Grave New World
TUCSON — We know about tacos here in Baja Arizona, and Donald Trump is no TACO. True, he always chickens out and has a high grease content. But I've never heard of a folded filled tortilla capable of destroying a planet by sheer hubris and insanity.
In America's name, he threatened to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, imperiling 92 million people of different ethnicities along with diplomats, foreign technicians, visitors and Iranian Americans who return regularly to see families.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” he posted on "Truth Social," his own anti-social stream of lies through which he addresses the nation and the wider world. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” It didn't.
Trump declared a two-week cease fire, already tenuous. So far, his $2 billion a day war has achieved little beyond civilian misery and destroyed cultural treasures from an ancient world that belong to our progeny, if any survive his jihad against climate action.
But his threat alone is against Geneva Conventions drafted mostly in Washington after World War II. "Genocide" does not begin to cover what that would mean. Airstrikes have already killed thousands of civilians, including hundreds of school kids.
His indifferent approach to wanton slaughter, combined with everything else we have seen since 2017, defines the man who personifies a dis-United States.
This is a brief(ish) Report with a plan for suggested action below. There is not a day to lose. This is no time for despair, confusion or apathy. Trump needs to go now. And, later, so does J.D. Vance, a chameleon manipulated by billionaires and ideologues.
As the smoke begins to recede, dispatches will dig deeper with Iranian and international sources I've learned to trust over the decades. The basic lines are already clear.
"This is a mix of incompetence and malevolence," Ben Rhodes, a top security advisor to Barack Obama, said on MS Now. The Hormuz Strait was an international waterway, open to all. Talks were continuing to ease tensions after Trump's 12-day assault in June.
Trump declared "total and complete victory" to Agence France-Presse. But he seems ready to slink away, humiliated. Russia has new billions from oil to sustain its Ukraine war. China has a steady flow of fuel and friends in Tehran. Gulf states, battered for weeks, distance themselves from America.
Iran now lays claim to the Hormuz Strait and demands $2 million tolls — accepted only in crypto currency or Chinese yuan — for vessels to pass through. It is emerging as a regional power, with Revolutionary Guards well-armed to viciously suppress dissent.
Rare White House pronouncements are almost laughably contradictory. Iran's nuclear program was hardly "obliterated" as Trump still asserts, but it was set back years. His amateur diplomat pal, Steve Witkoff, says it was weeks away from striking America.
"Regime Change," an upcoming book by two New York Times White House reporters, excerpted this week in the paper, details how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally found a patsy to help cripple Iran, predicting a popular uprising.
Unlike during Trump's first term, compliant generals and top advisors remained silent despite strong reservations. Vance tried to argue that "Epic Fury" would be epic folly, but then fell in line.
Trump was swayed by Pete Hegseth, his toy-soldier secretary of war crimes, whose tattoos suggest the sort of fundamentalist zealotry that sends migrants on one-way trips to a Salvadoran hellhole with no due process.
First, a quick review of how we got here. As it happens, I had been watching Trump, a mobbed-up conman, since I reported on his first casino in Atlantic City. And I had covered the death of democracies, violent or otherwise, since the Congo in the 1960s.
I warned of Trump's creeping coup before he was elected in 2016. This is no "I told you so." It seemed obvious that enough Americans would catch on after his ignominious first term and flush him away into history down one of his gold-plated toilets.
Among his first moves were to retreat from two crucial steps toward global sanity in 2015: U.N. climate accords in Paris and a deal to curb Iran's nuclear intentions worked out during 18 grueling months. China, Russia and European powers signed onto both.
Trump called them the worst deals in history because they were Barack Obama's triumphs. We have all seen what has happened since. On climate. In Ukraine. Across the Middle East and the Americas. In Asia, Africa and across a dying ocean.
On Feb. 28, Trump struck during those peace talks, and Iranian officials say any new dialogue is likely to be a trap to catch them off guard. NATO partners are furious at Trump's slurs, and the vital Atlantic Alliance is fraying fast.
Ali Vaez, an Iranian nuclear scientist now with the International Crisis Group, just summed up the situation to Christiane Amanpour.
There is no regime change, he said. The assassinated supreme leader's son is far more belligerent than his father, furious at losing his own wife and much of his family in the bombing. Their ample supply of drones depletes the U.S. stock of costly interceptors.
Iranians have 1000 pounds of enriched uranium hidden away, enough to make about a dozen bombs. Not much by today's standards, Vaez said, but each would have the impact of those atomic bombs America dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The slain supreme leader had issued a fatwa against any weapon that reached beyond the region, and the 2015 accord allowed regular monitoring. Now, he concluded, enraged, wary leaders may seek a long-range North Korean-type deterrent.
This is hardly about the price of gas.
I'm only a reporter, but here are my two cents.
The 25th amendment allows the cabinet to remove Trump, who knew that when he selected what is likely the most pathetic group of unqualified sycophants in U.S. history. That leaves a third impeachment.
Congress needs to reconvene immediately to stand up and be counted. A House vote would likely fail to charge, and the Senate would not have enough votes to convict. But every member's vote would be on record.
That allows citizens to boot out every Trump defender at the first opportunity. Recent elections heavily favored Democrats. In November, every House seat will be for up grabs. About a third of senators face re-election.
Republicans have far more money and a wide range of dirty tricks to suppress the vote. But an avalanche of people with families to think about would prevail — especially independents and Republicans with a trace of decency.
There are so many reasons at home to revile Trump: the Epstein files, diverted billions, fraud felonies, top-secret "Five Eyes" documents and classified files he tried to steal, atrocities against migrants, outrages against citizens he is sworn to protect.
I'll soon be back in the real world to report on how deeply and bitterly so many people loathe what has become of the country they once admired. Restoring sanity and stability to our lonely planet has never been so essential.
Voters need help to see the dangers abroad of a "TACO" who believes he is the global Big Enchilada.
Watch this space.
———