{"id":1665848,"date":"2026-02-20T21:20:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T02:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1665848"},"modified":"2026-02-20T21:20:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T02:20:00","slug":"hubris-generally-precedes-clusterfk-does-it-smell-like-victory-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/hubris-generally-precedes-clusterfk-does-it-smell-like-victory-3\/1665848\/","title":{"rendered":"“Hubris Generally Precedes Clusterf**k”: Does It Smell Like Victory?"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Hubris Generally Precedes Clusterf**k”: Does It Smell Like Victory?<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The message seems to be something like the USA isn\u2019t messing around with all those strike forces in the waters around Iran.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The Islamic Republic suddenly looks like Rock-and-Hard-Place-Land.<\/p>\n

Everybody and his uncle are trying to figure out the calculus in play, World War Three or a happy ending?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

You\u2019re seeing the most significant US military build-up over there in memory.<\/p>\n

Smells a little bit like first Gulf War,<\/strong> 1991 \u2014 minus all those allies we roped in then.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Mr. Trump (via Marco Rubio) has read Euroland out on this one. <\/strong><\/p>\n

We are in a cold war with those birds, in case you haven\u2019t noticed. The UK, France, Germany & Co.? They are as crazy as the ladies of\u00a0The View<\/em>\u00a0and their millions of Cluster-B followers.<\/p>\n

Euroland is yet in thrall to the climate nutters, the farm-and-industry-destroyers, the one-worlders, the\u00a0Jihad<\/em>-migrationists, the floundering banksters, and the Klaus Schwab wannabes. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Euroland seeks to throttle free speech throughout Western Civ and meddle in everyone\u2019s elections. Euroland keeps mouthing off about a war with Russia despite having no military mojo and going broke-ass broke faster than you can say G\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerung. Bottom line: the US is going solo on this one.<\/p>\n

What is the objective? Ostensibly \u201ca deal\u201d over Iran\u2019s nuclear weapons program. Like, just cut it out, will you, please?<\/strong><\/em> By the way, did you know that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei issued a\u00a0fatwa<\/em>\u00a0in 2005 saying production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons was forbidden under Islam. But then deception is allowed in Islam under the doctrine of\u00a0taqiyya<\/em>, against the threat of attack from hostile forces,<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure you remember\u00a0Operation Midnight Hammer<\/em>\u00a0in June last year when we attacked and supposedly \u201cobliterated\u201d Iran\u2019s nuclear research and development bunkers at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan? They got pretty banged-up, you may be sure, and nobody in Iran denied there was something nukey going on in those installations. Is there a will there to rebuild the whole darn infrastructure of uranium enrichment and so forth?<\/p>\n

The mullahs are not saying, which means: of course, they intend to continue developing nuclear weapons \u2014 and even if that\u2019s a stupid and futile gambit, given recent history, they still have factories churning out plain old long-range ballistic missiles and new drones by the thousands. Let\u2019s face it: the mullahs are hardcore for\u00a0Jihad<\/em>\u00a0and martyrdom. Since being elevated to Supreme Leader in 1989, Ayatollah Khamenei has sought relentlessly to transform the traditional Islamic concept of\u00a0Jihad\u00a0<\/em>and establish it as the central pillar of the regime\u2019s ideology.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Are we doing Israel\u2019s bidding there? (Cue: roar of affirmation.) But then, Israel has a point.<\/strong> Iran has been cuckoo for going on forty years. If Israel wasn\u2019t a target of the mullahs\u2019 eternal\u00a0Shia<\/em>\u00a0wrath, there are their other enemies, the Sunni, on the west side of the Persian Gulf (and next door in Iraq). And consider, too, Iran\u2019s obdurate sponsorship of\u00a0Jihad<\/em>, wherever possible, both within and outside the\u00a0Ummah<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 including especially Western Civ, where low-grade\u00a0Jihad<\/em>\u00a0has been going on for over a decade. . . mass murders, rape gangs, beheadings, trucks through the Christmas markets. . . . [ZH note:<\/em>\u00a0This is actually much more a trend of Sunni Islam].<\/p>\n

Okay, if Euroland is out, what about the other big dogs, Russia and China.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Will they just stand by and let the US have its wicked way with Iran? Russia sent a corvette-class naval vessel down to the Straits of Hormuz for a joint operation with Iran\u2019s navy, but what does that mean? Probably not much more than occupational therapy. Besides, Mr. Trump is just now promising to bring Russia \u201cout from the cold\u201d of all those onerous economic sanctions. . . to begin the process of\u00a0normalizing<\/em>\u00a0relations. You might doubt that Russia wants to blow that for Iran\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n

And, while it is somewhat out of the news due to the Epstein stink-bomb, and the deepness of mid-winter, there is still a war going on over in Ukraine.<\/strong> Which is to say, the Russians have their hands full in their own back-yard and might, perhaps, be hesitant about piling-on in Iran. And, let\u2019s just suppose that the US objective is actually regime change in Iran. Would Russia be indisposed if the mullahs got kicked out of power? I doubt it. Russia has longstanding annoying issues with Islamic factions distributed throughout their adjoining former Soviet republics. Russia does not need\u00a0Jihad<\/em>. Russia might actually live more comfortably with Iran under a secular government, tilting a bit more western in temperament. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Just sayin\u2019. . . .<\/p>\n

China has more urgent concerns with Iran. <\/strong>China gets around 13-percent of its oil imports from Iran, and it enjoys a three to four percent discount on it. Regime change or war that could damage Iran\u2019s oil terminals would be bad news for China. But then, China is at a long geographic remove from Iran, and China is not used to conducting military adventures so far from home, so don\u2019t expect much assistance there. China\u2019s other option would be to start a kerfuffle over Taiwan to distract and divert the US. We\u2019ll just have to see about that. Uncle Xi Jinping has been busy lately sacking the upper echelons of his own military leadership. Are they even ready for action? Plus, China\u2019s economy is wobbly. Consider also: has the US given China assurances of continued oil imports from Iran if it steers clear of the situation there?<\/p>\n

What are we operationally capable of over in Iran with all our warships, fighter jets, and other stuff? I don\u2019t know. . . and neither do you. <\/strong>Looks impressive, but a couple of Sunburn-type missiles landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln could produce a profound instant attitude adjustment. Perhaps President Trump, WarSec Hegseth, and StateSec Rubio have more refined plans for disarming Iran and surgically removing the cuckoo-birds in charge.<\/p>\n

Our guys are certainly acting confident.<\/p>\n

But then in geopolitics confidence is best friends with hubris.<\/p>\n

And hubris generally precedes clusterfuck. The art of the deal is not for sissies.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nFri, 02\/20\/2026 – 16:20<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/hubris-generally-precedes-clusterfk-does-it-smell-victory<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Hubris Generally Precedes Clusterf**k”: Does It Smell Like Victory? Authored by James Howard Kunstler, The message seems to be something like the USA isn\u2019t messing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1665849,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1665848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1665848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1665848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1665848\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1665848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1665848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1665848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}