Less Talk, More Rock: White House Edition

I don't know whether 'it's just me,' or I'm 'simply tired,' or what, but I seem to have reached a 'less talk, more rock' stage where the consumption of WH communications about the Iran action are concerned. If you're going to do something, ffs just do it. Get on with it. State a simple, consistent objective - e.g., acceptance of 'the President's full 15 point plan' - and pursue it. Let your actions do most of your talking. Don't throat-clear and threaten intended action day after day, sometimes to one end and other times to other ends, all while angrily cursing and fulminating. It looks senescent, incompetent, and weak. Especially on holidays, when people reflect and recall 'what it's all for,' why we all do what we do.

Today's (Monday) press briefing was particularly embarrassing in this connection, I thought. Yes, it's great that they rescued both flyers of the downed plane. But two hours of Pete Hegseth's unbearably triumphalist prattle and then multiple generals' painstaking descriptions of every part of this single 'rescue operation' just look staged and pathetic when (a) the salient story remains that a plane got shot down, and (b) Trump is still up there spluttering about what he's 'gonna' do rather than just doing it.

A confident, competent, and dignified state's dignitaries, it seems to me, would simply issue a calmly laconic statement of the following form:

'Last Friday a US fighter plane, the first since our operations began, was shot down over Iran. One pilot was recovered immediately, the second was recovered yesterday in an operation that killed x members of the Iranian military. Meanwhile, tomorrow night marks the deadline the President has issued to the acting Iranian leadership to accept terms of surrender. Once the deadline passes, our operations will enter a new and more destructive phase, as we turn to include in our targeting now the infrastructures on which the mullah regime relies in its internal repression and external aggression alike. Citizens are urged to stock up and shelter in place until we indicate that resuming the January uprising is in order.'