Is This Helping America?

When you consider the middle east and our involvement in it, it boils down to two issues, Oil and Israel.

Now for various reasons we have been identified as enemies by many natives in the region resulting in various attacks on us as "The Great Satan".

The current situation has a rather long and complex history, with escalations at each stage involving us more and more in countries which in all honesty have no great impact on America, except of course for the fact that we have troops there.

What is probably the next stage is increasing hostilities, possibly war, with Iran which I'm sure we can "defeat" but which I doubt we can subjugate.

We had at one time installed a friendly ruler there, the Shah, and we know how that worked out.

The question now is how many Americans and Iranians are going to die now?

It is almost certain that in ten years time we can use the following sentence,

"After xxx casualties and $xxx dollars we have no resolution in sight and must maintain our presence in the area."

So dead Americans and wasted billions, if not trillions.

Refugees and ruined lives for many Iranians.

And the benefit is?

Are the lives of our young people really that unimportant?

What about the potential terrorist victims here and abroad?

And no real reason why.

Justification?

When I watch some of the Sunday news shows, you hear explanations for certain action by this administration.  They are frequently illogical and condescending to both the American public and sometimes the world.

The recent assassination of an Iranian general has no real legal justification.  We are not at war with Iran and while we may attribute certain action by Militias in Iraq and Syria to Iranian influence to hold a high official in the Iranian government personally responsible would mean our officials can be held responsible for acts performed by militias we support.

If he was indeed planning an "imminent" attack on this country or our citizens it might be justification, but such an attack would need to be actually in the works and imminent.

It should also be noted that the attack was done without internal notification and on a third party countries territory.

No matter how bad he might have been, and he clearly was, he was still an official of a country we are not at war with.

The danger is that our ability to simply kill actors from a distance adds a new dimension to this sort of assassination.  Had we at least accused him internationally of war crimes we may have had some justification.

Repercussions are already started and they are likely to escalate.  That is not the reason the assassination was wrong, it is wrong because it is essentially a violation of "thou shall not kill".

Whatever exceptions we have applied to that, none of them seem to apply here.

Increasing Danger

Its impossible at this point to determine the full consequences of our recent assassination of a foreign General we are not at war with.  It Is at the very least a strong recruitment tool for various terrorists groups. The claims that this saved American lives is probably specious and of course without further information we will never know, but considering the lie record of this President it is likely false.

We see our country now on a heightened level of alert and everyone expects retaliation of some sort.  How much this will escalate the fighting in the middle east is unpredictable, but we have a President throwing fuel on the fire with ongoing public threat that sound a lot like rhetoric you usually hear for terrorist leaders or petty tyrants.

He may qualify as both.

The justifications for this assassination are not very convincing and certainly not based on sound legal doctrine.  The idea that it was done in self defense is just not very credible.  He was certainly providing advice and guidance to various militias operating in Syria and Iraq but that is nothing new and there is no evidence it was aimed at us in particular.  It is also unlikely that his death will make much difference since the people planning these events are still there.

It is very likely that plans will not be made to target American interests more than before.  It has made the world and this country less safe for Americans.  It is also likely to be the total end of any compliance with the nuclear deal they agreed to.

 Not too long ago there was a movie called "Real Genius" about students at I believe MIT .  In the movie they learned that Government project they were working on was for a weapon that would allow the military to assassinate foreign enemies from space, and they proceeded to effectively sabotage it.  The general idea of using science as an instrument of assassination was abhorrent to them.

Of course science has always enhanced our ability to kill each other and the movie while funny was naïve.  The research would go on despite their actions and our ability to kill remotely would grow.

Of course that is a double edged sword ultimately.

Clueless Leadership

There was a report that in some private conversation or communication, the administration told the Iranian President that if he agreed to negotiations we would lift all sanctions.  Once the report came out it was denied by the administration.

The problem is that the Iranian regime, for all their fundamentalist beliefs and enmity to Israel, have more credibility than our administration does.

Was this offer made?  I don't know but thinking about it, probably.

The administrations foreign policy efforts have almost no successes.  We and the world are in worse shape than we were before the last election.

North Korea scored a major propaganda coup and has continued to develop its weapons.

We withdrew from the Iranian nuclear deal and have nothing with which to replace it.  Our sanctions are hurting Iran but we have seen drones shot down, oil fields attacked and tankers seized.

Our allies don't agree with many of our positions and it shows.

We have allowed China the inside track on trade in the Pacific by leaving the trade agreement.

Whatever our interests are in Venezuela, we are not achieving them.

Russia continues to expand and interfere.  We have embarrassed the Ukraine.

The administration was embarrassed by a teenage girl at the UN and really want's something to distract the public it can call a victory.

Would they have proposed such a deal in private?  I'm sure they would, but they can't pull off private very well either.

Saudi Attack.

Its a sad day when the credibility of the administration is so low that you question pretty much everything they say.

Its even worse because they seem to contradict themselves frequently.

Take the question of who attacked the Saudi Oil Facilities.

This should be something that is easily answered since the Saudis have some of the most sophisticated defense systems in the world.

The idea that they didn't detect the attack is questionable in the first place.

Then we have one high level administration official saying it was Iran, while the Saudis are non committal and the dontard says we need more evidence.

Meanwhile a rebel group in Yemen is taking responsibility but of course they are accused of lying, we accuse everyone of lying nowadays.

It is also interesting to note that the Saudis wanted to cut production at the latest OPEC meeting but that was opposed by us.

This attack conveniently accomplished just that.  It also has led us to impose more sanctions on Iran, which we have no problem doing.

It just seems that in today's day and age with the technology the Saudis and we have that such an attack should have been detected.

Something is rotten in the Kingdom.

Failed Policies

Diplomacy is one of those things that is hard to get right but extremely important.

It may not seem that way when you listen to the talking heads on "news" channels who spell out exactly what should be done.  I love it when they spell out a course of action and act like it is a guaranteed roadmap to success.  Often they say things like "Well what else could they do?.

The fact that they may find multiple options outside the imagination of these commentators is actually almost certain.

We have an amateur in charge of our Government who hires based more on ideology than competence.

With the bombing of the Saudi oil fields we see an option probably not considered on morning commentary shows.

Is our Iran policy a success?  Well it might be too early to say, but so far it isn't achieving much.  We have inflicted pain on their economy but it appears that in most of the world we are seen as the problem.

We abrogated a multi nation agreement that was being followed for political reasons.  It was not an agreement that gave us everything and Iran nothing, unconditional surrenders don't happen without a war.

If the idea was to force additional concessions from Iran by being tough, well so far it is not working.

Nor is anything else.

Drone ?

It really shouldn't be a question about who is more truthful, the US or Iran, however, based on the amount of lying in this administration, it is.

Its especially an issue in this situation because:

The Pentagon didn't think Iran had the capability to shoot down such a high flying drone.

Iran has provide detailed coordinates and very likely has proof concerning where the wreckage was recovered.

Our failure to respond immediately since if it was in international airspace, we probably would.

Still I would like to see more evidence if in fact the drone was where we said it was.

The data released so far contained errors and misinformation, maybe not intentional.

For the sake of our credibility we need to release detailed data supporting our position.

Foreign Policy?

According to the administration Iran is planning some sort of trouble and we have dispatched a carrier.

In a somewhat sad commentary of our current faith in our government, there is a "show me" attitude since the WMD fiasco in Iraq.

Its also likely that our simpleton in the White House who bought in to all the FOX news criticisms over the years about how the prior administrations simply had to flex some muscle to get the world to comply with us.

It doesn't work, at least not in any meaningful sense.

Our foreign policy is pretty much a mess, with our allies concerned about our reliability and trustworthiness and our enemies manipulating our dontard.

One of the successes he touts is that he has inspired our allies to spend more money on their defense, and they have, but so have we.

If the benefit was supposed to be that we would spend less, it isn't happening.

Everyone spending more turns into an arms race.

Isis was being pushed out of territory when he took over and that continued.  They aren't destroyed and may be more dangerous than ever.  Certainly the middle east isn't friendlier and we managed to let Russia and Iran exert more and more influence.

North Korea played us and he let them.

Sanctions, tariffs and sending in a carrier are not much in the way of foreign policy.  Its all he seems to have though.

What Now?

Whether the decision to withdraw from the Iranian nuclear deal has significant repercussions or not is now in the hands of the rest of the world.

It is also not clear if it will cause Iran to resume its nuclear weapons program.

It certainly makes it more likely but it is by no means certain.

This type of approach, playing hardball and demanding concessions without offsetting offers is favored by groups that generally ignore the fact that the United States, as influential as it is, is not the only player in these things.

Clearly our influence is greater when we have world public opinion with us, which in this case we clearly don't.

Iran is a large country ruled by clerics ultimately which isn't necessarily persuaded by economic or political interests.

There hard liners are opposed to dealing with the Western Devils and we just gave them a big boost by going back on our word.

Will this eventually lead to a better agreement?

I tend to doubt that, but the world is somewhat unpredictable.

As unlikely as it seems, Iran has an economic mess that is leading to a degree of unrest that could lead to regime change.

That change could however be to a hard line government with no desire to deal with us.

Does the deal put us in danger?

Not directly, except of course that Iran may finance more terrorist groups.

It may increase risk in Israel which is obviously in a much more vulnerable place.

The fallout will happen and the only thing certain is that it helps Russia and China become more influential in the region as Iran reacts.

What Europe does will be decisive.

Iran Deal

The US is most likely going to withdraw from the Iran deal although there are a number of scenarios about what might happen.

There is no evidence that Iran has violated the agreement, it is simply a pretty typical reaction of the dontard to anything done by his predecessor.

Of course the deal has critics, it had them before it was ever signed, but of course it is a multi-national deal that has specific restrictions on Iran's nuclear program.

The deal didn't address some of the things that critics bring up and the gist of the criticism seems to be that we should re-impose sanctions until Iran does everything we would like them to do.

Negotiations between sovereign states is a tricky thing and requires give and take.

Not unlike business deals.

If a deal gives one side everything it wants, its not a negotiation, its an ultimatum.

The other point here is pretty simple.  Why would you enter into a deal with a country that fails to honor it even when you honor your end?

Iran is currently not a friend of the US but it has been in the past and possibly could be again in the future.

We would like them to change certain behavior related to terrorism and its recognition of Israel's right to exist.

This deal however was designed to impact Iran's nuclear program, not those other issues.

What will be interesting is who then honors the re-imposed US sanctions and whether we retaliate against those who don't?

We will have made Iran a more sympathetic country at the very least, not sure that's what we want.

News?

Sometimes what is purported to be news is not news at all.

Take yesterday's revelation that was made by the Israeli prime minister that he had thousands of documents that proved Iran had lied about having a nuclear program.

Of course the documents supposedly talk about project Ahmed and detail what Iran would have to have done to develop nuclear weapons.

This was about events that happened prior to the current agreement and I guess the point being made was that Iran had lied about its secret nuclear program.

Of course since the agreement makes them stop that development, not sure how much of a secret it really was.

Now of course another secret that was lied about was when the Israelis were developing nuclear weapons and told the world it wasn't.

Once again its not surprising that secret programs are in fact kept secret.

Is Iran violating the current agreement?

There doesn't seem to be any such evidence and we know that it is in Israel's best interests to keep Iran as weak as possible.

This may be a pre-arranged show that helps justify the dontard's pulling out of the deal.

Not at all sure the rest of the signees will go along with that and it's also uncertain what impact a unilateral withdrawal by the US has.

However, this news was not really anything surprising unless there is something much more damaging in the documents than what has been announced.

If it was there it would have been announced.

France

We seem to be developing a new relationship with the French, who not so long ago we considered barely friends.

Americans seem to have a somewhat distorted view of the French and admittedly, in this century they haven't been a truly dominant power.

Still they are a major economy and one of the leaders of the EU, especially with the departure of the UK.

Its a bit odd though that this president, considering his policies and followers would cozy up the French president.

This became sort of apparent when the speech he gave to congress pretty much was promoting policies this administration has opposed.

Still the thing with out dontard is that policy is secondary to him.

The fact that a foreign leader was willing to give him so much good press will go a long way with him.

It remains to be seen if this has much impact on the policies related to the Iranian Nuclear Deal or the trade agreements.

Still it might and maybe it will lead to a different policy related to the climate agreement which we withdrew from.

Probably not but making a vain man look good has a history of success.

Especially in France.

Iran Accord

It is likely that our dotard is likely to repudiate the nuclear deal with Iran.

He like to repeat the right wing media analysis of the deal and that it wasn't in America's best interests.

All evidence supports that Iran is effectively living up to the deal but they think the deal should have done more than it does, such as requiring Iran to stop supporting terrorists.

Now that would be fine except the agreement was negotiated with one goal in mind and wasn't just a bilateral deal with us.

It also may not actually matter much except for a public relations thing.

Certainly if all the other countries and Iran continue to honor it our non-participation is sort of optional.

Since the financial assets that had been blocked have already been released, you can't put that toothpaste back in the tube.

Unilateral American sanctions may have some impact, but the rest of the members who stay in the agreement won't honor them.

Worst case is that Iran uses this action to resume its nuclear development program and that would result in resumed UN Sanctions but because we took the first step it may be easier for the Iranians to get sympathetic support as the victim.

Not what anyone would want but you know the only thing that matters to our dotard is politics and public relations.

A safer world, not so much.