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The Felon's Countdown to a Ground War

 When George W. Bush announced the launch of the Iraq War, I had a very bad feeling about what the outcome would be - a bad feeling that proved all too correct.   I have a similar bad feeling about what could be an utter debacle that Felon seems to be leading the nation towards. Perhaps part of my bad feeling stems from living in an area with a huge number of military personnel, some of whom deployed to the Middle East.  Unlike the Felon and Hegseth who seeming view members of the living toy soldiers to be used for enhancing their egos, I know these individuals as friends and neighbors.  The biggest source of my fears are the very real possibility that the Felon and Hegseth are ignoring the warnings of military commanders and others who see a potential ground war as both dangerous and not fully a road to victory. Also, a ground war could result in many deaths of our military members, potential destruction of more oil facilities, and the Strait of Hormuz still under an Iranian stranglehold.  With the Felon, we have leadership that are both delusional and convinced they know more than the true experts.  Also disturbing are Hegseth's statements making this a war of religion - Christofascist America out to destroy Muslims. A long piece in The Atlantic looks at where things may be headed and why outcomes could differ from what the Felon expects. Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump [The Felon] announced this week that the United States and Iran had made significant progress in negotiations, and he was allowing five days to reach a deal. Tehran denied that it was talking with Washington at all. This is not, in any meaningful sense, a negotiation: It is a countdown.

The timing is not coincidental. Thousands of Marines and much of the 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne are en route to the Middle East. Trump may intend the talks to act as cover for an escalation decision already made. Even if he doesn’t, the structural reality is the same: When the deadline expires, he will be close to having significant ground-combat capability in the region and a collapsing diplomatic process to justify using it.

The gap between the two sides makes the collapse of talks likely. The American framework is, in essence, a demand for Iran’s surrender. The administration’s 15-point proposal, delivered to Iran via Pakistan, requires Tehran to dismantle its entire uranium-enrichment infrastructure, surrender its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, sever all ties with proxy forces across the region, and accept strict limits on its conventional military. In exchange, Washington is offering sanctions relief and support for a civilian nuclear-energy program. The proposal is very similar to the deal that the United States put on the table before the bombing campaign began.

Iran’s counter-framework reflects a regime that does not believe it is losing. Tehran is demanding binding guarantees that neither the United States nor Israel will strike again, reparations for the damage already inflicted, and formal recognition of its control over the Strait of Hormuz. On enrichment and proxies, Iranian negotiators have shown no willingness to move.

The war has not moderated the Iranian regime. It has hardened it. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps now dominates Iran’s internal deliberations to a degree unprecedented even under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran effectively controls the strait, and it knows that this control affords Tehran real leverage. Iran appears to have concluded that it is better positioned for a war of endurance than for a negotiated capitulation.

Trump could still choose to declare victory, or even accept terms closer to Iran’s position, if he concludes that the alternative is a longer and more uncertain war.

Last year’s trade confrontation with China ended with significant American concessions obscured by wins against U.S. allies and dressed in the language of reciprocal success. A similar reframing is conceivable here. He could point to Iran’s degraded navy, its shattered air force, the deaths of senior regime officials, and the setback to its nuclear program and argue that the threat But the Iran case will be harder to obscure than the China one was. Trade balances are abstract; the Strait of Hormuz is not. A deal that leaves the IRGC in effective control of the world’s most crucial shipping lane, imposes no enforceable limits on Iran’s missile or enrichment programs, and offers the regime international legitimacy cannot easily be framed as victory, especially when America’s closest regional partners will be lining up to say otherwise.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly told Trump that the United States should continue fighting to destroy the Iranian regime and remake the region. The United Arabmirates’ ambassador to the United States rejected the idea of a “simple cease-fire,” calling instead for “a conclusive outcome that addresses Iran’s full range of threats.”

Meanwhile, Israel remains committed to regime change or, failing that, maximum degradation, and it worries about a deal that meets Tehran halfway or a cease-fire. These governments can be expected to push Trump to continue the war once the talks collapse, although they seem to have concerns about ground operations.

But Trump wants to avoid a messy, long war, which could lead to sustained high oil prices and a possible recession. Ground troops would seem likely to bring this outcome about—but Trump appears to believe that their introduction will instead deliver a decisive knockout blow, which will either compel Tehran to accept his terms or make a U.S. declaration of victory credible. . . . . three ground operations are most likely: a raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities at Isfahan to seize its stockpile of highly enriched uranium; the seizure of Kharg Island, Iran’s principal oil-export hub; and the deployment of troops to Iran’s shoreline to suppress its attacks on shipping through the strait.

Each carries risks that the administration appears to be underestimating. . . . . Iran’s highly enriched uranium is a white, crystalline solid, uranium hexafluoride, stored in thick, steel cylinders, and cannot be reliably and permanently destroyed with explosives. If the cylinders are pierced, they emit a severely hazardous gas. A successful seizure from Isfahan would require U.S. troops to secure a wide perimeter, locate and excavate up to 970 pounds of the uranium buried under an unknown depth of rubble, protect it from counterattack, load it onto aircraft, and depart under fire. The operation would be arguably the most complex raid ever carried out by U.S. forces. The 970 pounds of uranium could also be spread among Isfahan and two other sites, raising the possibility of multiple raids.

Kharg Island and the coastal positions present different but equally serious problems. Forces on Kharg would immediately be within range of sustained Iranian fire; Iran could respond by attacking energy infrastructure and desalination plants across the Persian Gulf or destroying the island’s oil facilities to deny them to the Americans. Coastal positions are reportedly located near population centers, which would complicate both the military mission and the international response. In each scenario, the most plausible outcome is not a clean victory but a situation that demands more troops, more time, and more exposure to avert failure.

The deeper problem is that military operations, however successful tactically, cannot substitute for what the war is trying to achieve strategically. Trump launched this conflict believing that Iran was weak, and that a short, sharp campaign would force a new leader to terms. The regime has proved more resilient and more capable of inflicting sustained damage on the region than the [Felon] president expected.

[The Felon] Trump has a long history of claiming victory in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This may be the rare moment when that instinct serves the country—because the alternative appears to be doubling down on a losing strategy by launching a ground war.

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The Felon and MAGA Have Destroyed Conservativism

I often note that I grew up in a Republican voting family and was actively involved in the Republican Party for over a decade.   That Republican Party of yesteryear that I belonged to is dead and gone, destroyed by the rise of the Felon and his MAGA movement which have not only welcomed into the GOP "big tent" some of the ugliest elements of the far right that back in my era in the GOP were kept to the fringes and and viewed with mistrust - if not horror - by many traditional Republicans.   Traditional Republicans who are not living in a fantasy world where they pretend nothing has changed have fled the GOP like the author of a piece in The Atlantic, myself and many others I know.  Open racism and misogyny are now welcomed in the GOP of today and by embracing the Felon, it's clear that morality and some semblance of decency are no longer a requirement for admission to the party leadership. Neo-Nazis and white supremacists are now fully welcomed as are the most extreme right wing "Christians." As long as one hates racial minorities, gays, and wants a quasi-theocracy, the welcome mat is there for joining the GOP.   As the piece in The Atlantic lays out, the destruction of traditional American conservatism has been nearly complete.  Here are article highlights:

The “Make America Great Again” movement is the beating heart of the GOP, the dominant political party in America—which makes MAGA the most important political movement in the world. And that is why some recent developments within the MAGA movement are so disquieting.

Earlier this month, the College Republicans of America, one of the oldest youth organizations affiliated with the Republican Party, hired Kai Schwemmer as the group’s political director. Schwemmer has past ties to the white supremacist and anti-Semite Nick Fuentes and his Groyper movement, a loose network of white-nationalist activists and internet trolls who gravitate around online influencers, primarily Fuentes.

College Republicans of America President Martin Bertao defended the hire on X, writing that he had reflected on the decision and chose “to apologize … to absolutely NOBODY,” adding, “CRA will never back down to the WOKE mob!” . . . . Schwemmer is hardly an isolated case. Last year, Politico reported on leaked Telegram chats spanning seven months from leaders of Young Republican chapters in several states—chairs, vice chairs, and committee members exchanging racist and anti-Semitic messages.

While some figures in the GOP criticized the comments, Vice President Vance came to the defense of the Young Republicans, saying that the “reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys.” Vance added, “They tell edgy, offensive jokes. Like, that’s what kids do.” Several of the worst offenders were in their 30s.

A few months later the Miami Herald revealed that leaked chats from a Republican group at Florida International University showed participants using racial slurs, repeatedly expressing a desire to violently attack Black people, and describing women as “whores.” The text messages contained jokes about gas chambers, slavery, and rape. There was also plenty of praise for Adolf Hitler. Such praise appeared so regularly that at one point, the group was renamed “Nazi Heaven.”

These incidents are evidence of the normalization of white-supremacist and neo-Nazi rhetoric among younger Republican activists.

Among the older generations, a ferocious, intra-MAGA civil war is being waged between high-profile media and political personalities, including people such as Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Matt Walsh on one side and Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin on the other. There’s also Laura Loomer versus Elon Musk, and Musk versus Steve Bannon, and Bannon versus Dinesh D’Souza, and D’Souza versus Carlson. On and on it goes, with no end in sight.

The most recent bitter recriminations center on the Iran war and Israel. Consider an exchange between the current and former Fox News hosts Mark Levin and Megyn Kelly.

Levin, a popular radio-talk-show host who strongly supports both the Iran war and Israel, took to social media last Sunday to describe Kelly, a critic of both the war and of Israel, as an “emotionally unhinged, lewd, and petulant wreck” who is “utterly toxic.” Kelly, who hosts one of the most-listened-to podcasts in America, responded by calling him “Micropenis Mark Levin,”

Levin soon fired back. “Busy Sunday morning for Megyn Kelly,” he wrote. “She wakes up and has ‘micropenis’ on her mind. Suffice to say, if it talks like a harlot, and posts like a harlot, it’s … well, you know the rest. Shalom!”

Then Donald Trump weighed in, posting a defense of Levin on Truth Social, calling him “a truly Great American Patriot” who is “far smarter than those who criticize him.” Marjorie Taylor Greene, however, sided with Kelly. . . .The MAGA movement, like other radical political movements before it, is eating its own.

In January 2016 I was a lifelong Republican, having served in the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations. Yet that month I wrote in The New York Times that Republicans should not vote for Trump under any circumstances, even if his opponent was Hillary Clinton. I described him as a “virulent combination of ignorance, emotional instability, demagogy, solipsism and vindictiveness.” But I went beyond that.

Trump’s nomination, I said, would threaten the future of the Republican Party, because although Clinton might defeat it at the polls, only Trump could redefine it. I added this: Mr. Trump’s presence in the 2016 race has already had pernicious effects, but they’re nothing compared with what would happen if he were the Republican standard-bearer. . . . Mr. Trump would represent a dramatic break with and a fundamental assault on the party’s best traditions.

What we have seen in the decade since is the realization of those worst fears. To be clear, the MAGA movement’s rancidity isn’t due to only Trump. The impulses now on display within MAGA existed long before he entered politics. But those impulses were, for the most part, confined to the fringes. Republican presidents and other political leaders did what they could to keep it that way.

But from the moment Trump announced his candidacy in the summer of 2015, he sought to cultivate and encourage the ugliest passions within the GOP, dousing the embers of hate with kerosene. Among Trump’s most consequential legacies has been his deformation of the temperament and disposition of virtually the entire Republican Party.

I don’t mean to suggest the Republican Party pre-Trump was anything close to perfect. Like any political party, it had weaknesses, and its record was mixed. It was hardly the ideal embodiment of conservatism; no political party could be. But under Trump, the GOP has become a profoundly different, and a far more malicious, party. Within the Republican Party, from top to bottom, Trump has made cruelty and transgressiveness cool. And in the process, he killed American conservatism.

Trump has overturned many long-standing public-policy commitments of conservatives—supporting free trade, reforming entitlements, supporting foreign assistance to save lives and advance American interests, standing by NATO, and standing against Russian oppression at home and aggression abroad. But the deeper and more lasting damage he has done is to conservatism as a sensibility.

One of the most important figures in the history of conservatism is the 18th-century Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke. In Reflections on the Revolution in France, his most famous work, Burke warned about the dangers of a revolutionary zeal aimed at completely redesigning a civilization. Burke rightly feared it would unleash destructive passions and horrifying violence. . . . Burke’s key insight was that stripping civilizations of their beauty and sense of reverence would lead to spiritual impoverishment and, eventually, to terror. And like his contemporary Adam Smith, Burke believed that the cultivation of human sympathy, including the capacity to feel the pain of others, was essential to a good society.

British conservatism is somewhat different than American conservatism; the latter has traditionally been somewhat more forward-leaning, a bit more rights-based and ideological, and focused more on the individual as opposed to the community. . . . both recognize the importance of the education of character, the cultivation of decency, and the taming of the dark passions.

MAGA is not just antithetical to conservatism; it is at war with it. . . . At the core of the MAGA project and Trumpism is disruption and destruction, the delegitimization and razing of institutions, and the brutalization of opponents. Its leader, the president, abuses power, hurts the innocent, and mocks the dead before their families have even begun to grieve.

The MAGA ethic celebrates dehumanization. It is lawless, crude, and combative. Its entire ecosystem—social media, podcasts, and talk radio—is committed to spreading lies and conspiracy theories, to stoking rage and resentment. The disciples of the MAGA movement define themselves by what they hate much more than by what they love. They pursue culture wars with revolutionary zeal even as they vandalize our civic culture.

Trump and the key figures within the MAGA movement rejected conservatism not because they failed to understand conservatism well enough but because they understood it all too well. If conservatism is to ever again find a home in the GOP, it will be because the party decides that what is true and good and beautiful is indeed worth conserving. Right now the Republican Party is light-years away from that, and those who cherish conservatism should say so.

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Trump’s Hypocrisy on Religious Freedom

Like many in todays Republican Party and the MAGA universe, the Felon, his regime and the sycophants that surround him claim to be champions of "religious freedom."  The reality, however, demonstrates that this so-called support for "religious freedom" translates into special rights for right wing "Christians" and the demonization of those who do not subscribe to the Christofascists' agenda and beliefs, particularly Muslims. Also on the lists of targets are transgender Americans, members of the LGBT community and other religious minorities. Indeed, Project 2025 is a blueprint for increasing the rights of "conservative Christians" and bolstering white privilege.  It also plots ending same sex marriage, restricting voting rights and erasing separation of church and state as it pushes a de facto official religion based on Christofascist dogma.  The religious freedom of others, be they non-believers, atheists, liberal Christians and religious minorities, especially Muslims, are either trampled upon or erased.  A main editorial in the New York Times looks at the hypocrisy of the Felon and Republicans who bloviate about religious freedom, but despise the rights of others. Here are highlights:

The Trump administration holds itself up as a defender of religious freedom. It has created a Religious Liberty Commission, increased funding for faith-based schools and changed vaccine policies to allow more religious exemptions. It ordered a Christmas Day missile attack in Nigeria on what President Trump described as a terrorist group that was killing Christians. The administration has punished universities in the name of preventing antisemitism. “I’ve done more for religion than any other president,” the president claimed at the National Prayer Breakfast this year.

Yet there is an exception to this effort. Mr. Trump and his Republican Party appear uninterested in protecting the religious rights of Muslims. Instead, they are often hostile to Islam.

Their words are odious. As a presidential candidate, Mr. Trump called for a “Muslim ban” on entry to the United States, and a version of it remains in effect. “I think Islam hates us,” he has said. Several other Republican politicians have made similar statements in recent months.

“Islam is not a religion. It’s a cult,” Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama posted on social media. Representative Brandon Gill of Texas wrote, “Islam is incompatible with our culture and our governing system.” Representative Randy Fine of Florida called for “radical deportations of all mainstream Muslim legal and illegal immigrants and citizenship revocations wherever possible.” Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee — who has said that Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York should be expelled from the country — this month wrote that “Muslims don’t belong in American society.”

Of the Somali diaspora in the United States, the president said: “They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country.” He referred to them as “low-I.Q. people.” He described Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a Somali American, as “garbage” and said the United States should stop “taking in garbage.” He has directed similar ire at Afghan refugees, and his administration has smeared pro-Palestinian activists as terrorists.

The statements are particularly alarming when viewed in the context of Mr. Trump’s tendency to behave as an aspiring autocrat. Autocrats have a history of targeting vulnerable minority groups to justify their moves.

Recent events in Minnesota show how the scapegoating of a minority group can mushroom into broader violence. The Trump administration chose the state for an immigration crackdown last year, citing a government fraud scandal centered in the large Somali community there. The president unfairly maligned the full community for the scandal. The resulting crackdown led to the brutalization of many residents, both Muslim and not, immigrant and citizen, and to the killing of two protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Irrational fear of Shariah — a set of principles, based on the Quran, that guide life for Muslims, much as biblical precepts guide Christians and Jews — is another way in which anti-Muslim hate is translating into policy. Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas recently signed a law that would prevent what he called “Shariah compounds,” supposedly communities that are open only to Muslims and that subject their residents to religious law.

These efforts are based on ludicrously false pretenses. Extreme versions of Shariah are a problem in some countries, including Afghanistan and Iran, but they are not a threat in the United States. American Muslims are not attempting to impose Shariah principles on others. As Mustafa Akyol of the Cato Institute has noted, the recent proposals mimic anti-Catholic and anti-Mormon laws enacted in previous centuries. They are based on lies and are intended to scapegoat.

The millions of Americans who practice Islam are just as American as anyone else. They pay taxes, own businesses and serve in the armed forces. Many have been here for generations. Others upended their lives to move here, in some cases because of this country’s constitutional protection of religious freedom.

The surge of anti-Muslim hate has caused many of them to feel threatened in their own country. Some feel anxious about entering a mosque or wearing obvious signs of their faith. In Texas and other places where political leaders have spread hate, the fears can be acute.

Mr. Trump’s disparagement of Muslims is part of a broader pattern of bigotry by him. He has targeted Latinos and trans Americans, too. While he criticizes universities for tolerating antisemitism, he and other Republicans have allied themselves with some of the worst peddlers of anti-Jewish hate. Since he entered politics more than a decade ago, with a campaign kickoff speech full of anti-Mexican sentiments, a wide variety of hate crimes have surged, according to F.B.I. data.

In an editorial last year decrying the surge of antisemitism, we emphasized that not all accusations of discrimination are legitimate. . . . . A fundamental American principle is that people should be judged by their behavior, not their identity. Mr. Trump and too many other Republicans are instead besmirching an entire faith even as they claim to protect religious freedom.

Mr. Trump is prosecuting a war against Iran, which identifies as an Islamic republic and has an overwhelmingly Muslim population. His planning for that war has been reckless, and his explanations of its aims have been contradictory. Combined with the surge of anti-Muslim bigotry from Republicans, the attack on Iran has the potential to look like a war against Islam. Certainly, the bigotry weakens America’s position in the world, especially with heavily Muslim countries, including American partners like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

The attacks against Islam and Muslims from Mr. Trump and other Republicans are shameful. They are filled with lies. They deserve denunciation from all Americans, regardless of politics or religion.

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