2020 will not be 2019

No trust for the intelligence apparatus charged with protecting the nation; absolutely no track record of any discernible strategic thinking while in office, (aside from the loose set of tactical decisions across all policy categories aimed at enriching himself and his sycophants, which in aggregate perhaps form a semblance of a strategy with some thinking attached to it); a pattern of crescendoing contempt for his former military commanders whom he once lauded; a complete unwillingness, or inability, to identify or pronounce geographies and persons at the center of critical geopolitical importance correctly; a bias for strongmen who likewise abuse their power, harm their people, and are generally inclined to contemptible decision making; strong evidence for impeachable conduct in relation to campaign manipulation; an unprecedented level of deceitful expediency in literally every aspect of life; and an ongoing impeachment. This was the table set by the president and his staff ahead of their decision to take out Soleimani and potentially disrupt the Middle East in an amplified manner. I am no journalist. So this is a pedestrian, surface-level commentary on an extremely serious and deep problem, but the surface of this administration, as there is only a surface to it (excepting for the deep, dark, underbelly of it all), is extensive, vast, intricate, and confused. And, although there is no real substance to it, exploring the mind of this superficiality can provide plenty of fodder for a reasonable discussion and argument as to why this decision to unilaterally take out a regionally-revered and extremely powerful military commander of an adversarial and nuclear-armed state with influence in, and, in some cases, control of literally every hot-pocket, adversarial region in the Middle East is extremely problematic. Don’t get me wrong — nobody should be sad at the elimination of a terroristic threat bent on mayhem — but nobody should be thrilled at the prospect of war either. At the very best of American statesmanship and moral and intellectual leadership, a decision this deliberate and unilateral would be, at the very least, concerning. In the current climate of flagging leadership, and moral and intellectual decay, this decision seems, like many of this administration’s other decisions, completely insane. This will undoubtedly end in scaled violence, as it began I suppose. And, in many ways, it is just a guarantee of the continuation of the same violence we have been participating in one way or another for the past 30 years. This time, however, the adversary is a state with nuclear weapons. Based on how we got here, and who got us here, do we feel good about the cost-benefit thinking that presumably went into this decision? Perhaps that presumption is too generous. We should hope that our adversaries in the Middle East and their motivations are equally generous. I am not sure what I expected, but this is a less than ideal foreign policy start to the new year. Hopefully in 2021 we will sing Auld Lang Syne with sincere hope that this surreal dark comedy can come to a close because we are running out of punchlines that don’t actually kill a bunch of people.