Some readers who are as long-in-the-tooth as I am might remember John McCain’s inelegant parody of the Beach Boys’ hit single, “Barbara Ann,” as the first self-inflicted wound of his 2008 presidential bid. Of course, selecting the truly bizarre Sarah Palin as a running mate was a major error in judgement as well, and running against the uber-charismatic Barack Obama probably did not help, either. McCain lost the election.
Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. Well, that is precisely what Donald Trump did last Saturday night during the dinner hour.
I have complicated feelings about this event, as I will wager many Americans do. Clearly, Iran is a despotic state sponsor of terror, whose declared mission is to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. They actively oppress their own citizens, suffocate free speech and dissent, and rule with an iron fist. They have used Hamas and Hezbollah as proxies in their quest to annihilate Israel, to devastating effect.
Most Americans would agree, I am sure, that Iranian development of nuclear weapons is in nobody’s best interest. Because it is in nobody’s best interest, Obama’s Secretary of State, John Kerry, and a team of diplomats spent an excruciating amount of time and energy negotiating the deceleration of Iran’s uranium enrichment program. As part of that negotiation, there were requirements and benchmarks for regular check-ins and inspections.
But Trump, in his “I’m a tantruming two-year-old masquerading as an adult” zeal to destroy anything that his predecessor Obama had built, ended the agreement immediately upon taking office. He tore it up, just like he tore up NAFTA and NATO agreements.
It may be worth considering that these were not bad agreements to begin with; but they were not his agreements, and he is such a flaming narcissist that his mental illness compels him to destroy anything for which he cannot be directly credited. So, he tore up the deal and then demanded a renegotiation. Iran, unsurprisingly, declined. Equally unsurprisingly, their uranium enrichment process resumed.
Trump did renegotiate NAFTA with Canada and Mexico, tarted it up with a lugubrious new acronym, and claimed victory. As it turned out, the deal he renegotiated was almost identical to the deal he destroyed. The chief difference was that the new deal had a new name, even though it was the same old Obama deal, repackaged. And in his infinite wisdom, when he reclaimed office again this past January, he jettisoned his own deal, claiming it was unfair to Americans. Thus far, five months into his second term, Mexico and Canada could not care less.
As for the NATO military alliance, which had only been activated once since World War II, in America’s defense after the World Trade Center bombings and our invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, they started paying “their fair share,” whatever that entailed.
But here is the thing: when you extort, insult, bully, demean, and create nothing but headaches for your former partners, they get really sick of you and your garbage. And most world powers, after their Trump 1.0 experience and following the first five months of Trump 2.0, have had more than enough of his narcissism, his condescension, his word salad, his threats, his rudeness, and his stupidity. They have had it. He is pulling the same old shtick from his tired old sack of shticks, and most of the world is simply ignoring him. They have seen this movie before; they know how it ends, and they are leaving the theater.
To my amusement, aboard Airforce One on his way to a NATO summit last Tuesday, Trump remarked, “Now we’re going to NATO—we’ll get a new set of problems, [and] we’ll solve a new set of problems.”
Donald Trump has never actually solved a political problem in his life, unless you think that a grandstanding jackass flapping his trap incessantly in front of media microphones and ranting like a lunatic on his social media platform all day every day is what problem solving looks like.
And for those readers who still believe that Trump’s approach to “solving” illegal immigration in America is evidence of problem-solving abilities, it is not. The unspeakable brutality we are witnessing is so egregious that at some point I expect the United Nations, and perhaps the International Court of Justice in the Hague, to condemn his behavior as a crime against humanity—not that he gives a damn.
Real problem-solving on immigration happened under the Biden administration (no thanks to Joe Biden, since it took nearly four years for him to understand that we really had to fix it), with a complete bipartisan reform of our immigration system. But as we have already established, Trump must destroy anything for which he cannot be directly credited. He picked up the phone and killed it while in exile at Mar-a-Lago and replaced a coherent plan with gratuitous terror and violence.
So, “problem solving” in Trump Word must always be accompanied by horrifying cruelty.
As I mentioned last week, due to his own record of misbehavior on the world stage, he has quickly become an international pariah. No one, repeat, no one, has rushed to the table to negotiate a new trade deal with Donald Dearest. He started a trade war, and all that it will take for them to win that particular war is for almost every country on Earth to establish new trading relationships with other global partners. The message is unmistakable: “Go back to your golf course, you twit.”
He was ignored at the G-7 conference, so he got on his plane and went home to pout. In fact, every major player on the planet has made it crystal clear that they now see him as entirely irrelevant. Vladimir Putin is not even pretending to consider Trump’s opinion on ending the war in Ukraine; Putin has brushed Trump off his shoulder as if he were a large flake of dandruff. Bibi Netanyahu has brushed him off as well.
So, what does a malignant narcissist do when the world has made clear that they could not care less about him, his opinions, his faux deal-making, his saber-rattling, his threats, his insults, and his cruelty?
If he is Donald Trump, he orders the military to drop some bombs.
He dropped some bombs because Netanyahu rolled right over him in attacking Iran. Bibi sent drones, missiles, you name it, over Trump’s objections. Trump objected because he was attempting to renegotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, and given past performance, one might expect the deal to have looked identical to the deal Obama’s team worked so hard to forge, and Trump so blithely destroyed. When Netanyahu bombed Iran, that process died.
Again, no one gives a rip about the opinion of our American president. The only way that he could have possibly saved face, made himself momentarily relevant again, and reclaimed, however briefly, the spotlight, was to conduct a massive bombing mission, ostensibly of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
So, here come the complicated feelings: had the bombs actually hit their intended targets—which, according to our own preliminary military assessment, was not quite the case because a number of the facilities were buried too deeply underground, and much of the uranium was moved to other sites as President Blabbermouth live-tweeted the operation—then I would be glad that Iran’s nuclear capabilities had been degraded. There are some pretty scary antisemites and religious fanatics running the joint. But here’s the thing, which I first learned in my “Introduction to Physics” class many years ago:
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Reminder: Iran is a longtime state sponsor of terror. It does not take a Nobel laureate or a national security expert to surmise that there have been God-knows how many Iran-sponsored terror cells embedded in the United States for quite some time. There may be a long-established cell in anyone’s community. Terror cells are typically patient, plodding, and plotting. They bide their time, insert themselves into the fabric of their host communities, and when the time is right, they activate their plan to blow your ass off the face of the Earth. That is how they roll.
That is how they have rolled in France, in Belgium, and in Israel; and that is also how they have rolled in the United States. Most of us recall that this is exactly how it worked on the day that Al Qaeda terrorists, embedded for quite some time in our country, plowed two airliners into the World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon. Because of the courage of the passengers on board, a fourth plane, intended for the White House, crashed instead in a field in Pennsylvania, killing everyone.
Let us also consider this: because of the behavior of our “very stable genius” of a president, we are perilously close to having no allies left who might be willing to rush to our defense if we are attacked. Let’s not forget that this is the same man who showed his appreciation for NATO’s support after 9/11 by savaging them for not contributing what he considered a sufficient amount of money to the NATO defense structure and then went on in his second term to slap them with tariffs so ridiculous that he even tariffed a bunch of penguins on an island devoid of human habitation.
The NATO conference last week was an exercise in sycophancy and flattery. Trump said laudatory things about NATO and how much we all need each other; NATO representatives trotted out their most fawning, obsequious remarks so that Trump would feel extra-special. It was a classic—and somewhat nauseating—case of ego massage.
At the same time, Iran is not without powerfully dangerous partners. Hamas and Hezbollah are allies and proxies, as are the Houthis, who have already launched attacks on Israeli and American ships in the Red Sea.
China is an ally of Iran. North Korea is an ally, as well. These are not entities who play nicely.
Perhaps most devastating to Trump’s fragile ego is not just Putin’s complete indifference to him, but Putin’s very firm support for Iran. In fact, former Russian president and current deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, was eager to tell the world, immediately following our bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, that Russia was ready, willing, and able to send Iran a bunch of nuclear warheads from the Russian stockpile.
This would mean that the partially enriched uranium allegedly—but evidently not entirely—degraded by our bombs could potentially be replaced by actual nuclear weapons.
If this comes to pass, the logical next step would be to aim them at Israel and the United States, and now, the extent of Putin’s contempt for our commander-in-chief is so obvious that Trump may finally have no choice but to get the memo. He may finally understand, at long last, that he has been Putin’s tool for decades. Undoubtedly, this is a painful realization. One suspects that he may need to order an extra-large bag of Quarter Pounders to assuage his broken heart.
All of this conforms to the Law of Unintended Consequences, and here is the big problem: we have a president who has never really experienced serious consequences for his horrible behavior over the course of his entire life.
He has paid out hundreds of millions in civil judgements, true, but Trump is a billionaire and the judgements, comparatively speaking, were chump change. We have as our president a man who more rightfully belongs in prison for having committed a laundry list of serious crimes, including sedition, but instead is sitting in his White House dining room shoveling fast food into his big mouth as he fumes about Putin’s indifference.
Trump’s lifelong lack of meaningful consequences also explains the “Ready, fire, aim” philosophy that runs like effluent through the corridors of the White House. Trump simply does not understand that actions have consequences, because so far, he has dodged every consequence that he has so completely deserved.
Knowing that his violation of the “no foreign wars” campaign promise he made to his MAGA base might be problematic in terms of diminishing their continued enthusiasm for his presidency, Trump immediately assured the country that this was “one and done.” His vice president, Cleopatra Vance, took to the airwaves on Sunday morning to assure us that the bombing mission was simply to destroy their capacity to develop a nuclear arsenal, not to interfere with Iran’s internal political structure.
Of course, we all know what came next: Trump posted on his Truth Social bullhorn on Sunday afternoon that regime change was what he was after. Make no mistake: any world leader would interpret this as a de facto declaration of war.
And of course, the consequences have already begun. By Monday morning, Iranian bombs and missiles were flying over Israel and Qatar. Let us remember that the Qataris are actively involved in a shameless political bribery scheme as they gift Trump with flying palaces; underwrite the construction of massive Trump-themed golf resorts and hotel properties; spend lavishly to pump up his greasy, grifty crypto company; and honestly, who knows what else. Large suitcases stuffed with cash?
Make no mistake: an attack on Qatar is an attack on Donald John Trump’s bottom line.
In addition, but undoubtedly less important to Trump, is that Qatar is one of several countries in the region who host massive American military installations. Since Trump thinks of all military personnel as “suckers and losers,” he undoubtedly sees the soldiers currently under attack as expendable. Nevertheless, “proportional” responses are bound to occur, and then the tit-for-tat destruction goes on and on and on. This is how nations succeed in gradually blowing each other to bits.
The United States of America, a country that, thanks to Trump’s behavior, no longer has any real allies, is on one side of this conflict; Iran, backed by China, Russia, and North Korea—is on the other.
By late Monday, a “ceasefire” between Israel and Iran was announced, only to be violated moments later by both countries. On Tuesday and Wednesday, there was uneasy silence. Given that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, both Iran and Israel will likely violate the ceasefire repeatedly—just as Netanyahu has repeatedly violated Gaza ceasefire agreements, and just as Putin has violated ceasefires in Ukraine.
I am sure it will all work out fine.
