Thursday 5th of March 2026
Home » Blogs » Gus Leonisky's blog

time to hate that australia is on the road of hell, for love.....

From Afghanistan to Iraq and Libya, repeated military interventions have weakened rather than strengthened US power. With new strikes on Iran launched without congressional authorisation, the pattern of executive overreach and strategic miscalculation deepens.

 

Mark S Pirie,  Christopher Tang

We have been here before – and we never learn

 

Afghanistan did not merely defeat two superpowers. It contributed materially to the collapse of one of them.

The Soviet-Afghan war, which began in 1979 and ended in humiliation nine years later, drained the USSR of treasure, demoralised a generation of soldiers, and accelerated the credibility collapse of the entire Soviet project. The USSR ceased to exist two years after its withdrawal. The graveyard of empires had claimed another.

The United States watched every moment of that unraveling and then entered the same country, fought for 20 years, spent over $2 trillion dollars and left with the Taliban controlling more territory than when it arrived. Same enemy. Same terrain. Same outcome. Twice. In living memory. Perhaps worse, the USA left to die those Afghanis who helped the US military while in-country… guides, translators, etc.

That pattern, the certainty that this time will be different, or that this technology, this administration, this doctrine will produce what no prior effort could, is not uniquely American. It is the recurring pathology of great power thinking. But Americans are paying for it now, in blood and in treasure, and are about to pay for it again.

The strikes on Iran on 28 February, 2026, the largest American military operation in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, were launched without a declaration of war, without congressional authorisation, and in direct violation of the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which requires the president to seek congressional approval within 60 days of committing forces to hostilities. Senators from both parties said so immediately and explicitly.

Senator Rand Paul called the strikes an unconstitutional act of war. Senator Chuck Schumer noted that Congress had not authorised military force against Iran under any existing legal framework. Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie introduced resolutions invoking the War Powers Act within hours. The bipartisan reaction was not partisan theatre; it was the straightforward observation that Article I of the Constitution assigns the power to declare war to Congress, not to the executive, and that no authorisation covering Iran exists.

This is not the first time. It is not the fifth. The War Powers Resolution has been invoked, ignored, and litigated across administrations of both parties for 50 years. Congress has been complicit in its own irrelevance, systematically preferring silence to the political risk of accountability. But seven simultaneous unauthorised military engagement – in Yemen, Somalia, Syria, the Red Sea theatre, Venezuela, and now Iran – represent something beyond the incremental violations of prior administrations. They represent the functional abolition of congressional war power by accumulated executive assertion.

The fiscal dimensions of this accumulation have received almost no serious analysis. The administration that promised tariff revenues would reduce prices for American families is now operating a military budget approaching $1 trillion dollars – the largest in American history – while simultaneously giving the largest tax cut to the wealthiest and while arguably conducting an eighth war domestically: ICE agents with masks are imbued to arrest or shoot on site those believed to be in the country illegally without going before a judge first. Many legitimate citizens have been flown to faraway countries to be imprisoned without a hearing. The Fifth Amendment of the Constitution applies to persons, not citizens. “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” The money is going to wars the president promised would never happen and the deportation he said would be limited to criminals has gone way way beyond.

Iraq had its government destroyed entirely. What followed was sectarian fragmentation, the expansion of Iranian regional influence, and eventually ISIS, a strategic environment categorically worse than the one the intervention claimed to fix. Libya had its leader removed after he surrendered his weapons program. The result was a failed state and open slave markets. Afghanistan has been documented above. Brown University estimates the ‘Global War on Terror’ has cost more than $8 trillion.

Iran is not a modern political construct that happens to have a difficult government. It is Persia, a civilisation 3,000 years old that has survived Macedonian conquest, Arab invasion, Mongol devastation, and repeated western interference, including the CIA-backed coup of 1953 that destroyed Iran’s democratic government and produced the conditions for the 1979 revolution. The idea that air strikes will fundamentally alter its strategic trajectory reflects a historical illiteracy that the region has punished, consistently and at great cost, every time it has been attempted.

The Soviet Union did not survive the lesson Afghanistan taught it. The question now is whether the United States, with a trillion-dollar military budget, seven simultaneous unauthorised foreign conflicts with the War Powers Act violated in plain sight, an illegitimate domestic conflict with the Fifth Amendment rights violated in plain sight, and the full history of Middle Eastern intervention visible in the rearview mirror is in the process of learning the same lesson, the hard way, one more time.

History suggests it is. History also suggests we will be surprised when it does not go differently.

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/03/we-have-been-here-before-and-we-never-learn/

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

a win!....

 

A REPEAT POST:

Australia and the “Epstein Coalition”. Invasion of Iran a disaster
by Michael West

 

It’s only Day Five of the war, but surely the epic stupidity of Australia so cravenly backing the US-Israeli invasion of Iran is evident by now. Michael West reports.

We are led by fools and sycophants. The illegal, unprovoked invasion of Iran is not just garden-variety stupidity. This is stupidity on a grandiose, stratospheric scale.

The Israeli propaganda narrative that Iranians would sprinkle rose petals at the feet of their invaders has not come to pass. It has already been demolished in fact. 

Instead of bringing freedom and democracy – ‘regime change’ – we have brought chaos, possibly a world war, and definitely the destruction of the Middle East. The world economy is being hit hard as we write; oil prices spiralling, energy prices about to soar, and the inexorable spectre of inflation and recession.

And it didn’t have to happen.

This was a war of choice. Even without the “Epstein Coalition” – as the Iranian media so aptly dubs their invaders – murdering 168 Iranian school girls on day one, ‘peace through strength’ was never going to happen.

Quite the contrary. The illegal and unprovoked invasion of Iran has hardened the resolve of Iranians, who are massing in their hundreds of thousands across the country to mourn their dead and chant Death to America, to back their regime.

Where was the advice?

The Epstein Coalition killed the Ayatollah, who was actually against nuclear power; he was a moderate. Did Albo and Penny Wong not seek advice from Foreign Affairs that attacking Iran was folly, that the anti-regime protestors were a minority, that the pre-invasion protests were a Mossad and CIA psyop, that Iran might attack US proxy states in the region, that invasion would be a Brobigdadgian mistake?

Or did they ignore the advice in favour of a Washington regime compromised by the Epstein pedophile scandal?

And now, we see the feeble, hypocritical whining by Israel and its supporters about Iran attacking the Gulf states. Is that our only moral defence? Decades of supporting these regimes: Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – US proxy states all – regimes now unravelling, the oil price is soaring, inflation and recession are beckoning globally.

Images are emerging from Bahrain of locals cheering on the Iranian missiles. Were DFAT and our politicians unaware of popular angst in the Gulf states against American imperialism?

And what did they expect Iran to do in the face of this existential threat? Not blow up American bases and infrastructure while the US attacked them; after the US betrayed them at the very negotiating table when they were offering significant concessions on nuclear enrichment, all to avoid war? This war.

Australia, the US flunkies

Yet here was Australia, Saturday night, first out of the blocks worldwide to throw its support behind Donald Trump and his preposterous “Operation Epic Fury”, a probable pedophile being blackmailed and led around by the genocidal Benjamin Netanyahu like a pony at the fairground show.

“Operation Epstein Fury”, it was fast labelled. The soaring, craven stupidity is hard to grasp. Both major parties backing it. Albo first, then Angus Taylor rushing to tow the Donald’s line. Then, Pauline Hanson, too, who even congratulated and praised Netanyahu. We are led by fools and sycophants.

The flawed defence of atrocity

To address the empty rhetoric of the pro-war lobby, criticism of this war does not equate to support for the regime in Iran. Defenders of the US-Israel atrocity are busy with their swarms of social media bots peddling the argument that “you are an Islamist terror supporter” if you criticise the invasion. 

This is the 2026 version of “You are a Hamas supporter” if you argue against genocide in Gaza.

The cold facts of this debacle are that regime change does not work, that Iran did not want this war, that Iran appears to be exceptionally well prepared – even winning the war – that the Epstein Coalition, which Australia supports, is daily backing war crimes: blowing up hospitals, schools and civilian infrastructure.

This is a war which has already been lost.

The obvious reality is that regime change wars are a demonstrable failure. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Iraq – a million dead, irretrievable regional stability. In Afghanistan, 20 years, trillions of dollars spent, four US presidents, six Australian PMs – all to replace the Taliban with the Taliban. 

And here we are, the world’s busybodies, doing it again. 

Who would ever negotiate with the US in good faith again, or Israel for that matter? Iran did not want this war. Iran has not attacked another country in 300 years.

The US lured them to the negotiating table, then, without warning, murdered their leadership. This echoes last year’s 12-day war, where Israel and the US lured them in on the premise of good faith talks, then murdered them and now play the victim.

What did they expect Iran to do in the face of this existential threat?

The record speaks for itself. The US is the biggest invader of other countries in history. Israel has, last year alone, attacked Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Palestine, Qatar, Tunisia, Malta, and Greece.

Six illegal attacks of sovereign nations, as well as three illegal attacks in international waters equals 9 all up. In one year. And now they are invading Lebanon again, seizing more territory as their puppets, America, fight their campaign against Iran.

Albo, what are you doing?

We know who the war mongers are. We are the war mongers. Yet, in his bizarre statement of support, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was the fastest out of the blocks of all the allies on the weekend, issuing a false statement.

The claim, echoed by the usual warmongers of the Lib-Lab establishment, is that Iran is guilty of attacks on Australian soil, referencing alleged attacks on a deli in Bondi. 

Apart from the common sense, why would Iran commit an act of terror on a deli in Bondi? Senior police have conceded that there is no evidence of this.

The nuclear furphy

Then there is the age-old claim that Iran is about to produce nuclear weapons. The US and Israel’s nuclear risk claims have been so roundly discredited it’s a joke.

Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to instigate a war against Iran for 30 years – claiming Iran is days away, weeks away, months away from nuclear missiles. 

And they were at the negotiating table again when the Epstein forces murdered them.

The propaganda

We are now seeing mainstream media decry the ‘illegal attacks’ on Israel and the Gulf states. Yet the ‘victim card’ is tapped out. Around the world, outside the legacy media propaganda, there is little sympathy for Israel having razed Gaza and slaughtered between 72,000 and 700,000 Palestinians while stealing more land in the West Bank daily.

It will continue. The media and political classes have failed so majestically that they can only try to salvage their authority with more propaganda.

The deplorable coverage of the murdered schoolgirls in Iran is a case in point. The “40 beheaded babies” and the “mass rapes” of Hamas filled the headlines in the West on October 8, 2023. Yet real murders – 170 murdered schoolgirls – have hardly rated a mention. Yes, a mention perhaps, but a side story, buried, no headlines of outrage.

Can’t handle the truth?

Is the truth too hard to handle? Is it not evident to everybody except the most brainwashed advocate of the Epstein lobby that Israel – the government, the state – is the problem here? 

Netanyahu has won his ambition to drag America into a war against Iran, and if you follow the money, while world stock markets teeter, the stock market in Tel Aviv is surging, replete with weapons companies as it is.

Meanwhile, the ASX is tanking, ergo our savings. Oil prices are surging, ergo higher energy prices and inflation. The Houthis, Iran’s allies, are shooting again in the Red Sea while, on the other side of the Arabian peninsula, Iran has blocked the Straits of Hormuz, choking off a large chunk of the world’s oil supply.

Higher prices in India and China will mean higher prices for imports and inflation around the world.

The lessons of history have not been learnt; in fact, they have been discarded in spectacular fashion.

 

https://michaelwest.com.au/australia-and-the-epstein-coalition-invasion-of-iran-a-disaster/

 

BUT THIS TIME, WE'RE GOING TO WIN, AREN'T WE?

WIN WHAT? WHO CARES....

 

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.