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So when you boil it down, the ‘memorandum’ secures Iran’s war aims? No end to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s government, no end to Iran’s missile programme, no handover of enriched uranium, yes to ending US sanctions and thus forgoing any political leverage, yes to accepting Iranian (and Omani, for what it’s worth) control over Hormuz, no end to the IRGC proxy forces in Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon… and, er, an Iranian promise to be nice in the future and not make nukes?
This is not being well received by everyone.
Assorted wags have remarked:
Hegseth renamed the Department of Defense to the Department of War, whereupon he lost a war.
and…
Donald Trump promised the war would end with unconditional surrender, and boy did he deliver.
It would all be a lot funnier if it was not quite so tragic.
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Does no one in the western world understand the meaning and philosophy of the word, “taquiyya”?
While I would certainly replace ‘fools and bairns’ with something like ‘people not privy’ (which is all of us), the old maxim still stands. This is not to say that we shouldn’t worry, just that one of the two fat ladies will probably sing only after the midterms.
What Alisa said. Trump knows that if he loses the House in the midterms, everything he’s trying to do will be much harder if not impossible. He’s playing the long game…I hope.
And in true Trumpian fashion, if he wins the midterms he can return to the Iran situation saying something like “turns out, nothing they told us was true, so the bombing was started again 10 minutes ago.”
And to Penseivat, the answer is “No. At least no one in power. Or at least they pretend to not know it’s meaning”
Glenn Reynolds has a take similar to that of Alisa and Greg, although he does not mention the midterms.
It is short enough to reproduce here in full:
Thank God the RAF and RN is available to join the fight . . .
Yes Perry, as I said elsewhere, total capitulation. The situation currently is significantly worse than it was before the war. How is it possible that the trillion dollar US military cannot keep a 400 sq mile section of ocean open to commercial traffic? And who got fired at the Pentagon for this colossal failure of planning?
Maybe GregWA is right and it is a Trumpian ruse which will restart after the inconvenient mid-terms, but that assumes he can win the mid-terms which seems unlikely.
Although I agree with your assessment of the outcome I doubt we will agree about the cause. This war should never have been started. The situation was under control beforehand. I do not understand why Trump’s second term seems to be one military action after another while totally neglecting the failing domestic economy. It is not what I voted for. I want to support Trump and his plans but he keeps making it impossible.
It looks like the UAE is making the very sensible choice to start building pipelines to bypass Hormuz. That could be very profitable for them.
President Trump will read out the agreement – and no doubt it will sound good, but I continue to believe that the Islamic Republic of Iran tyranny will not keep any agreement they make.
As for the midterms – that is one of the reasons the IRI regime should have been destroyed months ago – which-it-could-have-been. No doubt the IRI will start firing off weapons again just before the midterm elections – in order to humiliate the American Administration and help the Democrats.
Had the IRI been destroyed the midterm elections would have been won – as victory gets support, but destroying the IRI was never the policy. Victory was never the policy – I am grimly reminded of a war in South East Asia when I was a boy, which the American military could have won – but were forbidden to do so, the goal (of every President) being a “political settlement” with the Communists of IndoChina – NOT victory.
President Trump never seems to have wanted to destroy the IRI tyranny – he always wanted to make a deal with it. I, respectfully, disagree with this policy.
Blaming Hegseth or the military for anything is wrong – if the Commander in Chief orders you NOT to destroy the enemy, there is nothing you can do.
See Admiral Sharp “Strategy for Defeat”.
Doesn’t everyone realise that the level of cheating and just downright theft will be so bad in the midterms that Trump’s last two years will just be shouting and panto?
Why, two years in, have we not had the five most egregious election frauds arrested and perp-walked in chains? Why have the five most egregious thieves in every state been arrested and perp-walked in chains? Why has the Republican establishment sat on its collective hands going “La-la-la, can’t hear you!” There was an excuse in the first term. The level of corruption must have been a shock. DJT was not prepared. There is no such excuse available this time.
mongoose: Why, two years in, have we not had the five most egregious election frauds arrested and perp-walked in chains?
Because there is little actual proof of criminal fraud. Which isn’t to say it didn’t happen in spades. But there is a long way from the abomination that was the California election and criminal proof in a court of law. The fraud is not really some election official stuffing ballot boxes or changing ballots or hacking into the voting machines. It is more subtle and dressed up in a nice way. For example, in California the law requires them to send a mail in ballot to every registered voter, and it is impossible to clean the voter roles. So there are millions of ballots sent around to people who don’t live there anymore, or people who are dead, or people who have moved out of state. Then these ballots are fraudulently anonymously voted due to the impossibly low verification standards. Then they register homeless people to vote and pretty much pay them to vote in a manner that they prefer, or mine old folks’ homes and exchange some affection with some old person whose mind is not quite there to “help” them vote. Which is to say it is several million small acts of fraud, and it is done in such a way that it looks like a positive for democracy thing (don’t you want to make it easy for people to vote? Don’t we want to ensure we don’t disenfranchise anyone? Just because they are unhoused doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Older people built our nation and so have a right to have their voices heard.)
This sort of thing is impossible to prosecute, with the best will in the world. And on the rare occasion it is, it is post election, it is small numbers, and so we get “there is hardly any fraud, and it is too small to move elections.”
Even the thing in Georgia that would have flipped several elections, but it was discovered years later was a “mistake” and far to late to actually do anything about.
These people on the left are not dunderheads. They are quite brilliant in their scheming and have been baking the fraud in for years. It is genius. Evil genius but genius nonetheless.
The only solution is universal voter id and universal standards for voter roll management, but that is almost impossible to get through our sclerotic congress, moreover it is in violation of the principles of states rights, and the constitution clearly defines the states responsible for how their elections are run.
Just because there is a problem doesn’t mean their is a viable solution. It does make one thankful for the genius of the electoral college.
Well there you go. I have been listening to the Vice President and I think he is beginning to change my mind on this. Certainly the way he explains it the deal seems to be in two parts:
1. We will stop bombing you and stop blocking your ports if you open the Strait with no tolls
2. We make a lot of vague promises that aren’t concrete to rely on, but are more along the lines of “if Iran becomes a much better player on the world state we will reverse things like sanctions and so forth” but with no actual actionable concrete promises.
And that, coupled with the destruction in the country means that, with no military and no navy they have no ability to project power, and with all their facilities, and perhaps most importantly all their scientists dead, they are a long way from restarting an actual nuclear program. He also assures is that no US money is ever going to Iran, and the “rebuilding” is more along the lines of allowing foreign actors to invest in Iran, only if they meet the “be a better player on the world stage” criteria.
So I still think this war was a gigantic mistake, I still think that the gross neglect of the economy and all the things Trump promised is a betrayal of what I voted for. But perhaps this deal is not as bad as I thought. It is more of a pause with no substantial deal, probably enough to get Trump past November. It is not, as I thought “get a deal, any deal at all” but rather “get a deal that isn’t too damaging but will hold for long enough to get us to December”.
And it also renews my faith in Vance. I so hope we can have him as President next time around. He is a remarkable guy.
Back to delusional. 😉 Read it all again.
Fraser, re this “moreover it is in violation of the principles of states rights, and the constitution clearly defines the states responsible for how their elections are run.”
Yes, but the Constitution also says that the House or Senate are under no obligation to seat an allegedly elected Congresscritter if they think the election the State ran was corrupt. They can hold an investigation (very useful, Congressional subpoenas for State election officials!), vote on it, and choose not to seat the person.
But would Thune or Johnson do this? Doubtful
Fraser: “Because there is little actual proof of criminal fraud.”
But I have seen several – many – videos: folk feeding votes through the counting machines multiple times, folk driving up in the dead of night and unloading boxes of votes, pics of identical ballots, pics of squillions of ballots from the same address. Why have they not all been arrested and grilled by monsters? (And the thieving too BTW.) And could we not have foreseen a tad? Have you not policemen? Undercover folk? Federal marshals?
Personally, I would call a spade a spade – conspiring to corrupt the election of folk to federal office is damn insurrection. The damn POTUS was impeached by on bollocks how many times? Fight fire with overwhelming force. Put a bit of stick about, Sir! Eventually, this will get ugly – if you do not.
“Blaming Hegseth or the military for anything is wrong.”
He should have resigned if he had any dignity.
Hegseth is exactly who we need in that job right now. Calling for his resignation is an announcement of your political bent, not your military acumen. “Dignity” just means, “he’s not as polite as us progressives.” Y’all are going to “polite” us into oblivion.
@bobbyb FWIW, I also agree that Hegseth is one of he best Sec of War we have ever had and he should continue doing what he is doing.
Doesn’t mean I don’t want an explanation of why we spend a trillion dollars on our military and they can’t keep a small area of ocean open to commercial traffic.
My view of all this is much the same as that of Senator Ted Cruz.
But the Cruz campaign lost way back in 2016 – and I, and everyone else, have to follow the Commander in Chief of the West – whilst still expressing, respectful, DISagreement with President Trump on this matter.
mongoose:
Fraser:
In a true democracy, there is no need for actual proof of fraud to annul election results and call a special election.
See Berlin a few years ago.
Trump is to be commended for trying to bring the US closer to a democracy, through the SAVE act.
— Calling a special election without actual proof of fraud is, of course, not the same as arresting presumed fraudsters without actual proof of fraud.
But that is to miss the point: the people who should be arrested are those who made the fraud feasible; even if the fraud did not actually happen.
@Snorri Godhi
In a true democracy, there is no need for actual proof of fraud to annul election results and call a special election.
For there to be a do over on an election in the United States there would have to be proof of massive fraud. In Georgia there was a huge error where incorrectly validated 315,000 votes in the 2000 election, far more than enough to flip the result most likely in both the Presidential election and the senatorial elections. An error that took five years to uncover and obviously did not result in a do-over. This is not theory, it is documented fact. In my country they do not redo elections because they look a bit dodgy.
And even if they did, what difference would it make if the cause of the dodginess is the rules under which the election is run? Were they to rerun the extremely dodgy looking California election there is no doubt they’d get basically the same result. The rules are dodgy and so without fixing that you don’t fix anything. And the rules are set by the people who benefit from them, so they sure as hell aren’t turkeys voting for thanksgiving.
Like I say, we are very fortunate to have an electoral college system.
But there is a bigger point here, which is the fundamental flaws in democracy itself. Even if there was an election pure as the fallen snow where 60% of the people wanted a 110% income tax on anyone earning over a million dollars a year, it would be a truly democratic decision, and it would still leave the country in ruins. As Musk said, the problem with eating the rich is that you are going to be hungry tomorrow. The real problem is that the “chains of the constitution” that was supposed to limit the power of the government has largely been forgotten.
Fraser:
That is why the US of A cannot properly be called democratic.
NB: I understand why people say that they do not want the US to be a “democracy” (see below).
But the vast majority of these very people would surely want the US to be democratic; ie, the results of elections should be decided by the voters.
This is why many people reasonably do not want the US to be a “democracy”. I agree.
But in reality, there is little danger of that.
The real dangers of “democracy” are better exposed by James Burnham in The Machiavellians.
See especially the chapter on Robert Michels.
(Though Mosca, in addition to Machiavelli himself, is my fav. Machiavellian.)
PS: I have come to believe that most, if not all, the problems in the US of A originate from the potential for election fraud.
Take Minnesota, for instance. Do you think that there would be Quality Learing Centers in Minnesota, were it not for the fact that non-citizen Somalis can vote?
And i do not blame Somalis (not much, anyway).
I blame those who buy their votes with taxpayers’ money.
They are what the guillotine was designed for.
The war against the Islamic Republic of Iran tyranny could have been won – and its proxies in Yemen and Lebanon could also have been destroyed.
There is no substitute for victory – but Washington D.C. decided to go for “negotiations” instead.
Neither the President or the Vice President ever had any intention of destroying the enemy – they always wanted negotiations and a “deal”.
They are wrong.
Paul:
This claim is wishful thinking, based on nothing.
There is no substitute for victory — this is Poetry