It Seems My Counsel Carries Little Weight…

Well, so much for Graeme’s boffo exit strategy for the Iran mess! Not what I had in mind, Donny. Not at all what I had in mind.

See, unless you really want a second one right where it hurts, the last thing you say to the playground bully when he slaps you upside the head is “I double dog dare you to do that again”. Now I’m not saying the better move is always to just give in and hand over your lunch money, but however you want to play it there’s no percentage in asking for another one right across the chops, is there? Just give him one back to the trachea, you really want to fight. If you don’t want to fight, you’re going to look awfully stupid when the guy does indeed give you another, which he will, especially if you have a reputation for empty threats. Especially if you just stood there and took it the last time he put the pucks to you.

Any attack by Iran on anything American, he says. Really Donny? Anything American? Anything at all? Massive, disproportionate retaliation then ensues? It’ll be curtains for the mullahs? Jesus H. Christ in Clown Pants. If I was Hassan Rouhani, I’d go on state TV and make a big show of shooting a two litre bottle of Coke suspended in front of an American flag, just to watch it fizz, then grab my crotch and say obliterate this.

I don’t know how well this sort of shit went down in the real estate biz, but painting the other guy into one corner before painting yourself into another is not the way we students of international relations were taught to handle an impasse. It constrains your options, see? His too. That’s under the “Don’t” column in your handy Brinksmanship Dos and Don’ts – Pocket Edition. Keep up with that shit and you can find yourself in real trouble, the kind you can’t get out of by stiffing the contractors, refusing to pay back your loans, and then declaring bankruptcy. Out there in nasty places like the Persian Gulf, when you start writing cheques your ass can’t cash, guess what – they cash them anyway. When they bounce, they come for the collateral, and if that’s lacking they break your goddam kneecaps. This is real, Donny. Get it? It’s actually happening. Not like Celebrity Apprentice. Out there, the next guy you verbally assault with the old you’re fired! treatment is going to leap across the table and plunge a pencil into your goddam eye socket.

Suppose they shoot down another drone, and not even a big expensive Global Hawk, but something more along the lines of a relative little putt-putt like an MQ-9? Then what? The B-2s head straight for Tehran loaded up with napalm and cluster bombs? What the f*%k is the end game here? Do these morons have even a vague idea of what war with Iran would look like? Do they think the Iranians are going to crawl back to the table, even though they were at the frigging table before, and got all this for their trouble? Or do they think the mullahs are going to cry uncle and promise not to develop nukes or support Hezbollah any more, even if the sanctions aren’t lifted? Or what?

Mother of God. Every now and again you’re brought up short, and realize that the President of the United States is making mortal threats to other nation states over Twitter. Seriously. He’s tweeting promises of massive military retaliation. We really have come to this.

Anyway, it’s a pity, but I guess Donny isn’t going to take my advice on this mess. It was such good advice, too, I thought so anyway. Who knows, maybe Iran will crawl back to the table, or maybe they bank on Trump losing in 2020 and hang tough until after the next election, when they hope the White House will be occupied by less of an idiot. Whatever happens, though, I guess it won’t be because I had anything to say about it. Ain’t that a kick in the pants? You know, Kathy keeps telling me, like when I yell at the TV, or start screaming as I read the latest on my iPad, she tells me, “You know they can’t hear you, right?”. That’s what she says. “You know nobody’s listening”.

Turns out she’s right.