John Guardiano

John Guardiano: writer, analyst, investor, observer—the antithesis of an influencer. Retweets=1 of 4 things: news, interest, agreement, or disagreement.

[John Guardiano @ResCon1]

The American war aim in Iran ought to be elimination of the country’s Islamist regime. Worryingly, that does not appear to be the case.

The American strategy to achieve this war aim ought to involve three lines of effort:

1. Destroy Iran’s military capabilities and military production infrastructure.

2 Strangle the country economically so that it has no choice but to submit to American will.

3. Aid and assist opposition forces in Iran with weapons and communications technologies so that they can overthrow their country’s Islamist regime.

This aim and this strategy are utterly achievable. Yet it remains unclear whether President Chump understands this and is committed to winning the war.

Too often, Chump has seemed eager not to win the war, but to strike a “peace deal” with supposedly moderate elements within the regime.

Wake up, Donald! Smell the coffee and get with the program. Fight to win or don’t fight at all.

Got it? Get it? Understand, Donald? Good. Now get it done.

[John Guardiano @ResCon1]

You can tell Brandon Gill is smart and well-educated because he knows how to ask questions—and he asks a lot of them.

Unlike many so-called smart people who feel compelled to be the smartest person in the room, Brandon Gill knows better.

Congress and the Republican Party would be better served if senators and representatives spent less time talking and more time asking questions. Too often, they are wont to do the former and not the latter.

[Brandon Gill @realBrandonGill]

I asked the Director of the National Museum of American History if it was appropriate for the Smithsonian Institution to sell "Latina power" merchandise.

[Max Abrahms @MaxAbrahms]

Don’t forget Turkey was the main state sponsor of Islamic State. Today it’s the main state sponsor of Hamas. According to Trump, Turkey nearly intervened on behalf of the IRGC against the U.S.

[John Guardiano @ResCon1]

Kamala Harris was also too intellectually vacuous and shallow to define herself and run a winning campaign for president. And this was true no matter how much time she had.

Case in point: when asked what policy differences she had with President Biden, she named not one.

Sorry, but that answer was political malpractice and disqualifying for a candidate running for the highest office in the land.

[Sean T at RCP @SeanTrende]

Reality: Kamala lost because she was running as the Vice President for an unpopular administration, on a timeline that was too long to allow her to ride the sugar high of her nomination but too short to allow her to define herself and run a real campaign.

[Dan Burmawi @DanBurmawy]

President Trump, because he surrounds himself with “advisers” whose only connection to the Middle East is that they know what tabbouleh is, seems to think that if he keeps frightening Hezbollah with the prospect of the ISIS regime in Syria invading Lebanon to fight them, they will panic and surrender their weapons to the Lebanese army.

What he does not understand is that, by doing this, he is making Hezbollah’s case for them, the same case Hassan Nasrallah preached for 30 years: that ISIS is an American tool.

President Trump and his advisers do not understand that what he is doing gives Hezbollah every reason not to disarm.

Sunnis wanted to exterminate Shia for 1,400 years, and Shia can't trust a state they themselves weakened and hollowed out to protect them.

Every time President Trump speaks this way, he makes it even more difficult to find a solution in Lebanon.

On top of that martyrdom is what triumph looks like in Islam, so don't threaten them with good times.

[John Guardiano @ResCon1]

This is true if, as I fear, Chump’s war aim is not to win and eliminate Iran’s Islamist regime. It is not true if his war aim is to achieve a tie and reach a “peace deal” with the regime.

JD Chance clearly wants the latter, not the former. Chump seems frozen by nerves and indecision, unable to decide which path to take.

[Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien]

The strategic reality should be clear by now. Each night of US strikes and Iranian sideways retaliation, makes the US weaker and Iran stronger. It depletes more US stocks, makes the US look weak to its partners, and reinforces to the Iranians that their strategy is the right one. The US is weakening itself with this campaign.

[John Guardiano @ResCon1]

Because although size and geography are certainly important, there are other critical factors that determine success or failure in war.

Military capability and domestic politics, for example.

Iran’s Islamist regime is despised by most of the populace and enjoys very little domestic political support. Its military capabilities, moreover, have been systematically destroyed.

Then, too, there are economic considerations. The Iranian economy is suffering from extraordinarily high inflation and a lack of oil export markets. It may well be on the brink of collapse.

Needless to say, it is difficult, if not impossible, for a country to win a war when it has virtually no domestic political support, no serious military capability, and a collapsing economy.

In other words, the glib and facile comparisons to the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan simply don’t hold up. These are very different places, in very different times and circumstances, fighting very different wars.

Next!

[Aaron David Miller @aarondmiller2]

Iran is twice the size of Afghanistan; four times bigger than Iraq; and 5 times size of Vietnam, all wars in which the costs to US far outweighed whatever was gained. What makes Trump Administration can have its way with Iran and its brutal, repressive regime?

[Rich Lowry @RichLowry]

Many of the right-wing criticisms of The Odyssey are miscast. Yes, Nolan modernizes Odysseus for a contemporary audience, but what was he supposed to do?

Was he really supposed to show, among other things, the mythical Greek hero slaughtering unarmed suitors, ordering the execution of the household maids (after forcing them to clean up the gore from the massacre of suitors), sleeping around with nymphs, and abducting women from Cicones?

And we are supposed to believe that these gaps are offenses *against Western civilization*? That stringing up enslaved women by a ship’s cable or physical intimacy with a witch are what made the West great, such that it speaks to Nolan’s hostility to our own culture that he left them out? Please.

Now, the director does significantly soften Odysseus in ways that I think go too far, but, as has been widely noted, Nolan changes him in a generally in Christian direction, which isn’t anti-Western, either.

By the way, Nolan also toughens up Odysseus for a modern audience by not showing him repeatedly crying. If he had, he surely would have been accused of feminizing Odysseus, when the weeping is in the original. At one point, when he hears the songs of the Trojan War, he breaks down like a bereaved widow—i.e., cries like a girl.

The thing about The Odyssey being foundational to the Western literary tradition is that … it’s foundational to the Western literary tradition. There are all sorts of interpretations of Odysseus that derive from that tradition, ranging from Sophocles, to Virgil, to Dante, to Tennyson.

It’s the last, as Spencer Klavan has pointed out (in his voluminous and brilliant commentary on the movie) that informs the very ending, with Odysseus setting out for yet another voyage.

In this, Odysseus is the very embodiment of the questing, endlessly curious spirit of Western culture that has forged so many new discoveries and done so much to transform the human condition.

As Tennyson puts it at the end of his poem:

Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Here is the ambition and drive of every great explorer, and one of the best and most important elements of our culture. That Nolan makes this quality of Odysseus the punctuation mark of his film is another reason to appreciate his achievement.

[John Guardiano @ResCon1]

In other words: veritable losers in America.

People who can’t cut it in the marketplace but who nonetheless feel a sense of entitlement because of their inflated academic credentials.

Don’t cry for them, Argentina. The truth is they could never hack it.

[Nate Silver @NateSilver538]

Income and education are usually positively correlated. But sometimes the relationship breaks down. What's the most Democratic voting group in America? People with post-graduate degrees but lower-to-middle incomes.

[John Guardiano @ResCon1]

This is a great and insightful point—very true, very important, and seldom remarked upon:

Israel has many enemies. The Palestinians have few friends.

[David Frum @davidfrum]

Reconstruction has scarcely begun in Gaza, only about 5% of rubble has been cleared. Almost none of the pledged aid to Gaza is yet flowing. The key impediment: donors (including Arab donors) require Hamas disarmament as a precondition for aid - and Hamas won't do it.

Humanitarian improvement is held hostage by Hamas, which has put its own dominance ahead of its subject population's human needs.

The Palestinian dilemma is that while their political movements are very successful at stoking anti-Israel odium, those same political movement's feel almost zero concern for the people they purport to speak for.

Israel has many enemies. The Palestinians have few friends. True friends would push for Hamas to lay down its arms so reconstruction can begin.

The strategy of "resistance" has failed again and again since the Arab Revolt of 1936. It's time for a strategy of "Take the deal even if you don't love it because it's better than living in tents waiting for the next war to turn out better for you than the last war did."

[John Guardiano @ResCon1]

Chump’s problem is that he listens to the crap peddled to him by Iran’s highly skilled diplomats. Yet he tends to ignore the actions of its zealous Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The former may want a deal, but the latter have the guns and missiles and, quite literally, are calling the shots.

[Raylan Givens @JewishWarrior13]

🚨 WATCH: Q: "There are no signs Iran wants to stop fighting"
TRUMP: "How would you know? Why, do you know something I don't know? You don't know the dialogue behind the scenes; they want to meet desperately because they're getting decimated. You don't get that when you listen to your fake station. You don't know anything. You know something I don't know"

[Nikki Haley @NikkiHaley]

It is important to remember that yes, Iran struck our military bases and killed and injured many soldiers but who is giving them the satellite imagery to do so? China and Russia.

[Max Abrahms @MaxAbrahms]

US policy to Iran is adrift.

We are just engaging in tit for tat.

Our strikes are limited and won’t fundamentally change anything.

Throughout the limited strikes we’re told negotiations are continuing.

Iranian leaders say every possible thing depending on the person.

There’s no coherent strategy.

This current approach doesn’t seem likely to open Hormuz.

Meanwhile, any financial inducements will strengthen the regime and be shared with terrorists.

What a mess.

[John Guardiano @ResCon1]

🙏

[Jennifer A. Frey @jennfrey]

I'm asking for prayers for a successful surgery & complete recovery. It's been a long road to get here and I'm hopeful that we are getting closer to the end of these troubles. Even if surgery is successful, we are looking at 3-7 days in hospital & one month recovery at home.

[Cynical Publius @CynicalPublius]

A major reason soccer will never supplant America’s core professional sports is because we value physical bravery above all other attributes in our sports stars.

Curt Schilling’s bloody sock.

Ronnie Lott chopping off the tip of his finger so he could stay in the game.

Mark Bavaro dragging half the 49ers’ secondary while his broken jaw was wired shut.

Michael Jordan having the best game of his life with a 103 degree fever.

Willis Reed limping onto the floor for Game 7.

Lou Gehrig playing with ALS until his body said “no more.”

Dave Dravecky pitching so hard that his arm had to be amputated.

Kirk Gibson hobbling to the plate in the 9th.

Tiger Woods winning the US Open on a knee that days later required reconstructive surgery.

Kerri Strug sticking the landing on her busted ankle for the gold.

Sure, we have our LeBron Jameses acting like little babies, but the one thing I learned about futbol during the World Cup is that acting like a little injured baby is not only not frowned upon, it is ENCOURAGED as a strategic advantage.

Americans want stoic heroes who persevere through pain. Soccer ain’t that, at least not in the day-to-day elements of the game.

That’s why soccer will never be anything other than second-rate in the USA.

[John Guardiano @ResCon1]

lol What a fraud! What a hypocrite. What a tool.

[Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist @DeAngelisCorey]

Maryland Governor Wes Moore attacks President Trump's nationwide school choice program at Randi Weingarten's convention.

Wes Moore went to a private school.

He sent his kids to private school.