In 1970, a Moody Blues song asked why we nev­er get an answer “…/to a thou­sand mil­lions questions/about hate and death and war.” In the case of the war in Iran, it’s because no one seems will­ing or able to artic­u­late one.

To be gen­er­ous to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, he seems to be chan­nelling Shakespeare’s van­i­ty-flawed tyrant, King Lear:  “l will do such things. What they are, yet l know not…”
The best lead­ers ral­ly peo­ple to their cause by artic­u­lat­ing ideals and  goals in a way that at least gives the impres­sion they know what they’re doing.
Trump’s sum­ma­tion in a phone inter­view on  CNN, that the US mil­i­tary is “knock­ing the crap” out of Iran is a bar room boast at best.
His habit­u­al use of “stu­pid” is equal­ly inane, a cov­er-up for “not thought out”.
Sec­re­tary of War (a title that does mer­it the term stu­pid) Pete Hegseth, told a Pen­ta­gon news con­fer­ence there would be no “stu­pid Rules of Engagement.”
His hair grease seems to be gum­ming up his thought processes.
Rules of Engage­ment (ROEs) are defined as “part of a gen­er­al recog­ni­tion that pro­ce­dures and stan­dards are essen­tial to the con­duct and effec­tive­ness of civ­i­lized war­fare.”
Apart from “civilised war­fare” being an oxy­moron, ROEs  are inte­gral to the mil­i­taries of civilised countries.
They refer to such things as pro­tec­tion of civil­ians, treat­ment of pris­on­ers of war and the sanc­ti­ty of med­ical facilities.
Amer­i­can ROEs also state that all per­son­nel have an inher­ent right of self defence.
Iron­i­cal­ly, that was added after a sui­cide bomber — from an Iran­ian-backed mili­tia — killed 241 Amer­i­can Marines and oth­er U.S. mil­i­tary per­son­nel at Beirut air­port in 1983.
Which part of that does Hegseth con­sid­er “stu­pid”, one wonders?
Or does he feel hav­ing entered the war in a de fac­to alliance with Israel, the U.S. can or should oper­ate under the same rules the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) apply in Gaza, where they have been accused by UN and Israeli human rights mon­i­tor­ing groups of com­mit­ting war crimes that amount to genocide?
After the one-day bomb­ing cam­paign last June, Trump declared Iran’s nuclear capa­bil­i­ties “oblit­er­at­ed.”
The cur­rent onslaught is alleged­ly nec­es­sary because:  the mul­lahs were “weeks away” from nuclear capa­bil­i­ty, Or to destroy mis­siles. Or to help Ira­ni­ans change the regime.
Or none of the above.
Trump’s cab­i­net and syco­phants have been twist­ing them­selves into ver­bal pret­zels try­ing to explain why expend­ing bil­lions of dol­lars worth of weapon­ry isn’t a war,  even though he keeps using the word.
No doubt clar­i­ty is hid­den some­where in mis-spelled and ALL CAPS-lit­tered posts on Truth Social, sound bites in phone inter­views with jour­nal­ists and a Press spokesper­son berat­ing and lec­tur­ing jour­nal­ists who dare to ask any­thing oth­er than quin­tes­sen­tial soft­ball questions.
Or not. Only com­mit­ted MAGA loy­al­ists and the right wing media know for sure.            

                    LESS THAN AN IDEA

Trump exhort­ed ordi­nary Ira­ni­ans to “take over” their gov­ern­ment, and assured “com­plete immu­ni­ty” for mem­bers of Iran’s exten­sive mil­i­tary and secu­ri­ty infra­struc­ture. “They would real­ly sur­ren­der to the peo­ple, if you think about it,” he said.
That’s rely­ing on hope, which isn’t even a strat­e­gy, let alone a plan.
The well-armed Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards Corps (IRGC) just walk­ing away from the “vast mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex” it has built and con­trols seems as unlike­ly as Trump resign­ing because of the Epstein files.
The more prob­a­ble out­come is  déjà vu chaos.
In 2008, five years into the U.S.-run inva­sion of Iraq, a study pre­pared for the  U.S. Army not­ed: “The evi­dence sug­gests that the Unit­ed States had nei­ther the peo­ple nor the plans in place to han­dle the sit­u­a­tion that arose after the fall of Sad­dam Hus­sein… Loot­ers took to the streets, dam­ag­ing much of Iraq’s infra­struc­ture that had remained intact…Iraqi police and mil­i­tary units were nowhere to be found, hav­ing large­ly dis­persed dur­ing combat….These con­di­tions enabled the insur­gency to take root…”
A vari­a­tion on that theme was repeat­ed in Libya after the U.S. and oth­ers helped over­throw Muam­mar Khadafy.
Per­haps Trump thinks his idea of hav­ing a say in who rules Iran next will cir­cum­vent such incon­ve­niences. Giv­en his cab­i­net selec­tions, that doesn’t seem like some­thing Ira­ni­ans would be eager, or wise, to embrace.
The best expla­na­tion for why nei­ther the-self-pro­claimed “very sta­ble genius” Don­ald Trump, nor any­one in his admin­is­tra­tion can cogent­ly sum up why “Oper­a­tion Epic Fury” was launched, or pre­cise­ly what will define suc­cess, comes from  an indis­putable genius. Albert Ein­stein: “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t under­stand it your­self.” 

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