Two quotations for you, long and short. Who said these things?
1. ... a future where the Middle East is defined by commerce, not chaos; where it exports technology, not terrorism; and where people of different nations, religions, and creeds are building cities together, not bombing each other out of existence. We don’t want that.... The gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called nation-builders, neocons or liberal nonprofits like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop Kabul, Baghdad, so many other cities. Instead, the birth of a modern Middle East has been brought by the people of the region themselves, the people that are right here, the people that have lived here all their lives - developing your own sovereign countries, pursuing your own unique visions, and charting your own destinies in your own way ... the so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves. They told you how to do it, but they had no idea how to do it themselves ... it’s something only you could do.
2. Despite employing some of the best and brightest analysts in the world, the advice given by the US State Department over the last fifty years could comfortably have been outperformed by a parrot that had been trained to repeat the phrase 'Don't start a war'.
The first, of course, is Trump. One could give many more quotations from that speech: "my greatest hope is to be a peacemaker and to be a unifier. I don’t like war / my greatest hope is to be a peacemaker and a unifier / far too many American presidents have been afflicted with the notion that it’s our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use US policy to dispense justice for their sins" etc etc, and feel like applauding it.
Ho hum. Trump talks a lot, and even the scripted speeches like the one above incorporate the usual mendacious, vainglorious narcissism which makes one glad one isn't a US military cadet, forced to listen to him and realise he's the Commander in Chief. Here are a couple, if you have the time: the first, from May last year, is actually the source of 1. above but this other, from November, is truly embarrassing and has virtually no redeeming features whatever. The judgmental decline had really set in by then, and it's only linked to here by way of illustration of how bad things are.
Yes, the prescient parrot of quote #2 has been well and truly stuffed. (It's from a writer called Dan Davies in The Unaccountability Machine.)
ND
This really is a war difficult to predict what'll happen tomorrow, let alone how it ends.
ReplyDeleteI'm rather taken that a lot of the claims of "they really want to make a deal" is not about the Iranians, but the various Inside Out emotions in Trump's noggin, bouncing about his rotting brain feverishly hitting panic buttons.
The amount of insider trading going on is horrific, and we're about to find out if the new Polymarket wallets are good predictors of events.
Four weeks ago my initial reaction was "Dear God, not again!"
ReplyDeleteI'm still of much the same view. Whatever the outcomes turn out to be - even if Iran throws its cards in tomorrow - it was a wildly reckless adventure to launch.
I suppose the Americans' best chance of escaping a complete humiliation is if the revolutionary ruling class decides to try to preserve the wealth it has presumably accumulated over the last four decades. Slowly then suddenly.
One thing I know nothing about is how life is for the people. Are they anywhere near mass impoverishment, for instance? And would it matter if they were? Search me.
"Are they anywhere near mass impoverishment?"
DeleteChurchill - "revolutions are not made by starving men".
Churchill was right about the US and French revolutions. Russia too, I expect. How about the continental ones in 1848? I don't know much about them.
Delete@ Are they anywhere near mass impoverishment, for instance?
ReplyDeleteYes the basic economics can be very significant.
I once met Shapour Bakhtiar, last PM of Iran under the Shah, in his Paris exile. He said that the way the Ayatollahs initially took root was essentially via economics. On arrival (from his own exile - in Paris too, of course) Khomeini took himself off to Qom, and wasn't seen for many months. No fatwahs, no morality police or anything much: but his people quietly took charge, and did something clever.
They immediately stopped the humungous arms payments (for US jets and Chieftan tanks and much more besides); rehabilitated the Iranian oil engineers who had been excoriated for being in league with the wicked American oil co's and had gone to ground - in order to get the oil flowing again pronto - and fed the money back into the economy in such a way that the ordinary family felt the benefit. After a couple of years, the Man in the Tehran Street was looking around saying, y'know what, this ain't so bad.
Then Khomeini came down from the mountain and started laying about him with decrees and fatwahs and the like. And it was too late to stop him: his people had also take over the police etc etc.
Poor old Bakhtiar was assassinated, in Paris, a few years later. I've visited his grave in Montparnasse.
ND............you've been/visited/observed the ME.
ReplyDeleteAs Have I
Outside of the billionaires pavillions, airports, golf courses, hotels & shopping malls,
One has to wonder
just wtf has all the revenue obtained from oil gone ?
An interstellar visitor might wonder why we still run our politics on the Bully/Warlord/King principle. Selecting for the crudest most competitive types. A sensible system would have confined Trump and Netanyahu to the galleys or the coal mines.
ReplyDeletePerhaps a psychiatric test is required of all political leaders - but how and by whom?
We seem at an awkward time in history, very few really good new inventions, no new cheap resources to produce power and feedstocks. The Europeans stuck with an 18th century model of government, our highest aspirations being Georgian Rectories, Versailles etc. The Americans on the last gasp of global capitalism, their highest aspiration being Disney and Mar a Largo. The Chinese still working on their model.
In the absence of any route to growth our Civil Service, BBC and social structures cannot find a productive use for huge numbers of intelligent people. The devil makes work for idle minds and we have the obvious rise of Woke and the turning of Law against any semi sensible policies. Nothing better to do. We truly are Over Managed and Under Governed.
"Selecting for the crudest most competitive types"
ReplyDeleteEvolution?
“The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears, to clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.” as the Great Khan put it. He also thought that the three conditions of a good life were a horse to ride, a woman to love and an enemy to hate.
I've seen two marvellous explanations today of Trump's current mental state.
ReplyDelete(i) It's not Trump, it's a "body double". The real Trump is in a cavern somewhere. To be fair the same chap always argued that President Vegetable was a team of "doubles" too.
(ii) It is Trump and he's suffering from tertiary syphilis.
And I've just seen a third: the proposal that Netanyahu has threatened to have Trump assassinated.
Delete@ just wtf has all the revenue obtained from oil gone ?
ReplyDeleteOh come on, Anon @ 9:05. Sovereign Wealth Funds! Which own half of the west. Where do you think all those billions upon billions came from, that Trump boasts about having attracted to "the hottest country in the world" ??("well, second only to Saudi Arabia" - joke, © DJ Trump 2025)
At least we get to laugh at American military gurgle, frinstance: "The loss of this E-3 is incredibly problematic, given how crucial these battle managers are to everything from airspace deconfliction, aircraft deconfliction, targeting, and providing other lethal effects that the entire force needs for the battle space, ..."
ReplyDeleteUS are doing quick tendering for prefab infantry blast shelters, so looks like escalation time. Incidentally it appears that Ukraine might be sending their drones to the Leningrad region via Poland and the Baltic States, unless Belarus radars are totally non-functional. Interesting times ...
ReplyDeleteAll a bit of a mess. Netanyahu is making hay while the sun shines, nothing to stop him.
ReplyDeleteBut the US military planners have got a problem, what to do and how. Stick it out and just wait for Iran to weaken? Or go gung ho? Or send a nuke (you made me do it guys)?
Just wait is cool, OK so RoW screams blue murder but Trump says 'help me out then' - cue sullen silence. Gung Ho is more vexed, how will your average grunt feel about putting boots on ground for Trumpy? I am not very brave and would be inclined to say 'no mate'. Or send a nuke - just a little one - to save American lives etc etc. A bit controversial but that is Trump for you. Neither Russia nor China is going to stop him.
How will all this play come the Mid Terms. Option 1 is good, those Uropeens didn't help out so I let them stew. Option 2 not so good, perhaps make a try, see how it goes and move to Option 3. Option 3 brings the screamers and pinko banner wavers out but could be spun to good effect - if it works.
What would I do if I were Iran? How will it all look in two years time? I reckon there is a shortish window for compromise or it gets ugly.
The various excuses as to why Trump is suddenly going full Dubya are amusing, but as Freud almost said: sometimes a fucking idiot is just a fucking idiot.
ReplyDeleteDo the markets close for Easter? If so, Thursday evening, US time, could be interesting. There are Polymarket bets on troops going in between April 1st and April 30th.
In other news, our first AI fiscal event looks to upon us - and it's not the bubble popping - it's private lending being caught pants round ankles.