Recently, El Presidente (at this point does it matter what we call him?) used his favorite form of mass communication to announce “95% Approval Rating in the Republican Party. Thank you!” There’s no need to draw crooked battle lines between the left and the right, everyone breathing knows what political time it is. But, boy howdy, how the two parties view the Iran situation is telling. The only word to describe this melee is “yikes.”
We can all agree Soleimani was a bad hombre. No one is painting this dude with a splash of rainbow paint. He wanted us all in coffins. That’s not up for debate. (Save for a few Hollywood airheads.) While the feel-goods of killing another enemy of the state rattles the sabers of the GOP base, what followed should give America the heebie-jeebies.
We dodged a literal bullet, kids. Trump is not a leader. He’s a guy who broke protocol with Congress and his leadership and made a super risky call and got away with it. He also threatened to blow up cultural sites, which is also a big no-no, post-World War II for the obvious reasons. The Iran situation worked in Trump’s favor because it has no teeth. Iran doesn’t have the military capabilities to match the US. Their two closest allies aren’t in a position to support them. Russia is a shadow of its former glory, and we all know how much Trump adores Putin. China hasn’t been in a war in decades. While we’ve been fighting, they’ve been building and growing.
While the feel-goods of killing another enemy of the state rattles the sabers of the GOP base, what followed should give America the heebie-jeebies.
Iran told its people via state tv there were 80 US casualties. But back in the real world, there were no bodies and they gave the Iraqis a heads up the missiles were coming. They didn’t bother trying to mask anything, knowing full well that the US would intercept the message as easy as hearing their Big Mac order read back to them at the drive-thru. Trump got his base revved up for his 2020 campaign and showed war-loving Republicans he can walk the walk when it comes to flying a drone, just like his predecessor. (See a lefty can admit Obama wasn’t perfect.)
The Republican base hates the middle east and all things Muslim. People on Facebook still think Obama was a terrorist plant and that he tried to elicit Sharia law across the country. Any punch to the gut of a brown, non-Christian is seen as a moral victory.
The reason Democrats won’t give Trump the win is that what would have happened if this was with a legit, powerful enemy? We don’t trust him. Anyone with common sense shouldn’t trust the guy. We’ve somehow survived his presidency. Most of us would like to walk away going, “what the hell was that?” like a bad night out. Trump isn’t mentally designed to lead the country, he’s a huckster whose tax records will be fought over in the Supreme Court. If you’re working that hard to hide something, it stinks. No one wants war with Iran, and hopefully, we can avoid it therein. The reasons for killing Soleimani were paper thin. Even a few GOP senators admitted it. More US troops don’t need to die for a pointless war. We’ve already been engaged in two of those. Trump got lucky. Who’s to say the next go-round will end as easily? Only time will tell in a news cycle that moves this fast. It's hard to keep up.
