Trading Places

PRESIDENT TRUMP was cocked, half cocked, fully loaded, ready to go. Then, within ten minutes of launching an airstrike he had already ordered, he decided to inquire into the likely number of fatalities which would be inflicted by said attack. The number came back, one hundred and fifty, sir. Off was called the airstrike, and Iranian missile launching and radar installations were spared. One must, after all, behave "proportionately". The airstrike is on, the airstrike is off, like some sort of board game. The unanswered white elephant in the room is: why didn't the president simply make the likely casualty inquiry before ordering the military action in the first place? Could it be that our president is capable of behaving impetuously? Is it possible that our leader fails to adequately consult his military advisers before taking action, then reversing the action? When one considers that the United States currently has no Secretary of Defense, it becomes possible. The previous Secretary of Defense, acting, as nearly all of Trump's cabinet level positions are filled by actors, left town the other day amid accusations that he demonstrated an alarming pattern of launching aggressive strikes against his oft assaulted wife. For a president who has bragged that he can treat a woman any way he chooses because he is rich and famous, an assault oriented Defense Secretary would seem appropriate. When a nation elects a person as its president who was previously a high rolling real estate gambler, that nation might expect its president to behave in unpredictable, precipitous, vacillating ways. Suppose that a foreign country maintained a network of over eight hundred military bases around the world, launched and engaged in a never ending series of foreign wars of aggression for the stated purpose of promoting liberty, virtue, and democracy, but for the actual purpose of plundering the resources of other nations and making those countries safe for foreign corporate investment, and regularly flew spy planes within a few miles of the borders and shore of this, the United states of America. Further suppose that this foreign power had substantial military assets stationed within a few miles of the United States, had recently withdrawn from an international treaty which limited and eliminated nuclear weaponry of the United states, and was imposing crushing economic sanctions on the U.S. Then suppose that on at least one occasion this foreign power had facilitated the overthrow and replacement of the United States government, and its replacement with an American government specifically chosen for its amenability to the foreign exploitation of its mineral resources. You might possibly expect not only the American people but the American government to be a wee bit resentful towards this foreign power, and irresistibly tempted to shoot down a drone or two. Suppose you are given a choice between believing what the Iranian government says about the location of the drone which was shot down, and the version emanating from the Trump administration. This is not a hypothetical. You have a such a choice; between the Iranians, or believing Donald Trump. Dare you ask which of the two has the greater tendency to prevaricate, early and often? When one often yells "fire!" in a crowded theater, but the theater never burns down, one might expect that the time will come when the yelling will be ignored, and the yeller will no longer be believed, under any circumstances. Of this we may be certain: Trump did not call off the attack because he has compassion for Iranians who would die from it; he did so because someone, perhaps Vladimir Putin, had the good sense to remind him that a war with Iran would isolate the United States completely from the civilized world, and that Trump has no support from America's former allies. Also, the military would normally have given Trump as estimate of probable casualties before the airstrike was ordered. On this occasion either this did not happen, or Trump ignored what he was told. Either way, his story does not add up. As a former mayor of New York City once said: I wouldn't believe a word Donald Trump says if he had his tongue notarized.