By Denny Gulino
THE WHITE HOUSE (MaceNews) – For anyone who hasn’t had their fill of facile and obvious scenarios for the near-term future, there’s plenty more to choose among yet somehow the graybeards among the talking heads seem somewhat quiet, unlike their young colleagues for whom escalating geopolitical threats and impeachment efforts are only Wikipedia entries.
Here at the White House, otherwise known as “ground zero,” the snow that chased non-essential government staffers home four hours early started on schedule in the afternoon. It seemed the non-sequiturs and disingenuous statements from officials that didn’t get to the point were as abundant as the snowflakes.
So far unanswered, How “imminent” was the threat that triggered the killing of the Quds chief? What’s the medium-term strategy other than tit for tat?
Stocks ended mildly negative overall. The betting in a certain press room, however, was that the last day of normalcy may not be far away. It won’t take the Iranians implementing one or more of its 13 threatened retaliatory scenarios, goes this train of thought. Only the creeping dread that Israel lives with every day, more or less, the gathering fear that something bad is taking shape that is so blessedly alien to America.
Many Americans who emigrated from elsewhere to escape that dread remember the feeling. Vietnamese whose nightmares are of the thump thump of helicopter blades. Or from much earlier generations, those who remember the air raids in Europe, the clank of tanks, the distant thunder of heavy artillery so long ago.
That dread so unfamiliar to most Americans feeds on vague explanations, double talk, inconsistencies and other blather that carries the message the world seems to be so gently slipping out of anyone’s control.
As this is being written, the top eight congressional leaders are being briefed on what the White House considered to be the trigger for the killing of the Quds chief. Wednesday the full Congress will be briefed.
President Trump Tuesday called reporters into the Oval Office as he hosted the Prime Minister of Greece. His earlier meeting with a Saudi official was not made public until the Saudis disclosed it.
Trump talked about past misdeeds of Iran’s top general, not of the context of imminence, and said the details will remain “classified” until revealed on Capitol Hill.
With the Iran funerals and the Iraq marches done with, the subject of retaliation begins to take center stage. The families of those U.S. troops deployed to the region have already braced themselves. Now, as the last day of normalcy approaches, everyone else slowly absorbs all those adverse scenarios.
—
Contact this reporter: denny@macenews.com