Trump Uber Alles

One thing about Donald Trump: there's never a dull or unfilled moment. 

It is hard just keeping up with Trump news; one loses track. Fortunately, the New York Times compiled a list of stuff Mr. Trump has attached his name to or has demanded be named for  him:

1. U.S. Currency will now have his signature where the U.S. Treasurer once had his. Not that most people ever noticed. And Trump did make sure his signature got printed on those COVID relief checks.

2. Trump coins: one with his profile and one from above the waist, leaning forward on some surface, looking like Marcus Aurelius watching his legions march off to war.

3. The Trump-Kennedy Center. As Llyod Benson remonstrated, "I knew Jack Kennedy. You're no Jack Kennedy." It's a "King Joffrey" move, if you're a fan of GOT.

4. Donald J. Trump United States Institute for Peace. Whatever that is. Likely where they display mementos from the airstrikes on fishing boats in the Caribbean, from the bombing of Iran and videos of Trump and his gang beating up on Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office.

5. Trump Gold Card: wherein if you give Mr. Trump a million dollars, you can get a visa to visit America.

6. Trump RX: A website for buying prescription drugs, which does not work yet, but Mr. Trump has the concept of the program in mind.

7. Trump National Parks Pass, showing Mr. Trump next to George Washington, who is not as good looking. 

8. Trump Class Warships: which are especially vulnerable to $2,000 drones, like the one which set fire to the U.S.S. Gerald Ford, causing the $3 billion aircraft carrier to high tail it out of the Persian gulf. 

9. President Donald J. Trump International Airport in Florida.

We Know Airplanes

10. Penn Station in NYC renamed to Donald J. Trump Station. This is a nice complement to the Donald J. Trump ice skating rink in Central Park  and might go well with a renamed Grand Trump Central Station at 42 Street, and while we're at it we could rename "Fifth Avenue" to "Trump Avenue," and Tiffany's to Trump Tiffany's and Breakfast at Tiffany's to Breakfast at Trump's Tiffany's. 

For that matter, how about New Trump City?  With 5 boroughs: BronxalDonald, ManTrumptan, DonnyBrookland, Statentrumpia and QueensBarron. 

Airport Security

11. Washington Dulles Airport: Well, who was Dulles any way? Just some guy who traveled a lot by airplane when he was secretary of state. They built that airport way out in Loudon County, Virginia, so far from downtown Washington, D.C. that the joke was nobody would ever use it until you built a train to get to the city, which they did eventually and now it's still light years from the city, but people do use it if they are trying to get to West Virginia.

Now Here's a Man Who Knows Gold!

12. National Football League Donald J. Trump Commanders stadium. Well, they named one Redskins stadium after Robert F. Kennedy--the original RFK, not the JR, and they had some pretty good teams there eventually, but lately the team could use a boost, which surely the Trump name could provide. Maybe we could go back to the Redskins, as long as we are renaming things, which means we could play, "Hail to the Redskins!" again. Or "Hail to the Trump Redskins! Hail Victory. Hail to the Redskins! Fight for Old Donald Trumpty!"

13. The Trump Train: renaming the DC Metro is a no brainer. The alliteration alone would be worth it.

14. The $100 Trump dollar bill. I mean, really, is Benjamin Franklin, for all his talents as a scientist, a statesman, a diplomat not just a little too homely for American currency? Not from central casting. While we're at it, why not go full tilt and replace all those folks, Washington, Lincoln, Grant with Trump. You could add variety by profile, full frontal and maybe different colors for different denominations, as long as they are all gold.

15. And, last, and the piece de resistance: Trump on Mount Rushmore. The problem is placement. The faces are pretty tightly packed, but there does seem to be room to Mr. Lincoln's left, and maybe to George Washington's right. Or maybe, just maybe, we could touch up Teddy Roosevelt's visage and transform it into Donald Trump. Roosevelt never really belonged up there with the first President who held the country together and then retired, refusing to be king or Jefferson, author of the Declaration and the President who bought the North American continent for posterity, or, of course, Lincoln, who Trump says is the next best President to himself. 

What the World Needs Now...Is a Good Apocalypse Movie

 

Reading Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick's wonderful "The Untold History of the United States," Mad Dog recalls the things they tell of,  things buried in his memories. 

The title is something of a misnomer--what these authors tell is not "untold," as Mad Dog remembers nearly everything they say about the 1950's, and even the stories set in earlier decades are hardly untold, merely forgotten, covered under layers of dust. What they have written is really, "The Forgotten History of the United States."

Going over those golden decades of the 1950's, the "Leave It To Beaver,"  segregated, halcyon days to which MAGA wants to return us, the whole Eisenhower era, where a man could support his wife and family and have a car and a lake house on his factory salary,  where serious men in the highest levels of the government wanted to use atomic bombs to cut a new Panama canal, to melt the polar ice caps, to intimidate the Communists into submission, to threaten Guatemala, Cuba and any other Latin American country who dared challenge the American United Fruit Company, the sheer lunacy of the times comes back into focus. Let's dig missile silos into the moon so we can attack the Soviet Union from space. Generals, Congressmen, up and down the chain of command, American officials were saying this stuff.

"Atoms for Peace" was Eisenhower's response to the outcry from scientists and a partially aroused public, when people like Einstein and Bertrand Russell sounded alarm bells about nuclear weapons threatening to end mankind. 

But that was all a con--Eisenhower's basic strategy, embraced by his loyalists (Dulles, Nixon, General Curtis LeMay et al), was to simply threaten with nuclear annihilation anyone who opposed the commercial interests of American corporations, or the political interests of the United States. He insisted nuclear weapons were just another addition to our military arsenal, and he considered using them in Korea, Indochina (later called "Vietnam" after he left office), the Suez Canal and elsewhere.

That benign looking, grandfatherly figure was mad as a hatter when it came to nukes. Even Churchill thought so. 

We could dig new harbors with nuclear bombs on the Alaskan coast; we could make new medicines with nuclear fallout; we could blast the earth in Arizona down toward the hot, magna core of the planet, for thermal heating systems. We could kill all the snakes in Africa with a-bombs! (How the bombs were going to select out the snakes, apparently, was not a problem anyone could solve.)

And don't forget our missile bases on the moon, which one wag said would be run by the Department of Luna-cy.

As is true now, the American public had no clear idea of who to believe, but then Neville Shute published a book, a novel, called, "On The Beach," and a movie soon followed.

 It simply described the aftermath of a nuclear world war, encapsulated in an Australian beach town waking up to the appearance off shore of an American submarine which has taken refuge, after firing its missiles. We meet the commander and crew of the submarine and we meet the Australian folks who take them in. Some star crossed romances ensue, but mostly what follows is the nuclear cloud, which crosses the equator and heads down toward Australia, ineluctably, as it moves toward the final elimination of human life on earth.

Churchill sent a copy to Khrushchev in Moscow, but he did not send a copy to Eisenhower because, Churchill said, Eisenhower had become "too muddle headed" to read it, or to appreciate it if he could read it.

The book's scientific assumptions were challenged, but the general conclusion was then and is now thought to be mostly correct: Nuclear war has the capacity of ending human life on earth.

And how did it all happen? There is only a general explanation--things got out of hand. 

Bibi Netanyahu, Iran, Ukraine are not mentioned nor predicted.

But you can be sure Joe Biden, addled as he might have been, remembered "On the Beach," as he replied to a question about whether the United States would go to war with Russia over Ukraine, "I don't want to start World War Three,"  Biden said.

Throughout "Untold History," American politicians continuously invoke the horrific menace of what we are facing--communists, Central American revolutionaries, Africans from tumultuous failed states, and it all sounds so today--we need strong men (in masks) to protect us from rape and murder coming from people who are not White or Christian or even English speaking. The escalation from the mundane to the five alarm fire is simply first gear for the MAGA mob. 

But where is our "On The Beach" today? 

Where is the book or movie or Netflix series about a Kingfish who denigrates experts, scientists, generals, becomes President, unleashes previously controlled viral diseases by abandoning vaccines, betrays America's allies, starts a war in the Middle East, then moves on to a war with China, as masked storm troopers suppress all dissent, murder and imprison all opposition, as he churns out gold coins with his image imprinted on them, renames airports, bridges, buildings, theaters, sports arenas after himself and he fiddles (or plays golf) while his apathetic nation is distracted by the circus, and he ultimately provokes Armageddon?

Is the story simply implausible? Just too far out?

In today's media world even a book as riveting as Shute's would have to fight through an ocean of titles competing for attention. In 1960, there were only three TV channels and Hollywood produced a manageable stream of movies shown in local theaters. You could get everyone's attention, if you had the money.

Today, getting enough clicks is tougher, and getting people to actually sit still and watch a movie is even more unattainable. And, to get the attention "On the Beach" got, to achieve that sort of reach through our population, you'd need Bezos, Zuckerberg, all the 0.001% guys to get on board. 

Don't think we could rely on Elon Musk for that.

Or, for that matter, any of them.

But there is a chance: A lot of people watch "The Pitt," and millions will see "One Battle After Another."

The question is whether or not it is still possible to get enough people on the same page to coalesce opinion.

But, it won't be easy:  even after masked federal agents shot a White mother and a White nurse in Minneapolis, Americans turned the page and moved on to "March madness."

Renee Good and Alex Pretti Are Still Dead

 News cycles being what they are, what are a couple of murders of ordinary people in Minnesota to fret about?

Last night, on PBS Rick Scott, the U.S. Senator from Florida was asked about the Democratic opposition to mask ICE agents roving the streets in unmarked vans, shooting people and he rolled out a list of names of people he claimed were murdered by illegal immigrants and pointed to heroic ICE agents as the good guys who are defending white womanhood from the depravations of Spanish speaking rapists and  murderers.

When asked at his confirmation hearing about his statement that Alex Pretti was a terrorist intent on murdering policemen, Markwayne Mullin said he might have "misspoken" about that, and, he admitted modestly, you can't get everything  right every time.

Not that  of this sort of hyperbolic tripe is new in America--Senator Joe McCarthy claimed there were thousands of Communists infiltrated into the halls of the U.S. government--he had a list of names--and that they were planning on taking over America and making it a pawn of the Soviet Union.

Pointing to a nurse holding a sign, "Melt ICE," and screeching, "Terrorist, rapist, murderer!" is so very American.

Up here in New Hampshire, most folks don't want to think too much about a mother or a nurse murdered by sadistic agents of the federal government. Haven't seem 'em up hereabouts. 

ICE is searching for empty warehouses where they can stash Spanish speaking, brown skin people caught driving or walking while Brown in Kavanaugh stops.  We put Japanese in concentration camps once for being of Japanese heritage. What's so wrong about seizing Spanish speakers and stuffing them in concentration camps? As Justice Kavanaugh said, when you find an illegal alien, he is apt to be speaking Spanish, looking Spanish and hanging around with other Spanish speaking people in Home Depot parking lots. So that satisfies that pesky requirement in the Constitution called "probable cause."

Was a time Black folks were lynched for being Black and walking around town after some white woman claimed to have been raped by a Black man. Much the same thing.

Clinton triggered a mass psychotic break called the "Unite the Right" rally when he observed the United States was moving ineluctably toward become a "majority minority nation."  That struck a deep chord: "We will not be replaced," the White men marching in Charlottesville shouted, wearing Swastikas, and there were some very fine people there, Trump reminded us. Also some Very Fine Cannibals, no doubt.

Very Fine Cannibals, Charlottesville, VA

Harry Truman didn't much like Jews, who he called "kikes" and he certainly did not like scientists, especially if they expressed horror at the uses of atomic bombs and if they spoke out against developing hydrogen bombs. Those scientists were all sissies and Truman said he never lost a wink of sleep about dropping the bombs on Hiroshima or Nagasaki.  And to this day, most people have no idea why Nagasaki had to fry. Even before Hiroshima, but surely after Hiroshima, the Japanese were toast, literally, and they knew it and dropping the second bomb then and now looks like, "Well, we had this bomb: What were we supposed to do with it?"

So, this America, man. 

Alex Pretti and Renee Good are dead and will stay dead. There is no statute of limitations on murder, because death is forever. But, of course, there is no murder, if the government does it.

Was always so. Thus is ever so.

Fighting the Last War

 

March 11, 2026, the American aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Ford was disabled and had to withdraw from its post to 200 miles away from combat by a $20,000 Iranian drone, which flew over the water at an altitude for 15 feet, evading the carrier's radar, then jumped up the the flight deck where sailors where refueling an airplane and exploded.

At least, that's what you can see on a few YouTube channels. In the time of AI and depleted journalism, it's hard to know who or what to believe. But if this is true, then the United States is losing this war.

If  a $13 billion dollar weapon was disabled by a $20,000 drone, then the United States can strut around all it wants, but it's fallen into a trap of hubris.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH50tJNE3tU&t=122s

Pete Hegseth keeps telling us we are bombing them back to the Stone Age, and the Pentagon is releasing videos showing us playing a video game with Iran, but Mad Dog remembers the war in Vietnam where the U.S. had air supremacy over Hanoi and the whole of both Vietnams, north and south and it didn't matter a damn. The North Vietnamese still beat the U.S., and United the country.

Images of LBJ, standing on the bridge of an American carrier watching the launch of American jets which pummeled targets in Vietnam, dropped napalm, roared louder than lions, all without any effect to win the war.

Crowds cheered as cavalry rode off to fight in the First World War, looking fearsome and proud. But machine guns, barbed wire, trenches and tanks ultimately rendered those horse mounted warriors ridiculous.

Iranian drones may be making American jets and surface ships look impotent and ridiculous.

The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong had multi-leveled tunnels with hospitals and HVAC built in concentric circles around Saigon. None of them were the least bit impeded by those jets roaring over LBJ's head.

Americans: We make a lot of noise, build expensive machines, but we haven't won a lot of wars lately against really smart determined enemies--not in Afghanistan, not in Vietnam and not, apparently, in Iran.

Hey BROS! I got this!

Of course, with the advent of AI, it's difficult to know whether the YouTube clip embedded in this post is even real, but when you see multiple stories across different sites, it does appear that some things are likely true:

1/ Iran has not suffered a significant degradation of its missile arsental and in fact, it  is likely the US which has begun running out of missiles and interceptors.

2/ The flow of Patriot missiles and similar systems to fight in Iran has bled away the availability of those weapons for Ukraine, which is now in danger of being disarmed by the war in Iran. So Putin is very happy about the US being bled by Iran.

3/ The Iranians do now and will likely for some time in the future, control the Strait of Hormuz and that allows Iran to wreck havoc on Western economies.

4/ Iran has said that if the US attacks the power grid  in Tehran, it will sink the USS Ford aircraft carrier and it is possible, given it's first successful attack on that ship, that it may just be able to do that, unless the Ford hightails it out of range.

Overall, it looks like Hegseth and Trump were simply too stupid to do the chess game, and the Iranians are much smarter and, to use Trump's phrase, they hold all the cards.

Backlash

Donald Trump, it has often been said, is simply a backlash to the election of Barack Obama. 

The swing of the pendulum.

Watching the folks lined up behind Mr. Trump at his Kentucky rally a few days ago, it was easy to see the point. Right here in Hampton, watching people arrive to vote at the polls for the recent town elections, we have people in New Hampshire who look just like those Trump backdrop people.

They have stepped right off the pages of "What's the Matter with Kansas," the Thomas Frank 2004 book about how conservatives won the heart of America. One of the portraits Frank presented in that book Mad Dog has never been able to shake was the invective from a man who said his son, who can competently re-wire his home, who has rebuilt truck engines on his farm, who changes out the water heater, uses a computer to plow the fields and who can hit a 90 mph fast ball, could never get into Princeton because his SAT scores aren't high enough and he barely eked out a "C" in Spanish and he flunked calculus.  So his son, according to Princeton, just doesn't have the smarts to merit admission to Princeton.

Nicholas Lemann, now a professor at Columbia, writing in the March 16th New Yorker describes his father driving him as a little boy to Princeton: 

"We'd stand on Nassau Street and drink in the magnificence of the campus, as if it stood for everything great, and also distant in the world. Today Princeton is even more magnificent, with beautiful modern buildings scattered around the Colonial and Gothic ones, and elegant stores lining the street across from the Campus."

Students on campus tours with their parents absorb the message: This is the place where success is made, where the tickets to high paying careers are handed out, where superiority reigns, where merit is rewarded and where lack of merit disqualifies you from a future among the aristocracy. It is the classic embodiment of, "If you work hard and have God given talent, you will prosper. If not, it's your own damn fault."

It is where the tyranny of meritocracy reigns.

Barack Obama was the epitome of all this--the child of a Black man and a white woman--who raised him as a single mother--who, through hard work got from Hawaii to Occidental College in California, then to Columbia University in New York City, then to Harvard Law.

His father was not a rich real estate icon. Obama, a physical specimen, lithe, graceful, played basketball as men play basketball, and he was eloquent, inspiring, everything Mr. Trump is not.

But then, under Obama's administration his Department of Education went off the rails, and he did nothing to rectify that. The Department intervened in the operations of universities, insisting that on campus sexual assault allegations be handled by new protocols which stripped the accused boys of their right to question their accusers, to due process and a fair trial.

At Brown, an engineering student in his third year, found a drunk co-ed in his bed in the wee hours of a fraternity party and he had sex with her. The details have been scarce, but apparently, as reported in the Brown Alumni Monthly, they awoke the next morning, exchanged telephone numbers. When she got back to her dorm, her roommates heard the story and told her she had been date raped. Nobody ever asked if the boy had been drunk, and nobody ever said whether, if he had,  that would have made the slightest difference to his defense before he was expelled, losing three years of hard work in the Department of Engineering, having to pick up the pieces of his shattered career.

This became part of the cloth of "Believe the Woman," where due process went out the window.

At Penn, a male swimmer, who had an undistinguished career, underwent transgender therapy and then competed as a woman swimmer, smashing all records and winning Ivy League championships. Nothing wrong with this, according the the great minds in the Ivy League.

When the President of Harvard was asked by a Harvard alum (Rep. Elise Stefanik) whether she would tolerate on campus calls for the genocide of the Jewish people, the President, Claudine Gay, replied it would depend on the context. In what world is the advocacy for genocide of any people a matter of context?  This is not a difficult or trick question Stefanik said. Of course, you do not need a Harvard diploma to know that much.

After thousands of people lost their homes in the financial crisis of 2008, men went to jail for their roles in the scams which precipitated the fiasco, in Iceland, Denmark and Scandinavia. But President Obama did not send a single man to jail in the United States.

Speaking together, in "The Wire," two political campaign managers throwing down drinks at a Baltimore bar bemoan the choices made by their successful candidates. "You work so hard for them. You may even come to believe in them. But when they win, they always disappoint you."

So, do we have the failures of Barack Obama to blame for the successes and excesses of Donald Trump?

Yes, partly we do. We see the failure of the winning liberal coalition to discipline and moderate its own members, to prevent those who worked for the winning team from doing really stupid things.

 

But, in some measure, Trump may have been inevitable after the triumph of liberalism--it was bound to go off the rails, just as Trump has been doomed to go off the cliff. 

The problem now is, how do we get the pendulum headed back in the other direction?

How Wars Are Won

 

As any YouTube addict will know, World War II was won by brave and determined soldiers, good generals and competent armies using high tech devices like proximity fuses to shoot down airplanes and, the ultimate high tech device, that product of really abstruse minds, the atomic bomb.

During that war, the US produced 9,000 airplanes a month and Hitler said that was simply impossible.

It produced 150 aircraft carriers during that war, swamping the Japanese Navy, which, by the end of the war had only 5 functioning carriers.

Despite the Japanese ethos of war, despite the willingness of soldiers and kamikaze pilots to die rather than to surrender, the United States methodically turned warfare from a test of courage and physical endurance into a contest between the manufacturing capacities of nations.

During this current war with Iran, American airplanes and Israeli Iron Dome missiles have been shooting down Iranian missiles and drones and we have been told the Iranians have shot their wad and that rocket launchings are down 90% as they have run out of missiles. So, America, we are told, has again simply overwhelmed its enemy with industrial and technological power.

But, the truth is, we are likely seeing a classic example of David slaying Goliath using a weapon which may look unimposing (a slingshot) but which can be used at a distance, with some stealth and which is superior to a sword which looks fearsome but is simply not as effective for the type of conflict a warrior of small stature can use in asymmetric battle.

A recent analysis of a simple "kill mission" involving an RAF high tech stealth fighter plane accompanied by two other war planes, shooting down an Iranian missile is both illuminating and sobering. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVyAiZnvQhE&t=210s

The airplane was successful in destroying the drone, but the cost of the missiles, the cost of keeping the airplanes in the air was in the millions, all to destroy a $50,000 missile.

And Iran is nowhere even close to having exhausted its supply of drones and missiles. In fact, the United States and Israel have had to import Ukrainian soldiers knowledgeable in drone warfare to help them. After abandoning the Ukrainians in their fight against Russia, the US is now begging them for help, something which the Ukrainian drone warrior interviewed on the PBS Newshour had a hard time not crowing about--he managed to suppress a smirk and said only that he was glad he could help the US in our hour of need.

It turns out the cost of keeping a high tech warplane in the air has been costed out per minute of flight and that is a major Achilles heel in the United States' war planning.  Sure, we can hunt down a ten cent missile with a thousand dollar missile, but who wins that war?

The spectacle of Mr. Hegseth crowing about how we are reigning down death, destruction and mayhem on the Iranians and pounding his tattooed chest about how badly we are skunking our opponents reminds Mad Dog of watching his son step off a wrestling mat, having just pinned his opponent, who looked so overwhelmingly muscled and intimidating at the start of the match.

"Oh, how I love to destroy those jacked up [muscular] guys. They come stomping out looking all fearsome, but they have to be helped back to their chairs looking like little boys crying for their mothers."

Why that memory surfaces now, watching Mr. Trump's chest thumping boys do their frat boy taunting is something to ponder.

Wither to War?

 

Constitution of the United States

Article 1

Section 8

Paragraph 11: The Congress Shall have the power to declare War, grant letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.

NB: Letters of Marque and Reprisal are legal documents allowing private citizens, e.g. captains of sailing vessels, to seize ships belonging to another nation, i.e. to make privateers legal, the forerunners of "contractors."

Stephen Decatur & Barbary Pirates

Congress declared war for the first time in 1812, voting to approve President Madison's request for war against Britain, which had been kidnapping American sailors and pressing them into service on British war ships, and which had been fomenting Indian wars against the United States along its western borders.  

Only on four other occasions has Congress declared war:

1. War against Mexico 1846 (Mexican-American War)

2. Spanish-American War 1896

3. World War 1

4. World War 2

No Congressional approval was enacted for the War in Vietnam. 

Neither did it vote a declaration of war against Iraq or Afghanistan, but in these two cases it voted an "Authorization for Use of Military Force."

The Iraqi war authorization happened after a year long campaign by President Bush and his Secretary of State falsely accused Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein of marshalling "weapons of mass destruction" in preparation for an attack against someone, presumably someone the United States wished to protect. No such weapons were ever found nor likely ever existed. 

The Spanish American war was launched by a newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst, for unclear reasons, although it clearly sold newspapers. An American warship, the Maine, had blown up in Havana harbor, likely owing to a boiler explosion, but Hearst claimed the Spanish Empire had bombed the ship. Famously, an American  reporter in Havana had told Hearst he could see no reason for war, but Hearst told him all he wanted was photographs of the aftermath of the explosion: "You give me the pictures; I'll give you the war!"

You Give Me the Pictures; I'll give you the War

The Mexican-American war was even worse: the United States was swept by notions of "Manifest Destiny" which meant the entire continent should belong to the United States, and that meant California and New Mexico and everything down to the Rio Grande. Texas, meanwhile had Americans who wanted to be separate from Mexico and they wanted to establish slavery, which was illegal in Mexico. The rest is all Alamo and myth and Davey Crockett and might makes right.

Manly Hero

Thomas Jefferson, who did not at all like the idea of a standing army or an American Navy, finally realized if his young country wanted to be able to trade with the world, he needed to protect his trading ships, which the Barbary pirate nations of the North African and Mediterranean coasts simply confiscated, demanding "tribute" (ransom.)

It would be cheaper and more efficient to simply send an American navy to attack these pirate states, and Jefferson did that, without a declaration of war.  Meet force with force. Commerce demanded it.

U.S. Soldiers Spanish American War

Then the world changed, and the American military became the De facto policeman of the world, and America became the prime target of every fundamentalist wacko group. President Obama looked at this new world and realized there was no practical way to get an authorization of war out of Congress every time he wanted to kill some kingpin of every homicidal group or rogue head of state. 

U.S. Soldiers Manila Manifest Destiny

So, Obama joined a NATO raid on Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, 2011, and he launched a drone against Anwar al-Walaki (Yemen, 2011) and he launched a raid against Osma bin Laden (Pakistan 2011) who most people assumed was behind the 2001 World Trade Center attacks--and if he wasn't the trigger man, he surely did celebrate those attacks and call for more.  Then Obama got Mullah Mansour, leader of the Afghan Taliban, in Pakistan in 2016 with a drone attack. Hakimullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban got drone struck in 2013.

Obama, a constitutional scholar, argued that executions like these did not require a trial or Due Process or a declaration of war because these were non state actors (except for Gaddafi, whose "state" was dubious.) 

None of these guys engaged in actual "war" wearing uniforms, operating by the Geneva convention rules of war, taking prisoners and providing for Red Cross visits. 

The ACLU actually challenged this practice in Court but got nowhere.

President Obama's drone strikes and especially his operation to kill Osma Bin Laden were notable for their surgical precision, and "collateral damage," i.e. deaths of civilians not targeted but in proximity to the attack were limited. Nevertheless, there were 540 drone strikes over the 8 years of his presidency.

So, now we have Mr. Trump bombing Iranians for reasons which are opaque, and keep shifting: Iran was a week away from an atom bomb after we obliterated their nuclear program; no, wait, Iran was threatening to assassinate Mr. Trump; no, that's not it; Iran was killing its own citizens; no, wait, it was going after Israel; no, wait, Iran is still a threat to world peace. 

"They weren't very nice to me," seems to be Trump's main thing.

As Paul Krugman has noted, sending in the fleet with aircraft carriers, missiles, drones, airplanes is costing $1 billion a day, money which Ukraine could surely have used to great effect, not to mention medical insurance programs, food for the poor, American homeless, infrastructure repair.

History helps us understand: This one ranks right around the Mexican-American war, except we get no land from it, and the Spanish-American war, but we get no naval bases or a nearby island to abuse.

The difference in Trump's attacks on Iran and Obama's targeted drone strikes seems to be one of precision and clarity. 

Obama said we have to fashion our use of force to the enemy we face--in his case shadowy strongmen who target innocents at markets or office buildings or embassies and then slip away, often without explanation--"You figure it out," seemed to be the terrorists' modus operandi--and so we respond with stealthy, targeted surgical strikes and let the Taliban, ISIS, Hamas or Hezbollah figure out what they did wrong.

In Trump's case, he kills the Ayatollah and some of his friends, and announces it's time for the Iranians to rise up and change the regime, as if that is going to happen automatically.

After the Atyatollah's boys killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,000 protestors, few in the West will mourn his passing.  And if Trump had said, "Well, this is what I do to people who offend me," and left town, then maybe we'd all shrug, the way we did with Maduro. Neither one of these gems garners much sympathy.

Trump, it is well known, is a great defender of protestors--just ask Renee Good or Alex Pretti.

But Trump's "move fast and break things" method only works occasionally. Just ask Elon Musk.

And wars are usually easier to get into than to get out of.