War

The posts above are shocking, not least because the first one was published on Easter morning. But they should not be surprising. We handed the world’s most powerful military to a man of incredibly low moral character and insane amounts of hubris and risk tolerance. But whereas the consequence of taking risks in business is bankruptcy (as Trump knows from experience) or fines, a failure to adequately consider risks in geopolitics and war is far more dangerous.

It goes without saying at this point that a combination of ignorance and over-confidence, encouraged by the “easy” operation we conducted in Venezuela, led to our attack in Iran. Not everything about this operation was crazy - Iran really was in a vulnerable state, both militarily thanks to Israel (and to a lesser extent our) attacks over the last year, and domestically thanks to the regime’s recent murder of protestors. There was potentially an opportunity to degrade their capabilities further and possibly even support an internal opposition to the deeply unpopular regime. A limited set of actions aimed at encouraging regime change from within as a best case, and reducing their capability to threaten the region and especially Israel could have made sense. And, had the administration deigned to make the case to Congress (who Constitutionally must be the one to declare war) and the American people (whose taxes and children will pay for this), I suspect they could have earned some popular support.

But they didn’t, and apparently ignored the fact that - unlike Venezuela - Iran’s strategically important geography means that they have a lot of leverage. The fact that they are still able to hold the world economy hostage despite most of the regime’s leaders being killed and their military decimated, shows that America failed to understand its enemy.

And now, Trump is doing what weak bullies do when cornered - lashing out with increasingly deranged threats and rhetoric. I pray that this is his typical bluster and that he TACOs as he often does, but posts like these make me even more worried about his mental state than usual. In his first term, there’d still be grown-ups around him to talk him down. But this was a war of his choosing, and he’s surrounded by sycophants selected for their loyalty rather than competence or expertise. I’m sure JD doesn’t want this, and I think Rubio is generally sane and competent, but is he listening to them? Or is he listening to Hegseth’s crowing about our de-wokeified military’s invincible lethality?

The problem is, we don’t know, and the whole world is anxiously waiting to see if our President is about to commit war crimes and inflict even more moral injury on America and the world. A man who, by his own admission, is only constrained by his “morality,” and who is able to act with the impunity of an emperor because of the utter spinelessness of the elected members of his own party who are unwilling to rein him in.

At least America and even some of his former allies seem to be waking up, but with another two and half years of this, that’s cold comfort.