That is fascinating. That’s like owing more oxygen than the planet has. You ever try to pay that back? You walk into the bank and they go, “Sir, we’ll accept your lungs.”
America is a nice place. Real stable. The kind of place where the currency is backed by optimism, which is good, because that’s the only thing they haven’t borrowed yet.
They say the US owes about 110 trillion of everything combined, and I thought, that’s interesting, because I don’t even know 110 trillion of anything.
I don’t know 110 trillion people.
I don’t know 110 trillion sandwiches.
But somehow, they owe it. That’s impressive.
Again and again, President Trump says “Don’t worry, we’ve got it under control.” And again, I believe him.
Because when I think “under control,” I think of a man standing on a pile of dynamite with a lit match, explaining interest rates. People are not panicking though, not at all, everyone just keeps on spending.
They say, “Well, it’s only debt.”
Which is true.
In the same way that a bear is only a large dog that wants to kill you.
I love how the Administration solves problems.
Economy collapses?
They say, “Let’s bomb something.”
Not to win.
Just… to keep busy.
It’s like a man sitting inside a house that’s already burned down, just the frame left, glowing and cracking in the dark.
And instead of leaving, instead of asking for help, he walks next door, drags his neighbor out into the yard, and sets that house on fire too.
Not to survive.
Not even to win.
Just so he’s not the only one standing in the ashes.
Then he looks around at the smoke, the screaming, the glow of everything collapsing and says, real calm, like he solved something: “Now it’s even.”
China and Russia are watching all this and I bet they’re very confused.
They’re probably saying, “Wait…you’re borrowing money, to pay interest on money you borrowed, to fund wars, that don’t work?”
And Trump’s like, “Yeah, but we’re very confident about it.”
Did you say Two trillion in interest Bill! That’s the kind of number where you don’t pay it, you just sort of acknowledge it politely.
“Ah yes, the interest… still there, I see.”
And the banks, they don’t even have the money they lend you. They just make it up. Which I respect, because I tried that once.
I went into a store and said, “I’d like to create some money out of thin air.”
And they said, “Sir, that’s called theft.”
And I said, “No no… it’s called banking. I’m just skipping the middleman.”
And President Trump, he smiles.
He says, “We’ve faced worse.”
Which is true, because eventually, this will be worse.
Assessing the hazard of the IRGC with nuclear weapons and delivery systems intact.
(h/t Perplexity Ai)
Summary
The Islamic Republic of Iran is animated by a vision in which the regime exists as the institutional vehicle for preparing the apocalyptic conditions — regional Islamic dominance, the destruction of Israel, the expulsion of American power, and generalized regional upheaval — that will precipitate the return of the Twelfth Imam and the inauguration of global Islamic justice. This vision, formalized by Khomeini through the radical innovation of Velayat-e Faqih, transformed a quietist eschatological hope into an active state mission. The proxy network, the ballistic missile program, the pursuit of nuclear capability, the ideological indoctrination of the IRGC, and the current multi-front confrontation with Israel and the United States are all coherent expressions of this framework — not in the sense that every tactical move is directly dictated by theology, but in the sense that the theological vision defines the ultimate purpose, justifies the costs, sanctifies the violence, and, critically, distorts the deterrence calculus that Western strategic planning relies upon.
in view of this animating principle what would be the most likely outcome when the regime acquired nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them to any desired targets
This is a question where the answer requires careful reasoning from the framework already established, combined with what is known about regime decision-making, internal factionalism, and the specific eschatological logic as it meets strategic reality.
The Central Analytical Problem
The question is not simply "what would a nuclear Iran do?" but something more precise: given that the regime's stated raison d'être is to precipitate the apocalyptic conditions for the Mahdi's return, and given that the destruction of Israel is identified as a theological prerequisite for that return, what is the most probable behavior of a regime possessing deliverable nuclear weapons?
The answer requires holding two things in tension that Western strategic culture habitually refuses to hold simultaneously: that the regime contains genuine apocalyptic believers, and that it also contains institutional survivors who want to preserve the state. The outcome depends on which faction controls the weapons at the moment of decision.
Why Standard Deterrence Theory Is Inadequate Here
The entire architecture of nuclear deterrence since 1945 rests on a single axiom: states value self-preservation above victory. Mutual Assured Destruction works because both parties prefer survival over any political or ideological objective. This is why the Soviet Union, despite official ideology declaring the inevitable triumph of communism, never used its nuclear arsenal — Moscow wanted to be alive for that triumph.
The Islamic Republic presents a structurally different case along two dimensions:
First, the regime's ideology does not treat the survival of the current Iranian state as the supreme value. The supreme value is the return of the Mahdi and the establishment of his global order. If the destruction of Israel — or the triggering of catastrophic regional war — is the price of that return, the theology endorses paying that price. Martyrdom is not a cost; it is an honor. As Times of Israel analysis notes, this regime "celebrates martyrdom, views bloodshed as sacred, and sees Israel's existence as a spiritual affront." An adversary that regards nuclear annihilation of its own population as potentially glorious — the ultimate martyrdom, hastening the Imam's arrival — cannot be deterred by the threat of that annihilation.
Second, there is a theological premium on irreversibility. If the Mahdi's return requires Israel's destruction, then a first strike that eliminates Israel — even at the cost of Iran's own obliteration in retaliation — accomplishes the eschatological mission. The regime does not need to survive the strike. It needs only to deliver it. This asymmetry — where one party has, in principle, a preference structure under which dying while destroying the enemy is the optimal outcome — breaks the mutual vulnerability logic entirely.
The Most Likely Outcomes, Stratified by Probability
Most Probable: Graduated Coercive Escalation, Not Immediate First Strike
The most immediately likely use of nuclear weapons — upon acquisition — would not be a bolt-from-the-blue strike on Tel Aviv. It would be the exploitation of nuclear status as a shield behind which conventional and proxy aggression intensifies dramatically.
This is the North Korean model, and it is well understood. A nuclear Iran would almost certainly:
Accelerate proxy attacks on Israel and American bases, knowing that any retaliation risks nuclear escalation
Extend a nuclear umbrella over its proxy network, daring Israel or the U.S. to strike Hezbollah or the Houthis
Dramatically increase its demands in any regional negotiation
Move toward the "liberation" of Jerusalem through proxy pressure rather than direct strike
The restraining logic here is the institutional one: the Khamenei faction of the regime — the Velayat-e Faqih apparatus itself — wants to survive to govern the post-Mahdi world. You cannot be the state that welcomes the returning Imam if you have been vaporized in a retaliatory strike. So the initial period after acquisition would likely look like emboldened aggression short of nuclear use.
The antisemites Bill attracts on here live for these moments. Don’t expect them to forego their joys or bother them with facts. Like the table pounding drunk at the local pub, their clouded sensorium and miserable certainty are impervious to dialogue.
Please ask your AI about Israel's 200 nukes and the Samson Option. Why would Iran use a nuke on Israel if they know they will be immediately obliterated? Also ask why is the US demanding inspections of Iran's nuclear program but refuses to talk about Israel's program?
It's worth noting the Bill Bonner is quite correct about the impending fiscal singularity in the USA, but also worth noting that Iran, in addition to the recent degrading of its military capacity, has already experienced the fiscal singularity of a destroyed currency. Which empire will melt down first? Perhaps both. Best wishes to the remnants that survive the current period of turbulence.
The inference from the SUMMARY suggests that, so it must be something else that rubbed him the wrong way. What that might be we will have to wait to see if there is something more than an empty sneer behind his comment.
For reference, here is the introductory query and response which led to the SUMMARY and further inferences:
Describe the apocalyptic vision that animates the ideology of the Iranian Islamic Republic and the consistency of that vision with the regime's preparations and execution of its current confrontation with the USA and Israel
This is a rich and well-documented subject. Here is a comprehensive analytical account.
The Theological Foundation: Twelver Shiism and the Hidden Imam
The apocalyptic vision animating the Islamic Republic is not a fringe overlay on Iranian politics — it is the constitutional and ideological marrow of the regime. It derives from Twelver Shiism, the dominant Shia tradition, which holds that the legitimate line of authority after the Prophet Muhammad passed through twelve infallible Imams, the last of whom — Muhammad al-Mahdi — did not die but entered a state of divine concealment (ghayba) in 874 CE. He lives still, hidden by God, and will return at the end of times to wage a final, catastrophic war, destroy the enemies of Islam, and establish universal justice under a global Islamic order.
According to classical hadith traditions, the Mahdi's return will be accompanied by what Mehdi Khalaji of the Washington Institute calls "bloody visions": two forms of mass death — red death by the Mahdi's sword and white death by plague — each claiming a third of the world's population, with the Mahdi ultimately cleansing the earth of unbelievers. This is not peripheral lore. It is canonical doctrine.
For fourteen centuries, however, the mainstream Twelver response to this eschatology was quietism — the "Theory of Waiting" (entezar). Humans could not and should not try to force the Imam's return. Politics was contaminated territory; the faithful waited, mourned, and prayed.
Khomeini's Revolutionary Rupture
The 1979 revolution was, among other things, a radical theological innovation that overturned this quietism entirely. Khomeini's contribution was the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih — Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist — which he developed in a series of lectures in 1970 and institutionalized in the revolutionary constitution. The argument, as Oxford Academic's analysis summarizes, was that the Prophet and the Imams were mandated not merely to transmit divine law but to govern — and that this mandate passed to qualified jurists during the Imam's occultation. The supreme jurist (vali-e faqih) holds, in Khomeini's most expansive formulation, the same authority as the Prophet himself, including the power to suspend religious obligations if the interests of the Islamic state require it.
This was, as Rasanah analysts note, "a wholly revolutionary interpretation" with no precedent in 1,400 years of Shia jurisprudence. It transformed waiting from a posture of passive endurance into an active, martial, world-transforming mission: the jurist-state must now prepare the ground (zamina-sazi) for the Mahdi's return. Every act of political power, every war, every proxy militia, every ballistic missile program becomes, within this framework, a sacred preparation for the end of history.
The theological consequence is momentous: the Islamic Republic does not merely invoke religion for legitimacy, as states commonly do. It claims that its raison d'être is eschatological — that it exists specifically to manufacture the conditions for the apocalypse.
The Vision in Detail: What "Preparing the Ground" Requires
Several concrete eschatological preconditions define the regime's roadmap, derived from hadith literature and elaborated by regime clerics:
1. Global chaos and bloodshed as necessary prerequisites. Unlike most messianic traditions (including mainstream Sunni Islam and Jewish and Christian variants) where the messiah arrives into peace, Twelver eschatology inverts this: the Mahdi arrives through catastrophic violence. War, turmoil, and the defeat of Islam's enemies are not unfortunate by-products to be minimized — they are theologically necessary conditions. Times of Israel analysis states this with precision: "In contrast to other faiths in which the appearance of peaceful days will bring forth the coming of a messiah, in Twelver Shia tradition, blood must be shed, chaos must reign, and the enemies of Islam must be vanquished."
2. The destruction of Israel as a sine qua non. Israel's existence is explicitly identified in regime theology as the "greatest barrier" to the Mahdi's return. A flourishing Jewish state on land once under Islamic rule directly contradicts the eschatological requirement that the Muslim world achieve dominance before the Mahdi appears. IRGC cleric Mehdi Taeb stated in 2015 that IRGC members must "remove the obstacles to the emergence of the Imam of the Age, the most important of which is the existence of the usurper regime of Israel." As the Middle East Institute's 2022 study documents, hadiths are cited to the effect that "the Jewish state will be destroyed before the Mahdi's arrival" and that Shia forces will wage war with Jews as a condition of his emergence.
3. The expulsion of American power from the region. The United States is not a secondary target but a co-primary one: the IRGC frames it as jebeh-e batel (the camp of falsehood), guarantor of Israel's survival, and the main power whose regional presence must be dismantled before the final confrontation can occur. Hojatoleslam Ali Saeedi, Khamenei's representative to the IRGC, stated in 2012: "The IRGC is one of the tools for paving the way for the emergence of the Imam of the Age in the field of a regional and international awakening," and explicitly identified U.S. presence in Iraq as a barrier to that emergence.
4. A Shia-led "axis" spanning the region. Classical apocalyptic hadiths describe the Mahdi's forces assembling from specific geographic nodes — Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon — all of which correspond precisely to where Iran has built its proxy architecture. The Houthi uprising in Yemen is explicitly identified in regime literature as one of the definite "signs" of the Mahdi's approach. The Syrian war was framed as resistance to the Sufiyani (a Sunni Umayyad-descended figure who, in classical eschatology, precedes the Mahdi and wages war against Shia forces), with ISIS conveniently mapped onto this role.
Velayat-e Faqih as the Institutional Mechanism
The bridge between eschatological vision and state action is the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih. The Supreme Leader is not merely a head of state who happens to be religious; he is the constitutionally defined representative of the Hidden Imam, governing in his name during the occultation. Obedience to him is, in Khomeini's explicit formulation, "as incumbent on the believer as the performance of prayer." This creates an institutional logic in which the entire apparatus of the Iranian state — its military, its budget, its foreign policy, its nuclear program — is formally subordinated to the eschatological mission of preparing the Imam's return.
Khomeini further ruled, in a 1988 fatwa, that this guardianship is absolute (velayat-e motlaqaye faqih): the supreme leader may even suspend core Islamic obligations if the "interests of the Islamic state" require it. This absolutism is the theological license for whatever is strategically necessary — deception, alliance with non-Muslim powers, tactical ceasefire — so long as the overarching eschatological mission is served.
Consistency with the Regime's Military and Strategic Preparations
The ideological framework maps with remarkable coherence onto the regime's actual strategic architecture:
The Proxy Network ("Axis of Resistance")
Rather than building a conventional symmetric military force — which Iran could never sustain against American or Israeli superiority — the IRGC constructed a geographically dispersed network of proxy militias: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and smaller formations in Syria. This is not merely pragmatic asymmetric strategy. Each node corresponds to a classically prophesied position in the end-times assembly of forces around the Mahdi's emergence point. The Century Foundation's 2025 report notes that "some alliance members share millenarian Shia eschatology" explicitly, alongside the more instrumental goals of opposing Israel and the United States.
The proxy model also solves a theological problem: the regime cannot afford to lose Iran itself in an apocalyptic confrontation prematurely, since the Imam has not yet returned and the state must survive to receive him. Proxies absorb attrition and create the required chaos and bloodshed at manageable cost to the core state.
The Ballistic Missile and Drone Arsenal
Iran's investment in precision ballistic missiles and drones — pursued at enormous economic cost despite crippling sanctions — is difficult to explain on purely deterrent grounds, since it offers no match for American or Israeli air power in a symmetrical exchange. Within the eschatological framework, it makes complete sense: the arsenal exists to demonstrate that Iran can reach Israel and American bases, sustaining the credibility of the threat even as the proxy network is degraded. Middle East Institute analysts warn that "devoted Mahdists could rise to senior leadership positions within the IRGC, bringing under their control the three principal pillars of Iranian power projection: militias across the region, ballistic missile forces, and the nuclear program itself."
The Nuclear Program
This is where the eschatological vision becomes most alarming from a strategic standpoint. Rational-actor deterrence theory assumes that nuclear weapons are instruments of preventing war, because the possessor values self-preservation above victory. But a regime that regards catalyzing apocalyptic chaos as a sacred duty — and martyrdom as glorious — does not operate on those premises. As Times of Israel analysis puts it, "whereas other states see nuclear weapons as tools for deterrence, Iran's regime believes nuclear weapons will allow them to destroy Israel, and possibly the world, facilitating the necessary chaos for the arrival of the Twelfth Imam." The IRGC faction most closely associated with the nuclear program is also the faction most deeply saturated in Mahdist ideology.
The Current Confrontation
The escalatory cycle since October 7, 2023 — Hamas's attack, Hezbollah's northern front, Houthi missile campaigns, direct Iranian ballistic missile strikes on Israel in April and October 2024, Israeli retaliatory strikes inside Iran, and the 12-day Israeli-Iranian war of June 2025 — fits the eschatological template almost point for point. Iran did not initiate the October 7 attack (Hamas has its own agency), but the regime's response was shaped by the framework: each escalatory step is framed internally as "preparing the ground," each martyred proxy fighter as a soldier in the Mahdi's preparatory army, each strike on Israel as erosion of the "greatest barrier."
The Hungarian Conservative's March 2026 analysis identifies the central strategic problem this creates for Western deterrence: "Western rationalist models assume survival is the highest good, and that nuclear weapons induce caution via mutual vulnerability. In Mahdist ideology, martyrdom and apocalyptic expectation make that assumption fragile. Accelerating confrontation hastens divine intervention, shifting the calculus." Even a small number of true believers in command positions alters what risks are judged acceptable.
Internal Tensions and Analytical Cautions
A sophisticated account must note the internal tensions within this ideological universe. Khalaji's Washington Institute analysis observes that Khamenei himself, as the institutional guardian of the state, is more concerned with regime survival than with precipitating the chaos that pure Mahdism demands — because the Hidden Imam's return requires a functioning Islamic state to receive him. This creates a structural tension between the regime-preservation instinct and the eschatological imperative. Ahmadinejad represented the more reckless, chaos-embracing end of that spectrum; Khamenei has historically been the more cautious, institutional operator. The danger noted by multiple analysts is generational turnover in the IRGC, where younger officers, more deeply indoctrinated in Mahdism than the revolutionary generation, may resolve that tension in the direction of acceleration.
Additionally, Mahdism functions simultaneously as sincere belief, as political mythology for mobilizing popular and militia support, and as a rhetorical instrument for legitimizing violence. Disentangling these layers is difficult. But the analytical consensus — from the Middle East Institute to the Hudson Institute to the Tony Blair Institute — is convergent: whatever the personal sincerity of individual leaders, the institutional and operational behavior of the Islamic Republic is consistent with and explicable by the eschatological framework in ways that purely geopolitical or realist accounts cannot fully capture.
Would have been an excellent article if it weren’t for the first few paragraphs demonstrating your on going hatred for the man. Oh you with all the answers to every decision the administration makes. THe Administration could take a chain saw to the debt and you would complain it is targeting the wrong things. New name for you, No win Billy.
Dear Mr/Ms stiff. As a confirmed DJT devotee please inform this commentariat on what your thoughts are regarding the actions DJT has taken to rectify the perilous debt situation facing the US. I doubt whether going to war at Bibi's behest is a good example.
In all actuality the public DJT is a Buffon I would not want to sit down to dinner with. However, those who know him say on a personal level he is quite kind. So there you have it, I dont know where you got the confirmation from but you should check your source. That said, I do think some of his accomplishments are note worthy, shutting the border for example and getting foreign countries off our teet. Yes, it’s painful but guess what, anything worthwhile is. No pain no gain. OF course on teh flip side he is an ass answer every critique with a biggest stick - imho a POS move.
You mean the perilous debt situation that career politicians have created? Surely you can’t put the blame on a man that has 5 non-consecutive years in office. What about the cadaver with over 50, or Mitch the Turtle McConnell, same thing. There are many more. But as I said above, TRump could become Millei and Billy would fault the cuts as inappropriate. It just is what it is
if you have a credible proposal for flanking the impending fiscal singularity, let the rest of us hear it. Perhaps BB is a TDS- victim, which makes other TDS- victims happy, and TDS+ victims sad or furious. I look around for some Donald replacement (an individual or a team of individuals) that has a credible way around our impending fiscal singularity and the closest approximation is Elon Musk (and his various teams), but is that vision really credible? Some think so. If not Elon, perhaps you. If so, give it a shot.
Bill’s style of rhetoric loves to yolk truisms to his bullshit. Here the truism is the usual one: Extreme debt is bad. All heads nod. The bullshit is typically a combination of selective attention and distortion of facts. Here the distortion involves first equating Iran with historical examples of failure of force to result in a win (i.e. Vietnam Nam) while placing the RESULTS of the war in Iran in the PAST TENSE six weeks into it! In fact, the outcome is yet to be determined. That being said, rest assured that there is no possible outcome that Bill would not declare as a failure.
All the post WWII attacks by our armed forces have been of smaller and less economically vibrant countries each with smaller armed forces and far less military equipment.
Foremost, the common denominator for each of our military misadventures is none of the countries we attacked were a threat to US.
And each war we waged against these countries ended with billions spent, tens of thousands dead, destruction galore and no change.
This time, one man --DJT -- decided to wage another war but, what's different, it's on behalf of another country: Israel.
When his war is over, it will feature the same results: more death, destruction and debt.
And Israel will still be saddled with its Palestinian problem and its prime minister still subject to an arrest warrant for crimes against humanity.
Leaving aside their stated mission to destroy the Great Satan and their quest for nuclear weapons capable of reaching the United States, how many thousands of Americans would need to die by Irans actions for Iran to qualify as a threat to the U.S.?
Lacking the capability (e,g., no ICBM, no nuclear capability, no navy and no air force) but possessing an educated population reputably most of whom want to be rid of their theocratic rulers, Israel and its US puppet would be better served to help the Iranian majority overthrow their religious oppressors.
Nonsense. Didn’t the 40,000 Iranian citizens murdered in two weeks by their rulers convince you that an unarmed citizenry in Iran might not be able to overthrow a heavily armed theocracy intent on murdering anyone needed to maintain power? If not what would? You also conveniently over look that their lack of means to carry out worldwide murder has not come about by accident. They currently have little or no capacity. Not true before. Will their citizens have a chance to free themselves? Hope so. They are just as much occupied and oppressed by Iran as Lebanon and Gaza.
It should have enabled Iranian dissidents (Shiites) to overthrow its religious oppressors.
With or without US and/or Arab (Sunni) help, it could have done so by taking a page from the CIA playbook used to overthrow Iran's democratically elected government a generation ago.
There's no love between Shiite and Sunni; they've been killing each other for over a thousand years (most recently in Pakistan, the conflict mediator nation)
And, as we know, lacking weapons there was no uprising by Iranian dissidents.
It is sad that government - any government - can't help itself. There is no fun of cutting the budget and voters hate it. So when there is no upside the government continues until it can't. As happen throughout history......and it will happened here in the U.S. What are we seeing - war department (and Trump was going to be the "peace" president....how did that work-out) budget is going to go to $1.5B - for what. The U.S. military isn't prepared for today's wars - even the Navy - when challenged by technology - must sit far beyond shores. Oh, sure, it can force Venezuela or Cuba or most countries to do its will - but look what Iran, and before it Iraq and Afghanistan, and before that Vietnam - did to our military. So, is this Administration going to go "all-in on the military" when there are so many problems here in the U.S. and the deficit keeps rising faster and faster? Shortly....when the money runs out (no more from the Gulf States for a long, long while) and so many countries that used to buy our debt is going to gold (held by themselves - like France and German just did) and starting to increase their holdings of the Yuan. Going to be ugly folds............and there is no way to stop it.
Pretty much agree with your comments. But in terms of winning wars, the wars you mentioned, where "winning " was not clear or maybe not at all, were so called political "wins" by the DC clowns masquerading as international policy wonks. I don't think there was much attempt to militarily win any of those wars.
When you are not going to "occupy" a country, winning isn't an option. It is stopping something you don't like. But, without occupying, then war is just to stop a government (or what controls the country or region) from continuing. What the world as seen since forever is that wars do not change anything for long. The people living there go on and their cultural goes on as has the Persian cultural. The only way America came to being is by "occupying" and then essential cleansing the country of its original inhabitants. So, I agree with you - wars without continuing occupant is essential a crime against humanity.
Is Germany still Germany, Is Japan still Japan, is Italy still Italy - it was just a war of regime change. Frankly, here in America we need a regime change as well. Iran isn't an American interest. The current Israeli-Led Administration is doing nothing for us peons and turning the world against America - just look at what has happening with Canada! As to WW2 it has some horrific times - the fire bonding of Germany cities and the Japanese cruelty in China and the Western Pacific, the bombing of London. All horrible but does that mean the Gaza genocide is "Ok"? And, what if Iran decides to attack the cities and infrastructure (electrical, energy, water) is that Ok? Just because it was done in the past, doesn't mean it should be tolerate today.
Depends on what your definitive of "won" is? You'll likely - giving it some thought - consider a regime surrendering a "win".. All about regime change. Depending how long this goes on, in the November elections there will be a "regime change" in America. Going to be interest ahead.
"The only way America came to being is by "occupying" and then essential cleansing the country of its original inhabitants." May I suggest "visiting" one of the many Indian Reservations scattered west of the Mississippi to see how our "cleaning the country of its original inhabitants" has been such a marvelous success.
I guess when the US Government encircles my farm and designates it "UTE NATION NATIONAL MONUMENT". Just like it did when it the last time it got "its ass kicked" up at the Little Big Horn. But, I'm not worried, after all the Ute Nation is living the good life on their Reservation.
Nice write up except for the TDS part, the man has been in office 5 non-consecutive years, what about the lifers that got us here? BTW, Germany did not repatriate its gold. Yet.
Still in favor of establishing a separate, lower cost, domestic energy market for extracted resources from public lands, only available for American infrastructure development - business and consumer alike.
The current fees paid from permitting by our energy giants seems to get swallowed up along with all other fees from marriage licenses, fishing permits, etc., etc.
Probably goes to the same place as our Social Security payroll deductions which magi-economically get converted into IOU's and thrown on the debt pile. We can't do anything about what has occurred to date, but we may be able to design a better system moving forward.
That being said, permit me to be a bit circumspective about taking advice from any of those who waved in millions of illegal immigrants, most of whom were unskilled and promptly went on the government dole in one form or another. I only want to hear from forward -thinking, law abiding capitalist Americans. Those interested in absorbing what has been done in the past and projecting coherent plans for a better future. No defeatism. No one who supported say, Obama sending Iran pallets of cash but having an issue with Trump addressing what that cash bought for the Middle East..
USAid checks sent all over the world into number4ed bank accounts for ill-fated, marquee DEI initiatives with long strings attached back to DC politicians- or worse.
Just positive ideas for where we go from here without the defeatism that seeks to buy peace at any price - but always gets taxpayers cheated...
This debt issue has been going on for well over 30 years. It never gets addressed because congress and the administration always wants to spend more, or give our citizens lower taxes and "goodies" plus wage increases for government employees & military and new programs and wars and never cut out OLD programs. They continue to give the Military Industrial complex cost plus contracts and seldom audit contracts and programs. I have to agree they are auditing for FRAUD in a few programs, but it most likely exists in ALL programs and a FEW people will be charged and tried. This whole mess is a total JOKE!
Rather than bashing the administration each day, I think you should spend some time listening to Altas World News to better understand the global chess board in play.
The US owes more money than exists.
That is fascinating. That’s like owing more oxygen than the planet has. You ever try to pay that back? You walk into the bank and they go, “Sir, we’ll accept your lungs.”
America is a nice place. Real stable. The kind of place where the currency is backed by optimism, which is good, because that’s the only thing they haven’t borrowed yet.
They say the US owes about 110 trillion of everything combined, and I thought, that’s interesting, because I don’t even know 110 trillion of anything.
I don’t know 110 trillion people.
I don’t know 110 trillion sandwiches.
But somehow, they owe it. That’s impressive.
Again and again, President Trump says “Don’t worry, we’ve got it under control.” And again, I believe him.
Because when I think “under control,” I think of a man standing on a pile of dynamite with a lit match, explaining interest rates. People are not panicking though, not at all, everyone just keeps on spending.
They say, “Well, it’s only debt.”
Which is true.
In the same way that a bear is only a large dog that wants to kill you.
I love how the Administration solves problems.
Economy collapses?
They say, “Let’s bomb something.”
Not to win.
Just… to keep busy.
It’s like a man sitting inside a house that’s already burned down, just the frame left, glowing and cracking in the dark.
And instead of leaving, instead of asking for help, he walks next door, drags his neighbor out into the yard, and sets that house on fire too.
Not to survive.
Not even to win.
Just so he’s not the only one standing in the ashes.
Then he looks around at the smoke, the screaming, the glow of everything collapsing and says, real calm, like he solved something: “Now it’s even.”
China and Russia are watching all this and I bet they’re very confused.
They’re probably saying, “Wait…you’re borrowing money, to pay interest on money you borrowed, to fund wars, that don’t work?”
And Trump’s like, “Yeah, but we’re very confident about it.”
Did you say Two trillion in interest Bill! That’s the kind of number where you don’t pay it, you just sort of acknowledge it politely.
“Ah yes, the interest… still there, I see.”
And the banks, they don’t even have the money they lend you. They just make it up. Which I respect, because I tried that once.
I went into a store and said, “I’d like to create some money out of thin air.”
And they said, “Sir, that’s called theft.”
And I said, “No no… it’s called banking. I’m just skipping the middleman.”
And President Trump, he smiles.
He says, “We’ve faced worse.”
Which is true, because eventually, this will be worse.
Assessing the hazard of the IRGC with nuclear weapons and delivery systems intact.
(h/t Perplexity Ai)
Summary
The Islamic Republic of Iran is animated by a vision in which the regime exists as the institutional vehicle for preparing the apocalyptic conditions — regional Islamic dominance, the destruction of Israel, the expulsion of American power, and generalized regional upheaval — that will precipitate the return of the Twelfth Imam and the inauguration of global Islamic justice. This vision, formalized by Khomeini through the radical innovation of Velayat-e Faqih, transformed a quietist eschatological hope into an active state mission. The proxy network, the ballistic missile program, the pursuit of nuclear capability, the ideological indoctrination of the IRGC, and the current multi-front confrontation with Israel and the United States are all coherent expressions of this framework — not in the sense that every tactical move is directly dictated by theology, but in the sense that the theological vision defines the ultimate purpose, justifies the costs, sanctifies the violence, and, critically, distorts the deterrence calculus that Western strategic planning relies upon.
in view of this animating principle what would be the most likely outcome when the regime acquired nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them to any desired targets
This is a question where the answer requires careful reasoning from the framework already established, combined with what is known about regime decision-making, internal factionalism, and the specific eschatological logic as it meets strategic reality.
The Central Analytical Problem
The question is not simply "what would a nuclear Iran do?" but something more precise: given that the regime's stated raison d'être is to precipitate the apocalyptic conditions for the Mahdi's return, and given that the destruction of Israel is identified as a theological prerequisite for that return, what is the most probable behavior of a regime possessing deliverable nuclear weapons?
The answer requires holding two things in tension that Western strategic culture habitually refuses to hold simultaneously: that the regime contains genuine apocalyptic believers, and that it also contains institutional survivors who want to preserve the state. The outcome depends on which faction controls the weapons at the moment of decision.
Why Standard Deterrence Theory Is Inadequate Here
The entire architecture of nuclear deterrence since 1945 rests on a single axiom: states value self-preservation above victory. Mutual Assured Destruction works because both parties prefer survival over any political or ideological objective. This is why the Soviet Union, despite official ideology declaring the inevitable triumph of communism, never used its nuclear arsenal — Moscow wanted to be alive for that triumph.
The Islamic Republic presents a structurally different case along two dimensions:
First, the regime's ideology does not treat the survival of the current Iranian state as the supreme value. The supreme value is the return of the Mahdi and the establishment of his global order. If the destruction of Israel — or the triggering of catastrophic regional war — is the price of that return, the theology endorses paying that price. Martyrdom is not a cost; it is an honor. As Times of Israel analysis notes, this regime "celebrates martyrdom, views bloodshed as sacred, and sees Israel's existence as a spiritual affront." An adversary that regards nuclear annihilation of its own population as potentially glorious — the ultimate martyrdom, hastening the Imam's arrival — cannot be deterred by the threat of that annihilation.
Second, there is a theological premium on irreversibility. If the Mahdi's return requires Israel's destruction, then a first strike that eliminates Israel — even at the cost of Iran's own obliteration in retaliation — accomplishes the eschatological mission. The regime does not need to survive the strike. It needs only to deliver it. This asymmetry — where one party has, in principle, a preference structure under which dying while destroying the enemy is the optimal outcome — breaks the mutual vulnerability logic entirely.
The Most Likely Outcomes, Stratified by Probability
Most Probable: Graduated Coercive Escalation, Not Immediate First Strike
The most immediately likely use of nuclear weapons — upon acquisition — would not be a bolt-from-the-blue strike on Tel Aviv. It would be the exploitation of nuclear status as a shield behind which conventional and proxy aggression intensifies dramatically.
This is the North Korean model, and it is well understood. A nuclear Iran would almost certainly:
Accelerate proxy attacks on Israel and American bases, knowing that any retaliation risks nuclear escalation
Extend a nuclear umbrella over its proxy network, daring Israel or the U.S. to strike Hezbollah or the Houthis
Dramatically increase its demands in any regional negotiation
Move toward the "liberation" of Jerusalem through proxy pressure rather than direct strike
The restraining logic here is the institutional one: the Khamenei faction of the regime — the Velayat-e Faqih apparatus itself — wants to survive to govern the post-Mahdi world. You cannot be the state that welcomes the returning Imam if you have been vaporized in a retaliatory strike. So the initial period after acquisition would likely look like emboldened aggression short of nuclear use.
This is why AI is worthless; this is the Jewish version.
Let's hear your version. and skip the Jew baiting if you want to be credible.
The antisemites Bill attracts on here live for these moments. Don’t expect them to forego their joys or bother them with facts. Like the table pounding drunk at the local pub, their clouded sensorium and miserable certainty are impervious to dialogue.
Please ask your AI about Israel's 200 nukes and the Samson Option. Why would Iran use a nuke on Israel if they know they will be immediately obliterated? Also ask why is the US demanding inspections of Iran's nuclear program but refuses to talk about Israel's program?
Sorry, I don't seem to have the frame of reference to inturprete you comment. Could you be a bit more specific?
For real, Personally I skip over the novels on this board….
Yes, me too but while long it is instructive and I enjoyed the read.
See my follow up comments which provide the Introductory query that led to the SUMMARY and further inferences.
It's worth noting the Bill Bonner is quite correct about the impending fiscal singularity in the USA, but also worth noting that Iran, in addition to the recent degrading of its military capacity, has already experienced the fiscal singularity of a destroyed currency. Which empire will melt down first? Perhaps both. Best wishes to the remnants that survive the current period of turbulence.
Or you could have just said you don't think Iran would strike first with a nuke...
The inference from the SUMMARY suggests that, so it must be something else that rubbed him the wrong way. What that might be we will have to wait to see if there is something more than an empty sneer behind his comment.
For reference, here is the introductory query and response which led to the SUMMARY and further inferences:
Describe the apocalyptic vision that animates the ideology of the Iranian Islamic Republic and the consistency of that vision with the regime's preparations and execution of its current confrontation with the USA and Israel
This is a rich and well-documented subject. Here is a comprehensive analytical account.
The Theological Foundation: Twelver Shiism and the Hidden Imam
The apocalyptic vision animating the Islamic Republic is not a fringe overlay on Iranian politics — it is the constitutional and ideological marrow of the regime. It derives from Twelver Shiism, the dominant Shia tradition, which holds that the legitimate line of authority after the Prophet Muhammad passed through twelve infallible Imams, the last of whom — Muhammad al-Mahdi — did not die but entered a state of divine concealment (ghayba) in 874 CE. He lives still, hidden by God, and will return at the end of times to wage a final, catastrophic war, destroy the enemies of Islam, and establish universal justice under a global Islamic order.
According to classical hadith traditions, the Mahdi's return will be accompanied by what Mehdi Khalaji of the Washington Institute calls "bloody visions": two forms of mass death — red death by the Mahdi's sword and white death by plague — each claiming a third of the world's population, with the Mahdi ultimately cleansing the earth of unbelievers. This is not peripheral lore. It is canonical doctrine.
For fourteen centuries, however, the mainstream Twelver response to this eschatology was quietism — the "Theory of Waiting" (entezar). Humans could not and should not try to force the Imam's return. Politics was contaminated territory; the faithful waited, mourned, and prayed.
Khomeini's Revolutionary Rupture
The 1979 revolution was, among other things, a radical theological innovation that overturned this quietism entirely. Khomeini's contribution was the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih — Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist — which he developed in a series of lectures in 1970 and institutionalized in the revolutionary constitution. The argument, as Oxford Academic's analysis summarizes, was that the Prophet and the Imams were mandated not merely to transmit divine law but to govern — and that this mandate passed to qualified jurists during the Imam's occultation. The supreme jurist (vali-e faqih) holds, in Khomeini's most expansive formulation, the same authority as the Prophet himself, including the power to suspend religious obligations if the interests of the Islamic state require it.
This was, as Rasanah analysts note, "a wholly revolutionary interpretation" with no precedent in 1,400 years of Shia jurisprudence. It transformed waiting from a posture of passive endurance into an active, martial, world-transforming mission: the jurist-state must now prepare the ground (zamina-sazi) for the Mahdi's return. Every act of political power, every war, every proxy militia, every ballistic missile program becomes, within this framework, a sacred preparation for the end of history.
The theological consequence is momentous: the Islamic Republic does not merely invoke religion for legitimacy, as states commonly do. It claims that its raison d'être is eschatological — that it exists specifically to manufacture the conditions for the apocalypse.
(continued)
Educational.
So many religions but none of which I am aware exist to foster an end-of-times apocalypse.
Makes me wonder if the Sunni's version of Islam expostulates the same sad ending
The Vision in Detail: What "Preparing the Ground" Requires
Several concrete eschatological preconditions define the regime's roadmap, derived from hadith literature and elaborated by regime clerics:
1. Global chaos and bloodshed as necessary prerequisites. Unlike most messianic traditions (including mainstream Sunni Islam and Jewish and Christian variants) where the messiah arrives into peace, Twelver eschatology inverts this: the Mahdi arrives through catastrophic violence. War, turmoil, and the defeat of Islam's enemies are not unfortunate by-products to be minimized — they are theologically necessary conditions. Times of Israel analysis states this with precision: "In contrast to other faiths in which the appearance of peaceful days will bring forth the coming of a messiah, in Twelver Shia tradition, blood must be shed, chaos must reign, and the enemies of Islam must be vanquished."
2. The destruction of Israel as a sine qua non. Israel's existence is explicitly identified in regime theology as the "greatest barrier" to the Mahdi's return. A flourishing Jewish state on land once under Islamic rule directly contradicts the eschatological requirement that the Muslim world achieve dominance before the Mahdi appears. IRGC cleric Mehdi Taeb stated in 2015 that IRGC members must "remove the obstacles to the emergence of the Imam of the Age, the most important of which is the existence of the usurper regime of Israel." As the Middle East Institute's 2022 study documents, hadiths are cited to the effect that "the Jewish state will be destroyed before the Mahdi's arrival" and that Shia forces will wage war with Jews as a condition of his emergence.
3. The expulsion of American power from the region. The United States is not a secondary target but a co-primary one: the IRGC frames it as jebeh-e batel (the camp of falsehood), guarantor of Israel's survival, and the main power whose regional presence must be dismantled before the final confrontation can occur. Hojatoleslam Ali Saeedi, Khamenei's representative to the IRGC, stated in 2012: "The IRGC is one of the tools for paving the way for the emergence of the Imam of the Age in the field of a regional and international awakening," and explicitly identified U.S. presence in Iraq as a barrier to that emergence.
4. A Shia-led "axis" spanning the region. Classical apocalyptic hadiths describe the Mahdi's forces assembling from specific geographic nodes — Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon — all of which correspond precisely to where Iran has built its proxy architecture. The Houthi uprising in Yemen is explicitly identified in regime literature as one of the definite "signs" of the Mahdi's approach. The Syrian war was framed as resistance to the Sufiyani (a Sunni Umayyad-descended figure who, in classical eschatology, precedes the Mahdi and wages war against Shia forces), with ISIS conveniently mapped onto this role.
Velayat-e Faqih as the Institutional Mechanism
The bridge between eschatological vision and state action is the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih. The Supreme Leader is not merely a head of state who happens to be religious; he is the constitutionally defined representative of the Hidden Imam, governing in his name during the occultation. Obedience to him is, in Khomeini's explicit formulation, "as incumbent on the believer as the performance of prayer." This creates an institutional logic in which the entire apparatus of the Iranian state — its military, its budget, its foreign policy, its nuclear program — is formally subordinated to the eschatological mission of preparing the Imam's return.
Khomeini further ruled, in a 1988 fatwa, that this guardianship is absolute (velayat-e motlaqaye faqih): the supreme leader may even suspend core Islamic obligations if the "interests of the Islamic state" require it. This absolutism is the theological license for whatever is strategically necessary — deception, alliance with non-Muslim powers, tactical ceasefire — so long as the overarching eschatological mission is served.
Consistency with the Regime's Military and Strategic Preparations
The ideological framework maps with remarkable coherence onto the regime's actual strategic architecture:
The Proxy Network ("Axis of Resistance")
Rather than building a conventional symmetric military force — which Iran could never sustain against American or Israeli superiority — the IRGC constructed a geographically dispersed network of proxy militias: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and smaller formations in Syria. This is not merely pragmatic asymmetric strategy. Each node corresponds to a classically prophesied position in the end-times assembly of forces around the Mahdi's emergence point. The Century Foundation's 2025 report notes that "some alliance members share millenarian Shia eschatology" explicitly, alongside the more instrumental goals of opposing Israel and the United States.
The proxy model also solves a theological problem: the regime cannot afford to lose Iran itself in an apocalyptic confrontation prematurely, since the Imam has not yet returned and the state must survive to receive him. Proxies absorb attrition and create the required chaos and bloodshed at manageable cost to the core state.
The Ballistic Missile and Drone Arsenal
Iran's investment in precision ballistic missiles and drones — pursued at enormous economic cost despite crippling sanctions — is difficult to explain on purely deterrent grounds, since it offers no match for American or Israeli air power in a symmetrical exchange. Within the eschatological framework, it makes complete sense: the arsenal exists to demonstrate that Iran can reach Israel and American bases, sustaining the credibility of the threat even as the proxy network is degraded. Middle East Institute analysts warn that "devoted Mahdists could rise to senior leadership positions within the IRGC, bringing under their control the three principal pillars of Iranian power projection: militias across the region, ballistic missile forces, and the nuclear program itself."
The Nuclear Program
This is where the eschatological vision becomes most alarming from a strategic standpoint. Rational-actor deterrence theory assumes that nuclear weapons are instruments of preventing war, because the possessor values self-preservation above victory. But a regime that regards catalyzing apocalyptic chaos as a sacred duty — and martyrdom as glorious — does not operate on those premises. As Times of Israel analysis puts it, "whereas other states see nuclear weapons as tools for deterrence, Iran's regime believes nuclear weapons will allow them to destroy Israel, and possibly the world, facilitating the necessary chaos for the arrival of the Twelfth Imam." The IRGC faction most closely associated with the nuclear program is also the faction most deeply saturated in Mahdist ideology.
The Current Confrontation
The escalatory cycle since October 7, 2023 — Hamas's attack, Hezbollah's northern front, Houthi missile campaigns, direct Iranian ballistic missile strikes on Israel in April and October 2024, Israeli retaliatory strikes inside Iran, and the 12-day Israeli-Iranian war of June 2025 — fits the eschatological template almost point for point. Iran did not initiate the October 7 attack (Hamas has its own agency), but the regime's response was shaped by the framework: each escalatory step is framed internally as "preparing the ground," each martyred proxy fighter as a soldier in the Mahdi's preparatory army, each strike on Israel as erosion of the "greatest barrier."
The Hungarian Conservative's March 2026 analysis identifies the central strategic problem this creates for Western deterrence: "Western rationalist models assume survival is the highest good, and that nuclear weapons induce caution via mutual vulnerability. In Mahdist ideology, martyrdom and apocalyptic expectation make that assumption fragile. Accelerating confrontation hastens divine intervention, shifting the calculus." Even a small number of true believers in command positions alters what risks are judged acceptable.
Internal Tensions and Analytical Cautions
A sophisticated account must note the internal tensions within this ideological universe. Khalaji's Washington Institute analysis observes that Khamenei himself, as the institutional guardian of the state, is more concerned with regime survival than with precipitating the chaos that pure Mahdism demands — because the Hidden Imam's return requires a functioning Islamic state to receive him. This creates a structural tension between the regime-preservation instinct and the eschatological imperative. Ahmadinejad represented the more reckless, chaos-embracing end of that spectrum; Khamenei has historically been the more cautious, institutional operator. The danger noted by multiple analysts is generational turnover in the IRGC, where younger officers, more deeply indoctrinated in Mahdism than the revolutionary generation, may resolve that tension in the direction of acceleration.
Additionally, Mahdism functions simultaneously as sincere belief, as political mythology for mobilizing popular and militia support, and as a rhetorical instrument for legitimizing violence. Disentangling these layers is difficult. But the analytical consensus — from the Middle East Institute to the Hudson Institute to the Tony Blair Institute — is convergent: whatever the personal sincerity of individual leaders, the institutional and operational behavior of the Islamic Republic is consistent with and explicable by the eschatological framework in ways that purely geopolitical or realist accounts cannot fully capture.
Would have been an excellent article if it weren’t for the first few paragraphs demonstrating your on going hatred for the man. Oh you with all the answers to every decision the administration makes. THe Administration could take a chain saw to the debt and you would complain it is targeting the wrong things. New name for you, No win Billy.
Dear Mr/Ms stiff. As a confirmed DJT devotee please inform this commentariat on what your thoughts are regarding the actions DJT has taken to rectify the perilous debt situation facing the US. I doubt whether going to war at Bibi's behest is a good example.
In all actuality the public DJT is a Buffon I would not want to sit down to dinner with. However, those who know him say on a personal level he is quite kind. So there you have it, I dont know where you got the confirmation from but you should check your source. That said, I do think some of his accomplishments are note worthy, shutting the border for example and getting foreign countries off our teet. Yes, it’s painful but guess what, anything worthwhile is. No pain no gain. OF course on teh flip side he is an ass answer every critique with a biggest stick - imho a POS move.
You mean the perilous debt situation that career politicians have created? Surely you can’t put the blame on a man that has 5 non-consecutive years in office. What about the cadaver with over 50, or Mitch the Turtle McConnell, same thing. There are many more. But as I said above, TRump could become Millei and Billy would fault the cuts as inappropriate. It just is what it is
if you have a credible proposal for flanking the impending fiscal singularity, let the rest of us hear it. Perhaps BB is a TDS- victim, which makes other TDS- victims happy, and TDS+ victims sad or furious. I look around for some Donald replacement (an individual or a team of individuals) that has a credible way around our impending fiscal singularity and the closest approximation is Elon Musk (and his various teams), but is that vision really credible? Some think so. If not Elon, perhaps you. If so, give it a shot.
I don’t but neither does Billy - thats the point, Nothing but blah blah blah and more blah every day
Bill’s style of rhetoric loves to yolk truisms to his bullshit. Here the truism is the usual one: Extreme debt is bad. All heads nod. The bullshit is typically a combination of selective attention and distortion of facts. Here the distortion involves first equating Iran with historical examples of failure of force to result in a win (i.e. Vietnam Nam) while placing the RESULTS of the war in Iran in the PAST TENSE six weeks into it! In fact, the outcome is yet to be determined. That being said, rest assured that there is no possible outcome that Bill would not declare as a failure.
Here's some truisms:
All the post WWII attacks by our armed forces have been of smaller and less economically vibrant countries each with smaller armed forces and far less military equipment.
Foremost, the common denominator for each of our military misadventures is none of the countries we attacked were a threat to US.
And each war we waged against these countries ended with billions spent, tens of thousands dead, destruction galore and no change.
This time, one man --DJT -- decided to wage another war but, what's different, it's on behalf of another country: Israel.
When his war is over, it will feature the same results: more death, destruction and debt.
And Israel will still be saddled with its Palestinian problem and its prime minister still subject to an arrest warrant for crimes against humanity.
Leaving aside their stated mission to destroy the Great Satan and their quest for nuclear weapons capable of reaching the United States, how many thousands of Americans would need to die by Irans actions for Iran to qualify as a threat to the U.S.?
Lacking the capability (e,g., no ICBM, no nuclear capability, no navy and no air force) but possessing an educated population reputably most of whom want to be rid of their theocratic rulers, Israel and its US puppet would be better served to help the Iranian majority overthrow their religious oppressors.
Nonsense. Didn’t the 40,000 Iranian citizens murdered in two weeks by their rulers convince you that an unarmed citizenry in Iran might not be able to overthrow a heavily armed theocracy intent on murdering anyone needed to maintain power? If not what would? You also conveniently over look that their lack of means to carry out worldwide murder has not come about by accident. They currently have little or no capacity. Not true before. Will their citizens have a chance to free themselves? Hope so. They are just as much occupied and oppressed by Iran as Lebanon and Gaza.
Israel erred.
It should have enabled Iranian dissidents (Shiites) to overthrow its religious oppressors.
With or without US and/or Arab (Sunni) help, it could have done so by taking a page from the CIA playbook used to overthrow Iran's democratically elected government a generation ago.
There's no love between Shiite and Sunni; they've been killing each other for over a thousand years (most recently in Pakistan, the conflict mediator nation)
And, as we know, lacking weapons there was no uprising by Iranian dissidents.
It is sad that government - any government - can't help itself. There is no fun of cutting the budget and voters hate it. So when there is no upside the government continues until it can't. As happen throughout history......and it will happened here in the U.S. What are we seeing - war department (and Trump was going to be the "peace" president....how did that work-out) budget is going to go to $1.5B - for what. The U.S. military isn't prepared for today's wars - even the Navy - when challenged by technology - must sit far beyond shores. Oh, sure, it can force Venezuela or Cuba or most countries to do its will - but look what Iran, and before it Iraq and Afghanistan, and before that Vietnam - did to our military. So, is this Administration going to go "all-in on the military" when there are so many problems here in the U.S. and the deficit keeps rising faster and faster? Shortly....when the money runs out (no more from the Gulf States for a long, long while) and so many countries that used to buy our debt is going to gold (held by themselves - like France and German just did) and starting to increase their holdings of the Yuan. Going to be ugly folds............and there is no way to stop it.
Pretty much agree with your comments. But in terms of winning wars, the wars you mentioned, where "winning " was not clear or maybe not at all, were so called political "wins" by the DC clowns masquerading as international policy wonks. I don't think there was much attempt to militarily win any of those wars.
When you are not going to "occupy" a country, winning isn't an option. It is stopping something you don't like. But, without occupying, then war is just to stop a government (or what controls the country or region) from continuing. What the world as seen since forever is that wars do not change anything for long. The people living there go on and their cultural goes on as has the Persian cultural. The only way America came to being is by "occupying" and then essential cleansing the country of its original inhabitants. So, I agree with you - wars without continuing occupant is essential a crime against humanity.
Last time I checked, we aren’t occupying Germany, Japan, or Italy. Did we lose? Does WW2 also stand as a crime against humanity?
Is Germany still Germany, Is Japan still Japan, is Italy still Italy - it was just a war of regime change. Frankly, here in America we need a regime change as well. Iran isn't an American interest. The current Israeli-Led Administration is doing nothing for us peons and turning the world against America - just look at what has happening with Canada! As to WW2 it has some horrific times - the fire bonding of Germany cities and the Japanese cruelty in China and the Western Pacific, the bombing of London. All horrible but does that mean the Gaza genocide is "Ok"? And, what if Iran decides to attack the cities and infrastructure (electrical, energy, water) is that Ok? Just because it was done in the past, doesn't mean it should be tolerate today.
Lots of spaghetti there, but your assertion was no war can be won without occupation. That’s false.
Depends on what your definitive of "won" is? You'll likely - giving it some thought - consider a regime surrendering a "win".. All about regime change. Depending how long this goes on, in the November elections there will be a "regime change" in America. Going to be interest ahead.
Yes, " 7/17/1942 The Battle of Stalingrad" qualifies as a crime against humanity in my book.
Hi assertion was not parsing opinions regarding individual battles. It’s about whether or not a war is “won” without “occupation”.
"The only way America came to being is by "occupying" and then essential cleansing the country of its original inhabitants." May I suggest "visiting" one of the many Indian Reservations scattered west of the Mississippi to see how our "cleaning the country of its original inhabitants" has been such a marvelous success.
When are you giving back your stolen home Harold?
I guess when the US Government encircles my farm and designates it "UTE NATION NATIONAL MONUMENT". Just like it did when it the last time it got "its ass kicked" up at the Little Big Horn. But, I'm not worried, after all the Ute Nation is living the good life on their Reservation.
Nice write up except for the TDS part, the man has been in office 5 non-consecutive years, what about the lifers that got us here? BTW, Germany did not repatriate its gold. Yet.
Still in favor of establishing a separate, lower cost, domestic energy market for extracted resources from public lands, only available for American infrastructure development - business and consumer alike.
The current fees paid from permitting by our energy giants seems to get swallowed up along with all other fees from marriage licenses, fishing permits, etc., etc.
Probably goes to the same place as our Social Security payroll deductions which magi-economically get converted into IOU's and thrown on the debt pile. We can't do anything about what has occurred to date, but we may be able to design a better system moving forward.
That being said, permit me to be a bit circumspective about taking advice from any of those who waved in millions of illegal immigrants, most of whom were unskilled and promptly went on the government dole in one form or another. I only want to hear from forward -thinking, law abiding capitalist Americans. Those interested in absorbing what has been done in the past and projecting coherent plans for a better future. No defeatism. No one who supported say, Obama sending Iran pallets of cash but having an issue with Trump addressing what that cash bought for the Middle East..
USAid checks sent all over the world into number4ed bank accounts for ill-fated, marquee DEI initiatives with long strings attached back to DC politicians- or worse.
Just positive ideas for where we go from here without the defeatism that seeks to buy peace at any price - but always gets taxpayers cheated...
Excellent summation as usual Bill!
This debt issue has been going on for well over 30 years. It never gets addressed because congress and the administration always wants to spend more, or give our citizens lower taxes and "goodies" plus wage increases for government employees & military and new programs and wars and never cut out OLD programs. They continue to give the Military Industrial complex cost plus contracts and seldom audit contracts and programs. I have to agree they are auditing for FRAUD in a few programs, but it most likely exists in ALL programs and a FEW people will be charged and tried. This whole mess is a total JOKE!
Rather than bashing the administration each day, I think you should spend some time listening to Altas World News to better understand the global chess board in play.
I stopped recieving email from y’all. I know I’m subscribed so please check. Thanks
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