Another Saturday in America

I woke up on Saturday to the news that the US and Israel had started a war with Iran. I wasn’t surprised. But I was deeply disturbed.

What did I do? I went ahead with my plan to go shopping for new shoes.

The giant outlet mall I went to was packed. I had to park at the far end of the massive lot, about a quarter mile away from the nearest shops. I was serenaded by pop music blasting across the acres of shopping space as I walked by stores so full that there were lines of people waiting for others to exit before they could be allowed in.

[In case you were wondering, these folks weren’t panic buying in preparation for wartime hardship. These shops sell designer clothes and housewares.]

This is America on the first day of “major combat operations.” This is America as it causes millions to flee their homes in fear. This is America as it kills a head of state and bombs two schools. This is America as it starts its fourth war in a year. With shame and despair, I felt the reality of what the US has become.

But I got my shoes.

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We are living through a political and moral catastrophe. We might like to think that what we are witnessing is a sudden and massive break from the past. But what’s happening has been in the making for many decades. While I admit this moment is distinctive, it is only small steps from the status quo before Trump 2.0. In the early days of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans were asked by their government to support their country by going shopping. The difference this time is that we aren’t being asked to do anything.

Democratic authority over the war power was in tatters long before the resurrection of Trump. The Global War on Terrorism, for example, was fought for decades in dozens of countries against many unconnected groups without significant Congressional approval or oversight.

This war in Iran—following the Trump administration’s prior attack on Iran last June, it’s declaration of war against drug smugglers in Central and South America, it’s invasion of Venezuela, and its threat of invading Greenland—has burned what was left of democratic control over war. US foreign policy is now governed as a dictatorship. The US president wages war without even consulting Congress or modestly trying to build public support. The vast majority of Americans are opposed to this war and don’t know why it is happening. I’m not sure, but my guess is that most of the people I passed at the mall were either unaware of or indifferent to the war.

The US’s tendency to go to war without thinking through its strategic implications was already well-established. Most spectacularly, the US endeavors in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite displaying America’s overwhelming military superiority, were massive strategic blunders. The lesson of those wars is that there is much more to winning wars than winning battles. But that lesson has not been learned. This war is a continuation of the now well-established American tradition of stupid war.

It’s unclear what the bombing campaign against Iran is even aiming to achieve. One thing is for sure: the war is not intended to thwart an imminent threat from Iran. Iran is further away from acquiring a nuclear weapon than it has been in the recent past. And it has not been planning an attack on either the US or Israel.

President Trump’s statements suggest that the war is intended to cause the demise of the Islamic Republic. But it’s very far from certain that the bombing will bring this about or, if it does, that what follows it will be better for Iran, Israel, or the US. It’s quite possible that the Islamic regime will stay in power. But it’s also quite possible that the bombing will spark a civil war and/or bring to power a new regime that is worse than the Islamic Republic.

Don’t kid yourself by thinking that the US and Israel care about the moral character of the Iranian government. The Islamic Republic is undoubtedly unjust. Only two weeks ago, it engaged in one of the worst massacres that any government has committed against its own people in recent memory. Nevertheless, the Trump administration has made it perfectly clear that it is uninterested in liberating the world’s people from oppression. They are uninterested even in preserving democracy at home. Certainly, they are indifferent about it abroad.

If there is a plausible goal of the war, it is to weaken Iran militarily and shift the balance of power in the region toward countries more aligned with the US and Israel. The bombing may achieve this. But, again, it may not. If the Islamic Republic survives, it might be more hostile to the US and Israel. And if another regime takes its place, it too may be more committed to fighting Israel and the US. Further, by attacking Iran, the US and Israel might cause a shift in alliances across the region. It is not impossible that countries might come to see Iran as more of ally against their shared enemy.

It’s also worth pointing out that Iran’s power in the Middle East was greatly strengthened by the US’s bungled invasion of Iraq. If Iran’s regional power is intolerable, it is only because the US created conditions for it. We may be engaging in a misguided attempt at regime change today because of a misguided attempt at regime change two decades ago.

So, there is a good chance that this war will go down as yet another massive moral and strategic disaster committed by the US military. If it doesn’t, that will only be due to luck, not US strategic wisdom.

The only lesson the Trump administration appears to have learned from the failed regime change wars of the past is to not use ground troops. Deploying the Army and Marines to countries far away focuses American’s attention on those wars and raises expectations that they be fought well. It also enables large numbers of American casualties which tends to turn the people against war. The Trump administration is not taking that risk. It prefers to fight from the air, declare victory, and then move on. We seem to have replaced forever wars with serial wars, two versions of perpetual war.

Last, the so-called “rules-based international order” that the US has claimed to represent had long ago become mostly empty sloganeering. The US used this framing and abided by the “rules” only when doing so served its interests. The US has always claimed the right to use force wherever and whenever it wants. The invasion of Iraq was certainly not done by “the rules.” And the US under the Biden administration supported Israel as it violated the legal prohibition of genocide.

What’s different now is that there is no pretense of justice to US military action. America now openly claims the right to use force whenever it decides force will be in its interests. The charade the US often played in the past—employing moral terms to turn self-serving or imperialistic policies into defensive or humanitarian missions—is over. The US is the most “rogue” state on the planet now.

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Will you remember where you were the day the US invaded Iran in 2026? I doubt it. Like me and the other mallgoers, I bet for you it was just another Saturday in America. This is what’ve become—a country perpetually starting wars that have nothing to do with us and that we have no control over. Trump 2.0 is not as far from the American way as we might like to think.