Appeasement, Donnie Style

Federal workers are now on twelve hour shifts to clean up the algae bloom in Trump’s “pristine” reflection pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. There probably could be no better metaphor for his administration. 14 million dollars on a no-bid contract to do, according to Trump, what no other president in history has done. To help kill the algae, the workers reportedly are also putting a 12 percent solution of hydrogen peroxide into the water where the bottom is painted “American flag blue”. Hydrogen peroxide in solutions over 10 percent acts as a paint remover. (photo-Facebook)

And it’s 1,2,3 what’re we fightin’ for? Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn, next stop is ol’ Iran. And it’s 5,6,7 open up the pearly gates! Well, there ain’t no time to wonder why, Whoopee we’re all gonna die!

With apologies to Country Joe and the Fish for altering their 1969 “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin-To-Die-Rag” sometimes known as the “Vietnam Song” written by Country Joe McDonald.

What a week it has been. It is hard to keep track of it all, but foremost on my mind is the debacle that took place this week as we acceded to all of Iran’s demands to end the war of choice started by Trump. As I wrote earlier this week, the U.S. is the clear loser, no matter what kind of happy face Trump and his flunkies try to paint on it. To me, it is not even obvious that the terms of the agreement will last very long. The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that Trump ceremonially signed with his trademark sharpie in the palace at Versailles France (oh, the historical irony) technically is not a treaty. It is supposed to be the framework for a more permanent peace agreement to be hammered out over the next sixty days. However, Trump and his administration are talking about it as if everything is already complete. If this is the end of it, then Iran got everything it wanted and the U.S. got nothing other than vague promises.

Indeed, there may be nothing more. In what can only be described as a fluid situation (government speak for nobody knows exactly what is going on), the follow on talks were postponed by Iran. They claim violations of the MOU are happening, especially on the part of Israel which was not a formal participant in the agreement. According to the MOU, the sixty day window started when the MOU was signed. All of this is to say, it reinforces my feeling that there may not be much in the way of formal negotiations to solidify the terms of the MOU.

There are fourteen points in the MOU which can be found here. In every detail, it is a humiliating end to a war that achieved nothing. While I am glad to see the fighting stop and an argument can be made that a bad deal is better than no deal, it is a clear sign of Trump’s ineptitude and preference to only look out for himself. The MOU achieves none of the alleged goals that were presented as the reason to go to war. The great victory the Trump administration is celebrating only requires Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, which was open to free navigation before the war began. As spelled out in the MOU, Iran will allow “the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge, for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa.” (Emphasis added.) After 60 days they can consult with Oman to define the future administration of the strait which will surely include some form of fees to allow safe passage. Iran only reiterated its long standing position that they promise not to develop a nuclear weapon, a position they have espoused for decades. That is it. There are no provisions for inspections or otherwise monitoring Iran’s nuclear stockpile. Meanwhile, the U.S. lifts all of its sanctions and will work to lift international sanctions immediately which means Iran can get its oil to market at market prices where before, when they had to smuggle it out, they sold the oil at a discount. At current prices, that means Iran will earn about 105 billion dollars a year. Additionally, the U.S. will unfreeze Iranian assets and work to institute a 300 billion dollar “invest fund” for Iran to rebuild. None of those things will be monitored under this agreement. The MOU says nothing about Iran’s missile and drone programs or stopping its support for terrorists and proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Guess where those billions will go.

In essence, the MOU is a multi-billion dollar payment to get Iran to re-open the strait for 60 days. Coupled with vague promises to negotiate a more permanent deal to control Iranian nuclear stockpiles. We are worse off than we were before the war. Not to mention that we threw Israel under the bus by including Lebanon in the agreement without consulting Israel.

Thirteen U.S. service members, 165 young Iranian school girls and their teachers, thousands of civilians throughout the Middle East, all dead. Roughly 400 U.S. service members wounded. Iranian citizens yearning to throw out their oppressors were abandoned. (Trump told them in January that “Help is on its way!”) Billions and billions of dollars spent. Everything wasted for no discernible purpose.

From a purely historical viewpoint, the U.S. again had to relearn a lesson that has been tested many times since World War II. Wars cannot be won by air power alone, no matter how grand, courageous or incredible our air forces and personnel may be. Ground troops have to be used at some point or the enemy can just wait out the onslaught. The Battle of Britain in 1940 showed that the first time around and we have relearned the lesson over and over since then. If your war aims are “unconditional surrender” — which Trump demanded at the start of the war — then ground troops are needed. If a nation does not want to do that — and thank goodness we did not put troops into Iran — then you may have tactical or operational success but not strategic success. It also says something about the will of those involved in the fighting. A nation may have tremendous military capabilities, but if there is not the will to fight at any cost, success is going to be relative.

Trump did tell the truth in one way. During a press conference at the G-7 conference in Evian, France this week he said, “I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened. But all I know is, every time we talked about the possibility of peace, the stock market shot up like a rocket ship.” Trump went on to say that he stopped the fighting, “rather than possibly going into a depression, rather than having your favorite president be Herbert Hoover, he was always the one I didn’t want to be.” In other words, he admitted that his economy was not “golden” and that things could get even worse if the war continued. Specifically, the economic impact of the war was intolerable and that the world was facing a severe shortage of oil. At the G-7 conference on June 17, he said if he hadn’t agreed to the MOU, the U.S. “would run out of [oil] reserves in about four weeks.”

Hold on a second. About those ballistic missiles. Did Trump let Iran keep their missile programs? The ones that Secretary of Defense Hegseth said that the goal of the war was to “destroy Iranian offensive missiles, destroy Iranian missile production.” Yes. Apparently the Iranians can keep their ballistic missiles and programs because, otherwise, it wouldn’t be fair. But I will let Trump explain it. “I mean, they have to have some because other people have some. You’ve got to have some,” Trump went on: “‘Sir, you shouldn’t let them have any missiles.’ I said, ‘Well, what am I going to do? I’m going to let Saudi Arabia have missiles, but they can’t have them?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ It can’t — doesn’t work that way,” Trump said. 

So there you go.

The war did not weaken the Iranian regime or strengthen the U.S. Gulf states will now have to deal with a revitalized Iran that keeps its war making capability and is now richer, stronger and tougher with the knowledge that it can survive an American attack.

On a brighter note, the Obama Center officially opened yesterday. All living presidents and their wives — except for the current one — attended the joyous celebration surrounding the opening. It reminded me of what America can be when we stick to our values and traditions.

And Happy Juneteenth!