Republicans are
helpless, and doomed:Republicans are now bracing for the "unthinkable" scenario that Trump could trigger a "full-scale war" that will still be raging when voters go to the polls in November, Politico's Dasha Burns reported Wednesday.
With 104 days until the midterms, contests in Iowa, Alaska and Ohio — along with House districts Trump carried by double digits — are now firmly in play, according to Politico.
"We're preparing for the bottom to fall out," a GOP operative working on midterm races told Politico.
"Republicans are running out of runway here to improve their political fortunes before November," the operative added.
(They aren’t “running out of runway.” The GOP sold out to MAGA, which means they sold out to Trump. These are the consequences.)
In the 10 days since the United States resumed its air strikes against Iran, neither President Trump nor any other senior administration official has publicly addressed the campaign," said the report. "U.S. forces began by striking Iranian military facilities but later expanded to attacking civilian infrastructure that the administration says is being used for military purposes."
Congress has "yet to receive classified briefings on the latest phase of the war."
Meanwhile, Trump, who initially bragged about how well the war was going when the fighting first erupted, has tried to shift the conversation back to his election conspiracy theories.
The president "expected a quick victory, and so the military didn’t prepare for a prolonged conflict," according to the report.
And as the administration failed to adequately build up forces, it set off further problems for the U.S. military.
"Although the military surged additional forces into the region, many assets — particularly Navy ships — were diverted from other war theaters rather than trained for this conflict," The Atlantic reported. "The Pentagon has since extended the deployments of nearly half of those ships, further taxing an already-strapped force."*
But let’s hedge our bets, and say the light could be a train:
According to two sources who spoke to The Atlantic, "Trump may at some point consider," a clean break from the war to cut losses, stop gas prices from rising further, and try to prevent more damage to the GOP in the polls. "But for now, despite the growing costs, he is continuing the fight."
"While sitting next to the leader of Lebanon in the Oval Office today, the president seemed to commit himself to the type of forever war he once derided: 'We’re not finished at all,' Trump told reporters. 'We’re not leaving right now,'" said the report — and Trump further vowed "to bomb Pickaxe Mountain on the suspicion that it houses part of Iran’s nuclear program."
*”an already strapped fighting force.” Anyone else starting to get late Roman Empire vibes if too much territory (Europe; Middle East; Chinese coastal waters) and not nearly enough military power? The money seems to be going to weapons systems we can’t afford to use because they’re ineffective except against technology Russia really doesn’t have. We’re in deep with million dollar missiles, while the world is going to cheap drones, or short range missiles we have a g he hard time countering.
This is the greatest military in the world? This is what it means to be a hyperpower? This needs another $1.5 trillion, or we’re done for?
Rome dominated Europe and northern Africa, but reached its limit with Scotland and Ireland. And then the whole enterprise became too big and too expensive and even the greatest military might in the world wasn’t enough. We’re not an empire, and we’re not facing that kind of collapse. But: is this the vaunted military we’ve been paying for? I can blame the poor management of Hegseth and Trump, but damn! We sure look like a paper tiger. We certainly look like we’ve overextended ourselves, something we were assured was not going to happen. But right now, if China decided to stir some shit, we’d be hard pressed to respond. And we were assured there were plans for things like that. Did those plans include this scenario?
No, we shouldn’t have started this war, but: what would the difference be if Congress had authorized it? Bush had an AUMF, and excuses like WMD, and militarily Iraq was a rout, but the results? Our military is good at nation destruction, but we’ve spent no time considering nation building.
And then there was Afghanistan, where we found a graveyard for our empire.
Is this what our military-industrial complex is buying us? An ineffective military and no money for healthcare and education? It’s Vietnam all over again. “Greatest military in the world,” and we couldn’t defeat “the little brown men in black pajamas.” All my life I’ve been told it’s just a matter of having the will, or the “support of the American people,” or the strategy, or a clear goal, or an “exit ramp/strategy/plan”… and it’s all bullshit. It’s all the same wars as the 17th and 18th century European wars of monarchy that the American colonists were so determined to not establish here.
And then FDR built the Pentagon,,which he meant to turn into a records storage facility after the war (the only reason it survived 9/11 the way it did.). But then came the Commies, and Korea, which begat the domino theory, which begat the military-industrial complex, the Red Scare, and the Cold War…
And here we are.
