MilPub

So just the other day we were talking about the...whatever the fuck the Trumpkins are doing in the Persian Gulf that's not-a-war.

(Here's Mike "My Balls Are In A Drawer In The Resolute Desk" Johnson today: "We're not at war, we have no intention, we have no intention at being at war. The president and the Department of Defense have made it very clear, this is a limited operation.". So it's a "limited operation"? A "punitive expedition"? A cabinet war...no, it's not! It's not a war! IT'S NOT A WAR!

Not a war. Are we clear on that now?)

Sure. Okay.

Anyway, the historical examples we discussed as looking real similar to whatever-this-is included Libya and Syria because 1) the U.S. part of those wars was largely limited to airstrikes, and because of that 2) they largely just resulted in dead and maimed people and blown up buildings and destroyed military things like tanks and aircraft, leaving behind nothing but chaotic failed states that served principally to spread disorder and violence to nearby parts of North Africa and the Levant.

Now.

Just having soldiers to occupy the targeted polities doesn't promise success, either; Iraq is the test case for how you can send a bunch of guys to walk around with weapons and still have no fucking clue how to use them effectively.

But experience (and common sense) would suggest that if the actual end state for - let's us at least be honest and call it what it is- the Fourth Gulf War is something other than "chaotic failed state" someone's are going to have to actually go into Iran and make claim to the actual physical ground, buildings, animals, and people. In war, as in any tort, possession is nine-tenths of the Law, and infantry are the bailiff's men.

Do any of these wanna-be Iran filibusterers wandering around the blanket fort at Mar-a-Lago have a plan for that?

Well...supposedly the spooks at the CIA do:

"The CIA is working to arm Kurdish forces with the aim of fomenting a popular uprising in Iran, multiple people familiar with the plan told CNN. The Trump administration has been in active discussions with Iranian opposition groups and Kurdish leaders in Iraq about providing them with military support, the sources said."

If so, then we're out of Libyan territory and closer to Syria, where the anti-Assad rebellion included Kurdish soldiers aligned with the U.S. (who were then abandoned by the U.S. when they became inconvenient to U.S.-Turkish relations, so I'm not sure they'd be the right people to ask about this cunning CIA plan).

What this Kurdish Free Iranian Army idea reminds me more than anything else is the early stages of the Afghanistan incursion, when the idea was to "go in light", using only U.S. Special Forces to augment the "Northern Alliance", an outfit largely made up of - as the name says - the northern tribes in Afghanistan; Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras.

Which wouldn't have been a problem, except for that the largest, most influential, and traditionally most powerful group in Afghanistan has always been the traditional rivals of those groups, the Pashtun, who also comprised the bulk of the Taliban that were the target of the 2001 invasion.

Enlisting the northern tribes meant that even after the Taliban was driven out of the major cities into the mountains of the Afghan southeast the locals who remained behind, the population that the U.S.-led occupying force and the Afghan regime it supported, were mostly Pashtun and were unlikely to cozy up to these damn outsiders. Afghanistan might be the most extreme form of "me and my brother against my cousin; me, my brother, and my cousin against the outsider" kind of clannishness.

So if the Pashtun didn't rally to the government in Kabul - and they largely didn't, for a number of reasons but tribal loyalties being a major part of them - the chance of getting far enough ahead of the Taliban counter-occupation insurgency was slim, at best.

We know how that worked out.

What's the story in Iran? What would sending a Kurdish proxy force into Tehran look like?

Here's a Reader's Digest version of the ethnic makeup of modern Iran: 

Pre-modern Iran was known a "Persia", and the people who lived and live there are Farsi-speaking Indo-Europeans (closely related to Afghanistan's Tajiks, in fact). "Persians" are about 60% of the population of the modern country.

The second-largest group of people are Azerbaijanis, a Turkic-related , that make somewhere between 15% and 20% of the country. The Kurds are about 10%, and there's a couple of percent of various smaller groups like "Lurs", Baluchis, Turks, and Arabs.

What does that mean for a Kurdish "Western Alliance" on the ground in Iran?

Not much good.

 A Iranian Kurdish-led ground force wouldn't be much different to the rest of Iran than an Iraqi or, for that matter, a Saudi or Jordanian army. Or how a bunch of Tajiks or Hazaras walking around Pashtun territory were in Afghanistan. 

They'd be outsiders.

 

And we've been there and done that, and seen how that fucking went.

"Ils n'ont rien appris, ni rien oublie'" 

I don't really have much to add about the Fourth Gulf War to what all of you probably know by now.

Unless the U.S. and/or Israel can convince some sort of alliance of Middle Eastern allies - or, if they're really insane, on their own - to invade and occupy Iran there is...well, perhaps not "no chance", but a infinitesimally tiny chance that this latest round of killing people and breaking shit in Southwest Asia will leave the region more peaceful, less violent, and better governed that it was before the missiles and drones began exploding.

Remember "we" (in the sense of "the Bush claque of imperialists, isolationists, filibusterers, and nitwits") already tried that in Iraq, a much smaller and less turbulent polity. 

It was an utter, bloodyhanded failure.

Afghanistan?

Same.

How about the other Middle Eastern countries that Israeli, or some mixture of the U.S/Israeli/Western Europe has tried to bomb (or at least claimed to be bombing) into liberal democracy?

Libya?

That's enough to make a cat laugh. 

From a post right here seven years ago:

"Well...that didn't work out very well. Libya has, since 2011, devolved into a semi- (or completely, depending on your definition) failed state. So far as I can tell there is a "government" in the old capital of Tripoli, but this "government" is, in most parts of the country, purely notional and those parts are in the best post-colonial, post-dictatorial tradition swarming with outlaws, rebels, armed insurgents, rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists."

Syria?

G'wan. Pull the other one. 

From this post, also seven years ago:

 "Update 10/14: What a fucking shitshow:

"Rarely has a presidential decision resulted so immediately in what his own party leaders have described as disastrous consequences for American allies and interests. How this decision happened — springing from an “off-script moment” with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, in the words of a senior American diplomat — likely will be debated for years by historians, Middle East experts and conspiracy theorists.

But this much already is clear: Mr. Trump ignored months of warnings from his advisers about what calamities likely would ensue if he followed his instincts to pull back from Syria and abandon America’s longtime allies, the Kurds. He had no Plan B, other than to leave. The only surprise is how swiftly it all collapsed around the president and his depleted, inexperienced foreign policy team."

Stable genius!

Update 10/16: Sweet Holy Jesus Fucking Roosevelt Christ, get the fucking net!

"Syria may have some help with Russia, and that’s fine. It’s a lot of sand. They’ve got a lot of sand over there. So there’s a lot of sand that they can play with."

What the...what the actual fuck..?

One thing I think is important is not to overestimate the rock-bottom level of Orange Foolius' actual understanding. I don't know much about the topography and geography of Syria, but right off the top of my head I don't think there really IS a "lot of sand over there". The deserty parts of eastern Syria are mostly rocky desert (the Hamad) or bare soil (the Homs desert).

But here's the thing; when this simple fucker hears "Arab" he probably really does think "Ahab, the A-rab, Sheik of the Burnin' Sands".

Seriously.

It's like having a really simple ten-year-old as a president.

Jesus wept."

So far as I know there has never been a successful internal "regime change" from a use of military force that didn't include physical invasion and occupation of the targeted nation. 

The closest anyone has come might be the 1954 Guatemala coup which was primarily accomplished by psyops and an almost-comic air "campaign" which included bizarro stuff like lobbing pop bottles from the aircraft because they made a loud noise when they broke.

But even that mess - which, remember, resulted in the assassination of the U.S.-installed caudillo and a decades-long, savage civil war - required a notional opposition invasion army to make it stick. 

And, as the specific Libya and Syria and Guatemala coup examples make the case in general, the usual result of the flyby shootings is just more chaos. Civil war, as often as not. Often dragging in neighboring states and factions.

Just as in Iraq, Iran is a polity with little or no experience, and little or no internal frameworks, for peaceful democratic governance. There's no Washington, or even a Mandela or Gandhi, to walk the people and nation from autocracy to democracy and the rule of law. There's not even a U.S.-backed potential caudillo in the wings. Not even one of the sad-act Chalabi variety.

But that's kind of the point here, at least from the U.S. citizen's view.

It's difficult to tell from the outside whether the pointlessness of the death and destruction in Iran and the surrounding area is because the Trumpkins don't actually understand this, or whether they just don't care.

Many of the people now in power in D.C. - Republicans, and particularly the Trump clique - are deeply stupid. Many of them, although not always the same people, are profoundly ignorant. A large number are implacably captive to irrational, illogical, or magical thinking, ranging from supply-side economics to Christiantist theocracy to pure Trump-Love Derangement Syndrome.

So it's entirely possible that there literally is no reason for all this beyond gullibility, short-term anger, greed, and stupidity.

Or it's possible that there's a "plan", but one, since it almost has to have been devised by the combination of ambition, distraction, uglification, and derision that drives damn near all that passes for "policy" in the Second Trump Administration, that is based on nothing but some bizarre combination of credulity and ignorance. 

It's worse than a crime. It's a mistake.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope that somewhere in the U.S. government there's an actual cunning plan for this war. I'm not real hopeful, mind you; these are the same idiots who keep insisting that what the U.S. domestic economy needs is more 1890-style McKinleynomics. The bar is pretty fucking low for these goobers.

But that's all the hope I've got.

Short of a successful decapitation strike on Mar-a-Lago, We the People are stuck in the audience for this Trumpian GOP shitshow, replaying all the Dick n' Dubya's Greatest Hits only without the attempt to make them sound sensible to the normies.

In the words of a different Frenchman:

"Ils n'ont rien appris, ni rien oublie'"

 "They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing."

"That's what we're talking about. We're not talking about vast wealth. We're talking about sand and death."
~ Donald Trump on the Middle East, 2019.

This is totally made of awesome.

Syrian dictator and all-around genial thug Bashar Al-Assad gave an interview in which he characterized Donald J. Trump as "the best president".

“All the American presidents commit all the political sins and crimes and take home the Nobel prize, and they give every appearance of defending human rights and the ‘advanced’ and American or Western principles but they are in fact a gang of criminals who represent the interests of the American lobbies, i.e. the big arms and oil and other corporations. Trump speaks with complete transparency;'We want the oil.' This is the American political reality since at least the end of the Second World War: ‘We want to get rid of so-and-so. We want to provide a service in return for money.’ This is the American political reality. What do we want more than a transparent enemy?”

I guess it takes one dictatorial sonofabitch to know one, eh, Bashie?

Update 11/7: It's looking less and less like #endingendlesswars and more and more like #kicktheirasstaketheirgas in Northeastern Syria as several what appear to be conventional Army units, including cavalry or mechanized infantry, have been moved into the area around the Deir al-Zour oilfields.

Just a reminder that 1) Trump HAS no "foreign policy" any more than a street-corner punk as a "economic policy" outside of "what's mine is mine and what's yours is also mine", 2) U.S. Middle Eastern policy has been a complete shitshow for a long time and still is, Trump or no Trump, and 3) it's LONG past time to repeal the goddamn AUMF. It's not even a fig leaf anymore.

So the latest piece of geopolitical genius kicking around the collective empty heads of the Trump Administration is the notion of parking a couple of...infantry companies?...(Sciutto at CNN says "200 troops", which would be about a couple of full-strength line infantry companies) in and around "oilfields" in NE Syria to "secure" them.

I'm fascinated by the point of international law here. These are pieces of Syria. They belong to someone, or something, Syrian. Admittedly, the Syrian government is not and has not physically held possession of them. But they are, by simple definition, "Syrian". Who has given the United States the authority to "secure" shit in and around them? If "possession is nine-tenths of the law" and infantry the bailiff's men? Well, yes, but that's the ONLY possible justification. There's no possible actual legal or diplomatic standing for these guys. If the Syrian Arab Army shows up and says "GTFO or we'll shoot" and we don't GTFO we've just started a shooting war with the Syrian government for something that is purely and unequivocally our fuckup. Any GIs that will die will be dying for a mistake, or worse.

And this is more than just a weird mission. This is stupidly risky mission. The US now has no - zero - "friends" in Syria. Check out this little video of random Syrian civilians cursing and pelting GIs with spuds, rocks, and rotten fruit. Nobody will have these poor bastards' backs - indeed, they're targets for everyone; Islamic State whackaloons, Syrian Army troops, Kurds pissed off at being betrayed, random jihadi nuts. Hell, it'd be shorter to list the people who DON'T have a reason to kill GIs than those who do. For the sake of some crappy little pieces of Syrian oilpatch these poor bastards are going to be hanging out there with a huge "Shoot Me Now!" sign on them.

But, hey! No worries! These sorts of things only semi-complicated and are totally not difficult for someone as smart as the Trumpster to figure out, right!

Oh, and this? THIS is simply fucking nuts:

"President Donald Trump is prepared to use military force against Turkey over its actions in Syria if “needed,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday as U.S. troops withdrew from the region. “We prefer peace to war,” Pompeo told CNBC’s Wilfred Frost in a taped interview that aired on “Closing Bell” on Monday. “But in the event that kinetic action or military action is needed, you should know that President Trump is fully prepared to undertake that action.”

I have no words to describe the idea of starting a shooting war with a NATO member. I know Sven likes to remind us how worthless an ally the U.S. has become to the nations of Europe, but this? Attacking Turkey, a NATO partner, for military actions taken in Syria? Where the hell does that leave Article 5 Article I, which states that "The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations." (corrected per Sven's reminder on the limits of Article V)

WTF?

Christ, every time I think this Administration has reached Peak Shitshow...

Update 10/23: Unlike Fake News Donnie, his BFF Vlad the Impaler is a genuine badass dictator who rides around bare-chested on a pony and knows that if you grab your enemy by the balls his heart and mind will follow.

"According to the deal announced at a joint news conference in Sochi, Ankara will control a 32km-wide (20 miles) area between the towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ain, which covers 120km (75 miles) of the Turkish-Syrian border. Beginning on Wednesday at noon, Russian military police and Syrian border guards will start removing the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which spearhead the SDF, and their weapons 30km (19 miles) from the border area. Once this is complete, within 150 hours, Turkish and Russian forces will run joint patrols 10km (six miles) to the east and west of the zone."

Here's what this will look like:
This is a huge backdown for Erdogan; he announced that he was going to grab a chunk of Syria 20 miles deep and 276 miles long, about 5,500 square miles. The 20-mile-by-75-mile piece he gets under this is about 1,500 square miles. His Syrian refugees are gonna have to be reeeeeal good buddies to pack into that.

Meanwhile, the Adventures of #EndEndlessWars continues; Trumpy's SecDef Esperanto announced that the US guys who had grabbed a hat out of YPG-land were moving to western Iraq, at which point the Baghdad government slapped him upside the head with what amounts to "Fuck YOU, Yankee dog!"

Thus proving that all this region needed was a very stable genius.

Unfortunately, it was an evil genius, and he runs the former Soviet kleptocracy.

Jesus wept.

I'd love to blame this one on Donald the Dove, but, sadly, I think the upcoming betrayal of the Kurds who fought for U.S. objectives in Syria is likely to have happened under any U.S. government. There's just no compelling national interest there, and the notion that they would have gained any sort of lingering obligation from Uncle Sammy by killing and dying for him was...well, the YPG could have asked any Vietnamese highland clansman or Iraqi translator what happens when you put your faith in the Big Guy to stand by you when you're no longer of any sort of geopolitical value.

The sadly-ironic part is that we're again reminded that for all his tough-guy talk Donnie is a puff-pastry when real dictators come into view, and his "foreign policy" is entirely based on what's in it for him.

In this case at least his cupidity and political cowardice will insure that the dead are "only" dusky foreigners and not Americans. Given the wasteful spending of lives my country has indulged in since 2001 perhaps that's the best we could have hoped for.

For the Kurds, well...this must feel pretty familiar.

That said... THIS...
...is a nastily cynical bit of business. "Captured ISIS fighters"? My ass.

Look, if you want to throw your Kurdish proxies under the bus, fine. Man up and admit it. Come out and say "We no longer have compelling interests in northern Syria and will not stand in the way of Turkey's desire to crush armed Kurdish forces, wherever they may be." Or, if you have to, try and make up at least a more plausible lie. "Captured ISIS fighters" is ridiculous nonsense; Trumpkins who don't care about dusky Mooslims can't be bothered, and anyone who knows anything about this sees it as the cheap and transparent lie it is.

Or, better yet, don't say anything. Dirty deeds are always done more appropriately in the night and the fog.

Update 10/8: Perhaps Sven is the only perceptive one here in sussing out that the supposed-Commander-in-Chief doesn't really command jack shit and his words are, indeed, meaningless:
My guess, though, is that Trump did, indeed, direct the abandonment of NE Syria and that the military and whatever-is-left-of-the-diplomatic-corps is trying to slow-roll the troop movement to let adults try and talk Liddle' Donnie out of whatever caused his tantrum after getting off the phone playdate with his buddy Erdie. There is no real reason to do this other than whatever bat is in Trump's belfry; if a handful of GIs can keep Turkey and the YPG from going at each other that really is better than the alternative, regardless of how you feel about idiotic U.S. adventures in the Middle East in general.

This, on the other hand, is just TOO perfect:

Update 10/12: The "Celebrity Geopolitical Apprentice" showrunners are clearly now past just doing weed and blow and are huffing sterno straight from the can, because it would take a perfect fool to set up this ridiculous plotline; the orange-tinted frontman, having bloviated that he will #endendlesswars proceeds to feed more GIs into the meatgrinder. And, in the unintentionally comic kudo of the season, claims that the move will inaugurate a new - or, rather, a return to a very old and discredited - military tradition; renting the nation's armed forces to a client state in return for cash:

Coupla things here.

First, if I was one of those zoomies I'd be pretty chapped. First, because I'd be me, and as me I would happily tell Prince Bonesaw and his merry band of religious nuts to fuck off and die in a hole. Outside of Israel, Saudi is the most worthless "ally" the US has in the Middle East. The people who Trump says should die now because they didn't help us on D-Day are a thousand times more valuable to US interests than the most pimped-out Saudi royal.

Second, IIRC Bush the Elder got most of the costs of the '91 Second Gulf War repayed by the various oil sheikdoms, so this isn't like Trump is coming up with some brilliant stroke of foreign policy here. Like he always does, he's just slapping his brand on other people's work.

And, third, the Bush example is a good counterpoint to how you do this if you really know how to play the foreign policy game. You ostentatiously lend support to your clients, emphasizing what a great partner you are, how strong and magnanimous you are and will be...and then, quietly, you stick out a hand so your grateful pals can slap you on the palm with some Franklins. You don't blow your intention to get moo-la-la in return for your mercenaries out your piehole first before you get so much as a single rial so you don't look like a fucking chump if and when the client stiffs you.

Mexico was gonna pay for that wall, amirite? Bwa-ha-ha...

Look.

I'm as tired of these idiotic whack-a-muj exercises as anyone. There's no real point to them anymore, largely because there has never been a genuine attempt to assess what the U.S.'s interests are in these parts. It's all fear and panic and "radical Islamic terrorism" all the way down.

Trump just adds a particularly idiotic icing to this shitcake.

As he is with U.S. domestic politics; he's not the disease. He's a symptom.

But...damn if it's not a pretty nasty virus.

Update 10/14: What a fucking shitshow:

"Rarely has a presidential decision resulted so immediately in what his own party leaders have described as disastrous consequences for American allies and interests. How this decision happened — springing from an “off-script moment” with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, in the words of a senior American diplomat — likely will be debated for years by historians, Middle East experts and conspiracy theorists.

But this much already is clear: Mr. Trump ignored months of warnings from his advisers about what calamities likely would ensue if he followed his instincts to pull back from Syria and abandon America’s longtime allies, the Kurds. He had no Plan B, other than to leave. The only surprise is how swiftly it all collapsed around the president and his depleted, inexperienced foreign policy team."

Stable genius!

Update 10/16: Sweet Holy Jesus Fucking Roosevelt Christ, get the fucking net!

"Syria may have some help with Russia, and that’s fine. It’s a lot of sand. They’ve got a lot of sand over there. So there’s a lot of sand that they can play with."

What the...what the actual fuck..?

One thing I think is important is not to overestimate the rock-bottom level of Orange Foolius' actual understanding. I don't know much about the topography and geography of Syria, but right off the top of my head I don't think there really IS a "lot of sand over there". The deserty parts of eastern Syria are mostly rocky desert (the Hamad) or bare soil (the Homs desert).

But here's the thing; when this simple fucker hears "Arab" he probably really does think "Ahab, the A-rab, Sheik of the Burnin' Sands".

Seriously.

It's like having a really simple ten-year-old as a president.

Jesus wept.

Update 10/18: So apparently the Trump Administration and Erdogan's Turkey arrived at some sort of agreement to pause Operation Peace Spring for about five days. As the linked piece notes, it's pretty much a Munich Agreement between the US and Turkey to allow Erdogan to get his piece of Syrian Sudetenland:

"This is essentially the US validating what Turkey did and allowing them to annex a portion of Syria and displace the Kurdish population," a senior US official familiar with operations in Syria told CNN. "This is what Turkey wanted and what POTUS green lighted. I do think one reason Turkey agreed to it is because of the Kurds have put up more of resistance and they could not advance south any further as a result."

My question is "What does this operational pause (since it's NOT a ceasefire and fighting is going to continue) "mean for the U.S. on the ground in Syria?"

I mean, the only way this actually helps is if there's a massive Dunkirk of Kurds from NE Syria; lock, stock, pots, pans, cats, kids...everyone gets marshaled out of their farms, towns, and cities, trucked to the railhead or airhead, and then from there to secure locations...where? somewhere south in Syria? To refugee camps at the tender mercies of Assad's Mukhabarat? To Iraq or Jordan?

Trump sure as hell ain't gonna take million of filthy wogs here in God's Great America.

And how does the US actually facilitate this? The logistics alone are breathtaking, and would require a massive commitment from a superpower - how the hell are the Syrian Kurds themselves going to do this alone? Surrounded by enemies (or at least people who are indifferent to their survival) and without a welcoming place to go to? I'm sure they might get a grudging reception from Iraqi Kurdistan, but those provinces are not rich, and have little in the way of resources (or need) for million of displaced relatives; it's be like having my in-laws come to live in our basement.

I mean...after Trump greenlighted this atrocity it's good that his people have managed to somehow deflect some of it. But I don't see how this works as anything but a rolling goatscrew without massive, immediate, and well-organized US-supported and internationally-coordinated evacuation.

To kick back and congratulate yourself over this is pure Trumpian looney-tunes.

Tens of thousands of Daeshi brides and children have streamed out of the last caliphate stronghold in Baghouz.  And also hundreds of surrendering Daeshi fighters.  Many appear to be unapologetic, unashamed of their allegience, and still radicalized.  Some of the brides in refugee camps are chanting "<i>Islamic State is great, Islamic State will stay."</i>  Some of the surrendered ethnic Turkmen Daeshi fighters are asking for asylum in Turkey with <i>"brother Erdogan"</i>.

Per CINCCENT General Votel:   <i>“Observations by our men & women on the ground highlight that the ISIS population being evacuated from the remaining vestiges of the caliphate largely remain unrepentant, unbroken & radicalized”</i>... <i>“what we are seeing now is not the surrender of ISIS as an organization but a calculated decision to preserve the safety of their families & preservation of their capabilities”</i>


https://syria.liveuamap.com/en/2019/7-march-even-in-defeat-is-supporters-remain-unrepentant-


https://anfenglishmobile.com/rojava-northern-syria/surrendering-isis-members-want-to-return-to-brother-erdogan-33404


https://www.stripes.com/votel-no-timeline-for-us-troop-withdrawal-from-syria-as-isis-caliphate-nears-end-1.571757

Lots of bloviation about the bomb assassination of a bunch of Kurdish "Manbij Military Council" militiamen and four of the U.S. liaison team meeting with them at a kebab shop in the Kurdish-held Syrian town, most of it pearl-clutching about whether "...this means the Islamic State isn't really defeated!!!"

That's not my question. No, duh, the IS isn't "defeated". They're pissed-off Sunni tribesmen. So long as the governments in Baghdad and Damascus are Shiite in some form the zero-sum politics of the Fertile Crescent means that pissed-off Sunni tribesmen are going to be killing people. You can't "defeat" that without killing ALL the Sunni tribesmen, or giving the Sunni tribesmen alternatives to killing people, and that fucking ship has sailed.

No. My question is; how the hell does some Islamic State bomb squad get the intel on where and when this meeting is being held in time to get their fall guy there in time to blow everybody to hell? Is there some sort of IS pizza-delivery bomb taxi squad sitting by the phones, vests on, ready to burn rubber to where one of their spies has just called in a big meet between the YPG and the gringos? Is Manbij that porous, that IS guys can drift in and set up bomb-making and bomb-delivery units just where-ever, and that their guys can spot juicy targets and hit them at a moment's notice?

Or is the MMC OPSEC so damn poor that the IS guys knew about this a couple of days in advance?

Frankly, IMO all this does is make the case for grabbing a hat. If the only people in Syria trusted enough to embed GIs with can't do a better job of securing their own territory then it can't be done. We got the hell out of Iraq for the simple reason that we couldn't get the place down to civil levels of violence without Roman methods. This suggests that the northeastern corner of Syria is likely to be just as impossible.

No, boys. The Islamic State is never going to "be defeated" if by that you mean that they will be unable to kill people. If that's your endstate the U.S. might as well make Syria the fifty-first goddamn state, because we're going to be there forever.

This is a portion of the transcript of a press conference given by President Trump on January 2, 2019.

I want you to keep this in mind as you read this; keep in mind who this is who is speaking.

This is not your drunken FOX-addled uncle spewing off after too much turkey and football at Thanksgiving dinner. This is not some random park ranter in the piss-smelling pants. This is the man who is legally in sole charge of the armed forces of the United States as well as the executive capacities of the largest economic and military power on the planet.

We begin with a reporter asking a question about the recent announcement of U.S. ground forces being pulled out of Syria and Afghanistan.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I appreciate it, Mr. President. Maybe the military has an angle here or a possible --
TRUMP: They have no angle. I know every angle. No, they have no angle.

We don’t have to wait long for the cray-cray, do we? “I know every angle” – and keep in mind this question was specifically about military affairs. The guy whose closest encounter with any military activity was terror-driven flight from potential Vietnam service “knows every angle”? Really?

The military under past leadership, including for many years was taken advantage of by other countries. Allies and not allies, they were taken advantage of. Our country has to be respected. We're not respected when we do that.

While this may not be overtly nuts – I mean, it IS nuts - the U.S. has undertaken military actions “for many years” but not because it was taken advantage of but primarily to pursue its own interests. This whole “taken advantage of” thing is one of Trump’s more consistent bizarre mental kinks, a seemingly overriding need to be seen as the grifter rather than the chump. It also dovetails with his obsession with alliances and pacts as a sort of protection racket where if the U.S. isn’t making bank it’s being chumped.

But the main point here is to recognize this as a signifier of Trump’s way of thinking, which is virtually indistinguishable from the gutter punks and gangster wannabes I went to high school with. “Respect” was their Holy Thing. The one sure driver of violence for these goombas was the perception that they weren’t being “respected”. It made them dangerously unstable to be around, because you never knew what they’d interpret as “disrespect”. That is this guy’s mindset. Think about that for a moment, and let’s move on.

When horrible things are happening on trade where we have barriers put up, where we have tariffs put on and we open our country up, we just open it up, where cars are sent into our country with virtually no tax, no nothing and yet they won't accept our cars, when cars are sent in and they pay no tax but we're expected to pay 25, 40, 50 percent and we pay nothing, I'll be honest with you, it's just not in my DNA.

This is economic gibberish, but it’s at least consistent with Trump’s obsession with “respect” and the idea that everyone else in cheating “us”.

I don't know how people allowed that in my position, allowed these things to happen. And we're not allowing it to happen anymore. I could be the most popular person in Europe. I could run for any office if I wanted to but I don't want to.

Here’s the first real “WTF” moment. Popular? Run for office? Of…what, “imperial poo-bah”? You’re an object of derision and contempt all over the non-fascist parts of Europe. You don’t know that? Obviously not, and yes, this is just Trump giving himself his usual tongue-bath. But it's the utterly random way this pops in here that is such fine flavor of pure whackadoodle senile-Grampy crazy.

I want people to treat us fairly and they're not. And it's not -- there's no angles. There's no angles.

Back to the “angles” again as senile Grampy suddenly remembers the original point (such as it was…) he was trying to make.

There's nothing -- you know, when a country sends us 200 soldiers to Iraq or sends us a hundred soldiers from a big country to Syria or to Afghanistan and then they tell me a hundred times, oh, we sent you soldiers, we sent you soldiers. And that's 1/100th of the money they take advantage of, they're just doing it to make me happy. I've heard past Presidents say they've involved in the Afghanistan war because they sent us a hundred soldiers.

Presumably this is about the other NATO nations. It’s nonsense. A bunch of other NATO countries pushed upwards of five figures of bodies into Afghanistan; the British, certainly, as well as France and Germany. Almost all the NATO members sent some contingent, the size of which was determined by the capacities of the contributor and the needs of the multinational force commanders.

Yes, some of them were company-sized or smaller. But that was because the force was set up by the needs of the theater commander and the capabilities of the units sent, not as a grifting scheme.

And, yes; if Andorra sends a quartermaster company they ARE “involved in the Afghanistan war”. Those people are. This points out the fundamentally unserious nature of Trump’s understanding of war; he sees it like a game, a con game, and the less money you make (or lose) the smaller and less important the con.

The MOST bizarre part here, though is that “they’re doing it to make me happy” thing. Why the hell would “they” do that? “You” aren’t that important in the Afghan picture; you’ve been the U.S. CINC for only 2/17ths of the entire Umpteenth Afghan War. "They" have no real reason to make you happy.

Yet it's costing us billions of billions of dollars. I get along with India and the prime minister and he's constantly telling me he built a library in Afghanistan. You know what that is? That's like five hours of what we spend. And he tells it is and he's very smart and we're supposed to say oh, thank you for the library.

Okay. Remember this whole India thing. The little library story is freakishly weird, but it’s not the stupidest part of Trump’s notions about India and Afghanistan.

Wait for it; we’ll get to la-la land in a bit.

I don't know who's using it in Afghanistan but one of those things. Well, I don't like --It's the end of the world and we're subsidizing their military by billions and billions and billions of dollars many, many, many times what those soldiers cost their country.

Here’s one bit of this whackaloonity that I actually have to sorta give him. Yes, “we” have been sinking a crap-ton of blood and treasure into this bottomless pit. Mind you, it has largely been for our own, admittedly by my reckoning strategically clueless, reasons. But, yes. “Billions and billions” (here’s where I hear Carl Sagan rather than Trump’s reedy whine, but, whatever…) have gone down the Afghan rathole.

I’m all in for Trump taking U.S. GIs out of this mess. But the glimpse this presser gives of what goes on – or doesn’t – inside the gomer’s head doesn’t make me feel confident that he won’t just get them stuck into something even MORE fucked up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President --

TRUMP: Go ahead, Afghanistan.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In Afghanistan, you have (one?) ISIS and the (Taliban?) is gaining ground. And India…

TRUMP: I think India should be involved in Afghanistan.

Holy.

Fucking.

Shit.

Okay, let’s just sit here a moment and ponder the epically, monumentally, heroically, pure-D, stomp-down, clueless boneheaded geopolitical stupidity of that single offhand sentence.

“I think India should be involved in Afghanistan.”

I have no idea what the fuck his military handlers have tried to tell this gomer. I know he’s functionally illiterate. I know he’s a bumptious rube, a walking Dunning-Kruger who thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room on whatever subject comes us.

But…”I think India should be involved in Afghanistan.”

I’m not saying that the Chief Executive needs to be a foreign policy wonk. I don’t expect him to know about the political situation in the subcontinent and the history of the region that still echoes decisions and actions taken as far back as the Mughals. Or that the entire focus of Pakistani Afghan policy is to ensure that the Afghan state provides strategic depth for Pakistan in the event of war with India. Or that the main driver of friction between the current Kabul government and Karachi has been the warming of relations between Afghanistan and India since the U.S. invasion and the fall of the Taliban.

But I’d expect at the bare minimum that their foreign policy advisors would have briefed him – and that he would have understood – on the tense relationship of Pakistan and India.

That they would have hammered at least a working understanding of why the triangle India-Pakistan-Afghanistan is as potentially explosive as nitroglycerine into this dumb fucker’s head. The fact that this moron could just toss this off is possibly as monstrously stupid as getting involved in a land war in Asia, except we’re talking about our involvement in a land war in Asia, so I’ll just say that this is monstrously stupid, even for Trump, and let’s move on.

I gave our generals all the money they wanted. They didn't do such a great job in Afghanistan. They've been fighting in Afghanistan for 19 years. General Mattis thanked me profusely for getting him several hundred billion and thanked me more the following year when I got him $716 billion. He couldn't believe it because our military was depleted. Now we're rebuilding our military. Pat was very responsible for a lot of the orders for the new F-35 fighter jets and F-18s including ships and missiles and everything. But General Mattis was so thrilled.

As always with Trump, it’s all about the money. Keep that in mind. He has no concept that there’s such a thing as geopolitics and grand strategy. If you throw money at something, you win. (Which might explain a lot of the whole “going bankrupt repeatedly”, when you think about it…)

Trump doesn’t get the difference between the problems caused by endless imperial wars run on a credit card have on O&M, and procurement. Why should he? It’s all just the money and all about the money, amiright?

But what's he done for me? How has he done in Afghanistan? Not too good. Not too good. I'm not happy with what he's done in Afghanistan and I shouldn't be happy. But he was very thankful when I got him $700 billion and the following year $716 billion. So, I wish him well. I hope he does well. But as you know, President Obama fired him and essentially so did I. I want results.

This, in terms of Afghanistan, is more than bizarre; it’s outright nuts. This would be like FDR going on the radio and ranting about how because of the debacle at Kasserine Pass he was relieving GEN Marshall. As SECDEF Jim Mattis didn’t micromanage in-theatre efforts in Afghanistan and he shouldn’t have been doing so. That Trump seems to think that is…well, it’s either stupid or nutty, but I’m actually going for the Daily Double of both.

We're going to do something that's right. We are talking to the Taliban, we're talking to a lot of different people but here's the thing because you mentioned India. India is there. Russia is there. Russia used to be the Soviet Union.

No shit, Sherlock.

Afghanistan made it Russia because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan. Russia.

This is an almost-fifth-grade-level understanding of the breakup of the Soviet Union, except I’ll bet that the smarter fifth graders actually have a more sophisticated understanding of the actual factors involved.

So, you take a look at other countries. Pakistan is there. They should be fighting. But Russia should be fighting. The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there. The problem is it was a tough fight. And literally they went bankrupt. They went into being called Russia again as opposed to the Soviet Union. A lot of these places you're reading about now are no longer a part of Russia because of Afghanistan. But why isn't Russia there?

Russia? Fighting in Afghanistan? You WANT that? Because you want to re-create “Charlie Wilson’s War” only you want to be allies with the baddies?

Seriously? WTF? This may be on the whackadoodle-level as the India comment, only with even less political sense because dopey here clearly remembers that the Soviets were fighting in Afghanistan and it didn’t go well for them.

Why isn't India there in we there and we're 6,000 miles away? But I don't mind. We want to help our people, help other nations. You do have terrorists, mostly Taliban but is. I'll give you an example. So tall ISIS is an enemy. We have an area where Taliban is here, ISIS is here and they're fighting each other. I said why don't you let them fight? Why are we getting in the middle of it? I said let them fight. They're both our enemies, let them fight.

Another hugely stupid idea, as we’ll discuss below.

Sir, we want to do it.

I think this is Trump pretending to be one or more of his military advisors (or the commanders on the ground in Afghanistan)

They go in and end up fighting both of them. It the craziest thing I've ever seen. I think I would have been a good general but who knows.

Fucking hell. Just…fucking hell.

These are two enemies fighting again but what are we doing?

We’re backing the government we installed in Kabul because the winner of the IS-Taliban fight will then go on to bitchslap our Afghan buddies, dummy.

Somehow, fucking Tallyrand here hasn’t managed to absorb that while there are two sets of “enemies” here there’s also an “ally”, the Kabul government, and that the whole idea isn’t to sit back and let the enemies fight each other but enable the third, “allied” party to win legitimate governance so the enemies don’t take the place back when they’re done (or find time to attack the ANA while they’re brawling).

He's done a fantastic job. He's brought the country together.

I have no idea what this refers to. I think there’s something missing from the transcript here, like Trump calling out the current Afghan head of state.

India, Russia, you look at some of the satellite countries that are extremely wealthy with oil, surrounding. I spoke to some of them. They -- I said to a certain country, very rich country, what would you do if the United States pulled out? Oh, we'd be taken over by the Taliban and terrorists.

I can’t figure out if this is just nonsense or an extremely ugly and bizarre congeries of lies.
The implication of his first sentence “satellite countries…wealthy with oil, surrounding” is that he’s talking about 1) a petrostate that is 2) adjacent to or within close proximity to Afghanistan, that 3) is highly vulnerable to takeover by a takifiri guerrilla movement.

But there is literally no such place that satisfies all three of his criteria.

The countries that border Afghanistan are Iran, – which is a petrostate but far too large and too Shiite to be endangered by a bunch of Sunni religious nuts – Pakistan – which might be vulnerable to unrest but isn’t a significant petroleum producer, and three former Soviet states; Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, which have neither a significant petroleum industry, nor, being closely linked to the "Northern Alliance" enemies of the Talib Pashtun, are likely to be at risk of a Pashtun invasion.

The closest polity that even comes close to meeting all the conditions in this gobbledegook is Kazakhstan, which has its own takifiri issues but 1) not with either the Taliban or an Islamic State franchise and 2) is geographically pretty far from the Pashtun regions.

Whatever the reason for this odd anecdote it’s worth reminding us that Trump does this, though. A lot; just pulls stuff out of his ass that is utter nonsense, or so twisted from whatever its genesis was as to be nonsensical.
And to remind us that he’s usually not called on it, which is why he continues to do it, and I think this is what this is. This supposed conversation never happened, or it happened with some representative of Pakistan and Trump just has this vague memory that he bitched out some wog or other (I mean, they’re all just “shithole” countries anyway, amirite?) for…

I said, ah. They b…then why are you charging us when we have to use your country to send product through? Why are you charging us when we send airplanes over your country? We're doing the job for you, why are you charging us? He said to me, very great gentleman, smart. He said to me, well, nobody ever asked me not to. I said I'm asking you not to. He said we will not charge you. And I'm talking about millions and millions of dollars. Flights over his country. But I say to him, what would happen if we weren't here? And he looks at me and he goes we would be overrun. We could not defend ourselves. And yet he charges us. But he doesn't charge us anymore.

…”charging us” – Trump again with the money, and (of course) his self-styled “dealmaking”.
The getting-hit-up-for-supply-and-overflight thing suggests he’s thinking of Pakistan.
But I honestly have no idea what to make of this whole farrago. I think it’s just all lies and make-believe, simply because I can’t see who this “very great gentleman, smart” and his country could be.

OK. Jeff.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You use the word slowly when you're describing the withdrawal --

TRUMP: I didn't say --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is your timetable?

TRUMP: Somebody said four months. Obama gave up Syria when he didn't violate the red line. I did when I shot 59 missiles in but that was a long time later. And when President Obama decided not to violate his statement that never cross the red line and then they did and he didn't do anything about it, you know, make a threat is OK but you always have to follow through with the threat. You can't make a threat and then do nothing.

Another of Trump’s over-riding foreign policy principles to the degree he has any is his obsession with Obama, in this case contrasting Trump’s Wag The Dog missile barrage back in April of 2017 with Obama’s backing off Assad after the barrel bomb/gas attacks in 2012.

So, Syria was lost long ago. It was lost long ago.

Wait? Whaaaaat? We’re pulling out of Syria because we WON, right? Because the Islamic State was beaten and “we’re not doing nation-building” (as he told the GIs in Iraq just last week). So…instead, now Syria “was lost long ago”?
Then what the fuck were all those GIs doing there for the past two years?

And besides that, I don't want -- we're talking about sand and death.

OMFG I love this SO much. “We’re talking about sand and death.” That’s your poet-president, that's fucking poetry right there.

“Sand and death.” I saw that movie, too. Tyrone Power played the matador. Linda Darnell was his wife.

What a great flick.

Sand and death.

That's what we're talking about. We're not talking about vast wealth. We're talking about sand and death.

Again with the wealth, but, hey, it’s Trump – you want to know what’s going on under that combover? Follow the money.

Now, the Kurds, it's very interesting, Turkey doesn't like them, other people do.

Some people like anchovies on their pizza. Some don’t. Some people want to butcher Kurds. Some like them. "I don’t really care, do U?"

I didn't like the fact that there selling the small oil they have to Iran.

The fuck..?

This is an outright lie, or some sort of Trumpy-brain nonsense intended to let him off the hook for screwing the Kurds.

The Syrian Kurds have no active oilfields and the Iraqi Kurds sell their Kirkuk oilfield products in Iraq.

Where the hell he gets this I have no idea; maybe Fox and Friends? Anyone heard this nonsense on wingnut websites? It’s not bizarre because it’s wrong – this is Trump – but because it’s so obviously, easily disproveably wrong.

But Kurds are selling oil to Iran. I'm not happy about it at all. At the same time, they fight better when we fight with them. When we send 30 f-18s in front of them, they fight much better than they do when we don't.

Close air support! Wow! Whoodathunkit? Would he have made a Great Captain? Would he? I'm tellin' ya, Napoleon has nothing on this joker.

And you've we want to protect the Kurds. But I don't want to be in serious forever.

So we’ve got your back, Kurds. Except…only until we get bored. Or it costs too much. Or we just stop giving a shit.
Sadly, this IS what you get when you trust Uncle Sammy. I suspect there’s a Vietnamese Montaignard word for it.

It’s sad and the death.

I remember saying stuff like this when I was 19 and stoned out of my gourd.

If we fight ISIS-- you know where else they're going? To Iran, who hates ISIS more than we do. They're going to Russia, who hates ISIS more than we do. Then I read when we pull out, Russia is thrilled. You know why they're not happy? Because this be and we're killing ISIS also for Iran.

I have no idea what the hell this means, and I don’t think he does, either. The Islamic State was born in the wreckage of the Sunni parts of western Iraq and eastern Syria, neither of which have the slightest similarity to any parts of Iran or Russia.

He’s just pulling this stuff…well, you know.

I sort of understand why none of the journos push him on this nonsense; he doesn’t know anything, and if you push it all you get is more gibberish. But, seriously…how can you respect this? How can you treat this like someone who should be doing anything other than tending the fry pit at some Mickey D’s somewhere instead of making geopolitical decisions for the globe’s biggest superpower?

And just while we're on Iran because people don't like to write the facts. Iran is a much different country than it was when I became President. Iran when I became President, I had a meeting at the Pentagon with lots of generals, they were like for a pry, better looking than Tom Cruz and stronger. I've had more I said this is the greatest room I've ever seen. I saw more computer boards than I think that they make today.

WTF? I got nothin’ here. Wow. Even when I was stoned out of my gourd I made more sense than this.

And every part of the Middle East and other places that was under attack was under attack because of Iran. And I said to myself, wow, I mean, you look at Yemen, you look at Syria, you look at every place, Saudi Arabia was under siege, they were all -- I mean, they wanted Yemen because of a long border with Saudi Arabia. That's why they're there, frankly. But every place was under siege.

I realize that this is a critical piece of GOP foreign policy, so it would be unrealistic to expect Trump’s toddler-level comprehension of geopolitics to question the “Iran is the Great Satan” trope. But, as usual, he takes the basic GOP talking point and goes utterly fruit-bat with it. “every part of the Middle East”? Like your pals in Baghdad, who are Iran’s de facto allies?

I actually asked a question. They had plenty of money. President Obama had just given them $150 billion. He gave them $1.8 billion in cash. I'm still trying to figure that one out, plane loads of cash, I...cash from many different countries.

This is easily understood if you recognize Trump as FOX-news-uncle. The “Obama gave Iran cash” thing is a wingnut trope that turns the Obama release of the impounded Iranian assets (which had to be delivered in banknotes because the banking embargos were still in place) into some sort of giveaway/bribe/corruption thing.

You know why from five different countries, Jeff? Because we didn't have enough cash in, they had to use the current at this with all of that being said, I did something called terminate the horrible Iran nuclear deal, which by the way, in eight years gives Iran the legal right to have nuclear weapons. I did it. Iran is no longer the same country. Iran is pulling people out of Syria.

I have no idea where he gets this, either. The IRGC is a Syrian partner and will continue to be so long as the Syrian Arab Army is fighting the civil war. If Trump really believes this – and, again, this is entirely likely to be pure Trumpian nonsense – he is either being really poorly advised or has a criminally low level of understanding of what his own intelligence people are telling him. Either way it argues a dangerously huge lack of geopolitical savvy.

They can do what they want there, frankly, but they're pulling people out, they're pulling people out of Yemen. Iran wants to survive now. Iran was they were going to take they can do what they want there, frankly, but they're pulling people out, they're pulling people out of Yemen. Iran wants to survive now.

To the best of my knowledge there are no significant Iranian assets in Yemen, which makes logistical and geographic sense if you think about it for two seconds; there is no direct land route from Iran to Yemen, and there’s no way for an Iranian freighter to put into a South Yemeni port.

Again, this is a dangerously idiotic way to think of the situation in the south Arabian peninsula if you are the U.S. head of state and charged with directing U.S. foreign policy.

Iran was…they were going to take over everything and destroy Israel while they're at it. Iran is a much different country right now. They're having riots every week in every country, bigger than they've had when we do all of the things that we gone pan (done?). Iran is in trouble. I'd love to negotiate with Iran. There but Iran is a much different country right now, Jeff, than it was when I took office. What I took over two years ago, Iran was going to take over the most and they were going to have all the weapons they wanted in a short period of time because of that stupid deal. When I terminated that deal and then did what I had to do, Iran is a much different country today than it was 19 months ago, that I can tell you.

There’s a lot of nonsense to unpack in this one paragraph.

The 2019 situation in Iran is little different than it was in 2016, largely because of the relatively consistent rumble of the low-grade Shia-Sunni Wars of Religion kicked off by Dubya and Dick’s Excellent Middle Eastern Adventure.

The one major difference is that the Trump Administration has made what I consider the major geopolitical mistake of taking sides in this religious war, and even moreso (in my opinion) by siding with the Wahhabi Sunni of Saudi Arabia, a metastable autocracy founded on the idea that petroleum wealth will both last forever and make the rule of a gang of inbreds from the Hause of Saud tolerable to the bulk of ordinary Saudis. I consider both these propositions to be sketchy in the medium term and unsustainable in the long term.

If Trump would “love to negotiate with Iran” there’s nothing stopping him. The probability is high that his idea of ”negotiation” is no different than his other diplomatic encounters with places like North Korea or the EU, which consists of 1) him throwing down his objective and folding his arms – which hasn’t worked with the EU, or 2) giving his counterpart what they want and then claiming it as a win for Trump, as he did with the NORKs. The Iranians, who have no real reason to take whatever one-sided “deal” he’d be offering, have no real reason to negotiate or, given his renege on the original "stupid deal" he and the GOP congresscritters welched on, any reason to trust him to hold with another deal, no matter how favorable.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On the timetable for withdrawing troops --

TRUMP: It just over a period of time. Oh, we're withdrawing. We're hitting them very hard.

Are you withdrawing, or hitting “them” very hard? Seems impossible to do both at the same time anywhere but inside of Trump’s head.

When I met with the generals in Iraq, I said to a couple of the generals, why didn't you do this before? He said, sir, our commanders were telling us what to do. I said don't you tell them? No, sir, we take orders. And they're great soldiers. They listen. I do it differently. I sat around and after a few minutes they listened up and said this is what we should do.

This little anecdote is baffling not so much because of the point of it – which is the point of almost all Trump anecdotes, highlighting the very stable genius of Trump (who in “a few minutes” grasps the elusively obvious solution that has eluded all these so-called “generals” and “commanders”) compared to the dullards around him – but the actual circumstances.

Who are these “great soldiers” (apparently “generals” but not generals who are “commanders”, since that get told what to do by the latter)? When and how did this meeting occur? Why?

And why, if “they listened up” when Trump told them “what we should do”, hasn’t the geostrategic situation in southwest Asia suddenly improved dramatically? It’s almost as if this was an utter fiction. But, frankly, even a fiction this little story seems ludicrous.

The scene as painted here by Trump is some anonymous GSA-issue conference room somewhere in Iraq, where a group of “generals” sits down with their commander-in-chief. There is some sort of discussion in which 1) the POTUS asks pointedly why these GOs haven’t figured out how to hit “them” hard by withdrawing, 2) the GOs explain that it wasn’t their fault, they were chust vollowink orders, and 3) after a mere “few minutes” suddenly the POTUS expounds, like Christ preaching in the temple as a youth, to the astounded senior officers who, we’re left to suppose are dumbfounded and enlightened by His wisdom.

If it was comedy it’d be fairly brilliant. But it isn’t supposed to be comedy, and as such it’s just ridiculous.

I cannot imagine how the people listening to this stuff don’t start giggling at Trump. It must take a lot of practice.

But we were supposed to be out and that was five years ago and we never left. I see soldiers that are so badly injured and hurt, I don't want that. Why want it. And our military is getting really strong.

Okay, brace yourself, because we get into some deep inside-of-Trump's-brain stuff here.

I can tell you story when I got here about our military that I don't even want to talk about. I don't even want to talk about. One of the NGS, we do these reports on our military. Some I.G. goes over there, and he goes over there and they do a report on every single thing we're fighting wars and they're doing a report and releasing it to the public. The public means the enemy. Those reports should be private reports. Let them do a report but they should be private reports and be locked up and but for these reports, criticizing referring for these reports -- essentially given out to the enemy is insane. And I don't want it to happen anymore, Mr. Secretary. You understand that. Look at the reports. Nobody more critical of, hey, it's not my fault, we're getting out smart.

This is…this is just tinfoil hat looney.

Seriously.

This is completely off-the-trolley gibbering nonsense. I’m not even sure what the hell he’s talking about here, other than it combines all Trump’s usual paranoia and his belief that there is some sort of critical OPSEC problem that he wants to solve by taking information that – at least in theory – the American public needs to know to make informed decisions about aspects of the military operations ostensibly conducted in their name are performed and closing it off to the public.

And the thing to remember is that IG investigations are NOT typically conducted for tactical events. Those are performed either by the local commander or someone above him in the chain of command. I've undergone IG inspections as well as been in units that underwent IG investigations. They were nothing like this lunatic espionage picture that Trump paints here.

The IG looks into things like GI-quality-of-life, maintenance, training, and personnel issues. The IG’s brief is not ”every single thing we’re fighting wars”, and the tactical or strategic value to even the most alert enemy of a typical IG investigation is likely to be extremely low.

But beyond the misinformed notion of who and what the IGs this is a reminder that, aside from all the looney stuff above, Trump has the “gut” – and remember how much he relies on that capacious organ – of a dictator.

He genuinely believes that 1) the Inspector General is giving away vital military secrets, and 2) that the only way to prevent that is for the IG’s reports to be “locked up” and the American public be kept safely away from even that level of knowledge of what is being done in their names. Think about the implications of that for a bit

But we're getting out very carefully. Yes, ma'am.

Well. THAT’s good to know.

I know that it’s difficult for the press people to do anything about these bizarre streams of verbal diarrhea. But it’s import for We the People not to begin to just overlook them or, worse, begin to accept them as ”just what he does”.

If your grandfather began to talk like this you’d, at the very least, consider taking his car keys away lest he end up in a ditch somewhere in the Poconos. This is not the behavior of someone who still has all his tacos on the combination platter. And yet this is what has the final say over much of our military and foreign policy.

Andy points out in the comments that all this is "shooting fish in a barrel" and, yes, there's certainly nothing newsworthy that a retired artillery sergeant with a geopolitics hobby can pick the nutty out of a Trump interview as easily as you could pick the cashews out of a bowl of mixed nuts.

But...that's kind of the point, isn't it?

The fact that the Chief Executive of the world's hyperpower is goofier than a wilderness of monkeys...shouldn't that be appalling? Shouldn't the people recording this nonsense be sounding the panic alarm? Should we, reading it, be horrified, angry, and - at the very least - committed to both acknowledging that nobody this unhinged, ignorant, and proud of both should be in charge of our lives and be clamoring that our Congresscritters be impeaching and convicting the rascal? Hell, the Emoluments Clause alone is enough to fry the dude.

That's my point here.

Not pointing out the crazy. Pointing out 1) how obvious the crazy IS, and 2) how it's not even being presented as "crazy" but as business as usual.

I don’t know about you.

But the fact that reading stuff like this isn't scaring the hell out of 99.9 percent of John Q. Public scares the living hell out of me.