Trump's Stupid, Useless, Unnecessary War Changes Nothing

Another war – unwinnable, unnecessary, and built on false pretense and dishonesty. I’d call it “typically Trump,” but these violent tantrums are typically American. We are told that Iran is on the “precipice” of having a nuclear weapon, while hearing US intelligence officials state that Iran is nowhere close to building a nuke. The main Iran/nukes scaremonger is Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, who is not only using war to keep himself from being sent to jail, but has been saying Iran is “only this close” from having a nuclear weapon for twenty years.

Like Trump, Netanyahu very much opposed the US/EU/Russian nuclear deal with Iran. His reasons were that it wasn’t “strong enough,” a claim echoed by American conservative hawks. (Trump merely hated the deal because Obama, a Black man, was behind it.) Netanyahu and the hawks refused to acknowledge a few things:

First, that no arms agreement is ever one-sided. Agreements are a series of compromises. No one gets exactly what they want, especially if that means that one side gets nothing or has no say in the process, which would not be an agreement as much as a dictate.

Second, all agreements are building blocks, especially when the parties involved do not trust each other. As trust builds, agreements are modified. Sometimes the agreement gets stronger; sometimes it is weakened; usually it is a bit of both, after all, every party to an agreement has its own goals, goals which change over time.

Third, arms agreements are subject to monitoring to determine whether or not the terms are being held to. If the terms aren’t held to, there are things in the agreement to address that, including ending the agreement through a process (not by fiat). So, if we agree that I am not to make fart jokes in class and a monitor hears me making fart jokes in class, we have a meeting and hash it out, and if I keep making fart jokes, refusing to stop despite being warned, the agreement is off and you fit me with a muzzle. If you only suspect me of making fart jokes, announce “deal off,” and demand I don a muzzle, you’ve broken our deal, and I get to make fart jokes ad nauseum.

Four, what is the alternative to the agreement? War? Will anyone cop to wanting a war? I’m not talking “at the moment of crisis,” but as the final goal? Certainly, Netanyahu has, over the last twenty years, expressed interest in at least bombing Iran. Israel has also attacked Iran. While Trump has campaigned as an anti-war politician, he’s also been open to war with Iran and, during his first term, ordered attacks on the country. Neither Netanyahu or Trump has called this violence war (and neither has Iran, who, mainly through proxies, has attacked Israel and US military sites), using terms like “defensive actions” to justify military aggression.

I generally distrust anything a government at war says about the war that they are engaged in. If they aren’t talking in certainties while clouded in the “fog of war,” they are either keeping information from us, spinning, telling half-truth, or lying. Those of us who experienced the “War on Terror” were subject to a rolling series of lies, lies that led to the attack on Iraq and then kept the war going for more than a decade, including through Trump’s first term. Most recently, Netanyahu and his political allies have lied repeatedly about Israeli’s war on Gaza, about targeting hospitals and schools, about massacring civilians, and about deliberately starving Gazans as a tactic of war.

And now that Trump, a man whose “greatest” attribute is his ability to lie about anything, is the spokesmodel for a war, I’m supposed to trust what he and his people say? My lord!

Right after the first American bombs dropped on Iran’s nuclear sites, Trump declared total victory and demanded “total surrender” from Iran. He said that the US had “completely obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. In less than twenty-four hours, that claim had been rolled back by administration officials. Iran’s capability wasn’t “obliterated” but “severely damaged.” Now word is trickling out that no one knows much of anything, which makes sense as there’s no American intelligence operations at those bombing targets. The US can only look at satellite footage and guess.

Meanwhile, the administration is spinning that the plan has always been to side with Israel to bomb Iran, and that Trump succeeded by carrying out a “ruse.” That is why he kept telling the press that he didn’t know what he was going to do, or so that’s the claim. Here’s the thing: While Trump is a serial liar, he’s not very good at it.

Rewatch footage of Trump saying he doesn’t know what he’s going to do and you see two things: One is that he is lying. The second thing is that he’s deluded. You can tell by a barely suppressed smirk on his face and the attitude that he’s pulling one over on us. He’s enjoying the moment. And he actually thinks that his “ruse” is successful, when it is pretty clear that he’s not only lying, he’s also reading the room.

This is not a grand revelation: As noted, Trump is a serial liar. He also is a serial room reader. And you see these two things working together all the time. He lies, gauges the reaction. If the reaction is positive, he continues with the lie. If it is negative, he finds a lie that counters his previous lie and then lies about changing what he said.

So, yeah, maybe when Trump was saying he didn’t know what he was going to do, he knew what he wanted to do, but he was also seeing what the reaction was, ready to reject war, at least until he could get a reaction that justified, in his mind, war. It’s not like Trump has a new bag of tricks. We’ve seen this kind of thing over and over. Hell, we just experienced months of this bullshit on tariffs. And now we are seeing it with war.

Did Trump’s “ruse” work? Against Americans, kinda, we will see. Against the American mainstream media, probably so. Against Iran, no. Not at all. Only a fool would think that Trump’s constant demands that Iran negotiate with the US and Israel were taken on face value by Iran, especially when there was no framework or structure in place for negotiations. Trump digitally screaming “EVACUTATE TEHRAN!” passed by Iran without notice. And here is why:

Israeli was already bombing Iran. Israeli and the US are allies. Trump had already attacked Iran in his first term. Trump has repeatedly threatened Iran. Iran figured a US attack was coming, it was just a matter of when. Iran was prepared and has been prepared for a US attack for decades.

Additionally, Iran knew that no military facility is 100% safe from attack, especially facilities known to be nuke sites, so they did what every country does, they had back-up sites that they hoped had not been detected. They had personnel ready to move way before bombs dropped and had already assessed what material and equipment that could be moved and what they could afford to lose.

And, though Trump might be clueless to all this, the US military knows the score, because that is their fucking job. Also, these kind of back-up plans are exactly what the US and every military power has going on. None of this is special or unique: It’s national defense 101.

So, what happens next? Hell, I don’t know. Iran will attack the United States, either directly or through proxies, either on US soil or abroad. Iran has already lobbed some missiles at a US base in Qatar. It has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, where about a fifth of the world’s oil flows through.

If Iran wants to bring the violence to the US, it will be going against the 22-year old career intern and lawnmowing boy who heads US counterterrorism operations. An attack on US soil will move Trump closer to declaring martial law, expanding the definition of terrorism to includes whomever he wants to target.

Or this whole thing could blow up on Trump. I have no fucking idea. But this is what I know for sure:

Trump has troops in Los Angeles illegally standing off against civilians. Trump is illegally snatching people off the street and deporting them. Trump has wrecked the economy is multiple ways. Trump has no solid tariff deals. Trump oversaw Elon Musk’s destruction of government services and damaged our safety net. Trump has hired people to run important departments and agencies who have absolutely no idea what they are doing. Trump’s corruption has topped his previous regime, which is saying a lot. Trump has eliminated basic rights for LGBTQ people and women, and is trying to shrink rights for people of color. Trump’s domestic and immigration policies stink of white supremacy. Trump wants to head an authoritarian regime. Trump has started the process of selling off public land and has his sights on our National Parks. Trump wants to privatize the whole medical system as well as Social Security. Trump is stealing money from the working class to give to the wealthiest among us. And now we have a stupid war.

Aside from the war, nothing has changed. Everything Trump has been trying to do, he will continue to try to do. The only thing between Trump’s desires and our rights is us and our dissent. We stand down because he’s got us into another war and because politicians and pundits say we must “Support the troops” and he will see that as a sign of weakness and move to enforce his will, which up until now, and because of our opposition, he hasn’t been very successful at. Yes, he’s fucked up a lot of things, but he’s been unable to build from the destruction. That’s because of us. Keep on keepin’ on.