Donald Trump, a badly manufactured causus belli, John Bolton’s mustache, and other inflammatory bull-oney

An abandoned protest picket sign in the New York
subway, some years ago. Hey, if we can picket for
any crazy thing, we can have a world war for any
crazy thing, too. Right? (Photo by The New York
Crank.)

So we’re heading for a war with Iran! At the risk of finally wearing out a cliché that’s been incurring considerable wear and tear since Donald Trump became president, what could possibly go wrong?

In case you missed it, there’s this video, taken from somewhere or other, purporting to show Iranian military removing an ocean-going mine from the hull of an oil tanker. Bit of a problem there, folks.

The mysterious case of

the airborne sea mine

See, the thing about sea mines is, they float in the sea. But if you look at this footage, you can see that the mine — if it is a mine — appears to be roughly ten feet above the waterline. In order to lodge in the ship’s hull where it is, the mine would have to leap out of the water, open its mouth wide, and bite into the hull as hard as it possibly can, afterwards holding on for dear life.

I’m kidding, of course. But also, I’m not kidding. That mine is ridiculously high above the waterline. And sailors on the ship — a Japanese, not an American vessel — said they saw “flying objects” heading toward them at the beginning of the incident that forced them to abandon ship for safety. Sea mines don’t fly. Moreover…

• The president of the Japanese company that owns the ship is reported to have said that claims of a mine attack are “false.

• Japan’s minister of defense said his government has no intention of responding to this incident with Japanese troops. He claims nothing here is an imminent threat to Japan.

Not to worry, Mr. Defense Minister, we here in America will respond for you, whether you want a response or not. 

This is just what President Trump has been looking for — an excuse to start a war with Iran. You know — send over more young Americans to fight, die, or get maimed for what years from now will turn out to be a tempest in a powder puff. Kill a few thousand, or hundred thousand, or millions of Iranians. Get to a stalemate after ten or twenty years of fighting. Expend treasure. Cut Social Security and Medicare to pay for it.

Also the excuse Iranian

hard liners needed

It has been pretty clear The Trumpster has been spoiling for a fight since the day he abrogated the nuclear deal that kept Iran from developing nuclear weapons. This got the United States nothing, while it got Iran an excuse to go back to manufacturing A-bombs again if they decide to.

All the same, the Iranians remained, as Elmer Fudd might say, vewwy, vewwy cautious about restarting their nuclear program — annoyingly cautious for Trump. Heck, even though Trump reportedly hates and despises John Bolton’s snowy white mustache, the President fired H.R. McMaster and hired Bolton in his place as national security adviser, perhaps because Bolton never met a war he didn’t like. Mustache and all.

Of course, it helped that Bolton also was appearing regularly on the Fox network, which also happens to be where Trump more than occasionally goes to recruit top governmental officers. I mean, I can see the logic of it. If you can regularly shoot off your mouth on Fox, you can probably start a shooting war, too. Maybe Trump thinks this is his big moment to have his very own war.

But even Bolton needs what they call a causus belli, some kind of excuse that lets the United States whine, “Whaa whaa, they provoked us. We had no choice.”

Causus Klutzi

Unfortunately, some klutz somewhere, instead of attacking an American ship with an American crew aboard, got a Japanese ship with a Philippine crew, and then aimed the rocket, or whatever it really was, too high.

Not to worry. Worst case scenario, somebody or other out there in the Persian Gulf will make it happen to another ship, presumably the right way this time. And then we can have anything from an invasion of Iran to a nuclear war. Or maybe WWIII.

Y'know what? Life ends quickly when the crazies are having fun.

Update, 3:40 PM, June 17th: Evidently, in an attempt to reinforce dubious information, the war-makers in Washington are adding more dubious information. According to an article just published by the right wing Washington Times, the surveillance drone that was surveilling the alleged Iranian attack on the Japanese vessel whose owner denies it struck or was struck by a mine...that drone was itself "attacked" by Iranian missiles. The Washington Times reports:

During the drone operations, “a modified Iranian SA-7 surface-to-air missile attempted to shoot down” the U.S. aircraft but missed its target, Central Command spokesman Lt. Col. Earl Brown said in the statement.

“The SA-7 was ineffective and its closest point of approach to the MQ-9 was approximately one kilometer,” Lt. Col. Brown said.

Wait, wait, just wait a second! The SA-7 rocket never got closer than a kilometer to the drone it was supposedly attacking. So how do we know that this kilometer-away rocket, if it existed at all, was even going after the drone? And how, from that distance, do we know it was a SA-7? And how come the Pentagon didn't think to release this information until now, more than a day after it released its story about the busy drones photographing alleged Iranians allegedly removing the flying sea mine? Inquiring minds want to know.