"That often happens in war…”

“The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost,
and we may have casualties. That often happens in war…”

—Donald Trump

“You need to understand that he is psychotic….
Cornering a rat is never a good idea”

—Jeffrey Epstein

First off, kickstarting a war from a swanky private country club is an interesting look—especially from a man who avoided the military he now commands with the help of a note from his podiatrist. In the hours after the US started bombing Iran, the President was seen partying with guests at a $1 million dollar a plate Mar-a-Lago fundraiser, while donning a white cap with “USA” on the front, presumably so everybody knew what side he was on. All of this happened after said President repeatedly assured his now-duped supporters that he was way too smart to go to war in the Middle East, which, to quote his own Vice President, is the sort of thing only “dumb” Presidents do.

In the first few hours of what Leaky Pete has named “Operation Epic Fury”*, 3 US servicemen are dead, and 5 more are “seriously wounded”. None of the casualties are members of the Trump family. I bring this up merely to underscore the fact that the hashtag #SendBarron was trending on Elon’s Musk’s sandbox yesterday.

(*By the way, does the term “Operation Epic Fury” give off tiny dick vibes, or is that just me?)

Also killed was Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, along with, Trump sheepishly admitted, the favored US candidates to replace him. “The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates,” Trump told ABC News. “It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead.”

Iran retaliated, bombing both Israel and US bases in Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. In the midst of this chaos Kuwaiti air defenses “mistakenly” shot down 3 US F-15 fighter jets. The crews survived.

So there’s all of this. And in the fog of war meant to, at least partially—liberate women—US/Israeli bombs mistakenly took out a girls elementary school, killing over 100. So yet again the bombs are not nearly as “smart” as advertised.

One wonders how much this sort of thing costs, and how much of DOGE’s work it may have cancelled out already. The money that we never have for people at home always seems to materialize when it’s needed to bomb people abroad. I don’t know what kind of accountants work at the Pentagon but I’d like to hire one of them to cook my books.

To level-set here—Iran is run by crackpot religious freaks. It’s a repressive regime of bearded incels with a warped interpretation of the Koran who treat women especially brutally. According to Trump their nuclear capabilities were “obliterated” by US air strikes back in June, but apparently, like his ear, they grew back. Regardless, it is never a good idea to give men who think 72 virgins await them in heaven nuclear weapons. I would not want dudes this randy in my neighborhood, so it’s not like Israel isn’t right to be concerned. However, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, there is no evidence Iran has an active plan for creating nuclear weapons. We have been in this WMD loop before. Israel has repeatedly shown that it can take care of itself. Also, it’s not like we don’t have our own internal messes to clean up.

The world is overflowing with backward zealots like Ali Khamenei. Some of them Trump quite openly admires (Putin. Orbán. Erdoğan, the North Korean dwarf). Going into this with the morality guns blazing is a tough sell for a nation that just shot down 2 of its own civilians in the streets of Minneapolis. Doncha think?

So in Trump’s “America First” world view, Iran poses no threat to the United States. To suggest that we are bombing Iran to “protect the homeland” is the sort of thing George W Bush used to say about Iraq. There is no plan. The apparent assumption is that Iranians will “rise up” and somehow take over the country, although Trump stopped short of offering any support if they indeed tried. You need to remember that George W had PROFESSIONALS surrounding him, and they managed the worst foreign policy disaster in US history. Trump has fucking Hegseth and Stephen Miller and a press secretary who calls to mind the Iraqi Information Minister. What could happen here stops the heart.

“The heavy and pinpoint bombing, however, will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!” This is giving off way too many Nixon/Cambodia vibes for me, not to mention the Orwellian “war is peace” slogan from Big Brother. How simple such rhetoric flows from a Mar-a-Lago conference room—as opposed to a bunker in Bakhmut. That it also flows from the inaugural recipient of the FIFA Peace Prize—and the head of the newly created Board of Peace—would be satire if satire was even possible in 2026.

Of course social media users are calling the attack “Operation Epstein Fury”, which is the lens the press needs to peer through but surely won’t because that’s asking them to do 2 things at once. The “Wag the Dog” bit of this is so on the nose in the wake of the DOJ scrubbing the allegation in the files that Trump raped a 13 year old that Congress should get involved.

If anybody knows where they are can you let me know?

In a bit…

—tf