Goddamn this GOP asshole and everyone who supports him:
Last week, during an interview with PBS News, the top adviser to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the truth – that Trump doesn't care about winning, only the appearance of winning – is clear. Because it's clear, Tehran believes it can do what it pleases with the Strait of Hormuz, and the rest of the Gulf region, while dismissing Donald Trump as an irrelevance.
When asked if Iran plans to wait until he's gone, Mohammad Reza Naqdi said yes. "We have to attain deterrence so that the enemy never dares to attack us, so that we can live with security. One way is to prolong this war until we get to the next term of the presidency."
This should be a banner headline. No one alive can remember a time when the American president was ignored! And this isn't just bluster. The cause-and-effect is obvious. The Iranians do not fear Trump. They believe he is a paper tiger who can be hand-waved away. So they have closed the strait and may keep it closed for the balance of Trump's term, creating two more years' worth of highly volatile and unpredictable global economic conditions.
Perhaps more disturbing is the fact that God-levels of money cannot in the future defend America against determined adversaries, not when the commander-in-chief is exposed as a paper tiger. "We need to face facts that the US military is in terrible shape and it will continue to get worse under the present leadership," wrote military historian Phillips O'Brien last week. "This is in some ways the greatest scandal in US history. The US has spent about $9 trillion on defense since 2016, and has created this deeply flawed, deteriorating force.”
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