Dem
47
GOP
53
The joke in that headline is in very, very poor taste. But we repeat it because we're not the ones who made it—former senator John McCain is. It is a reminder that attacking Iran has been a fantasy of war-hawk Republicans for at least 4 decades. And now, at least for those Iran hawks still living (e.g., Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC), fantasy has become reality. The test run in June didn't really count. It was too short and in actuality didn't accomplish much.
We have much to say today, and we'll have more to say tomorrow. As we tend to do with these complicated topics, we're going to break it up into pieces:
The Facts(?) on the Ground
The first casualty of war is truth, of course. And the early days of a war (or the early days of a battle) tend to be the "truthiest." So, regard any reporting you hear with some degree of caution. And even when the actual reporting is spot on, the consequences may not be visible for a while. Remember George W. Bush's mission accomplished speech?
With that caveat, there is universal agreement that Iran's Supreme Leader for the last 30 years, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is dead at the age of 86. His body was reportedly found under a pile of rubble that, until the missiles started landing, was a government building. Both Israel and Iran have confirmed his death, and while one side or the other might plausibly have motivation to lie, it is improbable that they'd both be lying.
The other thing that is clear, and that we could only (reasonably) guess at before yesterday's posting went live, is that the U.S. was intimately involved with the whole matter, and provided most of the firepower that killed Khamenei and rained destruction upon Iran. And while Venezuela was a "lop the head off the snake and go home" kind of operation, it looks like the Trump administration foresees a more substantial commitment in Iran. After the news of the attack went public, Trump gave an 8-minute speech in which he endeavored to explain "Operation Epic Fury" to the American people and to the world:
If you prefer to read, here is an annotated text, or a non-annotated text.
Even if you don't read/watch, it was exactly the speech you think he gave. Trump talked about how Iran is evil, and the worst sponsor of terrorism in the world, and has been since 1979. He repeated the seemingly contradictory assertions that the U.S. obliterated Iran's nuclear capacity 9 months ago, and that the point of the attack is to keep Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. He tossed in a generous dollop of self-congratulation, talking about how strong America's military is, thanks to him. And, most important in our view, he said this:
I do not make this statement lightly, the Iranian regime seeks to kill. The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war. But we're doing this not for now. We're doing this for the future. And it is a noble mission. We pray for every service member as they selflessly risk their lives to ensure that Americans and our children will never be threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran. We ask God to protect all of our heroes in harm's way. And we trust that with his help, the men and women of the armed forces will prevail. We have the greatest in the world, and they will prevail.
That does not seem to equate to "We'll be out of Iran in a day or two." At the moment, the Pentagon is promising at least a week of bombing. And we would guess that's actually just a start.
This Is Gonna Be Unpopular
We don't know exactly what Trump's game is here. Is this revenge on Iran for not surrendering their nuclear program or for not building Trump Tower Tehran? Is this a grift, to benefit Trump's buddies in the Military-Industrial Complex? Is it a distraction (although, these days, it's very hard to remember which things are the distractions, and which things are being distracted from)? Is he being manipulated, either by people within the United States (Graham, Marco Rubio) or without (Benjamin Netanyahu)? Could be any of these things, or something else entirely.
At the moment, (Z) is in the middle of his U.S. History lecture on Imperialism and the Spanish-American War (first half was Wednesday, second half is tomorrow). And a key chunk of that lecture is a discussion of how the U.S. is a democracy, and so it's necessary to build a consensus for war. And because different things persuade different people, there are four recurrent "arguments for war" that we usually see, in some form, for every war of the last 150 years. Here they are:
To give further depth to the argument, (Z) always uses a modern conflict to show variants of the four arguments. For a long time, it was the Iraq War, but for the latest presentation of the lecture, he switched to Venezuela, and gave evidence of high-ranking members of the Trump administration (Trump himself, J.D. Vance, and/or Marco Rubio) making variants of these arguments. There is an economic argument (oil), a safety argument (fentanyl), a rescue argument (political prisoners and/or the people of Venezuela), and a fight evil argument (Nicolás Maduro). If anyone wants to see that part of the slideshow, with the specific evidence, there's a PDF here.
At the conclusion of that segment, which came very close to the end of class on Wednesday, (Z) showed evidence (headlines from polls and news stories) that the conflict in Venezuela is unpopular, despite the administration having made the "correct" arguments. He told the students that the administration made three mistakes, and that two of them can be inferred from what the students have already heard. They did not take long to figure out what those two problems are. The first is that it's not enough to make the arguments, they have to be persuasive versions of those arguments. For example, nobody is really buying the "Making America Safer" argument, because Venezuela has nothing to do with the fentanyl epidemic. In turn, that severely weakens the "Fight Evil" argument, because the heart of that isn't just that Maduro is a bad guy, it's that he's a narco-terrorist.
The second mistake the administration made, and that the students were able to infer, is that the Trump administration did what the Trump administration always does, and it went too fast. It took at least a year (and more, in some cases) to build the consensuses (consensii?) that led to the Spanish War, World War I, and World War II. It arguably took nearly 20 years to prepare public sentiment for the war in Vietnam. The recent Iraq War took 18 months to sell (Sept. 11, 2001 to March 20, 2003), and even then didn't work out too well.
Note that there are other factors that would make selling ANY war or conflict difficult right now. Trump is an unpopular president. War, in general, is unpopular with Americans since Vietnam. The U.S. has recently been engaged in two forever wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) and is leery of another. The focus on arguments here is meant to highlight problems specific to how the administration sold THIS war.
Meanwhile, the third mistake, which the students will learn about tomorrow, is that Venezuela has made no attack upon the United States. (Z) will explain that sometimes that "attack" is dubious (9/11 as justification for invading Iraq, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, etc.), but you gotta have something, even if that something requires a healthy dose of spin to sell to the American people, so that Americans can tell themselves they are not aggressors, and are acting only in self-defense.
The reason that we go into this extended narrative is that the Trump administration did a poor job of following the playbook with Venezuela, and it went badly, politically. And somehow, some way, the administration has done an even worse job of making a case on Iran to the American people and to the world at large, despite the fact that Trump just had a golden opportunity to try to do so in the State of the Union. At least (Z) could find concrete expressions of the various arguments when it comes to making a case for invading Venezuela. For Iran, he can't even do that. Is regime change in Iran going to make America safer by limiting the number of dirty Muslim terrorists in the world? Is it going to make America safer by keeping Iran from becoming a nuclear power? Are we rescuing Israel? Are we rescuing the Iranian people? We are left to guess, because the administration has articulated very little, beyond "Iran bad" and "regime change needed" and "terrorism." On top of that, of course, Iran did not attack the U.S.
And then, add on the things that are going to work against Trump regardless of where the war is, or how effectively he sells it—his own personal unpopularity, weariness of forever wars, the risks of triggering a regional or global conflict, the financial costs for a country whose debt just keeps climbing. Oh, and don't forget that he specifically ran on a promise of ending forever wars, and that a big chunk of his base is America First isolationists.
Roughly two-thirds of Americans are unhappy about Venezuela, and that was just (at least for now) a quick strike that ended successfully. We don't see any way the voting public is going to like the Iran War better, and depending on how long it goes, and how much harm is done, we can see them hating it even more than they hated the Venezuela invasion. Yes, Iran has been a much more threatening adversary, and for much longer, than Venezuela. And yes, there have been polls showing that a slight majority of Americans support action against Iran. But those "slight majorities" tend to become minorities once theory becomes reality, and even more so once American soldiers perish. We'll have more on the politics of the war tomorrow.
Geopolitics
And now, the geopolitics. We are not Mike Froman or Les Gelb (current and former presidents of the Council on Foreign Relations), so we are not exactly experts in this area. That said, we do know some history that is probably helpful here.
To start with, the United States does not exactly have a great track record around the world when it comes to regime change. That is doubly true when it comes to regime change in the Middle East and its environs. The Ayatollah that the U.S. just killed ended up in power because the Iranian people rebelled against the Shah that America put in power and then propped up for 25+ years. Getting rid of Saddam Hussein allowed for the rise of ISIS. A 20-year commitment in Afghanistan led to the Taliban being replaced with... the Taliban, but even stronger. In what predominantly Arab or predominantly Muslim country has the U.S. been able to replace a problematic regime with one that is stable? Well? We're waiting for your answer...
And the people who are running the show right now in the U.S. are, on the whole, not a cause for optimism. Donald Trump knows less about geopolitics and military strategy than your average sixth grader. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is a preening, posturing hothead whose qualification for his job is that he used to host a third-tier weekend show on Fox. Secretary of State Marco Rubio knows more than those two, but he's no Hank Kissinger or Dick Nixon, and his area of interest is Latin America.
To the extent that we have confidence in any of the current high-level folks, it's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Dan Caine (and even him, we have our reservations about). He already tried to gently warn the White House that invading Iran might be a bad idea. He can't say too much, because he has a duty to respect the chain of command. Further, generals who DO say too much tend to get cashiered by Trump. That could be a concern for Caine because he wants to keep his job. Or it could be a concern for Caine because, like the generals of Trump v1.0, he fears being replaced by someone really bad. In any event, his feelings were about as clear as he could make them without rocking the boat TOO much, and he was ignored.
Even if the administration was populated by genius-level statesmen and strategists, however, the new reality of Iran is a recipe for disaster. Nature hates a vacuum, of course, and it's anyone's guess as to who or what will fill that vacuum. The likeliest possibility is probably the officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. When a nation is led by a military man, or a military junta, that nation tends to favor violence as option 1, 2 and 3 whenever a problem arises. Another possibility is that there will be a successor Ayatollah; if so, they will be even less of a fan of the U.S. than the America-hating Ayatollah who was just killed. Still another possibility is that there is a sectarian struggle, with multiple factions of military and/or religious people fighting for control. Some of these outcomes might slow the development of an Iranian nuclear weapon. None of them seem likely to make the world a safer place, in either the short-term or the medium-term. Indeed, is there ANY plausible sequence of events that ends with a more stable, less hostile Iran in, say, the next decade? Well? We're waiting for your answer, again...
Meanwhile, another thing we know is that when the circumstances are right, one match can light a whole powder keg on fire, and drag a whole region, or a whole continent, or the whole world, into violence. Under normal circumstances, the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 would have been a dispute between just two nations, Serbia and Austria-Hungary. However, the strains upon the world order of the "long nineteenth century" were so great that the incident plunged nearly all of Europe into war within a week. It's a worst-case scenario, obviously, but could the attack on Iran be the starting point for a vast regional conflict, particularly given the already existing issues in Israel? It's possible, particularly since either Israel or Iran could try, respectively, to attack, or to activate the various regional militias that were supported by Khamenei's regime. Certainly, the other Arab nations are worried, while the violence has already spread (some) to Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
We will tell you one other thing we know. World War II was actually a group of regional conflicts that (mostly) merged into one global conflict. China and Japan were battling as early as 1930 or so, and really hit the gas in 1937. Italy was indulging in militaristic behavior throughout the 1930s, climaxing in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War in 1935 and 1936. Adolf Hitler began rearming at that same time, began invading his neighbors in 1938, and was at war with France and the U.K. by 1939. The Russo-German relationship melted down in 1940. The U.S. and Japan ended up at war with each other on Dec. 8, 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
We do not propose that World War III has begun, as yet. But we do observe that there are a number of global conflicts that are starting to overlap quite a lot. The current leadership of Israel not only prosecuted its war against the Palestinians, inflaming tensions worldwide, but is also a partner in this attack against Iran. Iran has been sending arms to Russia, to help them with their war against Ukraine. The U.S. and NATO, of course, have been active on the other side of that war. There are also a large number of countries in the world with strongman leaders, who might like an opportunity to unleash their inner Hegseth. And, of course, China is always watching... watching... watching...
Legality
These days, whenever a U.S. president orders an attack like this, it is easy to find examples of experts on international and/or U.S. law who take the view that the attack was illegal. See here, here, and here for examples for this weekend's attack. It is also easy to find members of the opposition party who take the view that the attack was illegal. See here, here, and here for examples for this weekend's attack.
We think that this "discussion," if you can even call it that, is an absolute waste of time. Yeah, what Trump did this weekend probably was a violation of American law governing the use of force. So were two dozen other things ordered by at least a dozen other presidents since World War II. When was the last time a president of either party was punished for violating the War Powers Act, or any other such legislation? Exactly. And that's before we consider the fact that the current Republican majority does not do "accountability" and that Chief Justice John Roberts and his buddies have made Trump into a king when it comes to the law.
There are only two things that matter here, as far as we can tell. The first is if Congress is actually willing to assert itself, and to declare that the administration's actions in Iran are not acceptable, and need to come to an end pronto. That might force a change of course. When Congress gets back to town on Monday, they are going to vote on this question. We do not foresee the Republican members finding their spines, but you never know.
The only other thing that matters is if a majority of the House and two-thirds of the Senate decide that some military action undertaken by Trump (or any other president) rises to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors." Needless to say, we are not holding our breath on that one.
Reader Comments
We had selected a bunch of letters for today, and had even started editing them. But... it just doesn't work. When you have a war that could kill hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands of people or more, you just can't pair that with comments on whether or not Joel Grey deserved his Oscar. So, we'll save some letters for next week. We have a busy weekend outside of blog duties, so it will be good to have some material already banked.
That means that today's letters are all going to be about Iran. We got a lot of them, and we narrowed it down to a selection of them that make some good points, and give a sense of how (at least some) people are feeling about the whole thing:
C.S. in Philadelphia, PA, writes: "For the Jews there was light and joy, gladness and honor." We read this in the Book of Esther during the upcoming holiday of Purim. We also read it every Saturday night at the end of the Sabbath. It caused me to momentarily pause tonight when I read it during Havdalah.
During Purim, we faced extinction in the ancient Persian Empire, from the evil Haman, a descendant of the Amalekites, a nation committed to wiping us out. This Sabbath, the one before Purim, we read about their attempt to do so immediately after the Exodus. Modern day Persia is led by people whose goals are the same.
Everything bad about Iran is true. They butcher their own citizens. They sponsor worldwide terrorism. They are responsible for the murder of Americans and Jews worldwide. Their government is evil and the Iranian people deserve better.
How little in the world has changed in 3,300 years. The timing of the attack is poetic.
And yet.
I'm left with the feeling that America's relationship with the State of Israel and Jews in general has been irrevocably harmed by both President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu. Elements of the American left are reflexively against anything said or done by either man. They are misguided by compassion for religious zealots who make the conservative Christian right look like little old church ladies.
Other elements of the American right, in their America First mantra (supported by libertarians), ignore the United States' unique role in world leadership. Protecting allies protects America.
Elements of the American right view their support of Israel through a Christian messianic lens. This political alliance erodes broad support for a pluralistic, vibrant, liberal democracy with normal struggles. Right-wing nationalist populists (Trump and Netanyahu) end up weakening (small d) democratic norms. Also not helpful is their broad support for America First except for "America First... and Israel."
I am a former neocon. I supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. I genuinely thought democracy could be exported via bombs. There was also congressional approval for both invasions. However, doing the right thing, without a plan for the day after, leads to more chaos.
President Trump has not made the case to Congress or the American people that attacking Iran is a worthwhile expense of American blood and tax dollars. Nor is there evidence of an immediate threat to American interests and allies. In the midst of Iran mass murdering protesters, I could have supported a limited strike, but that is also not the case today.
What could have been the right thing, seems to be done the wrong way.
And at the end of the Sabbath we add one more line to the Book of Esther quote. "For the Jews there was light and joy, gladness and honor—so let it be with us."
W.R. in Henderson, NC, writes: The President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel, both convicted felons, jointly decided to bomb Iran. Netanyahu has to continue aggression against Palestine/Hamas and now Iran (again), to keep himself out of prison. Trump needs to deflect from the Epstein files or face the possibility of more criminal charges and possibly prison. Very sad for the United States and Israel to be led by these two.
J.Y. in East Brunswick, NJ, writes: Firstly, I want to make my position clear: Iran is an existential threat to Israel, the United States and western civilization in general. There is a unique opportunity to strike now, because Iran is weak, and because Russia has been weakened by the war with Ukraine.
But I feel strongly that the case should've been made to the American people, to Congress and to the world. Going this alone puts the U.S. in a very difficult position, and without public support I am afraid this mission is doomed for failure. And this is a failure of leadership.
I do believe that there will be regime change. But I don't think it's the regime change that people think. Iran does not stand a chance against the U.S. and Israel in a conventional war. But I don't think Iran will fight a conventional war. Iran does not need to win the war, they only need not to lose. Their objective will not be to beat the U.S. in the field. It will be to cause as much chaos and fear as possible so that the U.S. loses its will to fight. Iran only needs to survive to the midterms. If there are enough terrorist killings, if gas prices go up and inflation soars, Trump will lose the midterms. And if he loses the midterms, it's likely that Congress will stop the war in Iran (and maybe even impeach Trump if enough Republicans believe their political survival is dependent on his demise).
Make no mistake: If our plan was to topple Iran, all of the government's efforts should have been directed to ensure success. Instead, this seems more like Trump's other policies—short sighted and ill conceived.
This will be due to a direct failure of Trump's leadership. He failed to win over the public. He failed to win over Congress and he failed to win over our allies.
Reporting is that the strikes against Iran have been in planning for months. If so, all efforts should've gone to diplomacy to garner support. Instead, Trump spent the last 2 months insulting our allies, raising tariffs and threatening to take over Greenland.
Trump toppled Venezuela's President for one reason (drugs) but then pivoted to rare minerals and oil immediately after. This causes mistrust with leaders across the globe.
He did not appoint experienced military and intelligence strategists. He selected a Fox host and a potential Russian mole as heads of defense and intelligence because they promise more loyalty than competence. This undermines global confidence in the U.S. ability to execute the war.
Sure, I expect the next few days, maybe even weeks, to produce lots of great headlines as Israel and the U.S. destroy Iran's capability to wage a conventional war. There will be more "winning" than we can stand. But that's not the primary objective of this war. Regime change is the objective, and without an organized opposition, Iran is likely to fall into civil war. And without U.S. boots on the ground, the wrong opposition could win. The war will not be won in the next week. Regime change will take time.
In the meantime, terrorist cells that have been dormant will be activated. Iran's proxies will be emboldened and Russia will not sit idly by waiting for their power in the Middle East to diminish. Their support does not need to lead to victory. Iran only need survive to the midterms and inflict as much damage and chaos as possible to turn the fickle American public against the war.
I hope I am wrong. I hope Trump was right on this and the government topples and is replaced by a pro-Western government.
But I am going on the record to make it clear that a bad outcome was entirely predictable and could've been prevented by strong leadership.
P.J.T. in Raton, NM, writes: I trust both Netanyahu and Trump as far as I could throw them, but if there's a silver lining here internationally, Trump's war on Iran could mean that Iranian arms will stop supporting Russia's war on Ukraine. Whatever kompromat Putin might have on the Pedo King of Lard o' MAGA, I hope he's pulling his hair out right now. I harbor no delusions that Trump intended to help Ukraine, but the "law of unintended consequences" may work for the cause of peace in Eastern Europe. I'd love to be in Zelenskyy's head right now.
S.C-M. in Scottsdale, AZ, writes: In 1941, the U.S. and Japan were in negotiations to avoid a war and then Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Yesterday, the U.S. and Iran were in negotiations to avoid a war and then the U.S. attacked Tehran.
I know the parallels are a bit strained, but I could not help but notice the similarities.
J.C. in Fez, Morocco, writes: I liked what a friend suggested, and I'd like to see this get more traction: The Epstein Files War has begun.
J.E. in Manhattan, NY, writes: You're going to see a lot of ink spilled and pixels spent using the word "distraction." I am begging people to stop doing that.
Iranian lives are not a distraction. The girls killed at the school that was bombed are people. They were sisters, daughters, and future writers, artists, scientists, office workers, and yes, mothers.
Trump may not be playing 3-D chess, but there is a strategy here: Flood the zone. Leave people too exhausted to fight, because there are so many fronts to fight on. This is especially effective in the U.S., where we tend to not draw connections between struggles. As a political culture we tend to look at, say, trans rights as separate from income inequality as separate from foreign policy, when in fact they are very much connected at multiple levels.
In any case, Trump and the Israeli government decided that bombing Iran was a way to flex in the region and show the world that disobedience to the U.S. will not be tolerated. The breathtaking stupidity—on the order of Tsar Nicholas II taking command of the military in World War I, or maybe the French or Portuguese deciding to try and hold on to their colonies when it was clear that wasn't going to happen.
Breaking negotiations to start a war to stop that country from getting a nuclear weapon—even if that were the case here—will do nothing to stop other nations from wanting nuclear weapons. One thing I have never seen an American pundit consider is what happens if we, the United States, scare the bejeezus out of every other country, and instead of folding they decide to fight harder?
As Americans we assume, as a culture, that we have "good intentions"—when in fact, historically, our government has often decided that democracy is unacceptable in any country that might, just might, have the temerity to say "no" to us. The result is a long series of conflicts designed to produce compliant governments, democracy be damned. While politically it is nice if the relevant government looks like a democracy, having actual public participation is usually frowned upon.
Why bring this up? We as Americans have given a loud and clear message: The only way to protect yourself from the U.S. is to get a nuclear weapon or an alliance with the Chinese, or the Russians, or some hostile power. The only thing stopping many countries from starting their own nuclear programs is the expense (it's not cheap!).
If an American diplomat says the U.S. cares about human rights, do not believe them. The fact that the U.S. floated regime change and putting the former Shah's relatives in power demonstrates this. Iran has never attacked the U.S., and most nations will not see us as on the right side here.
If you scare the world enough, they will not always obey. They will fight—just as Americans pride themselves on doing. The Iranian government is oppressive and terrible in a myriad of ways, but if you wanted to make them more popular with the populace, congratulations, we have done just that. (What, do people think the "rally round the flag" effect only applies to Americans?)
As the saying goes, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. I predict—and I hope I am wrong—many more countries will take their cue and start having deeper conversations with the Chinese. We haven't even gotten to the possibility of igniting a wider conflict.
But again, this isn't a "distraction"—it's a poorly thought out strategy to try and scare the rest of the world (Nixon pioneered this with the "madman" strategy, which... didn't work, longer-term). And I submit that it isn't going to work here.
S.A.K. in Karnataka, India, writes: You wrote, before Iran was actually attacked:
It is also a political gamble on an unimaginable scale. If Trump could pull it off, permanently destroying Iran as a (nuclear) power, and doing it all without losing many American lives or creating many terrorist attacks, he would be a hero and Republicans would probably win the midterms. On the other hand, if it all went south with plenty of damage to Iran but at the price of multiple Navy ships being sunk with thousands of sailors dying, the economy in chaos, and the Dow down 20,000 points.I know which side I am rooting for. The time for niceties is over. The depths to which neocons are stooping to distract from and protect the Epstein class are, ultimately, not a surprise.
The fact that a "win" in Iran would probably help the Republicans sway the midterms their way says as much about the American populace as anything else.
L.B. in Savannah, GA, writes: I remember the lead-up to George W. Bush's Iraq war, when I participated in the largest anti-war demonstrations in history that took place before a war started. I'm baffled by the lack of a similar response today, especially when Trump's reasons for starting a war with Iran are sketchier than Bush's reasons for his war. Is our goal to end Iran's nuclear bomb program? Retaliation for the regime's killing of thousands of their own people in last month's demonstrations (i.e. "help is on the way")? Regime change? What's the plan, to air-drop Mr. Pahlavi into downtown Tehran with taxi fare and a copy of Forming a New Government for Dummies?
Past wars have been criticized for having no endgame; this one doesn't even have a beginning game, or at least not one I can fathom. My only hope is that Trump is trying to convince the mullahs that he may actually be crazy enough to attack them, which may lead them to capitulate without a shot being fired. I'll give him credit for that if he pulls that off. But if all we do is drop a few bombs, and Iran retaliates by blocking the Strait of Hormuz or carrying out a cyberattack (or worse) in the U.S., we may pay the price for this lack of planning for years to come.
Z.Z. in Coarsegold, CA, writes: The United States has assembled the largest concentration of airpower in the Middle East since 2003. Two carrier strike groups, F-22s, F-35s, B-2 bombers, and a logistics tail built for sustained air operations. We're told to watch for history to rhyme. It does, but not in the way anyone is promising.
The run-up to the second Iraq war took about 6 weeks of visible deployment, after months of quiet preparation and a "war before the war" air campaign. What we're seeing now is basically the same playbook. Air power first, no ground invasion in sight. The implied promise is that precision strikes will take out military targets, and then something will happen. Maybe diplomacy, maybe regime change, maybe a negotiated surrender. But no one is saying what comes next.
History doesn't offer much reassurance. Episodic airpower, no matter how impressive, has never actually forced a government to collapse or surrender. When the bombing stops, whether it's nuclear facilities or IRGC barracks, the regime will still be there. The administration hasn't answered the basic question, at least not publicly and probably not even internally: What happens then?
There's little reason to think we'll get a serious answer. Just look at the Venezuelan fishing boats. This isn't a one-off; it's a pattern. Missile strikes on boats with no evidence of drugs. Public bragging about killing people on small boats. Fishermen in Trinidad are now afraid to go out because, as they put it, everyone is a suspect. This isn't counter-drug work. This is a president who sees military force as theater, who treats killing as a kind of performance.
And this is the person who will decide what happens after the air campaign. Is it realistic to expect a grown-up response from a president who, by every available measure, acts like a 9-year-old with a temper and command of the world's largest military? The so-called "madman theory" only works if the madness is an act. When the behavior is consistent, impulsive, and unchecked by legal review or any adult supervision, it stops being a strategy. It's just dangerous.
We've built the hammer. No one seems to be asking what we'll do when all we have is a hammer, and the problem in front of us doesn't look anything like a nail.
A.G. in Scranton, PA, writes: I tell my "Christian" friends and family this, that they better have a big ol' basket of asterisks to bring with them when they stand before G-d so they can produce them when needed... and they're gonna need them, because He's gonna wanna ask them why they supported what He specifically commanded them to not support and why they did what He explicitly commanded them to not do.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.*
Thou shalt not steal.*
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.*
Give justice to the weak and the fatherless, maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.*
Rescue the needy and the weak, deliver them from the hand of the wicked.*
Love thy neighbor.*
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of G-d.*
I call it the Asterisk Campaign, one I created specifically for the purposes of people like my family and for those other merciful, kind, decent, loving, and non-judgmental believers in equal rights for Americans of all colors, genders, races, faiths, and creeds who fill the pedophilia-supporting pews of the American Evangelical Christian community.
Oh, look. I found an * my family must have dropped while learning how to better disguise their racist hate for our brown neighbors as patriotism while watching Riefenstahl and Friends on Fox "News."
I wonder what they were going to use this one for?
Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me, as well. And truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did not do that for me, as well.
It must have fallen off the end of that, because without it, the words of Christ look very different from the actions I see from His (Trump's) followers.
Sigh. I wanted a Christian Right, all I got was a Christian Worldview Right Now.
Again, we'll have more on Iran tomorrow. And probably the day after that, and... (Z)
(Z) writes: These were not William T. Sherman's final words, but they were prompted by all the dying he saw going on around him: "I confess, without shame, I am sick and tired of fighting... 'tis only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated... that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation."
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