Trump's Madness

This is a companion piece to my “Israel’s Madness” article from last month. Please don’t be mad :)

America’s actions in the last few months appear insane. In this article, I’ll attempt to find the method to this madness and see how this soap opera plot can be untangled.

This is a challenging task for me because while I feel qualified to delve into the Israeli soul, I feel less qualified to delve into the American soul. Nevertheless, without some soul-searching, this article would be pointless.

War is always a spiritual matter.

For Iran, the war is a cosmic conflict between good and evil that will determine the future of the universe. For America, it’s a balance-sheet item. That’s why Iranians are willing to suffer great hardship for victory while Americans reject even the smallest discomfort.

Belief in righteousness is a powerful weapon. Whoever wishes to win a war, must be spiritually armed. If your enemy is willing to starve while you’re not willing to even pay 10 cents more for gas, then your military advantage won’t bring you victory, it will only make your defeat more shameful.

Bush was probably the last president who saw the world in terms of good and evil.

He didn’t go to Iraq and Afghanistan because it would enrich the American empire. He went there because it was the morally correct thing to do. He was able to do this because he had a powerful mandate from the shock of 9/11. The American people were angry and were willing to act emotionally

It doesn’t matter if Bush was right or wrong. The important thing is that he was spiritually armed.

Trump, on the other hand, is a pure materialist.

So why would a person who doesn’t believe in good and evil start a war against a nation 10,000 kilometers away that most Americans barely care about? Simply to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons? How would you explain operation Midnight Hammer then?

This is a weak reason.

I’m almost certain Trump was misinformed by the sycophants that surround him about Iran’s level of stability. This was exacerbated by the very loud Iranian expat community, who’re masters of passing off their lurid fantasies as reality to clueless Westerners.

What he thought would be a walk in the park leading to an easy victory that would appeal to his greed and vanity turned out to be a real war, and he was not prepared for it. The American people were not prepared for it.

In a way, Trump is a bright reflection of Putin: the same yet opposite.

Both believed a small tap would cause the enemy government to collapse and for the people to greet them as saviors. When this didn’t happen, Putin chose to double down, Trump chose to cut his losses and run.

Sunk cost fallacy vs. shiny object syndrome.

Trump made zero effort to market this war to the American people as anything bigger than the operation in Venezuela. As a result, most Americans didn’t view it as a war; they viewed it as a business transaction.

People are willing to make sacrifices for a moral goal. Ten million Israelis were certainly willing to spend months under Iranian missiles for the goal of crushing the great force of evil in the world called Iran. But for a business transaction? Why would they? Why would anyone?

Because Trump was so certain the slightest tap would result in a regime change, he didn’t start the war with a debilitating blow. That makes sense. If tomorrow these people are going to become your allies, why destroy factories and oilfields that could enrich you?

This is why Trump avoided destroying Kharg island and other vital infrastructure in a quick and ruthless strike before going back home and declaring that Iran was “punished.” While this would not have resulted in a regime change, it would have severely weakened Iran. Not a bad deal.

Instead, he got the worst of both worlds: he neither “punished” Iran by totally destroying their economy, nor did he “convert” Iran by causing a regime change. The only thing he achieved is entangle the US in an unpopular war.

This by definition made him a loser.

Trump keeps blathering about how many Iranian ships the US sank and how missile launchers were destroyed, but the winner in a war is not whoever inflicted more damage on the enemy. It’s whoever managed to impose his will on the enemy.

However, there is something that makes the situation even worse for him.

The Iranians saw Trump was desperate to end the war and so they demanded that he pressured Israel to stop the operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon as well. Hezbollah right now is Iran’s main asset in the Middle East and losing it would be ruinous to their imperial ambitions.

In reality, what Iran demands is that the US give them Lebanon as a territorial gain.

Basically, Iran went on the offensive and took the fight to the enemy through purely diplomatic means. Weakness invites aggression, and from their perspective Trump is only strong against his allies. This is certainly the image he’s been cultivating for the past couple of years.

The problem is that Israelis are in a different spiritual position right now.

They have been burned painfully in 2023 and see this conflict as a moral war for which they are willing to make big sacrifices. Most Israelis see the war with Iran and its proxies as a spiritual conflict between good and evil.

Israelis are sick of rounds. They are sick of putting out 99% of the fire, and then being told to stop until the fire reaches 50% again. They are sick of ceasefire that only serve as preludes for the next war. Israelis want actual peace.

So now Trump is trapped between two sides who are spiritually armed while he himself is total disarmed. He is a man who brought a balance sheet to a gunfight.

He has all the power in the world and yet no power at all.

The same is true for the West.

During WWII, supply ships went across the Atlantic risking a huge chance of being sunk by the Germans, but people were willing to accept this risk because they were fighting a moral war. No one said, “we should stop supplying Europe because the insurance is too high.”

Meanwhile, modern ships are unwilling to go through the Red Sea or the Strait of Hormuz despite the chance of being damaged by Iranian drones and missiles is orders of magnitude smaller.

The West is trying to apply business rules to war and this simply doesn’t work.

That’s why a weak nation like Iran, that actually treats this war as a war, keeps winning against people who could pulverize it in an instant. That’s why a pathetic bunch of savages like the Houthis can terrorize the whole world. That’s why the greatest military in world history achieved nothing in four months of fighting a third world shithole.

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