2017 Apr 20^th

In times like these a little levity is called for: A farm wife is hanging out her wash close to a railroad bridge that has been recently washed away by a flood. Now she hears a train approaching and she must signal the engineer to stop the train. Thinking quickly, she waves a clothespin at the engineer who immediately slams on the brakes and stops the train. Why? Because the engineer knew that a clothespin was the sign of a washout on the line. OK, groan a bit and now back to work!

President Trump’s approval ratings have surged from an embarrassing 38 percent to 42 percent. Forty-two percent is nothing to crow about but it is an improvement. So why has this happened? There are several suspects but they are all in the same group: There was the missile strike at the Syrian airfield. The result of that was muted by telling the Russians/Syrians about it in advance. Even so, he did something however ineffective it turned out to be. We did get a resounding, “Don’t you dare do that again,” from all potentially concerned parties, so it got their attention.

Then we dropped a really big bomb on a cave complex sheltering ISIS in Afghanistan. This was a success we are told because it killed a lot of ISIS fighters and destroyed their hideout. Trump gets the credit here even if he didn’t literally order the drop.

Finally, there was the misplaced aircraft carrier. By now it must, at long last be on its way to the Sea of Japan. Whether the North Koreans are worried or laughing themselves silly is unknown but the imagery of a bellicose president doing something, other than, or maybe in addition to, playing golf should help his ratings.

He must believe that because now his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, has started to vilify Iran. He does not claim that Iran has violated the agreement it made with the five plus one countries to stop their nuclear arms research. Instead, he says that Iran is pushing terrorism and generally behaving badly and that we will not put up with it. He claims that we will deal with it and not wait for another administration to act later. He also claims the present agreement allows Iran to develop nuclear weapons eventually and is consequently badly flawed. The alternative is to let them continue developing their nuclear capabilities right now. How this is better we aren’t told.

This is a ridiculous rant: What does Tillerson propose we do about Iran? Saber rattling is silly; we aren’t going to invade Iran. If they were violating their agreement and going back to developing nuclear weapons, we could bomb/rocket their facilities but that isn’t the problem. Tillerson is left with making empty threats and our country looking foolish.

There are two kinds of Muslims, Sunni and Shia and they don’t get along at all. (OK, neither did Protestants and Catholics in the early 1600s when Oliver Cromwell was murdering Catholics in England and Ireland.) About 90 percent of the Muslim world is Sunni but about 90 percent of Iran is Shia. The Saudis are militantly Sunni and Sharia law is the rule there. As you can imagine the Saudis and Iran do not exchange pleasantries. Trump has made the elimination of ISIS a top priority. ISIS immediately kills any Shia it finds so Iran would be a powerful ally against ISIS. Why, then, aren’t we trying to find common ground with Iran at least on this point where we have a common interest?

Maybe Trump believes that his only road to higher approval ratings is through belligerence; that worked earlier so why not keep rattling the saber. Why else this sudden acrimony with Iran which seems counter-productive.