It is unlikely ancient King Leonidas of the Spartans, or his modern ripped and greased up Sparta by way of Glasgow equivalent, would have much in common with the McDonald’s-chomping current occupant of the Oval Office.
Okay, I guess they both have (by way again of the modern version) beautiful wives, good hair, and some around them who are out to slit their throats. Sadly, Trump doesn’t have a perv hunchback sellout. Not unless you count Michael Cohen.
They also share one more thing, a pronounced aversion to the Persian Empire and the ability to put a serious hurt on it. Trump has the edge over Leonidas in that department.
He showcased his advantage yesterday by formally labeling (yes, Persia is now Iran) the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a “foreign terrorist organization.” That had to so upset the mullahs of Tehran they might have even stopped “dating” farm animals for a minute or two. They solemnly vowed retaliation. The mullahs, not the farm animals.
These are also the guys that, upon overthrowing the Shah and instituting Sharia Law, dumped gallons upon gallons of fine booze into the gutters of Tehran. There were innocent pre-teen victims, like twelve-year-old scotch. Men so lacking in humanity cannot be taken lightly.
This puts the facial hair mandatory Iranian military in a quandary, as their big-talking whiskey-hating bosses are writing checks the lads in the forces can’t cash. The Revo Guard knows full well if they poked their noses out of their merdehole by an inch too far, we would send a good number of them to the nether regions. The Israelis and Saudis would no doubt be thrilled to help.
It’s sad, really, as the country, albeit not perfect, used to be a vibrant forward-looking place before the maniacs took over in 1979. Not long afterwards, in 1981, I was a young U.S. Army intel analyst in Germany. I remember one day getting imagery from the Iran-Iraq war that was raging at that point. Our orbital cameras, and probably amazingly so now, could get in close. We had, as did the Mossad, assets on the ground then.
One shot was of dead Iranian infantry on a battlefield. Scores and scores of them, as both sides fought like they were at the Somme. Around the necks of these very young men was what I thought were IDs, like our dog tags. But they looked strange; the shape was wrong for an ID tag or disc. I asked my S-2, the battalion intel officer who I worked for, to give me an explanation.
“Kamioner, those aren’t IDs,” he said, “They’re small plastic keys. They get them before battle from the imams.”
“Keys to what, sir?”
“The poor schmucks. Keys to paradise.”
If they decide to ever take us on directly, in the Persian Gulf or anywhere else, especially under this president, they will need to make a whole lot more keys. And unlike Leonidas, we will have a greater number than 300 men to see that they use them.
