Case Epstein: A Masterclass in Strategic Incompetence
June 28,1942
In the summer of 1942, the German army, stalemated on the Russian front after the failure of Operation Barbarossa the previous year, attempted a second massive offensive, this time entitled Case Blue. This offensive would be aimed at one of the economic hearts of Russia: the Caucasus oil fields. Hitler believed that if the Wehrmacht could capture those fields, Stalin's war machine, starved of fuel, would crawl to a halt. While he did appreciate that the Soviets would fight to the last to stop this from happening, Hitler understood that this reaction provided a second opportunity for the German army: to crush Soviet reserve units, thereby militarily weakening, perhaps fatally, the Soviet army. Lastly, Case Blue also sought to cut the Volga River, thereby cutting off essential Lend-Lease supplies from Stalin's allies.
The initial stage of Case Blue was a smashing success with vast amounts of territory gained, including the city of Rostov. Even the Goering-hobbled Luftwaffe over-performed during the early days of the offensive by quickly achieving air superiority, followed by an intense air support campaign that not only saw the Luftwaffe provide pivotal support to the ground forces (the fatuous term "boots on the ground" didn't exist in 1942...happily), but even saw pilots ranging far ahead of the troops to attack Soviet divisions not yet even in the fight.
And then Hitler, being Hitler, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by altering the plan based on his feelings. Hitler, assuming that the Soviet army had been successfully decimated, split the Wehrmacht forces into two groups, with one group charged with the original objective of seizing the oil fields, and the second, Army Group B, to cut the Volga and take the city of...Stalingrad.
Stop me if you've heard this story before.
As we all know from history, Hitler's decision to alter the plan based not on facts but on hubristic intuition eventually led to his greatest defeat at the city named for Comrade Stalin, a defeat that would result in the destruction of the Sixth Army and mark the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.
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February 28, 2026
On the same day but of a different month, some 84 years into the future, and aging, increasingly emotionally unstable, authoritarian Donald Trump, with a head full of antiquated knowledge and historical falsehoods, decided to launch an attack on the formidable regional power, Iran.
Why? No one really knows. As an authoritarian in practice, Trump, breaking with the tradition of the president explaining his case for war to the American people via a live television address, instead took to his failing social media platform, Truth Social, and delivered a rambling chinese menu of reasons, from obliterating Iran's nuclear program...again, to stopping Iran's ballistic missile program, destroying its navy, regime change and something about Iran trying to steal Christmas (give yourself a pat on the back if you get the reference!).
In short, no one was really sure why the Trump administration chose this moment to kick off the largest regional war in years. And this quickly reflected the military operation, entitled Operation Epstein Fury...er, Epic Fury, which quickly saw the US and the Israeli air forces hitting a wide range of targets, from Iranian nuclear sites...again, to military sites, an Iranian warship torpedoed off the Sri Lankan coast, the killing of the senior leadership of Iran, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (now replaced by his son), as well as a desalination plant and a large oil field, two targets considered escalatory by regional experts. Seeing the grab bag of targets, the reasoning became more confused.
As the confusion grew, someone in the administration decided it was time to push Secretary of State Lil' Marco Rubio to clear it up. In a moment of unfortunate candor for the pint-sized chicken hawk, Lil' Marco let it be known that the US attacked Iran because Israel was going to launch an imminent attack on Iran. Hence, the US had to be their wingman because, as Lil' Marco explained, America was going to get attacked as a result, so why not?
It didn't take long for the media to simplify this explanation: Israel's allegedly corrupt and bloodthirsty ruler, Benjamin Netanyahu, intent on eliminating Iran as a regional rival, was now controlling American regional policy. Israel said, "Jump!" and Trump asked, "How high?"
Well, you can imagine how this explanation played with Trump. It wasn't long before Trump did his petulant child routine of insisting he ordered the attack because he had a "good feeling" that Iran was going to attack us first. This, of course, put Rubio in a bind as it contradicted the explanation he offered. So, as is the wont of this crapshow of an administration, Lil' Marco's response was to go on the attack and blame the media for misreporting what he said, an explanation that didn't last long when the journalists produced what he said word for word. At that point, Rubio mumbled something about the president being always right and disappeared into the abyss that is this White House, worried, no doubt, that he will be the next one put out to pasture with Noem for angering the orange god-king.
And, here we are, weeks later, and we still don't know why we are at war, as the rationale changes almost by the hour, with the latest being a statement from Trump that we did it to benefit the world generally, and China(!) specifically. So much for MAGA supporters and their convoluted theorizing that this entire war is a masterstroke in isolating China! I guess we have moved on from "America First" to "For the honor of China." (As the darkness closes in, it is a small comfort to watch Trump repeatedly expose his base as the gullible fools that we know them to be! 😁)
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As I explained in my previous post, Iran, furious from being backstabbed twice, not to mention having almost the entirety of its senior government leadership eliminated by airstrikes, proceeded to take a total war posture. Unlike last year's strikes, where Iran was content to lob a few drones and missiles back at America and Israel, this time Iran unleashed their arsenal at not just American and Israeli military targets, but also at the entirety of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), hitting civilian targets as well as oil infrastructure. In a week, Iran has killed seven American suckers and losers, as Trump referred to soldiers not that long ago, injured 140 more, and destroyed two billion-dollar US THAAD air defense systems, rendering America's air defense umbrella hamstrung. On top of the outright carnage, Iran has also effectively shut down tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, something that has sent oil and gasoline prices soaring around the globe and might well trigger a global recession.
This is not what this administration thought would happen. As Trump said yesterday, from the Swamp White House at Mar-a-lago, he expected a "little excursion", the MAGA equivalent of John Hay's "splendid little war", albeit one that has now cost 11 billion dollars for just the first week of combat operations, and has caused a critical shortage in America's stockpile of missile and drone interceptors.
Trump expected a result out of Venezuela, but instead got something closer to a quagmire on the Eastern Front. It is telling how panicked the regime is by the various reports of America moving military assets from around the world to the Gulf to reinforce the operation, weakening our global defense posture in the process. At the same time, Trump blusters about demands for an "unconditional surrender" from Tehran, threatens ever more powerful strikes, and, in a final act of desperation, has already declared victory while military operations continue with no sure end in sight.
But don't worry. As the hapless and ever-smarmy Scott Bessent recently said, everything is under control as he also seeks international help to reopen the Strait. I guess the so-called "Donroe Doctrine" of America going it alone sounded better as a theory than it is as practice.
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It is now almost two full weeks since Der Dummkopf launched Case Epstein. As with Case Blue, what started out with an impressive display of force has ground down to a seeming stalemate. Worse, as with Hitler's meddling leading to a devastating defeat at Stalingrad, Leader Drumpft (to use the original German form of "Trump"), listening to a McDonald's-poisoned gut feeling, has now led America down a devastating military path. Iran has successfully kept the Straits of Hormuz closed, setting ablaze three ships that attempted to rush the gap just last night. Because of stunning incompetence on the part of the Hegseth/Rubio tragic comedy duo, no one thought to have a plan in place for this situation. As a result, despite America and the Gulf oil states flooding the market with petroleum, the price remains at or above $100 a barrel (but one has to wonder how this oil is going to get to market because the Strait of Hormuz remains closed!):
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| The price of 'Shock and Awe': global benchmarks hitting triple digits as the blockade holds |
In addition to all of that, today Ka$H Patel, the Chameleon-eyed putative Director of the FBI, has already failed to stop two Iran-sympathetic terrorist attacks inside America.
Lastly, it has just been reported that America has lost a KC-135 refueling aircraft. CENTCOM has said that it was not due to friendly or enemy fire. Can we trust anything coming out of Hegseth's dysfunctional Defense Department? Assuming the statement is true, it is indicative, again, of what I wrote in my previous post: the US military cannot continue to operate at such a high tempo without machines breaking down and crews getting dangerously fatigued. In light of the recent fire on the carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, the trend is clear: the US armed forces are stretched to the breaking point. Seeing how Operation Epic Furry began with the killing of over 150 Iranian school children by an American Tomahawk missile, one shudders to think of the mistakes yet to be made with a severely fatigued military establishment stuck spinning its wheels in the Gulf.
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So, where does this all lead? I have no idea. Der Dummkopf, a self-styled grandmaster of chess who has never bothered to read the rulebook, has decided to begin his game by throwing his pieces at the wall, hoping to intimidate his opponent into resigning. It hasn't worked. Instead, his opponent has picked up his pieces and has begun a mating attack. Now, Trump is stuck. He can't resign because Israel won't let him. He can't offer a draw, because his opponent, Iran, won't accept one. And he can't win, because he doesn't know what he is doing.
This is a nightmare scenario because, as we have seen time and again, when Trump gets cornered, he lashes out in the most idiotic way possible. The other day, Trump, when asked about deploying ground forces (not "boots on the ground", you MSM ninnies), answered, "I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground — like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it.” Take that bravado and combine it with his SecDef's disdain for law-abiding rules of engagement, and one has to ponder if we might well see a tactical nuke deployed in Iran. I don't say this lightly. We have to be ever mindful that we are dealing not just with stupid people, not just with evil people, but with stupidly evil people. As I watch this regime become increasingly panicked by a war that has spun far out of control, with devastating implications for not just regional stability, but also both the national and global economy, it is not impossible to imagine Trump saying the same thing about using a tactical nuke in Iran. Heck, this is the same man who wanted to nuke a hurricane back during his first term! How long until a dim-witted White House staffer invokes Truman’s use of the A-bomb as a proven strategy for Trump to extract an unconditional surrender from Tehran? I consider it an all too likely scenario looming in the distance.
Be it nukes or ground forces, there is a high likelihood that we are now living through a period of history as darkly momentous as when Hitler, bewitched by hubris, decided that invading the USSR would be easy because, as he said, "We have only to kick in the door, and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down." That is not what happened. Rather, Hitler set in motion an epic war that would devastate both nations and necessitate a Case Blue, which didn't lead to victory, but to Hitler's most devastating military defeat at Stalingrad and, ultimately, the downfall of him and his Reich.
Given the events of the past two weeks, I am convinced that we are living out Marx's observation that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. This is America's farcical Case Blue. Trump, sold a bill of goods by Netanyahu, and encouraged to make the purchase by his circle of sycophants, launched a regional war with a plan that extended no further than the opening moments of "shock and awe" followed by a sudden regime collapse and Iranian surrender. Instead, Trump discovered he had kicked over a hornet's nest, and is now confronted by a determined and capable enemy that even US and Israeli intelligence agencies believe will not collapse. Now, with the single-page war plan exhausted and his cabinet's braintrust bankrupt, he is reduced to shouting unrealistic demands at the enemy and telling the American people how we have already won the war, will win the war, and, most ridiculous of all, also asking "what war?"
Trump enjoyed the initial victories of his Case Blue. Now, as defeat piles on defeat, it is only a matter of time until he arrives at the gates of his Stalingrad.
Lord, help us all.
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