Pearl River      Using some set of rationales, Trump, the trigger-happy, has ordered the military to join with Israel in bombing the bejesus out of Iran.  The New York Times editorialists have been pleading for Trump to provide some reason behind why we would be going to war with Iran.  That call was answered by Trump by his finally deigning to talk to Jeff Bezos’ newly right-leaning Washington Post, “vowing to decimate Tehran’s military and fuel a change in government.”

Is this the same guy who only years ago criticized former presidents from both parties for their foreign adventures, claiming that they had misallocated attention and resources from the United States itself?  Now, he’s Mr. Shoot ‘Em Up.  On his orders, the US has decimated speedboats in both the Pacific and the Caribbean on his unverified claims that they were hauling drugs.  In a nighttime raid, he had the military extract the president of Venezuela in another firefight.  He’s had rockets fired in Nigeria, only God knows why, though he seems to have claimed he was doing God’s work to satisfy conservative US-based Christians.  He’s threatened bombs away on other countries, including a previous hit on Iran, in order to claim permanent damage to their nuclear program, though it seems temporary.  Now, hardly days after another meeting with the even more bellicose Netanyahu of Israel, who seems to play him like a fiddle, he and Netanyahu are promising the fires of hell over Iran indefinitely.

Somehow this is supposed to bring on regime change.  Where have we heard that claim before, which Trump has previously denounced?  Certainly, Iraq.  Let’s not forget Afghanistan.  Vietnam, but that’s ancient history.  Cuba has been on the “regime change” list for decades, and seems once again to be creeping up towards the top.  How about Venezuela?  The administration made a similar case there, but changed tactics once they had extracted Maduro, and now seem pretty pleased working with the same administration with a different boss. Given America’s record, most would feel pretty secure in saying that the US is simply bad at regime change.  The US knows how to make a mess, but is clueless about how to clean it, unwilling to invest either time or money.

We can see Trump’s plan for change in his fumble fingered handling of Gaza reconstruction after Israel’s devastation and arguable genocide.  Regime change for Trump means new construction and development.  Regime change is not from autocracy to some semblance of democracy.  That’s for losers.  Regime change for Trump is a new table of investors.

This presumes that this latest escapade doesn’t end up in total disaster or no holds barred war in the Middle East.  Israel and Trump are believing that it’s time to kick Iran while it’s down and weaker.  From thousands of miles away, I’m not sure that bombs bursting in air makes the US or Israel somehow more poplar in Iran as advocates and instruments for changing the government?  It’s hard to imagine that Iranian patriots advocating change will be popular with the public there, who are now dying and hiding.  The US insight on the Venezuelan opposition leader who presumed, wrongly, that she would be inserted into office, was rejected with the argument that she was “not popular” in Venezuela.  The same will be true for any pretender in Iran, whether a former relative of the shah or a foreign dissident, not matter how right and righteous.

Simply put, bombing a country does not equal regime change.  It may in fact empower the devil people know, rather than the devils they fear.