Let's talk about Trump's war floundering and failing.... - Belle of the Ranch

Well, howdy there Internet people. It's Belle again. So, today we're going to talk about Trump's war floundering and failing.

It's been an eventful few days. We're going to try to get into all of this over the next few days, but as a brief summary, Hegseth spoke to Congress, got called out for misrepresenting the state of the conflict, and being in direct contradiction to US forces who were actually on the ground. Trump has been getting his feelings hurt because other countries wouldn't join his elective and unplanned conflict so he announced the withdrawal of some US troops from Germany, which the Germans shrugged off because it damages the United States, not them. Trump declared an immediate end to hostilities, which seemed like nothing more than him calling his own base stupid and seeing if they'd still go along with it, while daring Republicans in Congress to oppose him.

Predictably, they did not oppose him as he ran over the 60-day deadline for his war. Now, shortly after Trump claimed hostilities had ended, Trump said the US would be escorting or directing civilian ships through the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran is saying they hit a US Navy ship. CENTCOM posted to social media saying, "No US Navy ships have been struck. US forces are supporting Project Freedom and enforcing the naval blockade on Iranian ports.”

Iran is saying they hit a US vessel. The US is saying they didn't. Who do you believe? Neither." After Hegseth's performance at the hearings, basically implying US troops were liars, official statements from DoD have lost a lot of their value. I would note that there's some very specific language in that CENTCOM denial. If your mission is to protect shipping going through the strait, you might want to comment on the status of the civilian ships you're supposed to be protecting, but maybe I'm reading too much into that.

In unrelated news, the South Korean government confirmed there was an explosion and fire on one of its tankers and a tanker from the UAE was reportedly attacked by drones or missiles.

What I'm not reading too much into is the importance of Iran's claim. True or not? One of the popular memes about the US military is don't touch our boats. And it's a true meme. A strike against US naval power generally elicits a massive response. The reason is because US naval shipping is critical to our force projection efforts. Even the appearance of that being weakened hurts the US because it calls into doubt our ability to respond.

So whether Iran hit a US ship or not, they claimed they did, they created the appearance of damaging US force projection capabilities. Now whether they felt comfortable doing that because the US has never been viewed as weaker than it is right now or because they don't think this administration understands force projection enough to respond doesn't really matter.

The United States has never appeared weaker or more incompetent on the world stage. Trump's elective war that he created to give him a tough guy persona showed that geopolitics doesn't care how many times you declare victory when geography says the strait isn't open.

As far as Trump's claim that the strait is open, Brent crude is sitting at $114. WTI is also over a hundred at time of recording. Both are almost double what they were at the beginning of the year. These numbers give you an immediate fact check for Trump's claims of success.

Anyway, it's just a thought. Y'all have a good day.