ 3rd division, and his RSA mates who always said Hirohito should have been executed. Truman decided in the end that he would accept a traditional conditional surrender, the condition being that the Emperor would live.
B52 BUFFs and A10 Warthogs are on active missions. That means that IRGC AA/A2D capabilities are not considered a major threat by them any more.
Each BUFF can deliver up to 32 tonne of ordinance carried in from as far away as 10,000 miles. The loadouts are now mostly Mk82, Mk84, GBU-24, GBU-28, GBU-31 and GBU-38. Did you notice that those are not stand-off weapons?
Each Warthog can CAP over theatre 2 & 1/2 hours with GAU-8 cannon (a one second burst delivers 60 rounds, sufficient to tear open any armoured vehicle including a main battle tank). Against this an IRGC fast-boat is helpless.
You may have seen some videos of an FA18 being used to strafe IRGC positions from low altitude at low speed, well within MANPAD range. Indeed a MANPAD was launched at it. The FA18 defeated the projectile without needing to deploy flares. That is telling.
Reports are that the Straights are not closed. IRGC do not control them. The reason for many ships not transiting is insurance. Shippers have been told no cover. They have also been told if they take up insurance organised by 47 then their entire fleets will have all cover cancelled internationally. Who'd have thought it?
Meanwhile gasoline prices in Europe are moving from expensive to unaffordable. As of April 1st gasoline prices are set to surge even higher still. I hope they do not, but there it is. While this price rise will be felt most keenly in Europe, it will be experienced in the UK and internationally (with a few exceptions). What do you think will happen for New Zealand?
Henry J
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