[Source: bbc.com] It is Wednesday, March 18, as I write: Coming up to three weeks into what U.S. President Donald Trump was confident—and said so—would be a four-day war that would be over by the Jewish festival of Purim on March 3. Well, the war did not end on March 3 and on this Ides (15th) of March (for those who remember Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”) it had not ended yet: There are no signs it is going to do so in the very unforeseeable future that looms ahead.