Wednesday, April 8, 2026

So, What Was All The Fuss About?

Yesterday morning: Oh, well, never mind: And the chuds wanna have it both ways! At minimum, Prof Feser seems to be dialing things down -- but it doesn't matter too much; if a sinful thing, viz, making a threat, has a good outcome, that doesn't make it good. But then there's Luke 14:5:

Then he said to them, 'Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern, would not immediately pull him out on the sabbath day?'

I guess even if that had a good outcome, that didn't make it good, huh? But here's the story from the UK Telegraph:

On Tuesday morning, before he posted his ultimatum to Truth Social after weeks of extending the deadline, Mr Trump had reportedly expressed in private that although negotiations with the Iranians had been “very serious”, he did not know whether a deal could be reached.

He fired off his salvo, threatening to destroy Iran’s bridges and power plants if leaders did not agree to open the Strait of Hormuz.

. . . In the other corner was China, who reportedly pressured Iran to accept the terms of the ceasefire – presented by Pakistan – at the 11th hour, according to The New York Times.

Talks had so far been indirect. Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey had passed messages between the US and Iran over the past two weeks as they desperately tried to avoid a global recession caused by the effects of rising energy prices on markets, as well as more death and destruction in the region.

On the morning of the ceasefire announcement, following Mr Trump’s warning, Tehran ruled out direct talks completely.

. . . Meanwhile, the US struck Kharg Island overnight. The island is Iran’s economic lifeline that handles 90 per cent of its oil exports.

It was a sign of the US’s determination to show that this was no bluff.

. . . As the hours ticked by, everyone from Pope Leo to the actor Ben Stiller called on the president to back down. At the same time, the administration fielded calls from executives and political allies trying to decipher whether Mr Trump was bluffing.

Then came the breakthrough. Three hours before the deadline, Iran said it was “positively” reviewing Pakistan’s proposal.

Mr Trump, who is thought to have been holed up in the Oval Office all day, was considering the proposal and would issue a response, the White House said.

The ceasefire gives Mr Trump a win, or at least the appearance of one, at a moment when it really mattered.

As The Telegraph noted, Pope Leo weighed in, saying “this threat against the entire people of Iran … truly is not acceptable”. But the problem is that Trump has developed a negotiating style over three different careers that's proven effective. It includes making wildly unreasonable demands until he gets a response he can live with, but it also includes careful study of his opponent. The Iranian mullahs are intransigent, they don't negotiate in good faith, and they treat the Western wish to seem reasonable as weakness.

Trump's counter-strategy was plain all along. Yesterday I linked to Fred Kaplan at Slate, who asked, "What Kind of Person Talks Like This—Let Alone a President at War?" But he almost got things right:

[O]ne might charitably interpret Trump’s tweets as a reprise of Richard Nixon’s “madman strategy”—the notion that an enemy will surrender out of fear that the American president is as crazy as he sounds and really will carry out his threat. But it’s worth noting that the ploy didn’t work for Nixon against North Vietnam—and it’s unlikely to work for Trump against Iran.

While Kaplan accurately characterizes Nixon's "madman strategy" (which was carefully calibrated with Kissinger), he underestimates its success. In 1972, faced with North Vietnamese intransigence, Nixon progressively removed previous restraints on US strategy, ordered B-52 strikes on North Vietnam, and ultimately mined Haiphong Harbor.

Though both the Soviets and Chinese frowned on the mining, they did not take active steps to protest it. With the North Vietnamese coast effectively closed to maritime traffic, Nixon ordered a new air interdiction campaign, dubbed Operation Linebacker, to commence.

. . . With imports into North Vietnam down 35-50% and with PAVN forces stalled, Hanoi became willing to resume talks and make concessions. As a result, Nixon ordered bombing above the 20th Parallel to cease on October 23, effectively ending Operation Linebacker.

If anything, Pope Leo facilitated Trump's "madman strategy" when he called it "not acceptable". Indeed, Trump cultivates his bad-boy image, again because it serves his purpose as a negotiator:

During a phone interview with Fox & Friends on Tuesday, Aug. 19, the president gave a new explanation for taking action to end the war in Ukraine — including positioning himself as a mediator between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“If I can save 7,000 people a week from being killed, I think that’s pretty-- I want to try to get to heaven if possible," Trump said.

"I’m hearing that I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole,” he added, to laughter from the Fox News hosts. "But if I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.”

But let's take the potential alternative to dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that opponents often float -- why couldn't the US have simply demonstrated the power of such a bomb by dropping it over the open ocean near Japan, instead of destroying cities? The problem is that while this might have demonstrated that this was technically possible (although in the actual circumstance, the Emperor's cabinet saw the possibility that even the actual damage at Hiroshima was American deception), it still wouldn't have sent a message that the Americans had the will actually to use it against cities.

All the hysteria in the leadup to yesterday's deadline, including Pope Leo's remarks, sent the clear message, not just to the mullahs, but to the Chinese and Pakistanis, that Trump didn't even care if he went to hell, he'd destroy a civilization. Trump couldn't have asked for a better group of people to vouch for his intent. Even the mullahs began to see these weren't your grandfather's Republicans.

It's worth noting that Nixon employed the "madman strategy" to further the US's then policy of containing the Soviet Union, and negotiation that resulted in a stalemate was the desired outcome. Trump's object, on the other hand, isn't containment -- but he's employing a strategy that Nixon in fact did demonstrate was effective.

posted by test @ April 08, 2026   0 Comments

Tuesday, April 7, 2026

Toward An Understanding Of Anti-Trump Hysteria

Yesterday I posted about a long-ago ex who could be so badly triggered that she would foam at the mouth, and this somehow reminded me of Edward Feser, the detached neo-Thomist academic philosopher who rages against the chuds. Then it occurred to me that there were two notionally big news events over Easter weekend, one a "historic" return to the moon by the Artemis II mission, the other the effort to rescue the downed weapons system officer who'd had to eject from his F-15 over Iran.

The Artemis II mission, with its one-from-column-A-one-from-column-B crew struggling with two versions of Outlook and a stinking multimillion-dollar toilet, was paralyzingly anodyne. The story of how the WSO was recovered, details of which are still coming out, is what gripped the country. Nevertheless,

Edward Feaser is convinced that Trump is a truly evil man: Fred Kaplan at Slate:

In the wake of President Donald Trump’s obscene and vile Easter-weekend posts on social media, two questions come to mind: Are any senior U.S. military officers preparing to resist unlawful orders? Are any Cabinet secretaries or GOP legislators weighing whether it’s worth the shame and career suicide to continue bootlicking an unhinged war criminal?

Why are people so triggered? The odd thing is that Trump was incredibly lucky. According to The Wall Street Journal:

For the Pentagon, this was a worst-case scenario. It was the first time a piloted U.S. aircraft had been lost over enemy territory in more than 20 years, military experts said. Video footage of a captured U.S. airman in enemy hands would have handed Tehran a major propaganda tool and a source of leverage at a critical moment in the war. U.S. officials worried that the regime would use the airman’s capture to seek maximalist concessions.

Except that Trump was in the White House while all this took place, monitoring the situation minute by minute. The harder he works, it seems, the luckier he gets. I think that's part of the problem: Reagan was characterized as an amiable dunce, someone who sleepwalked through history. Nobody calls Trump amiable or a sleepwalker. They call him an unhinged war criminal whose immortal soul is in danger, a very different thing.

Here's the problem with this characterization of the events over the weekend: the US has had a long history of humiliations at the hand of Iran and various other enemies, mostly Islamic, over the past half century, starting with Operarion Eagle Claw, the failed US operation on April 24, 1980, intended to rescue 52 US hostages in Tehran. In the general confusion caused by equipment failures and bad weather, a helicopter crashed into a C-130, killing eight service members and leading to abandonment of the mission.

This was a major factor behind Carter's loss to Reagan in the election later that year. Other such disasters, like the Blackhawk Down episode in Mogasishu on October 3–4, 1993, or the Benghazi attack on September 11-12, 2012, also had major political consequences; Hillary Clinton's connection with the Benghazi attack was one factor that cost her the 2016 election. I have a feeling that Trump has been acutely aware of the danger such snafus pose to his own military operations and understands how important careful planning, rehearsal, and managerial oversight are to their success.

In short, he's lucky, and the harder he works, the luckier he gets. Each lucky escape triggers people who can be triggered that way.

Scott Pinsker wrote yesterday:

Most Americans, I suspect, had a three-prong reaction to Trump’s post:

1. “Wait, Trump wrote WHAT? Is that true?”
2. [checks social media] “Welp, I guess it’s true.”
3. “LOL”

After all, Trump is the world’s most famous man. Ever since he descended Trump Tower’s golden escalator in 2015, he’s been studied, scrutinized, debated, and analyzed. Everything about him — from his hair to his personality to his use of social media — has been discussed ad nauseam.

At this point, he’s a known quantity. If his Truth Social post surprised you, you haven’t been paying attention.

. . . America and Israel are battling an enemy that’s been the #1 sponsor of global terrorism for 39 straight years, slaughters its own civilians, and is hellbent on acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran has repeatedly attempted to blow up bridges, power plants, hotels, airports, residential areas, and desalination stations. Even today, while waging war, the mullahs haven’t stopped murdering innocent teenagers.

But Trump’s use of an F-bomb — while warning them to stop — is the problem?

Please. This handwringing over the president’s language is ridiculous. And for Marjorie Taylor Greene, it’s especially hypocritical, considering this is the same virtuous “Christian woman” who called Rep. Lauren Boebert “a little b***h” on the House floor.

One thing I learned from watching On Patrol: Live is that police are trained specifically to use the f-bomb as part of "shock and awe" tactics in certain situations, like "Get out of the f-in' car!" This indicates a level of urgency appropriate to the situation. In this case, Trump is messaging that the situation is urgent. Pinsker goes on,

We nominated and elected President Trump because he’s a fighter. If we wanted another Bush, Jeb(!) was waiting in the wings. Good ol’ Jeb(!) was an excellent governor, a kind, moral man, and would NEVER use potty-language on social media.

Of course, he also wouldn’t have closed the border, deported illegals, renegotiated trade deals, ended DEI, forced NATO to increase its military funding, or played hardball against the radical left. We needed a fighter, not an appeaser.

The problem for certain people is that the electorate knows Trump quite well. They elected him twice to do what he's doing. They had three Bushes to compare him to. This may be triggering. Viewer discretion is advised.

UPDATE:

The sanctimoniousness here is astonishing. Genesis 12:1-3 seems to say Zionism is not just OK, it's established in an eternal covenant. To tell the truth, I kinda think the Almighty is having a chuckle about now.

posted by test @ April 07, 2026   0 Comments

Monday, April 6, 2026

Edward Feser Big Mad!

I haven't checked in with Edward Feser for several weeks, but others have pointed to his posts on X here and there. The big thing that strikes me lately is his use of the term "chud", as we see above. I asked the AI oracle, "can you give an estimate of how many times Edward Feser has used the word 'chud' on X?" Remarkably, it answered,

It is highly unlikely that Edward Feser has ever used the term "chud" on X (formerly Twitter). A search of his public posts and interactions reveals no instances of him using the word.

The term "chud" is a modern internet slang insult typically used by left-leaning users to mock those they perceive as being on the far-right. As a Gen X Catholic philosopher and academic known for a formal, Thomistic style of writing, Feser’s vocabulary generally avoids such contemporary online pejoratives. He has even criticized the use of similar slang, such as "boomer," as being "too stupid for words" and a substitute for actual engagement. While he is very active on the platform in discussing ethics, politics, and theology, his "insults" tend to be more traditionally academic or dryly humorous.

Well, AI itself says AI can be wrong, and it looks like AI is going to be surprised at some point. I wish AI had done an actual search -- I was more or less idly browsing recent posts, and his use of the term seems pretty frequent. The one above was yesterday; here's another one from this past Saturday: During my single days, I dated a woman who would get so upset at some of my remarks that she would begin to foam at the mouth. I'd simply never seen this phenomenon, and maybe from a bit of a cruel streak, I'd sometimes see what I could do to set her off. It was pretty predictable, and it resulted in a completely irrational, uncontrollable rage. I'm glad those days are long in the past, but I'm getting a sense of this same distant nightmare in Feser's recent posts. For instance, in the post just above, he calls Israel a "secular state", when this is at best a controversial view; for instance, at Quora:

The common misconception is the Israel is A Jewish State, when in fact Israel is THE Jewish State, or, more accurately, the national State of the Jewish nation. The Jewish religion is the unique national religion of the Jewish People, just as Hebrew is the unique national language of the Jewish People. The very word “Jew” is derived from the name of the land from which the Jews originated, Judea.

A quick web search reveals that couples can't marry in Israel without going through religious jurisdictions. Cremation is very difficult due to Orthodox Jewish opposition. Many of the conditions of ordinary life are affected by Jewish law. In the post above, Feser is implying that Israel is "another secular state" comparable to the US, which has a constitutional prohibition against established religion, which Israel does not. This stretches the definition of "secular" in a way that I wouldn't expect from a careful academic writer.

This again brings me to the question of why Feser seems to have created a sort of intellectual carveout for his estimates of Trump. If I were to ask him, say, about the logical validity of a proof of God's existence, he would speak as a neo-Aristotelian philosophy professor. If I were to ask him about how just war doctrine applies to Trump's strategy in Iran, he would start to use words like "chud" -- the neo-Aristotelian in him would take a siesta.

In fact, as I used to do with my long-ago ex-girlfriend, I'll bet I could find out how to set him off and get him foaming at the mouth. This has me scratching my head. I've seen references lately to a first anniversary of the New Jersey drone hysteria of early 2025 (for instance in an upcoming April 8 episode of the Discovery show Conspiracies and Coverups), in which New Jerseyites, who have always been the butt of a certain kind of joke, began looking up at the sky at night, seeing airliners with blinking navigation lights on approach patterns to Newark Airport, and anxiously reporting that these were drone swarms. Local politicians angrily demanded explanations. TV news reporters pointed upward at the ominous flashing lights.

This died down after several weeks, but now we seem to be seeing a new level of interest in the phenomenon. What caused it? I actually think it was the reelection of Trump and the slow recognition that he was returning to the White House. It seems to have caused a mass hysteria, at least in New Jersey.

Something about Trump makes certain people start foaming at the mouth. I think he even finds it amusing, and sometimes he deliberately sets people off. I need to give further thought to the question of why this is.

posted by test @ April 06, 2026   0 Comments

Friday, April 3, 2026

The Wall Street Journal Stands Up For NATO

Yesterday,

A second Republican senator spoke out in defense of Nato on Thursday, joining Mitch McConnell and the Democrats, after Donald Trump said that he was “absolutely” considering withdrawing from the alliance after it refused to take part in the joint assault with Israel against Iran.

“Nato stood by America when we were under attack and came to our aid after the September 11th attacks. Their soldiers fought and died alongside our troops in Afghanistan,” said Thom Tillis, a Republican, and Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, who co-chair the Senate Nato observer group.

McConnell and Tillis are both lame ducks who seem to be opposed to anything Trump has ever proposed, but by gum, The Wall Street Journal has their backs:

Could the Iran war do what even Vladimir Putin couldn’t and blow up the North Atlantic Treaty alliance? That’s no longer an idle question as most of Europe refuses to help the U.S., and President Trump responds by threatening to leave NATO. This would be the dumbest alliance breakup in modern history.

Several paragraphs of irrelevant blah-blah follow, but they don't explain why this would be "the dumbest alliance breakup in modern history". The writers finally wander back to the point:

A U.S. withdrawal from NATO would nonetheless serve only Russia, Iran and China. Blowing up NATO has been the main goal of Russian strategy since the alliance formed in 1949.

But NATO was formed as an anti-Soviet alliance, not an anti-Russian alliance. Putin would probably like to get rid of NATO, but it seems to me that, especially with Sweden and Finland joining, the original 1949 alliance is overextended -- the point of NATO in 1949 was to place territories that the US primarily had won back from the Nazis under the US nuclear umbrella. The calculation under Truman and Marshall seems to have been that this was something the US, primarily with the support of the UK and the Royal Navy, could afford.

The idea of adding Soviet satellites like Poland, Hungary, or Czechoslovakia to NATO between 1949 and 1991 would have been wildly impractical, and NATO did nothing when Soviet tanks went into several of those satellites during that period. Adding the former satellites to NATO became cost-effective only when the Soviet Union collapsed and the potential for any type of revanchism became much more remote.

In addition, as of 1949, Iran was a Western ally, and China was much less of a factor. At the start of the Korean War, Truman was able to use the UN to provide a legal foundation and justify an international alliance against Soviet-backed North Korean and Chinese forces. Under those circumstances, he didn't need NATO.

The world has changed a lot since 1949. Iran is no longer aligned with the West, and China is a more formidable adversary than Russia. Meanwhile, the European powers have already factored in the disappearance of the Soviet Union; the decline or the Royal Navy since the 1990s has been a topic of discussion for weeks. And as we saw yesterday, the German defense minister effectively admitted that the only naval force the European NATO members can assemble is "a handful of frigates".

The Journal concludes,

The larger reality is that Russia and Iran are working together as an axis against the West. The two share weapons, especially drones and missiles, and Russia is providing intelligence to Iran about American targets. Mr. Trump is especially obtuse on this point, refusing even to acknowledge this Russian harm to U.S. troops, much less condemn it.

. . . This axis of adversaries that includes China wants to weaken the Western alliance and the free world. It wants the U.S. and Israel to fail to defeat Iran, and Russia to defeat Ukraine militarily and become the dominant power in Europe. If the Western allies let this happen, it will be the height of folly and an historic tragedy.

This at least is an effort to answer the question my old colleague Phil used to ask in meetings, "What problem are we trying to solve?" The Journal's answer appears to be that Iran, China, and Russia have formed a 21st-century Axis against the US, and we can solve this only with NATO's help. But even if we were to invoke Article 5 against Iran, or even Russia or China, the best NATO could provide would be "a handful of frigates", which wouldn't be much help at all.

Is it in our interest to live in a fantasy world where this isn't true? In addition, in 1949, the British controlled the Iranian oil industry via the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which was 51% owned by the UK government to ensure oil fuel for the Royal Navy. The UK at that time was also the leading NATO partner, and it was capable of acting to ensure its control. This is no longer a factor -- why try to pretend things haven't changed?

In other words, Trump has made what seems to be a realisic appraisal of the current world situation, which in part simply ratifies the NATO members' own appraisal of the Russian threat, or at least their appraisal that the US would decisively defeat a Russian threat without much need for other than token NATO assistance. Therefore, Trump is pursuing US policy goals in this changed environment using resources other than NATO.

It's also intriguing that the Journal throws Ukraine into the argument. As things stand, once it's become plain that neither Russia nor Ukraine wants to end that war, which is heading for a four-year stalemate, Russia in particular has been squandering ammunition, personnel, and equipment that it can't use against NATO. On the other hand, adding Ukraine to NATO simply adds one more country to the growing number that the US would be committed to defend without much serious assistance from other members.

Trump is simply making the realistic assessment presidents are expected to make.

posted by test @ April 03, 2026   0 Comments

Thursday, April 2, 2026

NATO And The Conventional Wisdom

Just like that, Real Clear Politics ran comments on the Iran war today from both Roger Kimball and Victor Davis Hanson. As I've been saying, RCP reliably runs them as the conservative conventional wisdom, but they seldom add much insight to any issue, and sometimes they just get things wrong.

Hanson's point today is that the non-US NATO nations haven't been playing fair:

When NATO members in the past have operated unilaterally to defend their own national interests, they have often called on the U.S., as NATO’s strongest member, for overt help.

For nearly 40 years, the U.S. had offered logistical, intelligence, reconnaissance, refueling, and diplomatic support to the French in their unilateral and postcolonial efforts to protect Chad from Libya and, later, Islamists.

During the 1982 Falklands War, a solitary Britain faced enormous logistical challenges in steaming halfway around the world to eject Argentina from its windswept and sparse islands.

U.S. aid was critical to the effort.

. . . Currently, America has not asked NATO members to help bomb Iran . . . .

All the U.S. had initially asked for was basing support in disarming a common Western enemy that, for nearly half a century, has slaughtered American diplomats and soldiers and tried to kill a U.S. president and secretary of state.

But most NATO members could not even offer tacit help. Some damned the U.S. effort as either illegal or unnecessary.

But let's get real here. NATO was always an anti-Soviet alliance devised to contain Stalin and, to a lesser extent, Khrushchev. The Soviets removed Khrushchev themselves, largerly ending an expansionist threat to Western Europe. The two major "containment" conflicts of the Cold War, Korea and Viet Nam, didn't involve NATO. Nor did Soviet efforts to impose discipline within their sphere of influence in East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.

Neither US aid to France in defense of Chad nor aid to the UK against Argentina involved invocation of Article 5, which says that an armed attack against one member is an attack against all. That has been invoked only once, following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, in the Afghanistan-Iraq wars, which were post-Soviet, didn't much involve Russia, and were highly questionable affairs. It's also hard to imagine that the outcome would have changed at all if no other NATO countries had been involved.

The theoretical need for NATO faded once the Soviets themselves removed the expansionst Khrushchev. In theory, it completely disappeared after the Soviet Union collapsed. In practice, the Russian invasion of Ukraine demonstrated that even a second-rate non-NATO power could fight the Russian military to a protracted standstill, to the point that the US could seriously question whether its interests were threatened at all in that conflict.

The US aid to France in Chad and the UK in the Falklands was a lagniappe, pure and simple. It imposed no obligation on France and the UK; the only claim Hanson can make is we were nice to them; how come they can't be nice to us? But this neglects the bigger point: NATO was an anti-Soviet alliance, when the Soviet Union has been gone for decades. NATO for the non-US countries was a distraction: each of them had national defense interests aside from any Soviet threat, which they'd neglected to consider, somehow assuming NATO would solve everything.

Ukraine, not a NATO member, posed one puzzle. A bigger one is the Strait of Hormuz:

The problem is that as a practical matter, no non-US NATO country or combination of countries has the capability to "go to the strait and just TAKE IT".

Germany’s defense minister on Monday ruled out sending naval forces to the Strait of Hormuz, saying such a move would risk dragging Germany into a conflict with Iran.

. . . He dismissed US President Donald Trump’s call for NATO allies to help secure the strategic waterway and stressed that Germany will push for a diplomatic solution and a swift end to the fighting.

"What does Donald Trump expect a handful of European frigates to accomplish in the Strait of Hormuz that the powerful American Navy cannot achieve alone? That is the question I ask myself," Pistorius said.

But that ignores the issue that the oil that can't get through the Strait of Hormuz to reach Europe is European oil. The US doesn't get oil via the strait. But Europe can only send a handful of frigates to defend its interests, yet it somehow expects the powerful American navy to act on its behalf, while sanctimoniously claiming the Iran war isn't its war. The problem is that even the most powerful non-US NATO countries can send only a handful of frigates to protect any national interests that can't be protected by invoking Article 5.

The problem is worse if US interests conflict with the rest of NATO. For instance,

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned Friday [January 16] that a decision on who owns Greenland doesn't belong to U.S. President Donald Trump.

. . . Carney urged NATO allies including the U.S. to “respect their commitments” as he stressed Canada’s support for Danish sovereignty over the strategically vital Arctic island, which Trump has threatened to seize.

"We are NATO partners with Denmark, and so our full partnership stands," Carney said in his first remarks on the intensifying diplomatic brouhaha. "Our obligations on Article 5, Article 2 of NATO stand, and we stand full-square behind those."

But even the Canadian armed forces are fully aware of the military reality behind any such insistence:

Canadian military planners recently conducted a rare conceptual war game simulating a US invasion of Canada, reportedly the first of its kind in about a century, according to a report by The Globe and Mail.

The scenario, described as highly improbable by officials and experts, was explored amid heightened rhetoric from US political figures. In the exercise, planners reportedly assessed that US forces could seize key Canadian strategic locations within a week, potentially in as little as two days.

Denmark itself wouldn't add much to an alliance with Canada to defend Greenland against the US:

Greenland is Denmark’s greatest strategic responsibility. Denmark’s military presence in Greenland, however, is minimal, consisting mostly of patrol units and surveillance. There are no fighters or air defenses or heavy ground forces. Instead, Denmark relies on administration, diplomacy, and—perhaps ironically—its alliance with the far more powerful United States. Sovereignty is asserted more through legal mechanisms than militarily.

. . . Denmark can be commended for assembling a capable and modern force, albeit one designed for coalitions and contribution not dominance. Denmark’s power lies in alignment, rather than autonomy, an arrangement of which US rhetoric may force reevaluation. Greenland underscores this reality: a defense posture that is dependent upon alliances is only as strong as those alliances are.

The problem at this point is simply that as long as Russia isn't now able to go even as far as the Soviet Union could in asserting control over countries in its own sphere, like Ukraine, as it once did in Hungary or Czechoslovakia, the value of NATO to the US as an anti-Soviet alliance fades. At the same time, the lagniappes the US has traditionally provided to NATO members become too expensive to keep handing out.

Meanwhile, those same NATO members are slowly waking up to the fact that they have national defense interests separate from those the NATO alliance was supposed to cover. And that becomes their problem, not the US's.

posted by test @ April 02, 2026   0 Comments

Wednesday, April 1, 2026

Again, What's Going On In Iran?

As we wait for President Trump's address on Iran this evening, I continue to reflect on the X post above from several days ago. A big theme in the comment thread is that it's no surprise that the Revolutionary Guard is in control. On the other hand, no date is given for the reported exchange between President Pezeshkian and Revolutionary Guard Chief Vahidi, but at least one report claims that Vahidi has been eliminated: But other reports suggest he's still in charge, and conflicts with President Pezeshkian are continuing:

Rising tensions between the Pezeshkian administration and Iran’s military leadership have pushed the president into a “complete political deadlock,” with the Revolutionary Guard effectively assuming control over key state functions, informed sources told Iran International.

. . . Pezeshkian has repeatedly sought an urgent meeting with Mojtaba Khamenei in recent days, but all requests have gone unanswered, with no contact established.

Informed sources say a “military council” composed of senior IRGC officers now exercises full control over the core decision-making structure, enforcing a security cordon around Mojtaba Khamenei and preventing government reports on the country’s situation from reaching him.

But reports from a week ago said the Trump administration was talking, at least indirectly, with Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, but neither has been mentioned in the past several days. I asked the AI oracle, "Where do Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stand in Iran's current political structure?" It answered,

In Iran's political structure as of early 2026, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi have both seen their roles expand significantly, emerging as central power centers during a period of severe regional conflict and leadership instability.

. . . Qalibaf is the Speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly (Iran's Parliament). A former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Air Force and former Mayor of Tehran, he has long been a heavyweight in the conservative/hardline camp.

. . . Following severe degradation to Iran's senior leadership from military strikes, Qalibaf has moved far beyond his traditional legislative role. According to intelligence and media reporting, he is operating as one of the de facto leaders of the country's strategic decision-making and war effort.

. . . Araghchi serves as the public and international face of the Iranian regime. While the actual decisions regarding military posture and red lines are heavily dictated by the IRGC and top security councils, Araghchi manages the critical backchannels and diplomatic messaging.

I asked a follow-up: "What is Iran's President Pezeshkian's standing vis-a-vis Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf?" It answered,

The political standing between Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf (Ghalibaf) is defined by a shift from early cooperation to an escalating institutional and political rivalry. While they initially pursued a "honeymoon" period governed by the rhetoric of consensus to manage the country's governance, their relationship has grown increasingly adversarial.

. . . Amid the severe regional conflicts and military strikes impacting Iran, Qalibaf has emerged as a vocal and influential figure handling strategic posturing. He has taken an uncompromising, hardline stance against negotiations with the U.S. and Israel. Conversely, Pezeshkian's standing has been described as somewhat diminished or restricted to managing day-to-day state functions, particularly after facing pushback from hardline institutions when he attempted to extend diplomatic olive branches or apologies to neighboring Gulf states.

But this is worth exactly what I paid for it, nothing. Still, the comment thread after the first post I embedded above misses the big point: Israel clearly has penetrated and decrypted all of Iran's intra-government deliberations, to the point that their intelligence can leak specific exchanges between Iran's top figures and their subsequent remarks to staff. This report confirms that surmise:


Sources quoted by The New York Times overnight described a situation of deep dysfunction in Tehran, where decision-making has been severely disrupted following joint US and Israeli strikes. Officials said damage to communications infrastructure has fueled paranoia among senior figures, who now fear their conversations are being intercepted, leading many to avoid direct contact altogether. This has hindered coordination of military responses and stalled efforts to formulate positions in potential negotiations.

. . . Israeli officials speaking to The New York Times compared the situation in Iran to the breakdown experienced by Hamas in Gaza after its leadership was eliminated. They said communication challenges are forcing reliance on intermediaries and slow exchanges, complicating both military coordination and diplomatic efforts, and leaving uncertainty over who is authorized to make decisions on behalf of the Iranian government.

We should note that if Israeli intelligence can eavesdrop on their conversations, it likely can pinpoint their specific locations as well, and they know it. And based on recent remarks from Trump, the situation may have changed:

President Donald Trump told the New York Post on Monday that the U.S. is talking to new leaders in Iran, without providing more details.

"There has been total regime change because the regimes of the past are gone and we're dealing with a whole new set of people," Trump said. "And thus far, they've been much more reasonable."

Trump added that the U.S. is waiting to see if Iran's Parliamentary Leader Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf will work with the U.S., and he claimed that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei was "seriously injured."

"We're gonna find out," Trump told The Post when asked about Ghalibaf. "I'll let you know that in about a week."

Trump's implication seems to be either that Qalibaf, Vahidi, and Pezeshkian are no longer factors, or that their alignment and posture have significantly changed. As of last Thursday, nearly a week ago, Trump was saying,

“We estimated it would take approximately four to six weeks to achieve our mission; 26 days in, we’re extremely, really, a lot ahead of schedule. The Iranian regime is now admitting to itself that they have been decisively defeated,” he said.

“They’re saying to people, ‘This is a disaster.’ They know it. That’s why they’re talking to us, and they wouldn’t talk otherwise, but they’re talking to us because they’ve got a disaster on their hands. They’re defeated. They can’t make a comeback,” he said.

. . . “They now have a chance to make a deal, but that’s up to them, and they’ll tell you, ‘We’re not negotiating. We will not negotiate.’ Of course, they’re negotiating. They’ve been obliterated,” he said. “Who wouldn’t negotiate?”


Let's hope his address tonight adds some clarity.

posted by test @ April 01, 2026   0 Comments

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

Pope Leo, The Scriptural Conundrum, And Alan Dershowitz

I double checked this with AI, which replied,

Yes, Pope Leo XIV stated that God "does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war" during his Palm Sunday homily on March 29, 2026.

Speaking to tens of thousands in St. Peter's Square, the Pope condemned the ongoing conflict between the U.S., Israel, and Iran as "atrocious" and warned against using faith to justify violence.

. . . He cited Isaiah 1:15 to emphasize his point: "Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood".

But then I asked AI about Moses and the battle with the Amalekites:

According to Exodus 17:8-16, the Battle of Rephidim saw Joshua lead the Israelites against the Amalekites while Moses, Aaron, and Hur watched from a hill. The Israelites prevailed whenever Moses held up the "staff of God," but faltered when he lowered it due to fatigue. Aaron and Hur Supported his arms with a stone for sitting, allowing Joshua to secure victory until sunset.

A quick web search brings up the point that in Isaiah 1:15, God is specifically rebuking the later-stage Southern Kingdom of Judah, which had fallen into hypocrisy. This wasn't the case with Moses, Aaron, Hur, and Joshua, who were doing God's will. It's hard to avoid a conclusion that if your cause is in accordance with God's will, even when you go to war, God listens to your prayers.

But let's go to the specific wording of The Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2309:

The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. the gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. . . . the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. the power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

Let's consider very recent remarks by Alan Dershowitz, who by his account speaks frequently with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and whose viewpoint must certainly have influenced the prudential judgment of both Netanyahu and President Trump, whose mutual reponsibility it is to evaluate the moral legitimacy of the Iran war.

The military action undertaken against Iran, designed to prevent it from developing a nuclear arsenal, is the most significant since World War II.

This is a remarkable assessment, and it relies on what the meaning of "significant" is. The Korean and Viet Nam wars were longer and invoived far more forces on both sides, but they were fought to a stalemate, a result of a policy context of "containing" the Soviet Union, not defeating it. This likely won't happen with Iran, and it certainly isn't the US or Israeli intent. I think Dershowitz is correct in equating the moral significance of the Iran war with World War II in the area of averting potential widespread destruction of innnocent life.

Indeed, had similar preventive military action been taken against the Nazi regime in the 1930s, it might have saved as many as 50 million lives. If the military attack against Iran succeeds in preventing it from developing a nuclear arsenal, it too may prevent millions of deaths — we will never know how many.

We will only learn the deadly numbers if this attack fails and Iran develops and deploys nuclear weapons.

Preventive military actions are always controversial and often unpopular, because history is blind to the probabilistic future. If prevention succeeds, we never know its benefits. If it fails, we learn its costs the hard way.

What Dershowitz is saying here is that, weighing the circumstances, those who have responsibility for the public good have chosen to venture into war. He doesn't mention Clausewitz, but Clausewitz has a great deal to say about being blind to the probabilistic future -- it's simply part of war:

War is the province of uncertainty: three-fourths of those things upon which action in war must be calculated, are hidden more or less in the clouds of great uncertainty. Here, then, above all a fine and penetrating mind is called for, to grope out the truth by the tact of its judgment.

. . . Resolution is an act of courage in single instances, and if it becomes a characteristic trait, it is a habit of the mind. But here we do not mean courage in face of bodily danger, but in face of responsibility, therefore to a certain extent against moral danger.

Dershowitz brings up a question that strikes me as very close to Clausewitz's invocation of resolution as courage against moral danger:

Trump has said if the U.S. had not bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities back in June, Iran would already have a nuclear bomb and would have used it. That may or may not be accurate. We can never know for certain. But do we have to take that risk, and does Israel? Or are these two nations entitled — or perhaps obligated — to eliminate or at least reduce that risk by preventive military action? Should they have to wait until it is imminent, which may mean too late or almost too late to prevent it?

What Dershowitz is arguing is that we're never going to be completely certain about either the conditions that may have led to the war -- was Iran actually just weeks from building and deploying a nuclear weapon? -- or what the outcome may be -- will we be able finally to prevent Iran from ever doing this? -- but we have entrusted the elected leadership in both Israel and the US with the prudential judgment and the resolution to go to war.

But Dershowitz leaves aside the scriptural conundrum (and so does the pope): irrespective of the New Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant is eternal and remains in effect. God still has a special relationship with Israel. It's a major mistake to ignore this.

posted by test @ March 31, 2026   0 Comments