Trump's Undeclared War

Following Bibi Netanyahu straight to hell

When the news broke that the Trump regime had bombed Iran, I was playing poker at the local Moose Lodge, surrounded by nine other elderly white men, most of them veterans. The entire table minus yours truly applauded and made a number of predictable statements like: “Let’s bomb those bastards back in the Stone Age.”

While this is obviously not a representative sample of the majority of Americans, 40 or 50 percent of the country, or more, do agree with that entirely predictable sentiment. It’s shocking but not surprising, as they say, that a crude-thinking president surrounded by other crazies, with all of his policies unpopular and underwater, would resort to the oldest play in the annals of of authoritarian regime — go to war and then hope there’s enough of a patriotic response to bolster your position.

The consequences of this bombardment are yet to be known, but Trump has promised more bombing. Even before his statement, my sense was this is the beginning, not the end of U.S. involvement in the war that Israel began in the early morning hours of June 13 with an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities and the capital city of Tehran.

Iran may or may not have been crippled in its nuclear development, but you can be sure there is going to be retaliation. I am assuming that Iran’s arsenal of shorter range ballistic missiles will now rain down upon Israel and perhaps on the U.S. military based in the region, including the central command in Qatar.

I also suspect that the supreme leader in Iran will now be out and he will be replaced by the very powerful military and much more radical Revolutionary Guard. I see no way that Iran is about to surrender to Israel or the United States no matter how badly it has been hurt in the short run.

We can also expect a blockade of the straits of Hormuz that will disrupt naval shipping and will also be answered by some sort of retaliation by Israel and the United States.

We are now in a completely new phase of the Trump dictatorship. Not that it would have made any difference, but Congress was not was not consulted before this attack, let alone any attempt at formal approval, further debilitating our Democratic institutions.

Predictably the congressional Trumpanzees are already trying to outdo each other, heaping praise on our brave leader.

I cannot remember any time since I’ve been alive where a U.S. military intervention has produced a positive outcome. Whether it was Chile, Guatemala, Panama, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran.

I remember watching the 2003 shock and bombardment of Baghdad and even though I was an opponent of the war, I was still naïve enough to think that would be the end of that. Turns out it wasn’t, was it?

Those who believe that this single military action by the United States is one and done will be soon proven fatally wrong.

For those of us who oppose Trump, we must now accept the reality that we have crossed the Rubicon and we are in a completely different political situation.

Apart from the death and destruction and devastation that the Israeli and U.S. war will rack up in the coming months there is also now a radical change in our domestic politics.

Now anybody who stands to criticize our brave wartime president will be branded unpatriotic and a traitor because “our boys” are still out there fighting for whatever they call freedom

Today begins the most dangerous period of the two Trump regimes. The future: the immediate future as well as the long-term future, are utterly unpredictable.

We must take time now to think out truly effective strategies to try to block, oppose, and eventually, one hopes, rid ourselves of our fascist president and his lackeys.

The opposition is growing, and the turnout for the No Kings marches was a positive. But they were not enough, even before this war, and they will even be less important going forward.

I don’t have any prescriptions other than to say that we are now deeper into a dictatorial state than we were 24 hours ago. And we need to be aware that there will be millions of Americans who will be mobilized in support of the president as he takes us into war.

Back to the poker game. The Wag the Dog schtick works. That means we are going to have to be very strategic in our messaging, our actions and most of all our organizing to stop an authoritarian regime now taking us into war And taking all of the other issues that are hurting him off of the table.

I will have more to say in the next day or two as the situation develops. But I just want to underline the fact that today and tomorrow are very different than yesterday and the day before, and the challenges before us are more threatening. They are, in fact, downright horrifying

Keep your head screwed on tightly. Refrain from wild, outrageous, and emotional outbursts. Do not make blanket accusations against Zionism, which I oppose, but that I do not consider a dirty word as most people who identify with that are simply American Jews who have somewhat of a natural sympathy for Israel. Many of us American Jews do not, but we are a minority in our communities.

Remember that the key to successful politics is addition, not subtraction or exclusion. We need to build the biggest, broadest popular front possible against the Trump regime and it got a lot harder today.

I am dictating this from a corner of the Moose Lodge rather quietly, and you must excuse any typos or grammatical errors because I can barely see the text on my phone.

I will have more to say in the next couple of days or sooner as the situation further evolves. And believe me, it’s going to evolve.

Poker player Doyle Brunson. He knew strategy. Does anyone believe Trump does?