Donald Trump, Counting Coup
JD Vance put it best.
In striking Iran’s nuclear installations, Vance said the US proved that it “could fly a bunker buster bomb from Missouri to Iran completely undetected without landing once on the ground, and it can destroy whatever nuclear capacity Iran builds up.”
“I think that lesson is what’s going to teach them not to rebuild their nuclear capacity,” he said.
Yep, you can almost imagine what was left of the Iranian leadership pondering the power of the United States. We could have turned that country to glass. We could have carpet-bombed Tehran. We could have assassinated the Ayatollah in his bed.
We didn’t.
Instead we struck Iran’s nuclear facilities with pinpoint accuracy and flew home undetected and unmolested.
We left a calling card in the rubble, however.
On Wednesday’s “Kerry and Mike Show” Mike floated a theory. He said this was President Trump doing what the Plains Indians called “counting coup.”
Fans of the hit television series “Yellowstone” are familiar with the term after seeing the penultimate episode of Season 5, appropriately entitled “Counting Coup.” This was when Kayce Dutton confronted the man who ordered the hit on his father, threatened to shoot him and his daughter but ultimately he left after hitting the man with the butt of his gun.
“Where I come from that's called ‘counting coup,’” Kayce told the frightened man. “It means I took a piece of your soul and I'm going to keep it.”
Counting coup was the Plains Indian practice of “terrifying enemies by performing acts of bravery without killing or seriously injuring them. It was a way to demonstrate skill and daring and could involve touching an enemy with a hand or a coup stick or other weapon.”
After last weekend’s visit from America’s B-2 bombers, Iranians were touched by our weapons and humiliated. They were reminded that the USA could have mounted a far more ferocious and deadly attack, but didn’t.
That knowledge should have a chilling effect on one’s enemy.
Intentionally or not, Trump counted coup.
