Let me start with this from a July 5th post....
"This current conflict (with Iran) started on February 28....just before the Purim holiday that began two days later. What followed was a month of....shock and awe....and then came Passover....April 1-9....coinciding with Easter.....Sunday....April 5.....and texts from Trump that should have cast doubts by everyone on his sanity...."48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to God." This was an Easter message....the second is too vulgar to put up here but it does end with an odd mockery...."Praise be to Allah." Something happened somewhere! Maybe powers that be....whoever or whatever those powers might be....got a hold of him and said....act like you are sane or leave now? At one moment he was threatening the entire population of Iran with extinction....a population....half of which probably supported him....and the next moment....right up to today....he was just trying to get out of this conflict?"
In another post I wondered how it could happen that after a month of shock and awe....where at one moment the Iranian leaders were as if crawling around under the rubble looking for pockets of air to breath....and almost the next moment....those same leaders were controlling the narrative and events? It haunted me. What had happened that this war would change course so abruptly?
Maggie Habeman is definitely one of the best Trump biographers out there....although there are a couple of others. In her new book....Regime Change....she gives a day-by-day account of Trump's second term....beginning in the transition period....and ending at publication....just as the current war with Iran began.
It doesn't appear that she has missed much since the day of the second inauguration. If I didn't already know who Donald Trump was.....after ten years of intense observation and well over a hundred books on his life....I would think that for the uninitiated....reading this book straight through with no time to come up for air....that they would become totally discouraged and disillusioned with the state of our government. This man that leads the former free world is that bad....every day of his life is one misanthropic and megalomaniacal adventure after another. There is no break in the absurdities. I wonder how long the few relatively normal cabinet members and advisers from his administration can last....without succumbing to severe depression over what they had gotten themselves into?
So does Haberman's book give any hint as to what happened on that Easter weekend....even though the book essentially stops there? I think that it may. From the way that Haberman presents it....most of the people involved in the decision making in that situation room....were very concerned about the potential problems with a war....but Trump....possibly emboldened by the successful Maduro capture....and Benjamin Netanyahu's optimism....made the call to go for it.....and it was by all estimates going very well....until Trump went off the deep end that Easter weekend. It appears possible that he was more than ready to blow boats out of the water....and send bombers....but nothing more than that?
He went from shock and awe to not only diplomacy....but absurd.....back and forth diplomacy of....'they're agreeing to peace/we're going to blow them to hell'....all the while compromising more and more of his initial demands....and giving the Mullahs more and more breathing room....and probably causing great concern to Israel over all of this?
So here he is....right back where he started....only in a worse position....as this Iranian regime has proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that it will be as murderous as it ever was!
