Posts Tagged → deal
Sometimes no deal is good enough
President Donald Trump, the best president of my lifetime and the modern day savior of American democracy, believes in capitalism. He believes in “The Art of The Deal.” He believes that most humans, given good choices to select from, will almost always if not always choose logical, reasonable, rational options.
It is with this earnest mindest that President Trump has approached the Middle East. And in some ways, his view on human choices and preferences has, in fact, borne out with the wealthy Gulf states (Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait). These sparsely populated countries are exceptionally rich, and everything they do is centered on money. Money is the language that President Trump speaks most and best, because he is a capitalist. And it is piles of money that keep the rulers of the Gulf states in power.
So, money brings together some of President Trump’s foreign policy goals into alignment, or slight overlap, with the oil producing Arab Gulf states.
Where this money-and-comfort mindset and worldview fails is in the face of apocalyptic, genocidal supremacists like Adolf Hitler back then, or the jihadi Iranian Shia mullahs in the present. These people did not and do not speak the language of money or human comfort and happiness, other than to use these thoughts to move themselves forward on the chess board in the short term. Their currency is raw power and sheer domination and control of everyone in front of them, by any means necessary.
They are ruthless, whereas President Trump believes in choices and opportunities.
The jihadi/ Hitlerian supremacist view is contrary to President Trump’s view. The totally rational “Mutually Assured Destruction” doctrine that kept Soviet Russia and America from nuking one another in the Cold War does not apply in Iran, nor with any other Islamist country. There, money is only a means, not a goal. Lots of jihadis are happy to live in poverty, if it helps them achieve their measure of wealth in power and human subjugation.
Trump believes in kindness and human choices, free people making their own choices and reaching “deals” for mutual benefit. On the other hand, Jihadis believe in you, me, and Trump all on our knees (which is why the American and European Left share common cause with the Jihadis).
America was founded on individual freedom and choice, which are completely the opposite of Islam, and especially the jihadis within Islam. These two world views are incompatible; they do not overlap in a Venn diagram. To date, leaders like President Trump have managed to find points of contact between Western values and Islam where friction is least, but he has been unable to really find significantly overlapping areas of interest. The Abraham Accords came very close to bringing the Sunni Arab countries into a shared Venn diagram space with Israel and America, but those accords are pretty shaky. As soon as jihadis somewhere start their la-la-la-la yodeling thing, the Gulf states reflexively go into retreat. Culture is powerful.
With Iran, there is no compromise. Not because America does not want to, but because Iran’s apocalyptic, genocidal, fanatic jihadis do not accept any point of contact between themselves and anyone else that is not resolved 100% on their terms. And they will fight to the very end, even if they have to drag down their enemies with them into the abyss, to seek that end result.
President Trump is both a patient and loving man. That is clear. But he is also having trouble computing that anyone can be so different from him and from America’s hope and promise as are the Iranian jihadis. And so he keeps on trying to “make a deal.”
Mister President, a lot of us Americans, who are still squarely and absolutely in your corner, think you have tried more than is possible or than is even smart. You have done all that is possible to avert an absolute showdown with the Iranian jihadis, and they have been unable to meet you halfway. You must now accept that they are incapable of thinking like you, thinking in terms of mutual benefit. They do not think like that, or like you.
If the Iranian jihadis are allowed to stay in power in any way, shape, or form, they will return to their field of battle with America on their own terms. They will have learned from their mistakes since 2025, and they will adapt. Iran will find a way to destroy or damage America, one way or another, if they are allowed to remain in power.
You must finish the Iranian jihadi job, Mister President. If you love America as much as we all think you do, then you must make the unpleasant decision to wipe out the Iranian jihadis. It is us or them, and we elected you to protect Us.
We know that this is a difficult time for you, President Trump, and we stand firmly with you, at your side. Absolutely no one else in American politics has the strength of character that you have, and if you do not save America from jihadi Iran now, then we will end being apocalyptically victimized by them in the future. There is no art of the deal that you or anyone else can pull off that will avoid this; only military success right now will protect America.