Rep. Andy “It’s Not A Sin To Be White’’ Barr, contemplating just how far bigotry can carry him in his race for the U.S. Senate, is jabbering a lot these days about men participating in women’s athletics (those damn trans people, don’t you know), an issue that rivals the designated hitter for relevance to the current political situation.
One issue the Lexington Republican seems to be avoiding after a solid endorsement is the seemingly endless military conflict with Iran. Who can blame him? The war that President-cum-Dictator Donald J. Trump originally cast as “a little excursion,’’ was predicted to last a few weeks at most. It has now gone on for six months, too short to be considered a quagmire, perhaps.
But a fiasco? Oh yeah.
Andy, our own little GI Joe, was all gung-ho when the little excursion was launched, telling Fox Business News in April, “Anyone who believes Operation Epic Fury has not been an epic success is either living under a rock or has late-stage Trump Derangement Syndrome. This operation has been a remarkable success at defanging the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.’’
That assessment, obviously, hasn’t aged well, unless a large proportion of the population has, indeed, taken up residence under rocks. Nate Silver, who runs a website that correlates various polls, determined on Wednesday that 56.7 percent of those queried oppose the conflict with 37.1 percent expressing support. Meanwhile a Reuters/Ipsos survey released on Monday shows that 80 percent of Americans believe this lovely, little war will continue for an extended period.
Meanwhile, according to that same Reuters/Ipsos poll, Trump’s approval stands at 33 percent — the lowest of his second term, leaving the remaining sane people in this country to wonder what one-third of the population could possibly be thinking.
In other words, as Sen. George Aiken, R-VT, famously remarked about the ill-fated Vietnam War, “It’s time to declare victory and come home.’’
Trump has actually declared victory, repeatedly, as a matter of fact. He mouths platitudes. He maintains Iran’s military has been destroyed, claiming in June that the U.S. had achieved “complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” adding later that the enemy had “no air force” and that its “anti-aircraft is gone.”
Yet, the conflict continues, though military strikes have been suspended — the U.S. is quickly running out of missiles — and Trump is leaning toward economic warfare of some sort rather than bombing Iran “back to the stone ages,’’ a battle plan he once highlighted.
Some analysts, perhaps prematurely, maintain the war is indeed over and America lost. But Trump is so taken with the nation’s military might that now he’s threatening to bomb Oman for trying to make an oil transport deal with Iran.
Why Trump got the nation into this revoltin’ development is a long, sad tale. The administration was concerned about Iran’s uranium enrichment program that might ultimately result in possession of nuclear weapons. That concern is understandable since any aggressive move by Iran would unsettle the Middle East and pose a direct threat to Israel. So the great orange leader decided to blast the snot out of Iran, secure in the knowledge it would humbly bend to America’s military might.
Think again.
Barr along with the other Republican members of the Kentucky D.C. delegation — save for Rep. Thomas Massie, R-SomewhereorotherLewisCounty, and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Bowling Green — continue to back their ‘Big Daddy’ in his war game lest he get miffed at them. Given several opportunities to end the showdown via votes in the House, they have demurred and stayed the course. Barr rose on the floor in March to express his “strong opposition to this dangerous and misguided war powers resolution that would weaken our country and serve as a gift to our enemies.’’
That means you can count Andy among the 37.1 percent of Americans who support this atrocity. But then there’s Massie.
“The U.S. has been significantly weakened by the war with Iran,” Massie wrote on X last month. “This administration depleted our missile defenses, drained our oil reserves, sacrificed our men & women, inflated the price of consumer goods, increased our debt, and neglected our domestic needs…” he continued, adding, “all for Israel.”
A reckoning needs to be made — this despicable turn of events represents a crisis of Trump’s own making.
The United States has long had a sordid past with Iran, dating back at least to 1953 when the CIA became involved in overthrowing the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, primarily because he nationalized the oil industry. Thereafter, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran, consolidated power and ruled until January 1979 when he went into exile because of public unrest resulting from human rights atrocities and a growing Shia Islamist movement.
Suffering from leukemia, Pahlavi was allowed to enter the U.S. for treatment by President Jimmy Carter. That led to Iranian revolutionaries aligned with the new ruler, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to infamously seize the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, holding 66 American hostages for 444 days before their release.
So, there’s not a lot of love lost between the two countries. President Barak Obama in 2015 sought to ease tensions and end Iran’s nuclear ambitions in an agreement titled the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Iran agreed to limits on its uranium enrichment capabilities for 15 years and a redesign of its reactors. It also submitted to a strict inspection process to make sure it was following the agreement. In return the U.S. waived sanctions imposed as a result of Iran’s nuclear development program and agreed to send $1.7 billion Iran’s way — money that the U.S. had withheld as part of an arbitration case.
The pact was criticized in some quarters. Iran wasn’t required to dismantle its nuclear program and could restart after the 15-year duration of the agreement, The Obama administration asserted the pact delayed Iran’s attempt to build nuclear warheads and carried a strong verification regime. Reports at the time indicated Iran was following through on its commitments.
Whatever its shortcomings, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action may have had, it put a halt on Iran’s nuclear weapons development.
Then came Trump.
On May 8, 2018, during his first of two, non-consecutive presidential terms, Trump abrogated the plan, thus opening the door to renewed Iranian nuclear weapons development since all the limits were ceremoniously tossed out the window.
Trump opened the door. The Iranians stepped through.
On Feb. 28, the U.S. started bombing, anticipating Iran would quickly capitulate and beg for mercy. Sorry to disappoint.
On March 3, Trump sought to rationalize his actions by insisting Obama “made maybe the worst deal I’ve ever seen, because he gave all power in the Middle East to Iran, he went the exact opposite way, and I terminated that. If I didn’t terminate that deal, they would be sitting with a massive nuclear weapon three years ago, which would have been used already on Israel at least, and other countries also. And we wouldn’t be talking about it right now.”
The rantings of a madman. If you sniff something here, it’s the usual Trump horse manure. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the primary monitoring authority, consistently as part of the deal found that Iran was complying with the imposed technical limits. The Iranians further permitted unfettered inspections. U.S. intelligence officials determined that Tehran was in compliance. It was working before Trump blew it up.
Now what we are left with is a farce. Trump and his putz secretary of defense Pete Hegseth, who seems to be auditioning to replace Sterling Hayden as Gen. Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove, apparently thought cascading rocket attacks would lead to a general uprising and the Iranian people would do America’s work for it. Didn’t happen. Instead, Iran held tight and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp., which maintains control over the Strait of Hormuz, instituted a blockade, attacking vessels that bypass its authority, and using a combination of missiles, drone boats and mines to assert authority. The result is chaos in the oil market, with tankers unable to navigate the strait, resulting in higher gas prices.
What the nation has witnessed is one madcap, Three Stooges-like swing from one day to the other. Trump has repeatedly vowed that an agreement with Iran was close. It never arrived. So much for the world’s greatest negotiator.
Recall this: Trump harshly criticized Obama for sending cash to Iran, claiming he had “emptied out the banks” and provided Iran with “tens of billions of dollars.”
Lies. All lies. The banks were holding Iran’s money. The total was $1.7 billion.
Now, compare that to the country’s total costs thus far for waging the War on Iran — $40.6 billion according to the U.S.-Iran War Cost Tracker operated by the website MilitarySpend, a defense economics research outfit.
Obama sent Iran $1.7 billion of its own money in return for an assurance it would not develop nuclear weapons for 15 years. Trump is spending almost 40 times that amount in taxpayer money and has received no assurances from Tehran.
Ironically on this same day, the U.S. Treasury acknowledged that the national debt has reached $40 trillion under Trump, an all-time record, and it’s sure as shooting that the cost of this war of choice isn’t helping the nation’s bottom line.
Somebody might want to tell Andy. Maybe he can pay attention to all this rather than worry about trans and girls playing together.