A little over a decade ago, The Lego Movie came out. It was an interesting and ambitious movie in which everything was made of Legos. There were good guys and bad guys. There is one song in the movie that continues to ricochet around in my head—Everything Is Awesome.
This was a song that the lead character sang several times when he was feeling down. The song is really a bunch of propaganda—overly happy, borderline nonsense—but that’s exactly the tongue-in-cheek humor that makes the movie work.
The State of the Union
Our president, Donald J. Trump, spent more than 90 minutes trying to convince us that everything was awesome. The economy was good. Foreign policy decisions were strong. American manufacturing was back. The stock market was booming. Several times during the speech, he even stopped to hand out Congressional Medals of Honor.
During the Joe Biden administration, the State of the Union was typically used to highlight real accomplishments and propose new legislation. As far as I can tell, Trump offered no new initiatives. The speech was exactly what we’ve come to expect—unrestrained, self-congratulatory, and often detached from reality.
Iran
Back in June, the United States bombed three Iranian nuclear sites using B-2 Spirit bombers. The targets were hit. Trump declared victory, claiming the facilities were “totally obliterated.” Pentagon estimates suggest the program was set back about two years.
As you recall, the United States, along with the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Germany, signed an agreement (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)) with Iran in 2015. In the agreement, Iran agreed to reduce its nuclear enrichment so it could use uranium for civil power but not for nuclear weapons. It agreed to this for 15 years. It also agreed to reduce its nuclear stockpiles from over 10,000 kg to just 300 kg. It also agreed to reduce its centrifuges. It also agreed to redesign one of its heavy water reactors so that it could not produce weapons-grade plutonium. Finally, Iran agreed to international inspections. In exchange for all of this, the international community would gradually lift sanctions and return some of the money that we had confiscated (billions of dollars). By all counts, the treaty was working. Yet Donald Trump tore up the agreement in 2018.
Without an agreement in place, Iran restarted their nuclear program. So, now, we have a problem of Trump’s own making. Trump wants a signature deal that would include ballistic missiles. From Iran’s standpoint, why would they make another treaty? Trump and the United States are not unreliable. Trump says Iran wants to negotiate, but I’m not so sure.
Trump, along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, decided to bomb Iran. Exactly what our goals were is really unclear. It appears we wanted to remove Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. We killed him, but now what? And this is the part that makes me question the sanity and intelligence of folks in the White House and the Pentagon. What are the next steps? Ayatollah Khamenei had been ruling Iran for over 40 years. All opposition has been crushed. There is no “other” party. There is only the power structure of the current Iranian government. So, killing the Ayatollah will only produce another radical cleric to take his place.
Trump has trying to justify this war by telling us that Iran’s nuclear program was a threat to our national security. If that is true, then the bombing that we did several months ago was not the complete success that Trump told us it was. Trump has also claimed that Iran was developing a ballistic missile that could reach the US. I’m sure that they were, but how close were they to making that weapon a reality? A week? A year? 2 years? Who knows? We haven’t been shown any convincing evidence. The bottom line is that Trump got played by Netanyahu again. It is Netanyahu who was threatened by Iranian medium-range missiles. It is Netanyahu and Israel who want to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, but they couldn’t do it alone. They needed our help. Netanyahu played Trump like the sucker he is. So, now, we are in a Middle East war with no clear exit strategy.
Everything is… awesome.
