The US and Iran have been engaged in unproductive peace talks for the last several weeks, even for an outsider looking in it is obvious that the regime is half-assing it. In some cases they have met with Iran in the morning and Ukraine in the evening. It's clear that they are only paying lip service to the peace process. Meanwhile everyone can see that Trump has ordered the largest force of warships and aircraft in the Middle East in decades.
It's been a farce from the very beginning.
The US was trying to put Iran in a lose/lose situation by asking them to disarm so that they can be attacked by Israel later, or, they can be attacked by us now. So obviously that went nowhere, a clear non-starter. But later Trump will be able to say, "we really wanted peace, we tried, but they wouldn't make a deal"...
Early this morning Israel, predictably, launched a pre-emptive strike against Iran, who immediately retaliated hitting US and Israeli targets, and just like that, the US is once again at war in the Middle East.
I guess we never really left.
It's a pretty terrible time to be a peacenik, I feel for all of the people who are hurting right now because a tiny minority of individuals who are driven by some inner demon to lust for power have decided to spend our blood and treasure in an attempt to seize even more power and control.
I'm angry and I wonder if they ever stop to consider the waves of trauma and pain that they are unleashing into the world?
As a citizen of a governed society one of the tradeoffs we make is that we give our rulers the power to make war in our name. They get to do the dirty work of getting blood on their hands, and we get to have a clear conscience because of the implication that if our rulers do decide to use the power of the state to take a life, that it will be carefully considered and only done when there were no other options left.
When that contract is broken you can no longer claim that you are killing the defense of our people, or justice, or our way of life, you simply become a murderer. The Trump regime has already shown us, time and time again, that they are perfectly okay with killing people, US citizen or not.
Just the other day a man whose family had been looking for him for days after he had been arrested by local police and handed over to ICE, was found dead in the street. ICE agents claim that they dropped him off near a coffee shop a "location that was determined to be safe" near where he lived. Security footage later showed that the ICE agents dropped this poor man off in the middle of the night, after the coffee shop had closed.
The temperature that night was 36F (2.2C).
Oh, and if you're wondering why he'd been arrested in the first place? It was for the crime of being legally blind and using curtain rod as a walking stick...apparently someone reported a man walking around with a weapon and the justice system sprung into action and did what it does.
Every system is perfectly designed to get the result that it does. -Dr. W. Edwards Deming
It's fucking terrifying to have people like this in charge. People who I'm certain don't lose any sleep at night over a casual decision to enter a war that is going to kill and hurt so many people, and cause so much pain and suffering, and to do it with a smile.
It's just another day at the office for these ghouls. They'll probably discuss the casualty numbers over a round of golf later, meanwhile I will sit and seethe.