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The AP headline reads: "Trump sows confusion as tensions appear to ease." As the writers of the article point out, Donald Trump likes people to be confused.
He thinks it is a tactic, maybe even a strategy. One thing is certain: we entered a surreal, bizarro age of international diplomacy before Trump was even inaugurated, and this headline is proof of that surrealism.
Trump's policies-- or John Bolton's-- are insanity. Remember, the United States could not pacify Iraq (168,000 sq. mi.) or Afghanistan (223,000 sq. mi.). What makes Bolton and the other insane neocon yahoos (Bolton is the neocon representative in this rogue administration) think they can invade and pacify Iran, a nation of 636,000 square miles and 80.48 million people?
Remember, Iran is a country of enough technological sophistication that several years ago they removed a US surveillance drone from the air without hurting it and showed it to us, laughing. You know they are laughing at our threats.
If you really want to have Iran attack US-- like, our shores, which they currently have no intent to do-- the best way to get them REALLY mad is to drop bombs on Tehran or some insane act.
And there are actual powerful people with loose enough lips that we know people are thinking of just that. Several years ago-- during the Obama Administration-- gambling/publishing magnate Sheldon Adelson, an Israeli turncoat of an American if I ever saw one, was counseling the Likud to drop a nuke in an "uninhabited" region of Iran, and tell them that if they didn't give up their nuclear program, the next one was on Tehran.
A moderate conservative friend of mine has opined, perhaps hopefully, that "Trump may wind up being the good cop and Bolton and Pompeo the bad guys. It is possible Trump listened to both on Venezuela and that has not gone according to their script. We do not need a war with Iran as you properly state-- excellent analysis. I would submit if we ever were to have done it the green revolution was that time."
During the Green Revolution? We have never had, and will never have, enough troops to first invade Iran, depose the government, and then occupy the country during our attempts to "create democracy," a la Iraq and Afghanistan.
Comparison: Vietnam is a nation of approximately 128,000 square miles, and in 1975 when the country was unified, the population of the country was about 57 million. It is 90.3 million now. We could not pacify Vietnam with 587,000 troops at one point, though we killed 3-plus million Vietnamese trying, plus those today who die from our toxic chemical legacy.
We have no potential to have that size of military force without the draft, and without a coherent military mission. Less and less millennials fail to understand that what they are likely to be risking their lives for is not patriotism, but an "enlistment incentive," and a policy pig in a poke determined by whoever happens to be in power.
A US-Iran war might end up being asymmetrical warfare. It might BE disastrous for Iran.
But it would be equally disastrous for the US, because then all our adversaries, even those whom, if we practiced more moderate and inclusive policies, might be content to be our trading partners, or even allies, would conclude that the only way to deal with the aggressive American empire was to fight it.
And such a war would even disrupt the lives and businesses of the largest natural-resource-acquiring capitalists, as well as making life harder for everyone around the world. Can you spell "Strait of Hormuz?"
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