More Trump Travel Inspiration – Win, Win, Win or Lose, Lose, Lose? But Some Great ‘Operation’ Names
Monday, 23 June 2025Wow – that Donald Trump – aka Taco Trump, Dog-E Trump, Liz Trump, Tariffs Trump – he keeps on providing travel inspiration. Only a couple of weeks ago I suggested ‘Donald (Taco) Trump presents the best travel list since Bush’s Axis of Evil’ when he came up with his 12 really bad countries, although sadly Equatorial Guinea was the only one I’ve not yet visited.
Now he’s bombed Iran with Operation Midnight Hammer and presumably we’ll soon be able to draw up a travel list of countries where America has gone to ‘Win, Win, Win.’ After all War-Child Trump had announced ‘Time and again, America’s enemies have learned that if you threaten the American people, our soldiers are coming for you. Your defeat will be certain, your demise will be final, and your downfall will be total and complete. Because our soldiers never give up, never surrender, and never ever quit. They fight, fight, fight—and they win, win, win.’
So off we go on ‘Win, Win, Win:’ starting of course with Ronald Reagan’s big military victory in Grenada in 1983 in Operation Urgent Fury. At the time the population of Grenada was about 100,000 so it must have been a major challenge, but certainly Reagan’s invasion was indeed a ‘Win, Win, Win.’
Apart from Grenada, however, it looks more like ‘Lose, Lose, Lose.’
▲ School children in Grenada in 1993 – I travelled there with Maureen and our children Tashi and Kieran. We started in Puerto Rico, flew down to Trinidad and then island hopped back to Puerto Rico over a month using a multi-stop travel pass with LIAT – Leeward Island Air Transport, or alternatively ‘Luggage in Another Town’. We’d fly from one island to the next up the chain in the Lesser Antilles, if we didn’t like it we’d move on in a day or two. If we did we’d stay longer. We liked Grenada.
▲ The Military Museum in Hanoi, on my first visit to Vietnam in 1991, I’ve been back to Vietnam a number of times subsequently including in 2005 when I travelled right through Vietnam, starting from Cambodia and exiting to China on a Singapore-Shanghai trip all at surface level. My stop in Hanoi on that later trip included assorted military museums and I noted how there were often chunks of shot down USAF B52s to check out. The war in Vietnam concluded on 30 April 1975 with Operation Frequent Wind and the helicopter evacuation of the US Embassy in Saigon. You’d have to say that was Lose rather than Win?
Operation Allies Refuge was the evacuation from Kabul from 30 July to 30 August 2021 as the US and its allies departed Afghanistan and the Taliban took back over. A Win? Looked more like a Lose to me.
▲ An abandoned Soviet-era tank on the Shibar Pass on the road up to Bamiyan, I passed that way in 2006. So did my Dell laptop. Let’s face it, invaders rarely do very well there, the Russians were just another army of Afghan-losers. So if Trump’s ‘Win, Win, Win’ claims didn’t work out in Afghanistan it’s just par for the course? Everybody else has lost there as well.
The 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, also known as Operation Iraqi Freedom, ‘began on 20 March, 2003, with the primary goal of removing Saddam Hussein from power and eliminating Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. The invasion swiftly led to the collapse of Hussein’s regime and his capture in December 2003. However, the invasion also sparked a prolonged and complex period of occupation, insurgency, and sectarian violence.’ Despite George W Bush’s famous ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech on 1 May 2003, 20+ years later it looks more like Lose, Lose, Lose than Win, Win, Win.
▲ A long line of trucks queuing up to enter the Kurdistan region of Iraq from Turkey when I paid a visit in April 2006.
So now Trump’s leading another Win, Win, Win charge in Iran, backing up Israel so at least it might be distracting them from their genocide in Gaza. On 22 June 2025 Trump announced that Operation Midnight Hammer had ‘completely totally obliterated’ Iran’s nuclear program so clearly this is another Win, Win, Win from the War-Child’s perspective?
Or long term will it just be another Lose? Of course getting rid of anybody’s nuclear weapons abilities has to be a good thing and Iran is certainly the perfect candidate for having their finger taken off any nuclear button. Plus regime change in Iran could certainly be a ‘good thing,’ although regime change instituted from outside is rarely unmitigated good. If it’s going to work it has be done from inside. Remember the USA, with lots of support from the UK, have form here.Back in 1953 they organized a spot of regime change by overthrowing democratically elected Mohammad Mossadegh, an action which is still enormously unpopular in Iran and led, eventually, to the government Trump is trying to get rid of today! In recent days lots of media have run stories on that 70-year-old regime change, here’s one in USA Today.
▲ A mural on the wall of the former US Embassy in Tehran, the ‘US Den of Espionage’ according to the Iranians. I took that photograph in 2004, but I’ve been to Iran a number of times before and since that visit and one element of Iran society I’ve always noted is ‘friendliness.’ Click here for my experience (and my daughter’s) in 2017. Yes the government is shocking on so many levels, but don’t confuse a country’s government with its general population.
And finally just a summary of those great Operation names: 2025 Midnight Hammer, 2021 Allies Refuge, 2003 Iraqi Freedom, 1983 Urgent Fury, 1975 Frequent Wind.
