“WTF were you thinking,?” is what the world is asking the United States.  That’s the question into which you can fold all the others: What are the goals, the end game, how long will this war last, is a ground invasion upcoming, will regime change and forfeiture of nuclear material be objectives, is the Strait of Hormus truly open as the Secretary of Excursion claims?  Will the president be gifting MAGA baseball caps to dignitaries to wear at future “dignified transfer” of deceased soldiers ceremonies?

This Iran mess is an embarassing shit show our nation is forced to watch.  At this point no one knows how many acts the play has.  That unfortunaely is up to the producer/ director, Donald J. Trump.  As is his want, the financers of his  billion dollars a day production, the tax paying public, were never consulted about any of it.  Over the week end Trump put out a plea for help from China, France, the United Kingdom, Japan and  South Korea to help secure the Strait of Hormuz.  That’s got to be killing him.  This is his war. He is loath to share the limelight with anyone, but now that his overseas “excursion” has imploded with Iran’s choking off 20% of the world’s fossil fuel supply and peripheral commodities, he is hoping someone out there can save his bacon.   Without assurances of some kind of end game from him, I doubt many leaders of other countries will be willing to give Trump anything more than the middle finger for causing all the chaos.  After 10 years of  insulting and threatening our allies, he shouldn’t count on much else.

There are so many questions that need to be backfilled with answers here.  Why in the world does Trump keep appointing two real estate developers like Kushner and Witkoff to be point people for delicate negotiations with foreign adversaries ? This isn’t like his dealings with a friendly Arab country where in the end there might be something in it for him.   Reporting is revealinjg Witkoff was in way over his head.  Who was all involved in advising Trump?  Surely Joint Cheifs General Cain had to have warned him that provoking Iran haphazardly was a bad idea. Did anyone else in the room point out the adverse scenarios likely to occur without proper planning and understanding of a political regime with an entrenched religious ideology?  Will there be congressional inquiries if Democrats have a majority after mid term elections?  Since national security was likely to be involved, was DNI Tulsi Gabbard included in discussions or was she too busy with her new domestic duties supervising voting interference?

Although it seems questionable there was any kind of Iranian threat that required a first strike, like most freedom loving people I certainly didn’t feel sorry for those members of the Iranian leadership who were killed in the war’s initial hours. Iran’s theocratic government retains its authority by intimidation and medieval cruelty.  It’s the world’s most observable example of all the bad things that happen when you combine the powers of church and state.  Iran is an international pariah and under normal circumstances most morally reflective people would commend Trump for his bold action.  But he created, all by himself, completely abnormal circumstances.

Two of the most prominent goals Trump promoted early on were to eliminate Iran’s nuclear capability and establish a regime change.  In all the hype about the success of the bombing campaign neither one of those objectives can be claimed as achieved.  As Trump must have finally figured out, achieving those goals, as well as total victory,  will require troops on the ground.  Unfortunately I don’t think  he understands, or even cares, about the predicament he has foisted upon the general population of Iran.  Before this war they were politically and socially repressed, but now the Revolutionary Guard is so paranoid people can’t leave there homes without being questioned while a rifle is pointed at their head.

Attention to  public beseachment is how all of this started-  a social media alarm from a distraught Iranian mother urging Trump to save her son  from execution .  That’s all it took.  Forget in depth logistical planning and ignore any professional advice about examples of past conflicts that have been embarassing and costly failures.  Trump is going to save the day, so it’s bombs away!  He has become drunk with power and feels our extraordinarily competent military is his to use personally.

A regime change in Iran would benefit the entire planet.  Most of the international community would agree, and Trump is right in that many countries have a vested interest in the transactional events of Iran. He called attention to that fact during his public beg for help.  But there is no way he should expect a leader of any country to send their ships and sailors to the Strait of Hormuz where they would be sitting ducks, especially when he is the one who initiated the conflict.  However, any planning for regime change in Iran should involve other countries.   Bombing the shit out of it will not accomplish that without complimentary and bloody involvement of a large infantry force, and Americans are fed up with hubristic unilateral commitment by our government  A combined force of international troops is the only feasable way for foreign powers to overthrow the Islamic Republic.

You want to solve the Iranian problem, you need international help.  So where is Trump’s so called Board of Peace in all of this?.  Did he consult with those guys?  Surely heavyweights like Albania, Armenia, and United Arab Emirates would step up with some manpower.

Just kidding.   As Chairman for Life of that organization Trump is more interested in the billion dollar initiation fee he collects and personally oversees.  The “Peace” part is whimsical fantasy. And sadly in all likelyhood so is any international commitment of troops now, and probably ever.  What the people of Iran have to look forward to because of Trump’s egomaniacal incompetence is more of the same or the upheaval of civil war.  It is logical to expect the country to experience internal chaos and mass migration.  And people  in the United States should prepare for an uptick in terroristic threats.  That preparation should involve re-hiring all the  security personnel who specialize in that kind of work who were fired or reassigned by the Trump administration.

The only other way, the realistic way, there will be a regime change in Iran is if the  80% of the Iranian people who are suppressed do it themselves.  That is where things stood, right before Trump started blasting away.  Maybe if Trump had sent professional negotiators  instead of  Witkoff, we wouldn’t be in this mess.  A succesful revolution takes a significant, agreeable population, which Iran has.  It also takes internal leadership that can unify, organize and mobilize against the government, and somehow clandestinely  procure weapons.  That will require ingenuity, and courageous resolve and if it does happen in Iran, it will take time to evolve.  I am certainly no expert, but I believe our involvement should be with undercover intelligence and covert support, the shifty shit we have at least sometimes been good at in recent times backing rebelious unrest.  Independently dropping bombs, not so much.