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Posted on 11/05/2026 6:27:55 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Politicians and presidents sometimes make Faustian bargains. They make trade-offs. The stereotypical Faustian bargain is one in which someone sells his or her soul to the devil in exchange for money or fame.
But let’s say you’re the president of the United States, and the two options before you are to keep your country safe or to better position you and your party to hold onto power.
It all centers on a country that has been chanting “Death to America" since 1979, and that is very close to obtaining nuclear weapons and delivery systems that could wipe out its neighbors, and perhaps even some of your major cities.
Given how the regime that runs the country treats its own people, killing them en masse if they dare to protest, this really isn’t a country or a leadership you can bargain with in good faith. Diplomacy is always tried and always fails. One of your predecessors tried buying them off with cold, hard cash as a means to make the nuclear question the next president’s problem. You’re that next president.
You campaigned on an anti-war platform, and your history shows it. But now here you are. Your intelligence is telling you that this country is about to finish the job of joining the group of countries that have nuclear capabilities.
Then there is the sticky political issue of this being an election year. The fate of everything you want to accomplish rests on your ability to hold power and for your party to hold power.
You decide, after much deliberation, to put a plan together and to try to surgically dismantle the country’s nuclear capabilities. Still, the plan is a war plan, complete with all of the messiness and uncertainty that war brings.
Politicians and presidents sometimes make Faustian bargains, trade-offs…
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
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Yes, worth it. Prevention is the second most thankless job in the universe. You never get credit for it. In fact, you might get burned by it. Example: A guy on the subway platform is about to jump in front of the train. You throw a body block to prevent him. You get sued. You say, but I was trying to save his life. He was about to jump. He says, No, I wasn’t.
This is an easy one. Protection o f the US comes first. If Trump had had an amiable fireside chat each evening as a podcast, he might have been able to hold on to his base.
I don’t know what Trump knows. I don’t know how imminent the threat was. I’m guessing that Trump thought the public was bright enough to understand. If that’s the case, he miscalculated. I’d like to believe the Iran threat of nukes was close at hand and this had to be done, but the cost is immeasurable.
So, let’s say you’re the president of the United States, and the two options before you are to keep your country safe or to better position you and your party to hold onto power.
As with all things war-related, nothing ever goes completely as planned, and exit strategies are always messy and drawn out. In the course of this, the hostilities you instigated to save your country from a nuclear threat are now costing millions of your citizens dearly at home.
They are having trouble paying for gas, food, clothing, and other things. Month after month goes by, and you have nothing definitive to report to them on how this war is going, when it might end, and what your plan is to get the cost of living back down.
You try telling the people that this is not as simple as ending a war so oil prices can come down. You try to talk about refinery capacity, and the effects of another conflict between Russia and Ukraine and how it is reducing the supply of oil to the global marketplace, keeping prices high, especially for diesel.
The people are in no mood to hear this. All they know is that you instituted tariffs that cost them their own hard-earned money. You started a war that cost them even more money, and they don’t know enough to judge whether this nuclear threat was as real as you claimed it to be.
Election season hits full-steam, and your opposition party is triangulating. They are taking one data point (high prices) and tying it to you and your decisions and then attaching all of this to anyone from your party who’s running for office. They frame your party’s candidates as enablers of your “failed strategy,” and they never let go. They beat this message over and over again to anyone who will listen.
THAT WAS TRUMP’s PROBLEM. It would be ANY President’s problem regardless of who is in the White House.
It was more than preventing a nuclear threat. Iran had a stranglehold on 20% of the world’s oil and was holding it hostage, and choking a major trade route.
I don’t know what Trump knows. I don’t know how imminent the threat was. I’m guessing that Trump thought the public was bright enough to understand. If that’s the case, he miscalculated. I’d like to believe the Iran threat of nukes was close at hand and this had to be done, but the cost is immeasurable.
Good summary.
“You started a war that cost them even more money, and they don’t know enough to judge whether this nuclear threat was as real as you claimed it to be.”
When war gets personal, Americans rally. They can endure hardship if they know the reason why.
Think of Pearl Harbor.
It was also the support for houthis and hezbollah. I’d be nice to see some of the gulf states step up against the IRGC also.
My support for the war against the IRGC doesn’t require a nuclear threat from them.
Their decades long support of state sponsored terrorism including the murders of countless Americans is reason enough to remove them from power. They should have been dealt with when they attacked our embassy. They should have been dealt with in the many decades since then.
But that requires statesmen not politicians. So good on President Trump for doing what needs to be done.
RE: I’m guessing that Trump thought the public was bright enough to understand
Well in this case he thought wrong. The majority of the public does not look at the long term picture ( that’s why only a few men get to be the leader of the free world). The public only looks at their pocket books and the here and now.
Think about it — WHY DID WINSTON CHURCHILL LOST THE ELECTION JUST AFTER LEADING BRITAIN TO ITS GREAT VICTORY AGAINST HITLER AND THE NAZIS?
While Churchill was revered as an indispensable war hero, voters overwhelmingly favored Clement Attlee’s Labour Party to rebuild post-war Britain.
Thanks to President Trump no one in the future will feel the need to say: "If only someone had stopped the Iranians before they were able to develop nuclear weapons and use them to kill millions of people."
But they didn't take the bait.
Per tariffs….are you willing to depend on imports for everything…how did that work during COVID, when we were dependent on China? And our allies always screw us on trade-why does a Mustang or Corvette imported to Europe cost more than a Mercedes or BMW imported to the US? We need trade reciprocity.
Per tariffs….are you willing to depend on imports for everything…how did that work during COVID, when we were dependent on China? And our allies always screw us on trade-why does a Mustang or Corvette imported to Europe cost more than a Mercedes or BMW imported to the US? We need trade reciprocity.
Regardless....previous Presidents have just moved the goal post...It took a Brave Patriot to hit them and hit them hard.
The Iranian Oil Barons are barren.
The problem is its still a work in progress. Also, could Trump have waited till after the Nov elections?
I live in Florida.
I don’t think I’ve seen an anti-Iran war sign or bumper sticker.
There are a few posters that make a lot of fuss here, but I doubt more than 5% of Walmart customers could point out Iran on an unlabled map of the Middle East.
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As someone else pointed out: “it’s demographics - they have finally caught up, country is flooded with foreigners that will always vote left”
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Take a look at the cover of the current issue of “The Economist”.
In the center there is a booth maked VOTAR. To the right I believe that is marked in Hindi. I think the booth to the left is marked in a southeast Asian language.
He was elected by tens of millions of Americans who have absolutely zero trust in the bucket full of @ssholes in Washington who have been playing these stupid games for decades. Joining that bucket of @ssholes himself destroyed his legacy, in my book.
That is true, but you don't handle it by telling the people that everything is rosy.
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