After another week of dealing with the painful pinched nerve – my MRI showed that it wasn’t a bulged disc and I have my first PT session scheduled on Monday – I’ve been keeping up with the news, if only in a distracted way.
It’s been fascinating to watch the polarized reactions to the war in Iran. First because on all sides the talking heads are doing what they always do when a big international story happens: pretending that they are experts on an area that they couldn’t have found on a map a week ago.
It happened during Iraq and Afghanistan – when blow-dried morons who didn’t know Sunnis from sushi, and couldn’t tell the Taliban from either – lectured us on how popular Saddam was because of all of the giant murals of himself all over Baghdad. It happened again in Ukraine when everybody started plastering blue and yellow flags on their social media to show how dedicated they were to a country they knew nothing about.
And now it’s Iran’s turn. Democrats who have screamed for years that the Ayatollah must be deposed and Iran kept from gaining nukes are suddenly bemoaning a “forever war” (which they declared on Day 3!) and raving that Trump has no plan to deal with the IRGC. Or is it the RICG? Or possibly the GRIC?
I‘m no better than most. I knew what the Strait of Hormuz was, but if pressed I‘d have guessed that Kharg Island was the capital city of the Klingon Empire. But I can’t get too down on myself after watching Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar criticizing Trump’s military strategy, when you know that those crones don’t know the Strait of Hormuz from the Gay of Juarez. (Who could be the most popular rent boy south of the border, for all they know.)
Even I know enough to know that the critics who are wailing that we’re losing the war are full of it. We took out forty of their top leadership in the opening minutes of the action, and then blew up another three or four dozen of the “Council of Experts” several days later, when they were in the act of the choosing the next ayatollah, who was atomized before he could take the oath of office.
We took out their air force last year, we sank their navy in 10 days, and about 90% of their missiles and drones have been used or blown up. The IDF lit up their top three remaining military leaders in the last several days. Can you imagine how far down the depth chart they have to be right now?
Well, you don’t have to. Because some guy who was in The Teheran School of Cosmetology a month ago is now writing threatening press releases claiming to be from the newest Ayatollah, who – I Schiff you not – is made out of cardboard. Literally.
How am I supposed to write satire when the Supreme Leader of Iran is indistinguishable from something out of a South Park episode?
I don’t want us to end up in a drawn-out war in Iran either, but I think that even with all of his flaws, Trump is not going to let that happen. After his foreign policy successes – taking out Soleimani and al-Baghdadi; ending a half-dozen wars and getting the Israeli hostages released; taking out Iran’s nuke sites in an evening; snatching Maduro out of Venezuela in two hours; getting Rosie O’Donnell to leave the country – I think he’s earned enough trust for us to let him cook.
If this war lasts for over 4-5 weeks, we can always get our dresses over our heads and run around shrieking like hysterical Democrats then.
One bit of good news that the MSM didn’t cover – unexpectedly! — was that lots of everyday Iranians are calling in the locations of IRCG road blocks and gatherings, which then get a quick drone strike. The story suggested that the calls were to some Israelis, which sounds like just the kind of thing those bad-asses are known to handle well.
In that same vein were reports that some Iranian Kurds were positioning themselves just over the border, ready to go in and start killing some Ayatollah fans. The Kurds have always been known as tough fighters; I think of them as the Rooftop Koreans of the Middle East.
Would the subsequent movie about the adventures of the Kurds wreaking havoc behind Iranian lines be called “Inglorious Bas-Kurds?” It will if I can get the financing together.
I do hope that we have a plan to get lots of small arms to a lot of motivated Persians who would happily use them to secure their own freedom the good old-fashioned Second Amendment way.
Our military is doing such a great job devastating the regime and destroying their ability to project power outside of their own borders, but we don’t want to get stuck trying to install a new regime or get involved in their internal politics. (Other than teaching them the one indispensable rule that we have already taught them: don’t follow in the footsteps of the ayatollahs and make us come back in and level your whole government again.)
The best way to avoid that seems to be to give the Persian non-jihadist majority the ability to win their freedom and establish their own non-genocidal government.
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Martin Simpson 