By Walt Zlotow
America is famous for declaring its foes capitulate to unconditional surrender.
It was first uttered in 1862 by Ulysses S. Grant who demanded the “unconditional and immediate surrender” of Confederate forces at Fort Donelson, Tennessee. U.S. Grant forever became known as ‘Unconditional Surrender Grant.’
US war presidents loved unconditional surrender. FDR employed it on Germany before he died and it worked well. Didn’t go so easily for Truman on Japan. Burning down Toyko on March 10 with Napalm, killing a hundred thousand innocents didn’t. A bombing Hiroshima August 6 didn’t. Even the second A bomb on Nagasaki did not definitively make Japan bow to the US demand. Most likely it was the million man Russian invasion the day before the Nagasaki bomb that convinced Japan to surrender unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender lay dormant for the next 81 years. It was AWOL thru Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan as the US failed to achieve anything close to an unconditional surrender from opponents that stymied, even defeated the vaunted world’s strongest military.
But on March 6, President Trump, unaware he’d already lost his delusional war to bring down the Iranian regime at the behest of Israel, declared Iran must submit to “Unconditional Surrender.”
As well as the March 6 Truth Social post (above) a week into his lost war demanding “unconditional surrender” from Tehran, he trotted out his clueless Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt to describe what would constitute unconditional surrender:
“What the president means is that when he, as commander in chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, determines that Iran no longer poses a threat to the United States of America and the goals of Operation Epic Fury has been fully realized, then Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender.”
One hundred sixty-three days into his lost war, President Trump finds America facing unconditional surrender. Unless he capitulates on all of Iran’s reasonable and non-negotiable terms, Iran will not fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, placing the world’s economy in jeopardy of collapse.
What are those reasonable terms of surrender?
- End all military action against Iran including bombing and blockade
Promise never again to attack Iran
End all economic sanctions on Iran
Return all frozen Iranian assets
Provide reparations for damage inflicted in Trump’s illegal criminal war launched February 28.
Of course, facing unconditional surrender does not mean Trump will surrender unconditionally to Iran’s reasonable demands. He may simply adhere to the counsel of his former evil mentor Roy Cohn… ‘Never give up, never give in’ and mutter “After me, the deluge.”
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL
Also by Walt
After 157 days of Iran war failure, Trump must quit the war or quit the presidency
Trump must leave office to end Iran war, reopen Hormuz Strait, save world economy
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Mrs Lievitt, one would expect that a press secretary would, at the least, have a grasp of basic grammar: ” … the goals of Operation Epic Fury have been fully realized … “
Donald Bratwurst- Basher is stuck in a swamp of deficient mentality, no reality, driven by bestiality and territoriality, just bowelbursting shit. Diplomacy is needed, as always, professional and experienced operators (who do not exist in Trumpery tripe) so expect NOUGHT. Iran has a grand history, culture, position here. The USA?…still an “idea”, needing leadership, direction, policy, humanity.
leefe, admirably, you’re often quick to jump in with a comment, but perhaps a bit more reflection before posting might help.
yes, Karoline Leavitt (not Lievitt) is married. That may or may not influence her use of the honorific, Mrs., or perhaps Ms. Unlikely that she’d choose to use Miss.
Given her husband’s name is Nicholas Riccio, it’s also unlikely she would go by the name of Mrs Leavitt.
Your grammatical correction is duly noted. I encourage you to forward it to the office of the White House Press Secretary, whom I’m sure will take note and be duly chastened by such a slip of tenses.
Canguro:
Have you ever heard of humour? It’s strange but, as with so many things, different people do it differently. Perhaps if you reflected on that a bit you wouldn’t be so quick to chastise me for not commenting in a manner of which you approve?
Just to explain: I call her “Mrs Lievitt” to highlight (even if only to myself) the hypocrisy of a married woman being the spokesperson for a regime which seeks to take rights away from women and establish a christofascist state, while a) claiming to be christian, b) not using her husband’s name and c) lying through her bleached teeth the entire time.
leefe, I neither approve nor disapprove of the way you choose to comment. Nevertheless, you have a history on these pages of displaying a pedantic bent, quick to point out others’ errors… which, to be fair, are simple mistakes given the clumsiness of fingers on the keyboard.
Seems like a case of pot, kettle, black.
In any rigorous sense of the word, I am not chastising you… I have no slant on your behaviour one way or the other, I simply don’t care, but I do find it amusing that you would dash of a criticism over tense and at the same time, misspell the woman’s name along with her purported chosen marital name.
As Steve Davis noted, blogging isn’t for the faint-hearted. A good coat of Teflon helps, for those with thin skin.
“As Steve Davis noted,…”
Kanga, yer know what Oscar Wilde said — “The only thing worse than being talked about is…”
Trump has blamed Iran for the attack in 2002 on the USS Cole, even though the FBI determined the attack was planned and executed by the al-Qaeda terrorist network.
If that was not bad enough, Robin Cook, British Foreign Secretary from 1997 to 2001, wrote in 2005 that al-Qaeda and bin Laden were “a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies”, and claimed that “Al-Qaida, literally ‘the database’, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians” in Afghanistan.
Trump’s ‘unconditional surrender’ cosplay with him disguised in black against the King of Persia. ‘Tis but a scratch
It’s not only in Iran that the US is facing unconditional surrender.
It’s also losing the tech war.
Global capital is now investing in Chinese assets and capabilities to keep its own R&D flowing. In doing so, it pumps money directly into the Chinese industrial ecosystem, training the very competitor that is about to make it obsolete.
We have seen this before. When Western manufacturers massively invested in the Chinese supply chains, they transferred expertise, precision engineering knowledge, and industrial scale that China absorbed and built upon.
Today, Western pharma is doing the same.
They are licensing Chinese drug assets, funding Chinese clinical trials, and building Chinese R&D capacity.
The difference is that this time, the Chinese government is also investing massively into the sector, and the product is not about atoms.
It is about molecules. By driving down the cost of complex molecular manufacturing, it is constructing a parallel infrastructure of global health dependency.
See more at:
https://sovereignista.com/2026/08/10/this-month-in-china/
For decades the West deluded itself about Western superiority.
But Stalin was right.
Quantity has its own quality.
Which brings us to another reality, one yet to appear.
Latin was once the dominant language of science. And for many, many years it was the universal means of communication in Western Europe – from the late medieval period to the mid-17th Century. Then it began to fracture. Latin became just one of many languages of science.
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, German was the leading language of science, especially in disciplines such as physics, chemistry and psychology. The country’s universities were at the forefront of research and innovation, attracting scholars worldwide and establishing German as a crucial language for anyone seeking a career in science.
The industrial/technological supremacy of Britain and the US saw English take over as the language of science.
You can see where this is heading.
There would be many in China today, waiting silently, with due modesty, for the day when Chinese becomes the language of science.
And rightly so.
Chinese science publications accounted for 27.2% of the world’s top 1% of most-cited papers in 2019, taking the global lead and surpassing the US who had come second, with 24.9% of the top 1% of most-cited papers. The Economist also concluded that in 2022 China passed both the US and the European Union in the number of high-impact research papers published.
But taking the language lead will not be straightforward.
WIKI — The impact factor of Chinese scientific journals is relatively low. In 1999, the top-cited journal—Mining and Geologica Sinica—had an impact factor of 1.487, and the average number of citations per article published in the Chinese journals covered by Science Citation Index was 0.326. One reason for the low impact factor is that Chinese scientists tend to use relatively few references in their publications (average, 6.6 references per article). A second reason is that scientists in China, like those in other countries, prefer to publish their best papers in major or top English-language journals. In fact, for such purposes as promotion to senior positions, Chinese scientists must have published in Western journals.
But to paraphrase Joseph Stalin — momentum has a quality all of it’s own.
Canguro:
It genuinely never occured to you that such an obvious pun was deliberate? Wooohoooo.
What!! leefe said something funny… and I missed it
I’ll make sure I’m here around this time in 2030 for the next burst of happiness.
Congrats Roswell- topic of the moment…sometimes Trump is crafty tho.
Perhaps he has backed off because even he is sick of Israel, esp their refusal to get out of Lebanon.
Is it turning into a scrap over Exceptionalism v God’s Chosen People?
In Australia, do we need to re-examine Hanson’s version of “The Master Race” since Australians and everyone else are only buffoons left outside the elitist Charmed Circle?
Very good,Walt, but I beg to differ on one point:
“FDR employed it on Germany before he died and it worked well.”
I don’t think that it worked well then. I think that “unconditional surrender” and all guilt to Germany – these aspects were largely part of bringing about WW2.
I’m coming more and more to the belief that personal and psychological aspects play a huge part in a population’s acquiescence and enthusiasm for war.
To digress here – I think that Zelensky’s showmanship skills, wedded to some cultural passion for superior “national identity” – these are what keep the Ukrainians on their suicidal path.
Had to think for a moment Noel.
history can be quirky…For decades we were taught what wicked fellows Hitler and the Germans-exclusively- were. In our time, are the villains and victims mighty also be opposite to who and what they really are.
Just one comment and I won’t be surprised if Im caned for this, but apparently Hitler’s drunken father used to beat Hitler senseless as a kid so why has nobody examined a lot,
Hitler’s state of mind?
Was he evil or just f…ed up? (both?)
Did the times f him up?
And was Germany F….ed up by trade barriers and high finance before and after WW1 and is there an equivalence involving the US (and us) and China as to geographical access, since much of the latter conflict also revolves around trade, finance and access to resources and markets in a trade war?
Sorry if it comes across as garbeled, just had a nasty experience with computer s and idiot codes elsewhere and am rattled.
now I suppose everyone will write in saying I am excusing Hitler…no, just context.
Ouch, Roswell; that hurts. Luckily I’m here to amuse myself, not the audience.
paul:
Power hungry megalomaniac. Plus fucked up. Plus I think he never got over Germany being beaten in WWI, and I do wonder how much Monash’s contribution to finishing off that obscene bloodbath had to do with him targeting Europe’s Jewish population. Plus the terms of that surrender and the economic damage they did to Germany sowed the seeds for WWII.
Yeah, it’s complicated but he was still one of the monstrous people bent on reshaping the world at the time. Similar with Genghis Tan in modern-day USAnia.
And if that sounds garbled, it’s because the morning caffeine hasn’t hit the bloodstream yet. Too busy out in the garden.
Donnie will never ever surrender to anything or anybody, he is completely and utterly incapable thinking such thoughts. It would destroy him. Besides which, there always be others to try and blame for his weakness and failures.
Leavitt has quit. I think being put on the decoy plane while the nappy-changing nurse went with Trump on the catering truck and his plane may have been the last straw, for either her or her husband.
Wonder who the next spokesliar will be …