This really bothered me:
What really got to me about this is her expression. She’s clearly trying not to smile. You see all these photos of the young men in the Army who are trying to look tough with their fresh haircuts and fresh uniforms. She tried, but in the end, she was just a young woman who had finished something difficult (boot camp), and she was happy. What a waste.
During the Iraq War, all the Republicans were doing their best to mau-mau Democrats in whatever way they could. Our (valid) criticisms of that stupid war showed that we weren’t patriotic enough, and that we didn’t respect the troops and their service.
Now what? I guess we’re supposed to follow the Dear Leader and just ignore the sacrifice of Pvt Gonzales, who probably died after our million-dollar Patriot missiles couldn’t stop a ballistic missile attack on a base far away from whatever you want to call the front lines of the Iran War. At best, we’ll learn what happened to Pvt Gonzales in a year or two when there are hearings about the lack of protection at those bases. At worst, we’ll never know. What we can be sure about is that Trump and MAGA are unmoved by her sacrifice or the pain of her family, and I wish that Democrats would make more noise about that.
This thing ends when the oil runs out, and the Iranians took another big step to make sure it’s going to run out sooner rather than later:
CAIRO (AP) — Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels on Monday announced they are imposing a maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia in retaliation for a blockade on Yemen and a recent attack on Sanaa International Airport, threatening another vital waterway for global shipping and raising fears of renewed conflict.
A Houthi military spokesperson, Yahya Saree, said in a video statement that the maritime ban against Saudi Arabia will be effective immediately, describing it as an “equation of ‘an eye for an eye.’”
There were few details on how the embargo might work, but the deputy head of the Houthi media office, Nasruddin Amer, said on X that the Bab al-Mandeb strait will be closed to the Saudis in response to what he called the kingdom’s “unjust blockade on Yemenis for over 10 years.”
It’s unclear whether the embargo is against Saudi ships alone, or all shipments out of the Saudi port of Yambu on the Red Sea. If it’s the latter, that’s a problem, since 70% of Saudi crude exports after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have gone through Yambu.
At some point Trump and his advisors are gong to have to take the “L” here. If there’s essentially no oil coming out of Saudi Arabia, that will be more pressure for them to agree to a peace agreement that’s translated without edits from the original Farsi. No matter what they do, a young woman who was trying to hold back her smile will still be dead, like so many others.
