The convicted criminal presently occupying the Oval Office will tell anyone who listens that he is “a great negotiator”, the author of “many great deals”. In fact, he will tell you if you listen for only a very few moments, that “nobody makes deals like I do”. He will settle the war in Ukraine “on DAY ONE”, perhaps even right after the election if so chosen, claiming special relationships with the principals. “It will be easy” he repeatedly assured us; the claim becoming something of a campaign mantra. Likewise the genocide in Gaza. If fact, he is so good at it, he now pretends, that he has settled seven, eight, no nine wars demanding the “Noble” Peace Prize in small recognition for these Herculean efforts.
Why, then, has the much touted “six day” or later “three weeks war” currently being waged with Iran taken so long? Why is it dragging on with no end in sight?
The truth is that our much touted master negotiator cannot negotiate himself out of a wet paper bag. Consider, if you will, what is being claimed here and the record behind it. Disgustus makes these claims, as nearly all others, without citing a single tangible example and, when occasionally pressed will tell you the India-Pakistan conflict. But the Indian government immediately responds that he and his maladministration have had nothing to do with it, that the conflict ended through negotiations conducted by the parties themselves. And it certainly doesn't add up to nine, eight or even seven conflicts. True to form, tRUMP is pulling more shit out of his ass, providing more sustenance to his Maggot base.
Tony Swartz has spent more than the last decade on intermittent apology tours, seeking ablution in serial attempts to salvage what is left of his reputation for the cardinal sin of penning that awful document known to us as The art of the Deal. A more appropriate title, it transpires, should have been The Art of the Steal or, perhaps given tRUMP's constant whining, The Art of the Squeal. Read closely and one discovers that the book reveals only a singular strategy: don't honor the contract (principally through non-payment) and force the other party to legal recourse knowing full well it will cost the plaintiff more in legal fees than he will recover from any settlement. Using the legal system as a bludgeon, a strategy taught him by Roy Cohn, is his singular guiding light. Closely considered, Swartz reveals nothing more than a form of extortion. We are talking about contractors and suppliers here, usually small businesses that cannot afford expensive legal actions. Take the hit and face possible bankruptcy, go to court and face almost certain bankruptcy. That was the cost of doing business with the swine, and many walked the plank.
But tRUMP become Caesar now finds himself out of his league. Foreign nations, it should have been obvious, are not contractors. They have real leverage, and can retaliate. One simply cannot dictate terms without serious consequence. Oh, but you protest the example of the Second World War. Yes ,reply I, but it took four years of global conflict to impose terms and even then we accepted the Emperor. “ War is diplomacy by other means” it has been said, settled in the end through diplomacy. It cannot be avoided and cannot be reached through tantrums, bombast, bull-shit, memes, rants or force.
In the end, we had to negotiate our way out of Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan as the French had to do the same in Indochina and Algeria, the Brits in India, to name but the most recent conflicts of significance.
And out of his league he is. First he shredded the agreement reached under the Obama administration in which Iran agreed not to pursue nuclear weapons, agreed to international inspections. It was a wide ranging agreement with provisions to continue negotiating on other matters of contention. It was a real agreement promising to re-start our fractured relation with Iran given our history with the country, most notably the Coup of the early fifties which replaced a duly elected government with a tyrant. A tyranny imposed by the United States and enforced by a U.S. trained police force. Yes, we are up to our eyebrows in villainy leaving the Iranians with little reason to trust us.
Disgustus, in his inter-mitten soiling of the Oval Office has, serially, torn up agreements achieved through countless intermediaries taking years to reach completion. He has assassinated negotiators on their journey to meetings; conducted bombing raids on the eve of negotiations; hit Iran with bombs and missiles in the absence of ongoing talks. Bomb them if they do; bomb them if they don't. And this doesn't even take into account our support of the great terrorist of the Middle East, the Israelis who, on the eve of every parley launch an attack against Gaza, Lebanon, Syria or Iran itself as the occasion demands. .
The Iranians have retaliated. They have depleted our cache of missiles and anti-missile defense systems. They have introduced drone warfare into the middle east. They have shown us that they now have supersonic missiles capable of evading even the most advance Western defensive shields. And they have closed the Straight of Hormuz, pinching vital supply of oil, natural gas, fertilizer, helium all vital components of not only the Western economies but of the world economic order. They've got our Caesar by the balls.
What the Iranians have discovered and revealed to the world is that tRUMP has very small balls indeed.
Real balls, real strength is found in alliances, in military preparedness, in economic advantage, in soft power. Disgustus has destroyed all of those ingredients. First the alliances with his decade long war on NATO and the European Union, his imbroglio with Canada, his insulting Mexico and our Latin neighbors. Second, his appointment of Pete Kegsbreath, the drunkard now in charge of the Department of Defense, now dubbed the Department of War Crimes. Kegsbreath, late of Faux News, has distinguished himself by firing all the competent commanders, blocking promotions for women and minority officers, awarding defense contracts to companies affiliated with friends and the sons of his erstwhile Caesar, and making a pig's breakfast of military supply and operations. Third, we've lost our economic leverage. We no longer bring to any conflict a decided economic advantage. Not only are we no longer the 'Arsenal of Democracy”, for we have far to much reliance on critical materials and components not to mention manufacture of our weaponry, but we find ourselves racked with inflation as a consequence of both this war and an ill-conceived tariff war with the rest of the planet. Disgustus has destroyed what is called our 'soft power', that is the good-will earned in the world community through our support of UNICEF and similar international relief agencies and, most notably, USAID the United States Aid for International Development, a legacy of the Kennedy Administration “put through the wood shredder” by Elon Musk and his band of barbarians.
Real negotiations depend upon real strategy' strategy based upon a real understanding of the strength, weaknesses, and interests not only of oneself but of the other party. Disgustus has undermined the bargaining position of the United States and, being the narcissist that he is, has no real understanding of either his adversary nor, it transpires, of himself. His inflated ego has distorted everything. It is a looking glass become house of mirrors with Disgustus the Carnival Barker imploring, now begging, all to enter.
No one will now come to his rescue. He has no friends in the world community. Putin and Xi, laugh behind his back, celebrating his every misfortune. Our allies mistrust us, some even despise us. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has described our unraveling relationship not as an 'adjustment' but a 'breach'.
Disgustus from the beginning of this conflict, has serially claimed the objectives to be the end of the Iranian nuclear program, the end of Iranian support of 'terrorist' organizations in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine; and regime change. He has accomplished none of these goals.
Instead, what we find here is quixotic behavior with on-again, off-again military pressure designed to achieve ever changing 'military' objectives that bear little or no relationship to the nature of the conflict. The 'war' is fast becoming a deranged re-imagination of the 'escalation' strategy of the Viet Nam fiasco in which, it was held, just a little more 'pressure', involving a little more napalm and the 'enemy' will finally be 'forced' into discovering his long dormant 'reason'.
The Iranians have discovered, as the world is now discovering over tariff disputes, that one cannot negotiate with our present Caesar and his maladministration. There is altogether too much mendacity and too much incompetence; and there is also way too little intelligence. It is impossible to negotiate with an immature, quixotic psychopath. The Iranians have suggested that the end of the conflict can only be negotiated with parties serious about negotiation, perhaps awaiting a time when Disgustus has been retired or, as I would put it, the turd has been flushed. In the meantime, the oil reserves have run dry, real inflation is on the horizon, energy shortages loom with the spectre of long lines at the gas pumps, brown-outs and unemployment lines. The 1970's and 'stagflation' haunt our sleepless hours.
There is no strategy here. There cannot be. Disgustus the idiot stands in quicksand, sinking with no apparent way out and no rescue in sight.
An Bre'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh
Impeach and Imprison
