Empty Bag of Ducks📎

The Trump administration took your money illegally.

They won’t give it back.

if you're keeping score at home what's happening is this the department of war is running major combat operations in iran which may last just a few weeks maybe longer or maybe even forever and which are NOT a war but whose stated objective is unconditional surrender

Having a chemo day from hell so I’ve slept thru chunks of it.

Woke to Noem firing

Woke to Bluesky discourse on Iran ground conflict

Crazy thought: Trump knows the difference between picking a Mullin and a mullah, right?

Very important 🧵!!!!!

Reminder it’s a small army. Spoke to our son today, he knew two of the soldiers killed in Kuwait.

"We're fighting to win the war"

We are a week in and absolutely nobody has any idea what the political aim we're attempting to achieve is. Win what? Literally what are we fighting to achieve at the moment.

I have absolutely no idea atm if we are close to winning because I have no idea what we want

Getting real rolling thunder vibes from this

I wonder if the CENTCOM and INDOPACOM POLADS might have had differing views on this decision. It’s not like they aren’t *senior State Dept employees* embedded in those organizations for just this reason.

Sorry.

At one point in the past, (being purposefully vague), Iran was a defense planning scenario. (Used for studies and force sizing like the Army’s TAA). I don’t think Trump could stomach this.

🧵👇

Again, no idea what it will take to piss away ABO, but I'm amazed we weren't already at that point after Venezuela. At a minimum, I'm surprised we haven't lost the ability to use Soto Cano in Honduras and the contingency basing agreement with the Dutch.

No, it’s worse.

It’s a war without a political objective.

Plenty of wars have opened without a clear plan to reconcile desired ends with available means, we may be the first country to go to war without even a basic concept of victory.

War for the memes. War for the vibes. War for the Warriors.

From FT comments

The reason they’re called human rights is all human beings have them. If you’re talking about the supposed exclusive rights of the herrenvolk you should use another term or just switch to German entirely.

I’m related to the Pope

Packing house laborer and automotive assembly line electrician

Even putting aside the chaotic, almost apathetic communications effort the Trump Administration has made, the fundamental problem here is a trust deficit. A lot of Americans simply don't trust Trump to make war/peace, life/death decisions, period, no matter who the enemy is.

As far as I’m aware, there aren’t many ground combat troops deployed to the region yet - those that have been are mainly air defense. The buildup was almost entirely air and naval forces. And Iran is a mountainous country 4x the size of Iraq.

That’s the Israel-in-Gaza move for when the pace of strikes leadership wants outstrips arsenals of precision guidance kits. US forces rarely used unguided gravity bombs in the GWOT, and when they did, it was against concentrations of regular troops on open battle fronts (OEF1, OIF1, Kobane).

Incurring strategic risk can be justified, but you better be hitting justifiable targets.

Watching the conversations about munitions stocks devolve into one focused on global stocks (“hey, we have plenty” to turn Iran into dust) without reference to global requirements. (Oh, we might have to fight a conflict somewhere else?)

I once watched the worst, most toxic civilian leader (recently promoted to SES) I ever worked for publicly correct another civilian (GS15) not once, but THREE times on a VTC when the GS15 kept calling him by his first name. “That’s Mr. Doe to you” he shouted. Embarrassing.

Trump’s regime is built on purely punitive measures. My way or the highway. No constructive engagement.

But punitive action alone creates a backlash. We see that politically at home. In this war, do they think they will end Shia Islam? No. It’s likely support for the regime there will grow.

Only in the sense that the people who launched it without a plan or objective all get pretty defensive when criticized.

War crimes are back on the menu boys!

There are currently no US Ambassadors in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, or Qatar. And since consular budgets have been slashed, few personnel to assist Americans trying to leave the region, even as the US issues evacuation notices instructing them to do so.

This is what weak and insecure people think confidence looks like: buffoonish bluster and swagger, like a 12-year-old bully. It doesn‘t inspire trust or security. It inspires grave concern for the lives of the people serving our nation whose fate is in the hands of these overcompensating oafs.

the Constitution explicitly states that the Framers were forming a "more perfect Union."

implicit in that wording is that they did not form a perfect Union.

it is, rather, for each succeeding generation of Americans to pursue the unending task of perfecting it, just a little bit more.

It started me on a lifetime collecting and reading WWI memoirs.