As someone who was around for the runup to Iraq, at least when war boosters would say “but wouldn’t it be good to get rid of a leader as evil as Saddam?”, they had the rhetorical advantage that it was clear we could actually achieve that, and we soon did. When boosters today say “but wouldn’t it be good to get rid of the regime?” or “wouldn’t it be good to keep Iran from getting a nuke?”, they aren’t saying how this war will achieve those goals. It’s just like, here are goals that would take a war to achieve, we are fighting a war, ergo we are fighting towards these goals.
The Iraq War looks like a masterclass in civics compared to today. Bush gave everyone ample chance to object to the Iraq War. He announced what he was going to do, then there was an election, and then Congress authorized action.
"isn’t it a problem that Trump has made it clear that he actually wants Iran to pump oil — he’s letting them sell oil right now during the war! Strangely, both sides share a goal: Iran wants to sell oil for money, and Trump wants them to sell oil so that gas prices are low. This undermines Trump’s leverage"
This. Seems to me the moment we didn't stop Iran from selling oil when they stopped everyone else, we showed we didn't "have the cards". There is no value to endangering marines taking Kharg island - all we have to do is say we won't allow any Iranian ships (or ships that paid Iran) to pass through Hormuz unless Iran does. An important part of this plan is starving the Iranian regime for income. Now they're making way more than they were pre-war. If we weren't willing to deal with gas prices going up a couple dollars to overthrow the Iranian regime then we shouldn't have gone there at all. This is why we aren't supposed to have wars without consulting the people via congress - war always sucks, and you need buy in, otherwise you're screwed.
Working backwards, the admin wanted to decapitate Iran until it had leaders at least nominally friendly to us, like what happened in Venezuela, without destroying their oil ability. The oil was supposed to keep flowing, just not to our enemies.
It's not a bad plan written on paper. But whoever had the idea wasn't aware of the ability of Iran to apply pressure on its own. Now Trump wants to make it someone else's fault that nothing is going through the Strait.
The base stupidity is that the SPR wasn't refilled before this war. It wouldn't even have given anything away. It's not hard or even suspicious for a Republican president to start hoarding oil.
Not superstition--impatience. Preparing for something is definitionally incompatible with doing it *right now*, which is always and forever his only impulse towards whatever happens to hold his fancy.
The Day after January 6th, Thiessen repeatedly said that Trump should never hold public office again. For months after that, he argued that Trump should not be the Republican Candidate for President. Once Trump was nominated, Thiessen went back into Cheerleader-for-Trump mode again. Maybe he has a mortgage, and can't get work writing anything else.
> Okay, so we’re at the 20 yard line, but we’re facing, like, the ‘85 Bears’ defense, and we have no time outs, and our quarterback has just been diagnosed with a rare blood disease.
It took me a minute to realize that those were apostrophes and not single quotes. 😂
Yeah, Thiessen's confidence, real or pretended, is hard to watch. I used to read him, grudgingly, during the Biden years, so as to have some right-wing content in my media diet.
After four years of exquisite sensitivity on how allies would react if Biden put any restriction whatsoever on Ukraine aid, he thought Zelensky was to blame in the Oval Office, excused the Anchorage meeting with Putin as a well-intentioned gesture towards peace, and when that fell apart, he confidently wrote Trump would now put pressure on Russia. The aid didn't even resume, but that didn't put a dent in his wide-eye optimism.
Exactly, Telenil. After every Trump gesture of appeasement, Thiessen suggested that was just smart negotiation and giving Putin one more chance and Trump would soon get tough. Then Putin continued to spit in our eye, Trump continued to excuse him, so Thiessen just changed the topic to some alleged “woke” offense or the MSM being unfair to Trump. Though I wouldn’t call it “wide-eyed optimism”; I’d call it depraved cynicism.
"After all, I’m arguably “on the cusp” of becoming a Spanish-language rap star — it just depends on how many events you’re willing to cram into the word 'cusp'."
I appreciate your taking apart Mark Theissen, but you risk giving too much credit. Everything he writes is, at best, specious nonsense and, at worst, mean-spirited lies. He’s like Jonathan Turley. They belong on Newsmax.
Every time Trump has crossed the line from January 6, to appeasement of Russia and hostility to Ukraine, to threatening our allies on Greenland, and now to this, the craven Thiessen has come up with a justification, no matter how inconsistent with any past position. I don’t know how he sleeps night but now he’s the only writer left at the Post with job security, at least for the next 3 years because Bezos could never fire the in-house Trump mouthpiece.
It is so funny that many non MAGA but classic neocon type ppl fall for literally the same shit and gets extremely defensive about any criticism about the current war effort and this seems like a perfect example of it!
Like there’s a guy who declared “MSM are assisting terrorist” because “they described Iran holds a resolution despite being kicked in the ass” like come on, I don’t disagree msm are not supportive the war at all and MSM has a lot of credibility issues to be introspective about but being mad at them for describing Iran to “hold a resolution” and call them terrorist organization is really nuts lol
The Day after January 6th, Thiessen repeatedly said that Trump should never hold public office again. For months after that, he argued that Trump should not be the Republican Candidate for President. Once Trump was nominated, Thiessen went back into Cheerleader-for-Trump mode again. Maybe he has a mortgage, and can't get work writing anything else.
I think you are missing GEN Keane’s point. He isn’t using double speak like you are accusing Thiessen of (and fair point). He’s simply pointing out very aggressive operational-level objectives. Then he says “if” it succeeds, then hey give credit where credit is due. And he’s right. He then predicts Trump and his team will not get the due credit “if” this is successful. And he’s probably right about that too.
I had a similar reaction so I looked up the source of the quote to see if perhaps Thiessen was reading too much into it, and nope--General Keane was a guest on Thiessen's AEI podcast last week, where he proclaimed the operation is "exceeding expectations" before promising that "[e]very single one of [Trump's] objectives will be achieved to include opening the Strait of Hormuz by force and keeping it open." The conditional "would" language is in the vein of "when," not "if," Trump totally conquers Iran.
I played basketball with Pete for one season before switching to playing football. I think Pete’s use of football metaphors are spot on if Pete is using Princeton football circa ‘99-‘02 as the example. Our air assault in the open field was awesome when our jet-like receivers had room to run. But, our ground game was limited for those last few yards…if only the defensive lineman of the opponents had no hands - what’s up with that Dall-E image! 😂
As someone who was around for the runup to Iraq, at least when war boosters would say “but wouldn’t it be good to get rid of a leader as evil as Saddam?”, they had the rhetorical advantage that it was clear we could actually achieve that, and we soon did. When boosters today say “but wouldn’t it be good to get rid of the regime?” or “wouldn’t it be good to keep Iran from getting a nuke?”, they aren’t saying how this war will achieve those goals. It’s just like, here are goals that would take a war to achieve, we are fighting a war, ergo we are fighting towards these goals.
The Iraq War looks like a masterclass in civics compared to today. Bush gave everyone ample chance to object to the Iraq War. He announced what he was going to do, then there was an election, and then Congress authorized action.
Amazing how things used to work.
"isn’t it a problem that Trump has made it clear that he actually wants Iran to pump oil — he’s letting them sell oil right now during the war! Strangely, both sides share a goal: Iran wants to sell oil for money, and Trump wants them to sell oil so that gas prices are low. This undermines Trump’s leverage"
This. Seems to me the moment we didn't stop Iran from selling oil when they stopped everyone else, we showed we didn't "have the cards". There is no value to endangering marines taking Kharg island - all we have to do is say we won't allow any Iranian ships (or ships that paid Iran) to pass through Hormuz unless Iran does. An important part of this plan is starving the Iranian regime for income. Now they're making way more than they were pre-war. If we weren't willing to deal with gas prices going up a couple dollars to overthrow the Iranian regime then we shouldn't have gone there at all. This is why we aren't supposed to have wars without consulting the people via congress - war always sucks, and you need buy in, otherwise you're screwed.
Working backwards, the admin wanted to decapitate Iran until it had leaders at least nominally friendly to us, like what happened in Venezuela, without destroying their oil ability. The oil was supposed to keep flowing, just not to our enemies.
It's not a bad plan written on paper. But whoever had the idea wasn't aware of the ability of Iran to apply pressure on its own. Now Trump wants to make it someone else's fault that nothing is going through the Strait.
The base stupidity is that the SPR wasn't refilled before this war. It wouldn't even have given anything away. It's not hard or even suspicious for a Republican president to start hoarding oil.
They really believed it would be a cakewalk and Trump has a superstitious aversion to preparing for contingencies.
Not superstition--impatience. Preparing for something is definitionally incompatible with doing it *right now*, which is always and forever his only impulse towards whatever happens to hold his fancy.
The Day after January 6th, Thiessen repeatedly said that Trump should never hold public office again. For months after that, he argued that Trump should not be the Republican Candidate for President. Once Trump was nominated, Thiessen went back into Cheerleader-for-Trump mode again. Maybe he has a mortgage, and can't get work writing anything else.
> Okay, so we’re at the 20 yard line, but we’re facing, like, the ‘85 Bears’ defense, and we have no time outs, and our quarterback has just been diagnosed with a rare blood disease.
It took me a minute to realize that those were apostrophes and not single quotes. 😂
Yeah, Thiessen's confidence, real or pretended, is hard to watch. I used to read him, grudgingly, during the Biden years, so as to have some right-wing content in my media diet.
After four years of exquisite sensitivity on how allies would react if Biden put any restriction whatsoever on Ukraine aid, he thought Zelensky was to blame in the Oval Office, excused the Anchorage meeting with Putin as a well-intentioned gesture towards peace, and when that fell apart, he confidently wrote Trump would now put pressure on Russia. The aid didn't even resume, but that didn't put a dent in his wide-eye optimism.
He’s just a shill
Exactly, Telenil. After every Trump gesture of appeasement, Thiessen suggested that was just smart negotiation and giving Putin one more chance and Trump would soon get tough. Then Putin continued to spit in our eye, Trump continued to excuse him, so Thiessen just changed the topic to some alleged “woke” offense or the MSM being unfair to Trump. Though I wouldn’t call it “wide-eyed optimism”; I’d call it depraved cynicism.
This made me laugh!
"After all, I’m arguably “on the cusp” of becoming a Spanish-language rap star — it just depends on how many events you’re willing to cram into the word 'cusp'."
See you on Karg Island this summer! BYOB by the way.....
Sounds rad! (Except for the BYOB part)
Well I doubt the Iranians have much stocked there themselves . . .
Bring Your Own Bombs?
LOL didn't see that one coming! 😅
I appreciate your taking apart Mark Theissen, but you risk giving too much credit. Everything he writes is, at best, specious nonsense and, at worst, mean-spirited lies. He’s like Jonathan Turley. They belong on Newsmax.
Every time Trump has crossed the line from January 6, to appeasement of Russia and hostility to Ukraine, to threatening our allies on Greenland, and now to this, the craven Thiessen has come up with a justification, no matter how inconsistent with any past position. I don’t know how he sleeps night but now he’s the only writer left at the Post with job security, at least for the next 3 years because Bezos could never fire the in-house Trump mouthpiece.
It is so funny that many non MAGA but classic neocon type ppl fall for literally the same shit and gets extremely defensive about any criticism about the current war effort and this seems like a perfect example of it!
Like there’s a guy who declared “MSM are assisting terrorist” because “they described Iran holds a resolution despite being kicked in the ass” like come on, I don’t disagree msm are not supportive the war at all and MSM has a lot of credibility issues to be introspective about but being mad at them for describing Iran to “hold a resolution” and call them terrorist organization is really nuts lol
The Day after January 6th, Thiessen repeatedly said that Trump should never hold public office again. For months after that, he argued that Trump should not be the Republican Candidate for President. Once Trump was nominated, Thiessen went back into Cheerleader-for-Trump mode again. Maybe he has a mortgage, and can't get work writing anything else.
Maybe the Administration misunderstood the blooper reel of George Sr.'s Caged Wisdom as well and are taking faith as a fact.
I believe you're thinking of Tiffani Amber Thiessen. She always looks at the bright side!
I am often thinking of Tiffani Amber Thiessen.
I think you are missing GEN Keane’s point. He isn’t using double speak like you are accusing Thiessen of (and fair point). He’s simply pointing out very aggressive operational-level objectives. Then he says “if” it succeeds, then hey give credit where credit is due. And he’s right. He then predicts Trump and his team will not get the due credit “if” this is successful. And he’s probably right about that too.
I had a similar reaction so I looked up the source of the quote to see if perhaps Thiessen was reading too much into it, and nope--General Keane was a guest on Thiessen's AEI podcast last week, where he proclaimed the operation is "exceeding expectations" before promising that "[e]very single one of [Trump's] objectives will be achieved to include opening the Strait of Hormuz by force and keeping it open." The conditional "would" language is in the vein of "when," not "if," Trump totally conquers Iran.
https://whatthehellisgoingon.substack.com/p/wth-the-iran-war-all-the-details
I played basketball with Pete for one season before switching to playing football. I think Pete’s use of football metaphors are spot on if Pete is using Princeton football circa ‘99-‘02 as the example. Our air assault in the open field was awesome when our jet-like receivers had room to run. But, our ground game was limited for those last few yards…if only the defensive lineman of the opponents had no hands - what’s up with that Dall-E image! 😂
I gave DallE several tries and that was the best one. It’s good if you don’t look at it too closely.
I . . . looked too closely. My God. I shall forever be haunted by the mutilation of that poor center.