Fearful Asymmetry

The Trumpian Way of War

Former American national security advisor John Bolton [not exactly as illustrated]

Americans these days are supposedly afraid of Forever Wars, as some now call them after the War on Terror, but Americans already had a Forever War with Iran long before anyone deliberately flew planes into buildings and the Americans invaded Afghanistan in reply.

Iran.

Now 47 years after the revolution that threw the American puppet-Shah from office generations of American political leaders have fought Iran, not just because Iran sits in the midst of oilfields but because it alone in the region defies American power.

Some of America’s Forever Warriors are beyond merely doing their duty. John Bolton, Trump 45’s national security advisor, is almost as bloodthirsty as the South Carolina fool Lindsay Graham since the start of Trump 47’s Operation Epic Fuck-up. That’s the real name of this mess, this strategic fiasco. Some started to call it Epic Failure online over the weekend. Actually, they tentatively asked if that might be the real name, days after your humble escribbler labelled it so and wondered why no one else had yet struck on the obvious. It is really a fuck-up but you cannot say fuck to American adults so there must have faux-genteel alternative.

America is a country of contradictions. That’s why people around the world are both fascinated by and repulsed by America at the same time. It is hard to be singularly anti-American since America is so many things at the same time, many of which are spectacularly good, but it is easy to be anti-American since at the same time parts of the country are spectacularly repulsive.

America and Americans produce staggering wealth but, intentionally distribute it so poorly, limits who may share in it, that poverty and all its social ills of drug abuse, homicide, squalor, and preventable disease are rampant. Some are pro-life but, as with Charlie Kirk, joyfully accept thousands of preventable deaths to protect the right of anyone to own a pistol or rifle or 50. There is a bill currently in front of one of the southern states’ congress that would bring the death penalty for anyone convicted of getting or helping someone to get an abortion. The sponsors of the bill say they are pro-life.

Americans believe in equality, but American culture is inherently and irredeemably racist. Jesse Jackson, who, as the New York Times obituary for him reminded us, said he wanted “to transform the mind of America,” instead reflected the soul of it nation in his own undeniable antisemitism. Those pro-life advocates also believe in equality and of individual freedom, except for women, whose bodies the state must control.

The name Trump picked for his fiasco is a contradiction, an imbalance, an asymmetry. By the way, asymmetric is an adjective American military types came up with a few years ago to describe situations where two sides are mismatched. Not everyone fought the same way or had the same resources. The notion contains two basic and deadly flaws. First, it assumes that there is something called symmetry, sameness, but that is not true. There are always differences and imbalances, which is what strategy is supposed to address. Second, it assumes that the side used to measure what “symmetrical” is would be the naturally stronger or better side. Tell that to the Vietnamese, the Afghans, or now to the Iranians as the Americans shout, like Franz Liebkin in The Producers to “Stand still! How can I shoot you if you keep moving?”

Operation Epic Fury. Not a Forever War. Over and done, Trump and his stooges claimed early on. Its initials are the same as Operation Enduring Freedom, the war in Afghanistan, which did not produce freedom at all. True, this is not asymmetry as such but irony, but the name reflects an asymmetry in understanding, knowledge, sense between the Trump gong show and the world. Trump’s version was supposed to avoid the Forever War that the other OEF became, but it is merely another few shots in the war now a half-century old. It is also not epic, except for the size of the catastrophe or the political onanism Trump 47’s publicity machine cranks out more fervently as the payoff for all his fevered action becomes less and less likely. That stroking, whether Trump’s own or from Karoline Leavitt’s social media, is the only thing furious about anything Trump and his mob ever does.

Then there are the leaks.

The leaks.

All leaks are political, in that they are about power. Some are partisan, in that they reflect the view of one team or side, whether it is a civilian team or a bureaucratic teams. Some are offensive. Others are defensive.

Leaks are Lots of leaks. D Vance, eying the post-Trump years and his shot at the Republican nomination in the next general election, leaked nakedly. As if people had forgotten how much of a greaseball he is, Vance had his people spread stories that he was the only one in Trumps inner circle to have doubts about Operation Splendid Shitshow.

“Vance is ‘skeptical,’ is ‘worried about success’ and ‘just opposes’ the war on Iran, a senior Trump official said via text message. The official was granted anonymity to speak about the vice president’s views.” That is from Politico’s story a couple of days ago. Politico is where the New Age politicians leak.

Vance’s leak does not help anyone except Vance. That is normal in an administration where everyone is at war with everyone else, where every week is frig-your-buddy week. Vance’s leak helps only Vance. Well, it does in the mind of someone who imagines that three years from now everything about Operation Easily Foreseeable will not be so bad and that everything else about Trump 47 including murders, theft, corruption, and economic bungling would be long forgotten such that Vance’s claim in March ‘26 about what he said behind closed doors will swing voters to him even just a peench.

The Pentagon and the intelligence gaggle is also leaking. They are about munitions stockpiles, the Iranian attacks on shipping, and what advice Trump 47 got from the Pentagon and National Security Council about the consequences of his attacks. Like the Vance leak, the Pentagon leaks show the deep divisions inside the administration and concerns for the attacks to escalate into an even greater disaster. But they are about the military planners’ reputations, really, and are, on another level, part of an internal struggle at the topmost levels of the American government over the direction of the military connected to Pete Hegseth’s plan to overhaul American professional military education and to disembowel the military legal corps.

A spook leak from both partisan and intelligence roots to CBS News looks more like a disinformation campaign than anything else, if only because Trump himself dismissed it.

U.S. intelligence has circulated to Trump and to a small circle around him that Iran’s late supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, had misgivings about his son replacing him. The analysis showed Khamenei was wary of Mojtaba taking power because he was perceived as not very bright, and was viewed as unqualified to be leader, according to sources.

The info gathered also indicated the father was aware that his son had issues in his personal life, according to sources within the admin, intel community and people close to the president.

Trump, the VP and other senior officials were briefed on the intelligence.

In private conversations, Trump has said he doesn’t know that the info about Mojtaba Khamenei matters -- he thinks Iran is essentially leaderless right now, with the younger Khamenei possibly dead.

The leak has no real value and even flies against know details. The Canadian Middle East expert Janice Stein pointed out recently, to decentralize its leadership such that it could survive an Israeli-style decapitation strike. That one of the sources for this leak were “people close to the President” part is telling here since it makes the Iranians less capable than the Amercians, at least in the WH insiders’ view.

Then there is the species of leak about the potential use of American airborne soldiers from the 82nd Division to seize the Iranian supply hub at Kharg Island. Last week, there was a leak and pictures showing a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) moving from Japan to the Persian Gulf, along with speculation about their role. All of that comes with public speculation apparently tied to internal White House disagreements over whether or not to put soldiers on the ground in Iran since the plan to topple the regime with single blow didn’t work.

Neither of those options would work for the soldiers or Marines, if they go ashore or drop from the sky. The Iranians know the options. The Iranians now know American capabilities. And they know the American leadership is divided. The leaks show that. The Iranian regime is fighting for its life, as Stein pointed out. The asymmetry makes the war look very different as a result. The Iranians are in it for the long-haul. They play for keeps and have played that way for 47 years. Trump always chickens out. Already there are other leaks about advice from some of his tech bro friends or finance bro friends that he should TACO. The Iranians just need to bleed the Americans a bit more or - to be accurate - let the Americans kill themselves and then Trump, tanking in the polls, will run under pressure from Congressional Republicans fearing they will lose spectacularly in the fall mid-terms. Look what happened in Minnesota. This is worse.

Besides, Trump has already lost interest in this fight he started, just as he lost interest in Ukraine. His only victories have been against speedboats and a third-rate dictator from a third-rate country no one cared about whose bodyguards and driver apparently sold him out and now Trump is stiffing them on the ransom. Everywhere else, everything else Trump touches turns to shit. Let the All-Americans or the MEU drop or wade into a trap. “Put on your boots, boots, boots, then your parachutes, chutes, chutes,” as the 82nd’s divisional song goes. But going up, up, up and coming, down, down down might mean something else.

Tankers with Iraqi crude bound for America burn at the loading point last week.

Every day this fight goes on, American impotence is nakedly displayed. The Iranians announced earlier in the week they would attack any vessels in the Gulf that were American or that was bringing goods to the Untied States or Israel. The Americans announced they’d struck what few military targets there were on Kharg. Used HIMARS, the Iranians explained, a precision short-rage missile, even as the Americans say little in their briefings except for exaggerations or the incantation of meaningless statistics to conjure victory. A warning Trump said and all Americans repeated on every television show. Open the Straits or else.

We’ll take “or else” for $1,000 please Alex, the Iranians replied, repeating on Sunday that anything not American is safe and can come and go peacefully. The Iranians hit American-bound vessels in Iraq on Friday, setting them ablaze and the seas around them as well, as the pictures show. That stuff is still blockaded, the Iranians said again.

The Iranians know what the Americans will not say, which is that taking Kharg and interrupting oil from Iran brings the Americans into direct conflict with the Chinese, who buy half the Iranian oil. The Americans will not do anything more than puff and posture. What’s worse for Trump, the Iranians and the rest of the world know what the Americans are only now gingerly admitting, which is that unlike 20 or 30 years ago, the United States Navy could deploy every ship in the fleet today to the Straits and not have enough to escort tankers safely.

The rest of the world also knows that 2,500 Marines - as good as they are - cannot control the whole Iranian coast or even just key bits of it and so the Iranian armed forces can strike with their small boats and cheap drones and bleed White American will ashen. Besides, it will take the Marines a couple of weeks to shift from Japan to the Gulf and that is two weeks more of Iranian preparation they will have to overcome.

Kharg was not a display of power. It was impotence. Threats work before you start fighting. Once the battle is on, threats are useless. What the Americans are doing looks like the bargaining with force nonsense of American nuclear strategist 60-odd years ago. This stuff doesn’t work, as General Dan Caine’s predecessor explained to the Kennedy crowd’s whiz-kids in 1960, because it is not rooted in reality. They are like creating a “theory of attrition” in war that some American political scientist has concocted and now just published. Just garbage since - as any cursory reading of history shows - all warfare is attrition. Any claim to the contrary is bullshit.

What all these leaks, all the claims there is a plan, that things are going well, what all this bullshit ignores is the evidence in front of our eyes. Actions speak louder than words. Trump exultant with self-congratulations for an attack he paid for figuratively if not literally by decimating education and health care in America. To counteract the economic crisis he has triggered, Trump lifts sanctions on Russia to flood oil into the market to desperately keep domestic American prices down. But at the same time, giving Russia - who is also feeding Iran target locations and God-knows what else - a flood of cash that puts pressure on Ukraine and Europe and Canada, the latter being the erstwhile allies Trump is also attacking economically and in other ways.

With the Hormuz Straits closed to American ships and the Americans too weak to do anything about it, Trump tells his much abused allies and trading partners to send ships to help him open the Gulf. No, thanks, they reply. The French and British have sent aircraft and ships to help their Gulf allies, who are pissed off at the Americans for bringing down Iranian attacks on them but helping the Americans is not an option politically or practically.

No one trusts Donald Trump. No one trusts the mob around him. Not Canadians or Europeans or now Iranians. Trump’s pledges are not worth the air it took him to spew them. Meanwhile, at home, as oil prices skyrocket anyway, Trump gushes that “we” will make a lot of money as oil prices jump, as they have done already, like nothing seen before. He is further and further away from Americans, who disapprove of him in hear record levels. This matters to him and surely matters to the Grand Old Party’s senators and congressmen up for re-election in November.

Their fury will be epic if this trend continues and may well be epic even if Trump TACOs, as he will in Iran, inevitably, eventually.

It’s just a question of when.