Major Pete – A Major Source of Donald Trump’s Humiliation in Iran

 

Major Pete – A Major Source of Donald Trump’s Humiliation in Iran

“An entire nation [the US] is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, especially by these so-called Revolutionary Guards… And so I hope that this ends as quickly as possible…. The Iranians are clearly stronger than expected and the Americans clearly have no truly convincing strategy in the negotiations either… The problem with conflicts like this is always: You don't just have to get in, you have to get out again. We saw that very painfully in Afghanistan for 20 years. We saw it in Iraq.” 

 The Chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, on April 26th while addressing students at a school in Marsberg, Germany.

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about! If Iran had a Nuclear Weapon, the whole World would be held hostage.”

Donald Trump’s Truth Social Response, although Iran does not have a nuclear weapon.

“Under Barack Obama, 197 general officers were removed…So this is not something specific to this administration.” 

 Secretary of Defense/War Pete Hegseth, April 29th testifying before the House Armed Services Committee. His numbers were totally fabricated.

“The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans.” 

 Part of Hegseth’s same testimony.

Our biggest adversary is not China, Russia, Iran or even North Korea… It’s just American citizens and elected members of Congress who disagree with Trump and his mini-me, recovering alcoholic, Major Pete? I guess that’s the response you can expect from a profoundly under-qualified cabinet appointee who passionately believes in a one-party autocratic state. Major Pete. Military dilettante Major Pete took particular delight in firing close to 30 senior admirals and generals who either had the temerity to disagree with him (or were insufficiently enthusiastic over the young major’s goals)… or who (perhaps because they were older) didn’t look like the fit soldiers he wanted as role models.

With those firings went the accompanying tactical and strategic “hands-on” experience, education and leadership – qualities Major Pete was insufficiently experienced to appreciate or understand – that were replaced by Major Pete’s apparatchik, ready to embrace a Christian Crusader mentality of a war lover (warriors, not peacekeepers) without ethical boundaries, as the policy-setting presidential advisor and top military leader of the land. The same man who has led a wildly unsuccessful war in Iran, who has zero appreciate that his proclivity to spend gobs more money than we have ever spent on military budgets (by quantum leaps), adding an extra $50 million to pay for an absurd name change (from Department of Defense to Department of “War’), combined with his failure to return the Strait of Hormuz to the status quo ante (a wide open international channel), resulted in a global energy crisis and staggering cost increases (fuel, shipping, fertilizer, etc.) to everyone, including the American public.

And no, Major Pete, most of the American public is NOT behind your war. But then, despite your Princeton degree, you just may lack the reading skills to have reviewed the consistently and profoundly negative polls evidencing the out-and-out rejection of this Iran war by a vast majority of Americans. The only poll that supports your malign effort was a MAGA only sampling. Your testimony before the House Armed Services Committee at the end of April was an insubordinate, egotistical rant that came across as a disastrous joke. Indeed, listening to you, it is hard to believe that you will escape international charges as a war criminal. Your respect for the law, even the Constitution, reflects your betrayal of your oath as a soldier and a cabinet secretary. Further, your arrogant scofflaw mentality resulted in your erroneous statement (mirroring Donald Trump) to that committee that the President didn’t need congressional authorization to continue his war with Iran because the cease-fire deal had paused the clock on a 60-day legal obligation. Good thing you didn’t go to law school, where your ignorant interpretation would have been reflected in a comparably horrendous grade.

Major Pete’s testimony noted above was both disrespectful and filled with inaccuracies and contradictions. “Wednesday’s [4/28] hearing stretched nearly six hours as Democrats and some Republicans questioned Hegseth over the war and his ouster of several top military leaders… In one tense exchange, Hegseth told Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) that Iran’s nuclear facilities were obliterated in a 2025 attack by the U.S., prompting Smith to question the Trump administration’s reasoning for starting the Iran war less than a year later.

“‘We had to start this war, you just said 60 days ago, because the nuclear weapon was an imminent threat,’ said Smith, the ranking Democrat on the committee. ‘Now you’re saying that it was completely obliterated?’… Hegseth responded by saying that Iran ‘had not given up their nuclear ambitions’ and still had thousands of missiles…Smith said the war ‘left us at exactly the same place we were before.’” Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, April 29th. So just looking at Major Pete’s statement that we started a war, resulting in a global catastrophe, because Iran may have maintained an “ambition” (desire?) to have nuclear weapons someday? Clearly there were no nuclear weapons to remove!

“Democrats accused Hegseth of misleading Americans about the reasons for the conflict and said rising gas prices are now threatening the pocketbooks of millions of people in the U.S… ‘Secretary Hegseth, you have been lying to the American public about this war from Day One and so has the president,’ said Rep. John Garamendi of Walnut Grove [Cal.], who called the war ‘a geopolitical calamity,’ a ‘strategic blunder’ and a ‘self-inflicted wound to America.’… Hegseth blasted Garamendi’s remarks… ‘Who are you cheering for here?’ he asked the lawmaker. ‘Your hatred for President Trump blinds you’ to the success of the war.” LAT/AP.

What Garamendi was cheering for seemed fairly obvious: common sense, truth and a willingness to understand that the United State had been stalemated by a much smaller nation, one we bombed into oblivion, and that we were much worse off than we were before the war started: the once open Strait of Hormuz was closed, Iran’s missile stash was anything but depleted, her vast stockpile of cheap drones and small boats was continuing to wreak havoc, our stockpile of sophisticated (and very expensive) missiles were seriously diminished, Tehran’s attacks on under-protected regional US bases were profoundly effective, the world blamed Trump and not Iran for the global catastrophe as we spent billions and billions of dollar to achieve failure.

If there were anything like regime change, it was to a much less pliant cadre of super-hardliners, quite willing to let the local population suffer as they dug in to resist big bully America. By pulling the US out of the 2015 nuclear accord in May of 2018, Trump unleashed a fury of Iran’s remilitarization, resumption of its nuclear enrichment program on steroids and presented a formidable foe to any nation that would attack her. After Israeli PM Netanyahu had failed to convince prior US administrations to join in his forever war against Iran and her surrogates, one strategic presentation by Netanyahu and his advisors to Trump made the “I hate to read or study the past” President of the United States of America ignore generations of American generals… and swallow a flailing Israeli PM’s most passionate wish… hook, line and sinker.

I’m Peter Dekom, and Trump’s appointment of a former Fox News host, a recovering alcoholic, a man who never rose above the rank of major and a “Warrior for Christ” will rank as one of the greatest mistakes by a US president in history.