We were waist deep in the Big MuddyThe big fool said to push on—Pete Seeger

On April Fool’s evening, the US president who has been comparing himself to Jesus Christ finally gave a speech in which he attempted to win support for his and Israel’s disastrous and failing war against Iran. He failed miserably, but his minions and military remain obedient.

Lies may have outnumbered contradictions. President Trump apparently has yet to appreciate Abraham Lincoln’s admonition that “You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” Among others, oil and stock markets saw through the flimflam. Energy prices soared once again while stock markets from Manhattan to Manila took a dive.

One has to wonder when the billionaires behind Trump, Vance, and their mandarins will conclude that it’s time to pull the plug, to insist on US regime change via the 25th amendment, for Congress to refuse to pick up the bill, or for the generals, admirals, and troops who have tolerated Secretary Hegseth’s white nationalist cheerleading to finally say one simple word: "No."

And if they won’t, it’s up to us to end the nationally self-destructive war on Iran and the rest of the world.

Some version of textual analysis may be in order. So taking it from near the top of Trump’s teleprompter:

Operation Epic Fury targets “the world’s number one state sponsor of terror.” The Iranian state and its surrogates have certainly engaged in murderous terrorist operations. But it has been outdone by the United States which has killed millions of innocent people from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bombs, through the Vietnam and Southeast Asian War, to the special military operations against El Salvador, Iraq, Libya, and most recently Venezuela. Not far behind are Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the West Bank and its ethnic cleansing in southern Lebanon.

“In these past four weeks our armed forces have delivered swift, decisive, overwhelming victories on the battlefield, victories like few have ever seen before.” Despite battlefield victories, the United States is losing the war. Trump is caught like an insect in a spider’s web. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed. Iran continues to torment Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Gulf states with missile and drone attacks, and prospects for an actual US-Israeli military victory over Iran grow further from reach with each passing day.

“The Islamic Revolutioary Guard Corps is being decimated…” Yes, the Revolutionary Guards have suffered serious losses and its command and control systems are not what they were on February 28. But its surviving leaders, are more hardline in their commitments than was Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and they now call the shots in Teheran. Trump’s battlefield triumphs have been real, but they come in the more than two thousand year-old tradition of pyrrhic victories.

“We have by far the strongest military anywhere in the world.” Perhaps. But there are eight other nuclear weapons states, and a lesson that Iranians and people in other nations are learning is that, like North Korea, one way to ensure that you are not attacked by the United States is to have a retaliatory nuclear arsenal. Moreover, as Ukraine is teaching Putin’s Russia, we are in the midst of yet another “revolution in military affairs.” Terror and power on the battlefield and wars against cities are being murderously equalized by drones, cyber attacks, and by other relatively affordable weaponry.

Warfare and battlefield victories have never been all about military hardware and muscular warriors. Knowledge of history, geography, and culture can be as if not more, decisive. Think in terms of Alexander the Great and others failing to conquer Persia, of Iran’s geographical advantages along the Strait of Hormuz, the power of Persian nationalism, and resistance to Crusader Christianity that have endured across the ages.

“We are getting along incredibly well in the production and sale of amounts of oil and gas.” Let’s assume that it’s been a long time since Donald Trump filled his car’s gas tank, if he ever did. And Narcissist that he is, Trump hasn’t registered other nation’s rage at the skyrocketing costs of energy. Cuba isn’t the only country that is experiencing Trump induced blackouts. And wait until the scarcity of fertilizers that are not making their ways down the Hormuz Strait takes its toll on grocery bills across the US, not to mention deadly famines in the Global South.

“Operation Epic Fury is necessary for the safety of America and the security of the free world.” So much dishonesty in a single sentence. A free world? ICE and Border Patrol brown shirts are terrorizing our neighbors. Science, health care, and freedom of speech are all under serious attack in the United States under Trump. The US ranked 51st in terms of being an electoral democracy even before Trump and his MAGA allies launched their campaigns to disenfranchise millions of legitimate voters.

On the subject of safety Trump seems to have forgotten that back in June he claimed that US and Israeli air strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. Further........

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