Havoc and the Dogs of War: Here We Go??

So we are now one incident closer to armed conflict with Iran. This is serious, and may be the foreign crisis that many have feared Trump would stumble into and drag us down with him! As I predicted and worried about in my May 17 blog post, all it takes is one incident like the current Iranian downing of a US reconnaissance drone (on top of the several recent attacks on tankers in the Persian Gulf) to possibly tip us into a military response, which could then escalate into a disastrous major armed conflict. This was all too predictable as a consequence of the Moron-in-Chief’s imbecilic and politically motivated withdrawal of the US from the multilateral Iran nuclear agreement and ramping up of sanctions not only on Iran but on our allies who had limited trading with Iran under the treaty. As with everything he does, Trump obviously has no coherent and well-reasoned strategy for dealing with Iran, only his perceived political self-interest, which he often determines by gut instinct. Trump clearly does not want a war, which he believes would be a political disaster for him (which may or may not be the case… wars have a way of unifying the public behind a leader, on both sides!), but he has allowed himself to be blindly led into this situation by advisors like Bolton et al, obviously assuming (with typical hubris) that he would always be able to control events, and has now put himself and all of us in a position in which backing down will make him & the US look weak, which he also will not be able to tolerate. Trump is trying to give himself and the Iranians an out by saying that a rogue military actor may have been responsible for this or that someone made a mistake in targeting the drone, but Iran is just not going for that. There is no sign that Iran is about to back down, and unfortunately there are elements within the Iranian regime as well as our own who are itching for a battle. If he isn’t already, Trump could easily find himself backed into a corner with no way out other than a military response, which could lead events to spiral out of his or anyone else’s control! This is exactly why we need someone with both actual foreign policy experience and a brain who is not a pathologic narcissist in the Oval Office! It is also no surprise that most of our allies have been hesitant to back us up on any of the recent events in the Persian Gulf, given how Trump has alienated them over the Iran nuclear deal and many other things, resulting in a serious credibility deficit. They may be all too happy to sit on the sidelines and watch the US go into this abyss alone. One country probably celebrating all this and egging Trump on is Saudi Arabia! Israel is also probably on board. This is also the worst possible timing in terms of the Defense Dept. being in transition between just ACTING Secretaries! And what about Congress in all of this? Over the previous decades, Congress has ceded most of its role in these kinds of decisions to the White House, probably mostly to avoid any political blame. How far will Congress let Trump go in terms of military conflict without feeling the need to approve or block it? Despite grumblings from several of them, I think the Republicans would mostly roll over and play dead, i.e. go along with anything Trump wants to do, and just hope that it doesn’t eventually make them look bad to their base. Lyndsey Graham has already actually come out in support of a military response! Although they certainly need to sound every available alarm against rushing into another disastrous war, if the Democrats try to block or defund a conflict already in progress, they would probably be labeled as unpatriotic, and would have to keep playing defense. One thing is certain: this would definitely be a MAJOR distraction from House Democrats’ attempts to investigate Trump, which he would certainly relish!