Equipment
Trump to Iran: Ok we fixed that for you, now get on with it, kthxbye.
The killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei marked the latest decapitation or defeat of a bitter U.S. adversary overseas, following the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq two years later, the breaking of Moammar Gaddafi’s grip on power in Libya in 2011 and the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro just two months ago.
The United States has often followed such triumphant moments with attempts to fill the void — deploying thousands of troops, spending billions of dollars, seeking to nurture fledging democracies or, in the case of Venezuela, leaving the decapitated government in power. But those efforts have largely brought disappointment, yielding states that remain riven by conflict, have revolted against the U.S. role or hardly rank as robust U.S. allies.
Trump appears to be pursuing a starkly different approach with Iran, signaling that he has no intention to use Americantroops to steer the path of a country whose fate has been buffeted by U.S. power since Iran’s last democratically elected government was ousted in 1953 in a CIA-backed coup.
We broke it but we’ll be god damned if we’re going to fix it.
On Sunday, in phone calls with multiple journalists at several news outlets, Trump seemed to revel in the incapacitation of the Iranian regime, saying that the strikes had wiped out potential successors to the supreme leader.
After assessing Trump’s comments and the impact of U.S.-Israeli attacks, a German security official said the worry in Berlin and other European capitals is that “the plan is to have no plan.”
Well, you see, having a plan would require some actual brain power, and Trump doesn’t have that, so…
The beauty of it is if you have no plan, your plan can’t fail.
Iran was a democracy until 1953, led by Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, when it was overthrown by an unholy combo of Britain’s (ie Churchill’s) MI6, the American CIA, (Eisenhower/ John Foster Dulles), and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
Mossadegh’s government wanted all Iranians to benefit from their massive oil resource. The combo disagreed, and saw to it that the Pahlevi autocracy was installed instead.
Moral: Politicians and bureaucrats appointed through democratic processes are all too often themselves antidemocratic and authoritarian. Trump is a classic example of the type.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddegh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat#Execution_of_Operation_Ajax
When Saddam Hussein was toppled, Americans expected Iraq to just be transformed into a free working democracy and were surprised that it wasn’t that simple.
It wasn’t even all that simple here, but most Americans know so little about their own history that they don’t realize how many colonists wanted to remain with a monarchy – preferably the one they knew. Democracy takes work.