It is hard to argue against the claim that Trump Derangement Syndrome is a weapon that Iran can use against us. It is true for any enemy. But what I find really interesting is that whenever we hit an enemy the left says it will only unify the enemy and push dissidents to rally around their thug leader. But when an enemy attacks America, TDS-afflicted Americans display approximately zero "rally around the flag" effect. Indeed, after the clashes with Iran inside Iraq the left seems to rally around the enemy flag with their public apologies to Iran and hopes expressed that Trump would experience his own Benghazi in Baghdad--that is, they hope jihadis will kill Americans on Trump's watch. Although I must say that I am disappointed that my preferred Trump Hysteria Condition (THC) term never caught on.
I know the Resistance likes to say that Trump is a lawless president, but he actually does obey the law--including the War Powers Act. So he notified Congress about the Soleimani strike consistent with the provisions of the War Powers Act. Let's take a walk down memory lane and recall that Obama said our months-long participation in the 2011 Libya War did not qualify as a war under the War Powers Act. Sure, he notified Congress at first under the provisions of the act, but when the fight dragged on he changed his mind about the applicability of the act. Although I was wrong to say that Obama killed the act. Silly me, I forgot that the rules are reset when a Republican is in the White House.
"Like inviting a pin to a balloon party." I'm truly sorry I missed the Golden Globes.
I suspect we'll be calling it "Four Eyes" soon.
America and India strengthened defense industry ties.
Last week I noted that al Shabab attacked a Kenyan airfield that American and Kenyan forces use. Strategpage reports that 3 Americans were killed in the attack (one military and two contractors). We subsequently reinforced the airfield with a regional reserve. I read elsewhere that the base was "overrun." Mind you, this is just an austere airfield and not a major facility.
China recruits even their tourists to conduct espionage in America. With enough grains of sand China knows it can build a beach.
This author says that our killing of Soleimani could convince Iraq to join us in defeating Iranian influence inside Iraq. Well, duh. That's the big question, isn't it? Will Iraq stop letting Iran use Iraqi territory and people as part of Iran's war effort? Or will Iraq side with Iran against us? Or continue to straddle the line. Iraq may complain that we violated Iraqi sovereignty by killing Soleimani. But Iran violates Iraqi sovereignty by orders of magnitude more than we did. And we certainly were justified in our action by Iraq's failure to control Iran's proxies in Iraq who were attacking us. I've long wanted a campaign to disband, disarm, or de-Iran the Iranian-controlled Iraqi militias as part of Iraq War 3.0.
Don't laugh at them. They would be horrible revolutionaries fighting in the streets. But they'd make perfectly adequate gulag guards. Although there is competition for those jobs.
Again, stop wringing your hands over Iran's decision to walk away from the Iran nuclear deal. The deal was worse than worthless if your goal is to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. As I long argued, the outline of the deal we ended up "signing" with Iran was always clear, "The Iranians will pretend not to have a nuclear weapons program; and we will pretend to believe them." Trump decided to stop believing them, and now Iran has stopped pretending they aren't seeking nuclear weapons. Which had to be a tough decision for the mullahs given that the deal was a money spigot and shield for Iran's nefarious activities and imperial ambitions. I say better to have this in the open rather than fool ourselves that the deal would produce a successful regional (non-nutball) Iranian power.
So there's that take: "The #GoldenGlobes mood was already sober thanks to an impeachment, threat of war with Iran and Australian bush fires. The last thing anyone needed was Ricky Gervais there, telling them they sucked." You know what is really funny about Lorraine Ali's complaint about Gervais? That the buzz kill in the room was so LA-centric. In past years when people were being slaughtered in Darfur or Congo or simply being imprisoned in China or Iran, the Hollywood attendees had no problem partying it up without a sober moment in sight. But that's because they suck.
I have followed the Iran situation for a long time. I didn't pretend to know what Iran would or will do. As a rule they are cautious. I call them nutballs but that doesn't mean they aren't rational on their terms. Surely we seem irrational to them. But their rationality can break. During the Iran-Iraq War, Iran was pretty cautious in the Gulf and refrained from lashing out at neutrals despite slowly losing the Tanker War against Iraq. Until the Iranians got in real financial trouble. Then the Iranians lashed out and America exchanged blows with Iran to keep the oil shipping lanes open. Rationality would have told them not to expand the war and simply figure out how to cope better. So when I read or heard analysts predicting what Iran will do after we killed their Quds leader Soleimani I assumed they were simply projecting, guessing, or pretending to know what Iran would do. Iran probably doesn't know what their path is.
Action by Congressional Democrats to prevent a war without Congressional approval is pretty funny when you consider Bush 43 got the debates and votes for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan--which didn't stop Democrats from turning against both wars; while Obama never bothered with that when he went to war with Libya. The issue is actually complicated.
Sure, the Chinese Communist Party is evil enough to order mass killings to harvest organs for transplant, but I'd like a better source. Widespread blood tests of Uighurs may be consistent with tissue matching, but it is also consistent with setting up a DNA database to help control their Moslem population. Here's what the FBI does with a law enforcement objective. Still, if friggin' Canada is using body parts of people they
Yeah, Obama's single-minded obsession with a nuclear deal with Iran led Obama to let Iran get away with literal, figurative, and attempted murder. Reversing 8 years of such expectations for America's behavior is hard.
I admit that I was initially suspicious when I heard Hong Kong activists are getting sick with a mystery illness. But apparently it is hitting the mainland, too. Densely packed populations can experience this. So I sincerely doubt this is a Chinese plot. Still, China could use the response to the illness to clamp down on protests, I'm sure. Tip to Instapundit.
Yemen's Shia Houthi rebels are shaky and the Iranians have urged them to beat their chests and fling poo to look scarier than they are. The Houthi mourn the loss of their patron Soleimani. How will that loss affect Iranian financial support?
Hunter Biden must be jealous that his dad isn't that influential. If we're talking privilege, she would be one of the first up against the wall when Bernie takes over. I swear, whenever I have heard Chelsea Clinton speak she seems like a dullard. I'm sure she's a wonderful mother and all that, but seriously. Tip to Instapundit.
Related: Finding Baghdadi.
It will be interesting to find out if those Australians deliberately started wild fires for profit or were climate activists trying to make things worse for the cause.'' And if those arsonists are global warmers, someone should explain that our media will do their work for them to make what is really bad seem far worse than it is. "Twice" the size of Maryland just doesn't get the panic juices going, I guess.
Yeah, Bernie is kookoo for Cocoa Puffs. If he wins this November I'm just glad Democrats put the 25th Amendment on the table.
Democrats and the media panicked that a nuclear war was coming after we rightfully killed that breathing piece of human garbage Soleimani and when the crisis with Iran ended in our favor the Democrats and the media said that they were right all along because it could have been bad. How nuclear war could result when the Iran nuclear deal "solved" Iran's nuclear ambitions is beyond me. I guess the Democrats and media don't really believe Iran has no nuclear weapons program as the Iranians claim.
It is interesting that Taiwan's KMT party started as the losing side in the Chinese civil war. They fled to Taiwan and basically took control of the local people. For a long time they wanted to restart the civil war and regain control of the mainland. They've evolved into a more pro-China party putting Chinese control of Taiwan over KMT control of China. A fascinating change.
You know, it depresses me that while scrolling through the Yahoo! news page that the stories about Trump's statement that Iranian cultural sites would be on our target list far exceeded the number of stories on Soleimani's terrorism. We won't hit those sites and Iran will continue to support terrorism. Yet a lot of people are way more upset about the former. Perspective, people. Try it.
Honestly, Gervais should be grateful he wasn't compared to Hitler.
Indonesia deploys fighter planes and fishing boats to resist Chinese claims on the South China Sea.
I'm tired on people saying the Iran nuclear deal was "working." On the deal, note that I predicted the problem (with my commentary about provisions starting on page 42 of the deal) with the inspection process that supposedly had a 24-day deadline on getting access to Iranian suspected nuclear sites. Later the Iranians verified my analysis. And that's just one problem.
It sounds like about 10,000 American ground troops were sent to or near the Middle East--on top of what is there--in case of further Iranian military or terrorist actions. I assume the Ranger deployment is a company element going with special forces for potential rescues (Rangers would establish the perimeter around a target within which the special forces would operate) and that the "task force" reference is used as a general term and not specifically a battalion-sized unit.
Good grief, people. It isn't literally true that Iran paid for the missiles they fired at our bases in Iraq with money Obama gave them. But Obama did give the mullahs a lot of money and so figuratively it is close enough to accurate. Just stop. You are beclowning yourselves to pick that nit with Trump.
Sure, fourth place isn't that good for a "late" entry in the race. But he's a shoo-in as the vice presidential pick for the winner. Tip to Instapundit. That was clever.
Once again, the 2015 nuclear deal was not stopping Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons. Claims that the IAEA confirms Iran is abiding by the deal ignores that the deal does not allow the IAEA to confirm that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons. The deal only allows the IAEA to confirm if Iran is obeying the very weak terms of the deal. Given that so much of Iran is out of bounds for inspections, the deal cannot determine what Iran is doing. Nor does the deal have the ability to see what Iran is doing in other countries--like in Syria or North Korea. So stop the ridiculous claims that the deal was preventing Iran from going nuclear. All it did was shield Iran from American military might while Iran pursued nuclear weapons.
To be fair, Andrea Mitchell is a partisan moron. The moment I trust her judgment is the day I return the calls that warn me that my Windows operating system is about to expire.
Next step: installing feed troughs in the cafeterias. I swear to God I'd have mocked that regardless of the university.
Why our media isn't considered under our laws a giant campaign contribution to the Democrats is beyond me.
Why do they hate us? Seriously. Why?
I recently mentioned that Iran had built and attacked (while filming it) a mock-up of a Nimitz-class carrier. I guess the Iranians are hauling it out again to beat it with sticks. Or something. Perhaps the Iranians decided that if they are going to lie again about inflicting damage on the American military they want some plausible footage. But as I warned in that post, putting our carriers in the Persian Gulf is insane. On the bright side, perhaps hauling out that replica means the Iranians don't think we will be cooperative enough to provide a real target conveniently close by.
It is not crazy for Trump to suggest America and Iran can be partners in fighting jihadis. After we defeated Saddam and realigned Iraq, Iraq--as difficult as that relationship is because of Iranian intrigue--has joined us in killing jihadis. But since that victory is so easily overlooked, people can't imagine what Iran might look like after we defeat the mullahs. Of course, until Iran's mullahs are defeated, Trump's hope for an Iranian partner is as far-fetched as Obama's was.
By the very terms of the struggle, carnivores are defeating the vegans. Have carnivores ever touted a beef-based broccoli substitute?
Again, as Democrats accuse Trump of a "hasty" decision to take a shot at the al Quds leader Soleimani without any planning, we actually set a red line for that notorious terrorist--and notified him--over two years before we nailed the SOB.
The Resistance put a lot into how Trump supposedly dog whistles support from racists. Why do they support him if he isn't a racist, they asked. I say you can't help who supports you and people support you for a variety of reasons. But on the terms of the issue established by the left, I guess one prominent racist isn't getting what he thought he'd get. So take that racists and Resistance.
People keep talking about how the outsider Trump took over the Republican party. In the last election campaign I noted that Bernie Sanders--clearly an outsider as a Democratic Socialist rather than an actual Democrat--came close to doing that in 2016. Without media-Democratic Party collusion with the Hillary Clinton campaign, he might have succeeded. And in this election Sanders could yet take over the Democratic Party with only the joke of a candidate Biden standing in his way.
Well, I'll vote for him (again) and I wish him luck. It will be an uphill battle.
Even Senate Democrats are starting to get upset with Speaker Pelosi for not sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate. Remember, Pelosi rushed the process because of the urgency of stopping Trump from destroying our republic. Then sat on them. And even as Democrats warned Trump would start a world (!) war with Iran to distract from impeachment, Pelosi still sat on the articles. Some urgency.
I noted that the pro-Iran (or those intimidated by Iran) Shias in Iraq's parliament passed a non-binding resolution to eject America from Iraq. It has no legal effect and so is meaningless. So Speaker Pelosi followed the example with a non-binding resolution that opposes Trump going to war with Iran (as if Trump wants a war with Iran). Politico attempted some major mental gymnastics on the resolution, calling it "a powerful rebuke of President Donald Trump’s war-making powers amid the ongoing crisis with Iran, ... [which] limits Trump’s ability to go to war with Iran without congressional approval." Yet in the next paragraph admitting "it's a non-binding measure[.]" Are you effing kidding me? No legal effect yet somehow it reins in Trump and is a "powerful" rebuke? These reporters are inept or partisan hacks. Aren't they embarrassed at their "reporting?" Of course, there is the healing power of "and" that I should consider.
I think this post has held up well.
As long as the people of California pay the bill, I guess I don't care what they do. As long as they don't ask for help from the rest of the country. It is a wealthy state and if they value this they can pay for it. And who knows? Maybe it will work out just swell and be a lesson for the country. But I'm relieved they are the test site and not my state. Tip to Instapundit.
I don't rule out that the EU or the EU lackeys in Britain will engineer a last-minute reversal, but Brexit does seem like it will proceed after this Parliament vote. Fingers crossed for rule of law and Britain as a successful ally rather than a province of a hostile European imperial state.
The Democratic presidential candidates act like Twitter represents the country and wage their primary season battles to get its approval. This will be an interesting presidential election to see if it is as much of a mistake as it seems to me to look for votes where the light is best and not where the votes are.
At first it seemed plausible that Iran was trying not to kill American troops with their missile barrage into Iraq. The small number used certainly suggests a symbolic retaliation. Sure, they claimed to have slaughtered Americans in their merciless strike, but that might have been for the true believers in the Basij and MSNBC to lap up. But then I heard that Iran used older missiles that really aren't able to be "aimed" at things smaller than cities. So aiming them at or away from a target is a crap shoot. And now Iran says they deliberately didn't try to kill Americans. So my conclusion is that the Iranians absolutely tried to kill Americans. Their claim is a face-saving measure after decades of wonder weapon announcements that always turn out to be Potemkin weapons. And consider that Iran actually did kill a plane load of people when they presumably weren't intending to kill them and you have a picture of an Iran that isn't as good with high tech as they are with roadside bombs and terrorism in general. Seriously, Iran killed one American and as of right now we killed about 30 of their men and leaders in Iraq while without any American military action directed at Iran itself, Iran got about 50 in their funeral for Soleimani and about 175 in a Ukrainian plane killed as collateral damage. We may be pretending to believe them just so we can collect our winnings and leave the table.
So Meghan and Harry think they can quit the job of being members of the royal family yet still collect the paychecks? Prince Charles is a buffoon, but he is right to say the two should be cut off financially if they run off to play Woke Prince and Princess games. Do they not understand that when the lefties take over, people like them are the first up against the wall? Mind you, I have no use for such royal types. But I'd rather just de-fund and ignore the whole lot of them. Perhaps Harry and Meghan can ask the Romanov's if they want to confirm that risk. Oh wait, never mind. But don't feel sorry for them. The Kardashians are wealthy. This duo will do just fine. And they won't even need to put out a sex tape to start the ball rolling.
Iranian missile development. Which are nice if you have nuclear warheads to go on them.
Isn't this Texas decision really just a chance for "sanctuary" governments to demonstrate how morally superior they are?
The Russian soldier who killed 8 Russian soldiers in a shooting spree last October blamed his action on the hazing he endured. That is a traditional practice in the Russian military (and the Soviet and imperial Russian armies before). More senior soldiers (if just be half a year) target the new soldiers for abuse and theft. It hinders Russia's attempt to create a modern volunteer army.
Israel is hoping to get a couple new KC-46 tanker aircraft ahead of the U.S. Air Force.
I'm hardly a defender of mullah-run Iran, but that piece of equipment with the big red arrow pointing to it is not a bulldozer.
It's a front-end loader. Ah, reporters and their deep subject knowledge and layers of fact checkers. Iran may be hiding what happened to the Ukrainian airliner that Iran appears to have shot down, but the "bulldozer" is not Exhibit A. And since Iran now admits they unintentionally shot it down, what is there to cover up?
I'm not comfortable with calling this a "Matzneff Flap." That disgusting piece of breathing garbage has gone too long not only not punished but celebrated in France. This should be the Matzneff Electrocution, the Matzneff Hanging, or maybe even the Matzneff Defenestration. May he rot in Hell one day. And may he face some justice on Earth as belated as it would be. The people who think this man is great are the real ogres in this whole revolting celebrity scandal.
The same night we nailed Soleimani and his comrades in Iraq we tried--but failed--to get an important Quds commander in Yemen, Abdul Reza Shahla'i. One item on his resume` is the plot to bomb a restaurant in Washington, D.C., in 2011. Tip to Instapundit.
Brokaw says the media is 24/7 rage. The man is right. I noted some time ago that I cut way back on television news to reduce my consumption of that rage (by both sides). And I've worked to cut down on linking to the "look at this outrageous thing the other side did today" stories. I really feel much better for this choice. Screaming at your television or computer screen is no way to go through life.
Military suicides have nothing to do with combat experience. Years ago--and I'm sure I mentioned it on TDR, but I didn't look for it--I thought that suicides back home were delayed war casualties. But I changed my mind after looking at the data.
So what? America (and our Western allies) and the USSR cooperated to defeat Nazi Germany! Are you saying that the USSR didn't consider America and the West in general an enemy that was temporarily useful? Really? I'm glad Soleimani is dead and I'm glad the USSR is on the ash heap of history. This isn't that complicated. Just ... stop.
In related news, the Russians are really a-holes under Putin. Their hostility is pointless, counter-productive, and speaks of mental health issues, really.
I think America and our allies could scrape China's artificial island bases in the South China Sea clean in a war. I don't think that my view that claims and control are two different things is inconsistent with saying that short of such a war that China's artificial island bases provide China with great advantages in efforts to intimidate neighbors into accepting Chinese territorial claims. And I don't think that conceding that China could put up a hard fight against an effort to scrape them clean denies that we could--and would--do that in case of a full-scale war. The author's statement that we can't smash them "early in a fight" is a standard for America that is too high. As long as the Chinese bases are scraped clean by the time the fight ends, that's good enough. The apparent idea that the standard must be that we can instantly smash them is ridiculous. Seriously, we will increase our ability to strike them as time goes on. And in the end, the author simply says that we'd have to cede control of the South China Sea in the early stages of the fight. So the author retreats a lot from the initial position, no?
I'd trade random Hong Kong protesters for random College Democrats on a one-to-one basis until every Hong Kong protester is safely in a free country. Tip to Instapundit.
Trump should say that the "cultural" targets in Iran that he said he would strike (he wouldn't, of course) are Confederate statues.
Okay, this is really funny:
She'll make him a commoner and cut him off. "Get woke, go broke," as the saying goes.
Seriously, the Russians are total a-holes. Not that their accusations greatly exceed the positions of a number of Democrats, of course.
Al Shabab's aggressive language and expansive threats to America after their attack on a joint US-Kenyan airfield in Kenya makes me wonder if the Iranians have pushed the Somali terror group to go after America. Still, the issue of how the terrorists pulled this off is partly explained by the very question of why AFRICOM "has yet to explain how a lightly-armed detachment of Islamist fighters, probably numbering no more than 15, managed to cross into Kenya, advance unspotted on foot across 50 miles of bush before killing three Americans and wrecking six hi-tech surveillance aircraft." A small number of lightly armed men is hard to track and spot--even by a force with lots of surveillance assets. Being 50 miles inside Kenya is another explanation. Still, local security really should have been better than that, even for some small outpost.
Well, to be fair, the worst and most clueless failure of a secretary of state can hardly be expected to be aware of what the rest of the administration did wrong. And if there was no "whiff" of scandal that's simply because the neutered bloodhounds in our press corps weren't interested in sniffing out such things. Well, from 2009 through 2016, anyway.
So what's up in Iran? I'm not seeing a rally-around-the-mullahs that our media insists must be happening after we justly killed that Quds monster Soleimani. A presidential tweet of support to Iranians and massive Farsi likes? The British ambassador to Iran briefly arrested after a mourning for the Ukrainian flight victims turned into an anti-government rally by hundreds of students? Iran's sole female Olympics medal winner defects to the West? And it remains tense, with the Revolutionary Guards commander briefing their faux parliament on the Soleimani crisis. We've seen things like this for a couple decades now, so I don't assume it means anything bigger. Just how lucky is Trump?
ACK! doesn't like involuntary payments to her governing body and refuses to pay. Doesn't she know that it takes a village to raise a campaign war chest? I'd say Pelosi should retaliate by stripping ACK! of committee assignments, but Lord knows what the representative would do with her mouth and plenty of time on her hands.
Back channel diplomacy helped to de-escalate the Soleimani crisis.
All sides in Libya (jihadis excepted, I assume) accepted the Russian-Turkish ceasefire proposal. I'm so old that I remember when the 2011 Libya War was a test case for bombing the dictator to death and then getting out of the way so the locals can sort out their differences without our terrible meddling. That was the left's lesson from Iraq. But there was no sorting out. And now our annoying foe and allynemy (a more formalized frenemy) are poking their noses in to force a sorting in alignment with their (competing) interests. Libyans will lose in whatever deal they manage to impose. And Europeans won't like it either, if Turkey and Russia are in charge of the migrant spigot in Libya. The Obama era "Smart Diplomacy" continues to pay negative dividends.
Good grief, he's still a professor here? His concerns about endless drone bombings took a sabbatical from 2009 to 2016.
Sure, that was certainly annoying. But if I may point out the obvious, if the woman in front of the blocked woman was completely bald the woman taking the picture would still have been blocked from seeing the full screen. Just deal, people.
Should America and North Korea declare that the Korean War is over? Recall that technically we just have a ceasefire. Perhaps that would do some good. As long as it has no legal effect. I like having the UN Security Council formally defending South Korea because if that role is ended there is no way the UN Security Council with Russia or China wielding a veto would allow the UNSC to defend South Korea if North Korea renews the war. Perhaps I'm simply refusing to accept an opportunity. But this is an issue. Perhaps if we make it a conditional end based on whether North Korea gives up nukes. The language would need to be tight so that if North Korea doesn't denuclearize that the condition that allowed for the ending of the war did not take place, so the declaration had no validity.
I literally had that poster up in my dorm room. Cancel me now for my past thoughtcrime. Tip to Instapundit.
The Army is coping with a brief recruiting shortfall. I had my own contribution to the issue a few years ago in Army magazine. The Army seems to be doing fine without my suggestion.
