It’s a marathon not a race, which is still a race. Whatever.

Baby steps

It’s getting tense!

It’s a slog. I don’t know how authors manage 1,000-page books.

I hit the 20,000 mark in my WIP. I usually shoot for 90,000 to hit the 300-page mark. But it’s not a requirement. Just a goal. And most importantly, I had fun doing it.

And another 70,000 to go.

Sleep tight.

Keepin’ on.

At least I’m not an Iranian mullah.

I supported the Iraq war back in 2003. I believed my government. I believed Colin Powell. On the heels of the War in Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks, it made sense. And Afghanistan, at the time, was somewhat successful in that we knocked out the taliban, which harbored Osama bin Laden.

There’s no point in rehashing the disaster that was the Iraq war. Saddam Hussein was an evil asshole, as were his despicable sons, and they’re gone. There were no WMDs, which was the whole reason we were informed that the USA had to act. Looking back, was it worth it? From 2003 to 2020, more than 4,000 US servicemembers were killed there, and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis. That’s lost in the shuffle a lot of the time, all the innocent dead.

We can’t change it; we can only learn from it.

So, when the US went to war in Iran, it’s only natural to recall the Iraq debacle. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. It’s out.

I don’t believe that Iran was going to imminently strike the USA or even Israel, which is what’s being bandied about right now. Governments lie all the time. About Iraq, about Covid, about Joe Biden’s health. It sounds like a retroactive justification.

Iran has been an evil theocracy my entire life. They’re terrorists. They’re murderers. They’ve killed thousands of Americans and innocent citizens of the world. They partner with evil governments like Russia and China. We’re less than a week into the war, and Iran’s ayatollah is dead. Much of his government is dead too. The leadership is in chaos. Whoever gets the job isn’t long for the world.

The USA and Israel decapitated the leadership and are working on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. I would highly suspect Iran’s regular army, like Iraq’s army, will surrender.

Iran’s citizenry hates the mullahs, and tens of thousands of people have died at their hands as recently as a few months ago. It would be wonderful if they could storm the castle, so to speak, and take back their country.

One problem: The citizenry has no guns. They cannot take up arms against the government, which, crippled as it is, possesses the weaponry.

Whoever has the guns has a better chance of taking control. So, perhaps a less terrible Iranian dictatorship will emerge. Just so long as it isn’t a theocracy, it’s a start. But the people with guns in Iran are linked to the military and the regime. Someone from that mob has a better chance of claiming power.

The truth is, guerrilla warfare is likely. Radical Islamists (many from Iran) infiltrated Iraq more than 20 years ago and waged war against US troops and the woeful Iraqi army.

Do you honestly believe that radical Islamic terrorists from throughout the Middle East won’t gravitate toward Iran to wage war in the weeks ahead against Israel and the United States? That, to me, is the greatest concern. And the worse it gets, the greater the call will be for American troops to put boots on the ground. Americans, by and large, won’t stand for that. Not again.

We can’t hit the rewind button on the world. Iran wanted a nuclear weapon. Nobody doubts this. And had they built one, I have no doubt it would’ve found its way into Israel. No nuclear deal, like the one concocted by Barack Obama, would ever have prevented Iran from getting a nuke. Why? Because they’re evil. They lie, cheat, murder, and steal. Like they’ve done since the Iranian revolution in 1979. Any deal that relies on trusting Iran will fail. Sadly, what the USA is doing now is likely the only way to prevent Iran from getting a nuke.

Can you think of another way that doesn’t involve military involvement?

I wouldn’t have given the go-ahead to do what Trump and Israel did a few days ago. I supported the bombing of the nuclear site last summer in Iran. I was told by my government that we obliterated those sites and that the nuke program was pushed back decades. Turns out it was only a few months? It doesn’t add up. Either it was obliterated, or it wasn’t.

Continual monitoring of the Iranian nuclear sites, and subsequently bombing them, might have been a more palatable option because we saw how effective the USA was in pulling it off.

But that’s not the option now. I pray for our troop, the Israeli army, and innocent Iranian citizens who simply want to be free.

And I pray that whoever has the guns in Iran and who takes control gets the point that seeking a nuke might not be the best idea.