Appeasement, Donnie Style

Posted: June 19, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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!

Bizarre. Embarrassing. Scary.

Posted: October 1, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Yesterday Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) Pete Hegseth ordered roughly eight hundred Admirals, Generals and Senior Enlisted Advisers to Quantico, Virginia so that he could heckle, humiliate, and embarrass them while giving a totally political speech. Not to be out done, Trump showed up 26 minutes late to give a 73 minute campaign speech that was barely coherent. This was the best use of the time and money (estimated to be in the millions of dollars) of our most senior military leaders from around the world?

The good news? Those present demonstrated to the American people that our military leaders can remain apolitical in the face of brazen attempts to use them as props for some harebrained tirade against a “woke” military. They were polite but Hegseth’s and Trump’s applause lines fell flat. No applause. Or any other reaction. Trump in particular seemed nonplussed that his usual antics had no impact.

Hegseth’s speech (transcript here) and delivery reminded me, as one commentator noted, of Major Frank Burns of M.A.S.H. fame (the television version. I know. I am old.) He came across as the totally unaware disgruntled junior officer that is pissed that he cannot do what he thinks he should be doing rather than what he is told to do. Lots of talk about “woke” (apparently the military started down the woke path in 1947 when the Department of War was replaced by the name National Military Establishment which in 1949 became the Department of Defense). He railed that women in combat roles ruined the “warrior ethos” by lowering standards (and plugged his book on the subject — a true Trump Administration member, never miss a chance to make a buck). Of course, he forgot to mention that the standards have been the same for men and women since the beginning of integrating women into combat positions. He denigrated minorities. He talked about pushups and haircuts. He stated that many of the officers he fired and most still in the services were only there because they were women and minorities, saying “for too long, we’ve promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons, based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts.” Of course. How could they possibly be qualified to lead when they did everything every white male did to get where they are?

You know what he did not talk about? Strategy. Equipping the force. Relations with allies. Regional threats. The future of warfare. Countering our adversaries around the world. Or any other national level policies that a SECDEF is supposed to focus on and help to formulate. Instead he is focused on redefining hazing and bullying. “We’re talking about words like bullying and hazing and toxic. They’ve been weaponized and bastardized inside our formations, undercutting commanders and NCOs [Non-commissioned Officers — enlisted leaders]. No more. Setting, achieving and maintaining high standards is what you all do. And if that makes me toxic, then so be it.” He added that physically and verbally abusing recruits will be okay again because these are the “tried and true methods” that turn new recruits into “warriors.”

As a twenty-eight year Navy veteran I was appalled, embarrassed and angry at the way that he spoke about my, our, military. Apparently, no one since World War II knew how to run America’s first line of defense at all. Only he and Trump know how. He was insulting.

Underneath the in-house blather about pushups and “dudes in dresses” one thing caught my eye because it is totally reckless. He already fired Inspectors General, Judge Advocate General (JAG) officers and civilian attorneys trained in the laws of warfare, the Constitution, the Geneva Convention and ethics. He intends to change the Rules of Engagement (ROE). This should worry us all. (Keep this in mind when I address Trump’s speech below.) As Hegseth put it, “we also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.” This spells TROUBLE. Visions of Lt. William Calley who led the Mai Lai massacre of civilian men, women and children in Viet Nam in 1968 come to many people’s minds. These words of Hegseth’s are repugnant to today’s military. The U.S. Armed Forces take pride in being the best in the world at fighting hard while doing their best to protect civilians — of any country. I am sure that our professional military officers and enlisted were insulted when he said in this same context that today is the “liberation of America’s warriors, in name, in deed and in authorities. You kill people and break things for a living. You are not politically correct and don’t necessarily belong always in polite society.” So says the Fox News weekend host about our highly educated officer corps that has as their foremost mission being prepared to fight in order to deter conflict. (As we used to say “Deter. Defend. Defeat.”)

Clearly Hegseth has no concept of what the modern military does, of the people that are in it, what modern warfare is about, or where and how our enemies are taking advantage of new technologies. He wants to refight World War II using the same training and tactics that won the Big One. Embarrassing.

I thought it was the worst speech I have ever heard in the context of understanding the audience, their ethos, their values and their profession. At least until I heard the Commander-in-Chief’s speech. (You can find it here. As of this writing there is no official White House transcript. The administration stopped providing verbatim transcripts some months ago because it only highlighted how incoherent Trump is in his public remarks.)

Clearly thrown off guard by the lack of response to his “greatest hits” Trump mumbled through a monologue of lies, exaggerations, political attacks, whining and self-congratulatory remarks with a rambling seventy-three minute stream of consciousness. I’ll spare you the details (although there is a classic bit in there about steps — clearly Trump is afraid of falling, but Obama was great at steps — as well as a reference to Victory At Sea the old 1950’s television show about World War II which prompted him to say “it’s something we’re actually considering, the concept of battleship.”) Unfortunately, thrown into the mix were some really scary ideas. I can only imagine what his audience thought about the competence, knowledge and mental health of our Commander-in-Chief.

About halfway into his talk, Trump started ruminating about the state of our cities and how immigrants have made them unsafe. “You know, the Democrats run most of the cities that are in bad shape. We have many cities in great shape, too, by the way. I want you to know that. But it seems that the ones that are run by the radical-left Democrats — what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles — they’re very unsafe places, and we’re going to straighten them out one by one.” Pretty much standard fare for the MAGA crowd. But then, it became threatening. “And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war, too. It’s a war from within.” In other words, all of you combatant commanders listening to my speech, “now hear this!” We are going to be using the United States military to fight a war in our own cities.

Too far-fetched? Maybe I misunderstood the intent? I don’t think so since he then went on to say “And I told Pete [Hegseth] we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military — National Guard, but military — because we’re going into Chicago very soon. That’s a big city with an incompetent governor. Stupid governor.” Remember that he continually talks about his political critics as “radical left lunatics.” In a speech he conceded that “I hate my opponents and I don’t want the best for them.” He also calls Democrats “terrorists”. And there we go. He wants troops in Portland, Oregon to use “Full Force” against American citizens. He already has ICE agents in military gear wearing masks and little to no identification “disappearing” folks off of our nation’s streets. Now take another look at Hegseth’s remarks about ROE.

And this from Trump to the military leaders at Quantico, “last month, I signed an executive order to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room because it’s the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control. It won’t get out of control.“

One positive thing that may have happened yesterday is that our military leaders saw with their own eyes how unhinged our president actually is and the dangerous ideas he has about how to consolidate his power over our country. Everything that he and his minion at the Pentagon said yesterday flies fully in the face of our military’s traditions, values, ethics and their oath to uphold the Constitution — with no trace of loyalty to one man. I hope that they can hold fast.