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Notes -
I made a prediction that Iran might step up attacks before the midterms. Looks like that may be happening and the rates of attacks are up:
Two ships sink near Hormuz after being hit by projectiles amid surge in attacks
Container ship hit by projectile sinks in Strait of Hormuz, Singapore says
The decision to pause the war by Trump remains puzzling to me, and it suggests a lack of conviction in the war effort. A side confident of success would act immediately rather than grant Iran weeks to strengthen its defenses, plan retaliation, consult its allies, and position its assets. One thing it certainly isn't doing is helping with inflation:
Consumer prices rose 3.7% annually in September as gas prices skyrocket
Trump seems to have a plan though, although it is not popular even among Republicans:
Bipartisan group of senators call on Trump to rescind Russian diesel deal
Polling numbers and prediction markets also paint a pretty bleak forecast for the Republicans.
From Nate Silver:
If things go as they seem, we are about to witness the end of the age of Trump. If we get a Blue Tsunami -- and I believe we will -- Republicans are going to turn on him. Why wouldn't they? What can he offer them at this point but big fat L's. The only question now is what comes next on the Right, because it's certainly not Trumpism.
It's just bizarre behaviour from Trump too. He was already struggling with legislation, the SAVE Act is still not passed. That's critical electoral engineering to help prevent another Democratic admin sending him straight to prison the moment he leaves office (or before). The threat of lawfare really ought to be front and centre in his mind, given his experience since 2020.
What did Bibi have on him to prompt such an error? He should've had no illusions that starting a Middle East War would be short, cheap or popular. He campaigned on not starting any more wars. Higher fuel prices caused the Biden administration serious harm, why repeat the experiment? He was gullible in the extreme or actively compromised.
On twitter, I read reasonable arguments from Trump supporters saying that the war doesn't really matter and domestic concerns (getting rid of DEI and illegals) are paramount. The Democrats would struggle to make anything better on the battlefield but would likely make things worse for Trump supporters, sure.
Far be it for me as a foreigner to tell Americans how or why they should vote. But if the Trump base is so loyal that they can be taken for granted, there is nothing to stop the neocons playing Trump like a cheap electronic piano. He can count on his base's support no matter what idiocy he does but the neocons demand wars. The dynamics of the situation are bad even if loyalty is the Nash Equilibria. It's like a repeated prisoner's dilemma where the other guy defects but the payoffs are worse for you if you defect back. Are you supposed to just take it? Or alter the situation?
And the Trump base being loyal does not in itself guarantee success. To win elections Trump needs to persuade moderately apolitical people on the margins either way.
Starting a war isn't going to make it any easier to get rid of illegals or DEI, it takes away political capital that could be deployed elsewhere. War is not the price of deportations or slowly, barely winding back DEI a ratchet. War is a major distraction and a detractor against these domestic efforts. It should've been strongly lobbied against during the lead up period to the attack where aircraft were flown in but while the train wreck was still avoidable people seemed to think 'maybe it'll be fine, Venezuela went well'. They could've railed against the war up till the last minute when Trump was undecided. I don't remember any big names on the right doing that.
There are some tragic quotes from Lindsay Graham:
https://x.com/zarathustra5150/status/2103316151011074523
Trump is not smart enough to be a good President. Charismatic enough to get elected and manipulate the media, sure. But actually running a country requires different qualities. It's an enormously demanding job that would exhaust a clever man at the peak of his powers.
Like a good bit of Trump era policy, the SAVE is intentionally bad and over the top so it can't actually be passed. Even Republican senators don't actually want to pass it for very fixable reasons, but they won't be fixed because it's not designed to succeed from the ground up.
The main thing being that everyone knows requiring passports and birth certificates as the main ID fucks over republicans (who are more rural and poor of a voterbase) than it would Democrats..
Murkowski is just the biggest example of a Republican senator who would be fucked if rurals couldn't vote as easily because of how extreme the ruralness of Alaska is. Every single issue with the SAVE act is amplified there.
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Clarity Act not passed either. Trump and the GOP overall has never been that good or determined at getting legislation through unless it's minor stuff or tax cuts. This is why the dems win long term because they actually put the work in changing institutions, which far outlast executive orders or strong words.
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The SAVE Act's provisions would have hit Republican voters harder than Democrats in pursuit of a solution to a nearly non-existent problem and the Republican congressmen knew that, which is why it didn't pass.
Then why haven't Democrats passed Voter ID?
Voter ID and the SAVE Act aren't the same thing.
Then why didn't they support the SAVE Act if it was such an own goal? This one doesn't pass the smell test.
I think both Republicans and Democrats have a weak sense that there's a lot of cheating that goes on in the big blue cities and that clamping down would probably help Republicans.
Just because something hurts the other side's supporters more doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt your own supporters, and just because Republicans have lost all pretense that they aren't hacks willing to do anything for partisan advantage doesn't mean Democrats are willing to do the same.
Are you willing to actually defend the view that the Democrats aren't hacks willing to do anything for partisan advantage? It seems pretty trivial to argue that they are.
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That's the payoff matrix of Chicken, not Prisoner's Dilemma.
I was thinking more of an asymmetrical game where you can defect back and hurt the other guy but get hurt more yourself. Chicken is symmetrical.
PD payoffs for one player/Chicken payoffs for the other, according to a table I found, is known as Called Bluff.
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Just fyi, since you say you're not in the country and thus not irradiated as much by our media, the SAVE act is long dead. Enough Republicans in safe seat sinecures decided it wasn't worth upsetting the apple cart. Generally, you can safely assume that Congress intends to do nothing and there are no meaningful legislative agendas aside from "spend more money so we can raise more money".
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Why not? Venezuela went off perfectly and then he got rizzed hard by Bibi, Graham, et al
Wasn't Graham literally flying to Israel to be coached by Mossad as to how to best sell Trump on this? The entire weight of one of the world's greatest intelligence agencies was deployed to convince an 80 year old man of something.
Poor fucker never had a chance
I was gonna quote that second instance where Graham boasts about how he was helping Netanyahu persuade Trump, getting 'special intelligence' from Mossad but I thought my post was getting too long.
But Trump did have the CIA and NSA and military to advise him. He has agency and bears responsibility for ignoring their warnings and favouring Israeli 'intelligence'. US intelligence has been reporting for years that Iran was not actively seeking nuclear weapons. An indictment on the system, that key information doesn't make its way to decision-making circles. It's a little like how in the late Soviet Union, Gorbachev couldn't even get access to the real military budget and Politburo ministers did not understand inflation at a basic level.
CIA/NSA/State Dept/Shadowy Deep State Inc. have been vocally wanting to attack Iran for like half a century -- I find it highly implausible that Trump went to them and said "Bibi says we should bomb Iran", and the response was "Noooo" or even "one does not simply bomb Iran" rather than "hell yeah, warm up the fleet"!
There was skepticism about attacking Iran from the CIA, they came under lots of political pressure to take a more hawkish tone about Iran's nuclear capabilities:
https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/2007-Iran-Nuclear-Intentions.pdf
It was the same story in the later 2019 reports and everything up until the war itself, no imminent threat from Iranian nuclearization - but Trump and the hawks hated this intelligence. Tulsi Gabbard was also pressuring against the 2026 war. The military wasn't too keen either, Caine said the attack was risky:
https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2026/02/23/trumps-top-general-foresees-acute-risks-in-an-attack-on-iran/
And previous CENTCOM commanders had been against an attack as well, years prior, Gates warned against an attack. The general US deep state attitude is more like 'this is a very courageous decision, on your head be it' than genuine enthusiasm.
The hawks are more in the 'think tanks, FDD, political aides and Israeli officials' sort of genre.
What reports are those? And what in the world makes you think that the Deep State is putting its true goals in reports on the internet? That seems like the very opposite of their MO, no?
Tulsi Gabbard is strongly against frivolous warmaking and diametrically opposed to the Deep State on most any matters that come to mind; it's kind of her whole deal! Trump was clearly not listening to Tulsi on this one.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/33199-document-33-office-director-national-intelligence-worldwide-threat-assessment-us
The 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment says this:
And its the same since then in later reports, with politicians. US intelligence said Iran was not racing towards a bomb. If they wanted a bomb, they'd just get one.
Iran wants optionality, to be able to quickly acquire nuclear bombs if they decide they want them.
If you want a more narratival version of what I'm saying, here's Amerikanets, he lists a bunch of sources to justify his point, the US military and intelligence forces have not been eager for this conflict: https://www.amerikanets.com/p/they-saw-it-coming
I don't think the Deep State wanted a war with Iran, they wanted to focus on China and Russia rather than get bogged down in the Middle East again. They were somewhat embarassed by the last politically motivated WMD story and it also really damaged the US position, they weren't keen to let the politicians bully them into making up false intelligence to justify a war again.
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No, and I'm not sure what could possibly make you say that. The deep state isn't about putting a smoke generator in a room, because smoke-filled room consoiracies are fun, it's just the unelected parts of the government coordinating enough to become their own faction. In our managerial system "here's a report written by experts (us) saying you should do exactly what we want you to do" is the textbook case of their MO.
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This is another one of those lazy Trump myths that needs to be challenged. Trump ignored American intelligence and only listened to the Israelis? You were there in the Situation Room? What did the American intelligence reports claim? Did the Israelis say Trump should do a naval blockade?
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Hard disagree. Obama or GWB or Clinton could have all gotten honest capability assessments from the military/intelligence community. So could Trump, if he wanted. I am not a fan of the CIA, but I do not think they would push a president they dislike into a bad war just to harm him domestically. I also do not think their median employee is a pink-haired lesbian with a gender studies degree.
While Obama and GWB have fired some high-ranking generals, under Trump 10% of the top brass was fired or sidelined. I surmise this is not conductive to an atmosphere of honest feedback. "Mr Hegseth, I think engaging Iran on this scale will not result in regime change, but drag the US into a long-winding and unpopular war" is unlikely to be received very well -- probably he would tell you to get your testosterone levels checked because you are lacking the Spartan warrior spirit or something.
Trump got the presidency twice because he is good at influencing public perception -- who cares if his claims are bullshit as long as the people believe them. Unfortunately for the US, neither the economy nor the military run entirely on vibes.
The system which really failed is not the US intelligence apparatus, but the electorate which decided to elect an egomaniac who believes he is better at everything than the long-serving domain experts.
This is where I think you are wrong. I don't think capability assessments are the issue here, its all about willpower assessments, which long time employees and generals appear to be the worst at.
There is no way to think there exists some "deep state" (for lack of a better word) general or civilian in the DOD circles would have told Trump that if Iran pirated French vessels in response to airstrikes the French would do nothing. Who would have been that guy? Such a person with such a low opinion of the French would have been driven out by the establishment years ago. They'd never make general while openly stating that NATO is a bunch of wimps who would rather just mail Iran nukes then lift a finger to stop them obtaining nukes.
I agree this feedback would be risky under trump and hegseth, but I just disagree that it is relevant. The Iran war is a military success despite having no real end date. In fact, if the question is the lack of end date, it is the lifelong employees that will be advocating against the best ways to bring about an end date, such as destroying power plants, Kharg Island, "bridge day" as it was once floated as an idea, etc.
And on the other side, its not like there was a lack of people telling Trump not to do the war, almost all reporting indicates that Vance was opposed to the war on the grounds it would be unpopular.
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I was a little unclear there, I was sort of gesturing more at what you were saying about 'neither the economy nor the military run entirely on vibes.' Obviously it didn't come out that way.
I agree that there's a problem in that US decision-making circles include a bunch of flatterers, lightweights and foreign agents who can crowd out the sober analysts.
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They already lied to Trump during his first term to keep doing shit they wanted to do in the Islamic world (Syria and Afghanistan). I sincerely believe the Afghanistan pullout was deliberately sabotaged to punish Biden for taking away their medal farm.
And the fundamental question that the Hegseth shakeups are attempting to address is "Are these generals good at war, or are they good at slide decks that brownnose the right people and don't rock the boat"? The core criticism is that for the last 20 years, the top levels of the military have, in fact, been running on vibes. Directly disagreeing with your boss is, in fact, high-T behavior.
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Those “long-serving domain experts” got us Afghanistan and Iraq. Your premise that Trump firing generals is bad for war fighting falls apart when they are generals like Milley.
Clinton oversaw the blowback to the Tailhook Scandal which ultimately purged the military command structure far more severely than anything Trump has done so far.
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