Conscientious Stupidity

 

Well, the peace talks in Pakistan have now come and gone, and, as expected, failed. I don't think anyone expected it to succeed. As I wrote in my last post, the American delegation was what I called the Three Idiot Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Vance, Kushner, and Witkoff. Yeah, that bag of mediocrity was never going to accomplish much of anything, and they didn't. The explanation for the failure seems to be that Vance and his team went into the negotiations with a maximalist position, which is to say making inflexible demands despite not having the cards, as Trump would say. Iran called their bluff and refused to concede. And that is where the talks ended, albeit there is a contingent of professional diplomats remaining behind from both parties, an important detail because it is often these unseen professionals who are responsible for succeeding where the high-profile envoys fail.

Before they occurred, I wasn't sure if the talks would end with the Trump regime agreeing to most of the Iranian demands but declaring victory because they got one or two Iranian concessions in return (most likely Iran returning to the terms of the enrichment agreement under the JCPOA), or if talks would fall apart, resulting in a return to hostilities. We now have an answer, and it is the latter.  In theory.

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In a post that I at first suspected was social media satire, Trump today announced a military move so brilliantly unorthodox that it rivals Scott Bessant's masterstroke of removing sanctions on Iran and its ally Russia as a way of punishing them. Trump has announced he will, starting tomorrow, blockade Iran's blockade! 

As the New Zork Times reports:

The U.S. military said on Sunday that it would blockade any ships “entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas,” but said it would allow other ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz, hours after President Trump had said the United States would fully block the economically vital waterway.

The blockade on Iranian ports would begin on Monday at 10 a.m. Eastern time, U.S. Central Command said in a statement posted on social media, adding that U.S. “forces will not impede freedom of navigation for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from non-Iranian ports.”

Though the statement said the move was “in accordance with the President’s proclamation,” it appeared to soften Mr. Trump’s earlier vow to block “any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz.” In an interview with Fox News in the morning, the president had reiterated it would be a “complete blockade,” and said traffic through the strait was “all or nothing.”

In a very real sense, that is like telling your boss you quit after he fires you.  Or, it is like a kid who would rather break his toys than have someone else play with them.  Or it is like trying to unclog a drain by stuffing more rags into it. 

This is not a strategy but pointless spite that changes nothing.

In some ways, it is worse than nothing because this so-called strategy is going to make matters worse.  Above, I mentioned (supposed) Secretary of the Treasury Bessants' brainstorm of removing economic sanctions on an enemy that the nation is currently in a shooting war with. The strategy behind this was one of desperation, of lowering the rocketing price of oil by allowing Iran and its ally Russia to sell their oil without hindrance. 

Field Marshal Trump's new strategy of blockading the blockade is directly counterproductive to Bessant's assinine strategy as it will serve to diminish the world's oil supply yet again.  As Iran's top negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, said to American consumers: “Soon you’ll be nostalgic for $4–$5 gas.”

But there is even a worse outcome. By blockading the blockade, American vessels (what Trump likes to refer to as "a water navy", which, I guess, is like a gun bullet) will come into conflict with Russian and Chinese-flagged vessels.  Anyone who knows their history - which excluded all of MAGA, obviously - will recall the great lengths President Kennedy went to avoid such an explosive situation occurring when America had its quarantine zone around Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

What could possibly go wrong now when POTUS is the dumbest man ever to sit in the White House?

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As this administration has proven itself to be a Pandora's box of incoherence, bluster, and incompetence, no one knows what is really going to happen tomorrow. However, there is one thing we do know for sure, and that is that this administration has been lying about the Strait since the war began. Recall Secretary of Defense (there is no "Secretary of War," no matter how much Hegseth likes to pretend that there is as he goosesteps in front of a mirror) saying that reports that Iran had closed the Strait were false. Also, recall Trump saying that a flotilla of unnamed allied warships was coming to open the Strait that Hegseth said was already open. And then recall Trump saying that he didn't care if the Strait remained closed because we don't get our oil from the Gulf.  And then recall Trump saying Iran no longer had a navy to blockade the Strait because we sunk all their boats. And lastly, and most importantly, recall Trump insisting that we had already won the war.

So, here we are, in the second month of Trump's "little excursion" into Iran, where America is now blockading a blockade, in a war we already won, to reopen a waterway that was never closed or, if closed, didn't need to be reopened. 

As Martin Luther King Jr. once quipped, "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Was there ever a better description of the Trump administration at war? 

I think not.

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 (Fun fact: the idea of blockading a blockade is so incoherent that my grammar checker keeps wanting to correct it to something more sensible! LOL!)