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