Trump's Thuggish Insanity Not Conducive To Effective Diplomacy
Shocker!
Donald Trump’s catastrophic war in Iran is on its third week and nowhere close to ending. Thirteen Americans are dead so far, all while Trump golfs and fumes on social media.
Trump’s stooges repeat the lie that the U.S. has decisively defeated Iran, all while “demanding” the free world’s involvement in Trump war of choice
Back in September 2021, when many of us hoped we were free of Trump’s malevolence, President Joe Biden told the United Nations General Assembly that the U.S. was entering a new era of diplomacy.
“As a global community, we’re challenged by urgent and looming crises wherein lie enormous opportunities if we can summon the will and resolve to seize these opportunities,” Biden said.
He continued, like a rational person:
Will we affirm and uphold the human dignity and human rights under which nations in common cause, more than seven decades ago, formed this institution?
Will we apply and strengthen the core tenets of -- of the international system, including the U.N. Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as we seek to shape the emergence of new technologies and deter new threats? Or will we allow these universal -- those universal principles to be trampled and twisted in the pursuit of naked political power?
In my view, how we answer these questions in this moment -- whether we choose to fight for our shared future or not -- will reverberate for generations yet to come.
Simply put: We stand, in my view, at an inflection point in history. And I’m here today to share with you how the United States intends to work with partners and allies to answer these questions and the commitment of my new administration to help lead the world toward a more peaceful, prosperous future for all people.
Just three years later, American voters in key swing states chose to go in a different direction. That was unwise. (Watch Biden’s remarks below.)
Trump has spent the first 15 months of his second reign of terror alienating America’s allies. He launched vindictive, petty global trade wars. He’s threatened both Greenland and Canada with annexation — going so far as to churlishly refer to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney as the “future Governor of Canada.” His cackling hyena henchman JD Vance lectured our European allies about free speech, a concept that MAGA defines as “all Nazi rhetoric, all the time.” He’s minimized the contribution our NATO allies have made to global order. He’s buddied up to despots and tyrants as our actual democratic allies watched in horror. He’s abandoned U.S. soft power — gutting critical foreign aid. Other leaders of the actual free world have expressed doubt that America is still on their side.
While an insane direction to take, it certainly made more sense when Trump was deliberately isolating America from the world. That was the inevitable result, after all, of a true “America First” foreign policy. However, now Trump has blundered the U.S. into war, with a willing assist from Israel’s far-right government, and Trump is realizing how small the world is without friends … well, we’re realizing this. Trump himself is incapable of learning anything.
Militarily speaking, Trump is a world-class buffoon, who never considered the possibility that Iran would close off the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping corridor for global oil supplies. Of course, now Trump claims he did predict this, declaring on Monday, “I knew the Strait would be a weapon. I predicted it a long time ago. I predicted all of this stuff. I predicted Osama bin Laden would knock out the World Trade Center. I wrote it in a book.”
Well, President Kreskin’s powers of prognostication failed him when it mattered most. Oil and gas prices are increasing, and this is the rare instance where the incumbent president is fully to blame. This is Trump’s own dumb fault, and the solution is not a simple one. Bob McNally, a former energy adviser to George W. Bush, supports “defanging” the Iranian regime, if that is actually Trump’s overall goal (it’s been sketchy). However, McNally warns that the Strait is the “mother of all chokepoints.” (Watch below.)
“It’s not like there’s a big gate that swings open in front of the Hormuz and Iran locks the gate,” McNally said. “All Iran has to do is demonstrate every day, every other day, that it has the means and the ability to attack ships in the Strait, and that will be enough.”
The U.S. can bomb Iran into the Stone Age, but that won’t fix the problem. Trump’s wealth and privilege kept him out of Vietnam but he could have at least read a book or watched a movie about that past quagmire before repeating the U.S. government’s past mistake … only worse, as Iran has the means to devastate the global economy. Whacking the current leader’s father doesn’t exactly put him in a mood to do business.
Diplomacy is not a particularly prominent trait among brutish thugs, so Trump can’t persuade our allies to help us out of his self-inflicted mess. He can only make not-so-subtle threats and hurl juvenile insults.
Trump posted on his jacklegged social media platform, “Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint, will send Ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a Nation that has been totally decapitated.”
“It’s only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the Strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there,” Trump told the Financial Times. “If there’s no response or if it’s a negative response I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO.”
He’s attempted to delay the XI Summit if China doesn’t help. His only form of negotiation is a transparent, increasingly desperate shakedown. Still, as much as Trump loves the thug life, it has not borne great results.
During Monday’s regularly scheduled expression of lunacy, Trump claimed other nations “won’t be there for us” while insisting that some “are really enthusiastic. They’re coming already.” His massive ego refuses to admit that we even need help from our allies but he demands that “if we need anything, they should be jumping to help us.” Then, like a spoiled child at the verge of tears, he declared, “My attitude is we don’t need anybody.” He literally ran the gamut of unstable emotions within a half hour. (Watch below.)
Tuesday, when it was clear that our allies weren’t rushing to bail him out, Trump bellowed on social media: “Because of the fact we have had such Military Success, we no longer ‘need,’ or desire, the NATO Countries’ assistance — WE NEVER DID! Likewise, Japan, Australia, or South Korea. In fact, speaking as President of US, by far the Most Powerful Country Anywhere, WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!”
As with almost everything else, it’s a stark contrast to Biden’s sober, professional approach to foreign policy, which he understood was about building and maintaining relationships. It was far more effective than Trump’s “gunboat diplomacy,” which has America up a strait without a paddle or a boat.
Wow! That Obama dude sure was powerful at age 18 to be able to have started this mess with Iran! Or did he travel in his time transport back to 1979 to do so? That's powerful too. But problems with Iran didn't start in 1979, they started in 1953, 73 years ago, when we, with the UK, regime changed Iran. The democratically elected president was toppled and the Shah installed. Why? Because of oil.
trump doesn't understand soft power, and thinks that it has no value. Diplomacy and humanitarian efforts are part of soft power. Also, not insulting and lying about your allies, while sucking up and praising despots. Hard power can only get you so far, and can run out. Ask Napoleon or Hitler.
This all has “I’m breaking up with you, why won’t you call me back?” energy and it’s very humiliating to see America led by such a demented monster who any honorable public would have hanged already. To think that if we had just done nothing since 2016, we’d have Iran continuing with inspections, detente likely (with the Saudis accordingly pressured to get closer to us to compensate) and no nuclear threat as we’d have leverage with lifted sanctions. Instead the dumbest electorate in history decided to put the worst American they could find in charge, and to decide, just for him, everything would be graded on a curve (“COVID would have been hard for everyone! Not his fault!”) and give him no checks on his power. Now we are being humbled, weakened, an6 our treasury drained. That’s assuming we don’t also lose several thousand American lives on top of the civilian lives that Americans don’t value because they’re brown and foreign.
It’s almost as though Trump wants to take Bush’s mistakes and double down on them. Even Bush didn’t jeopardize getting any oil out of the Gulf. But apparently U Penn—which people still want to go to after they accepted this monster due to his dad’s bribe—did not teach him about how US oil prices were affected by global supply and demand. Nice job, Penn! Hope the money was worth it.
I don’t see how this war ends without an invasion. Iran cannot trust any deal while the dotard remains in power and any leader who accepts the humiliation that Trump will demand (as a cruel, demented child he cannot conceive of winning without humiliating an opponent, imagine if this bag of shit was in Truman’s position after WW2) would be killed by his own people. And we can’t use the straits until Iran allows it. So I hope we send in the Proud Boys first, with the inadequate military training that greaseball Hegseth’s will allow them.