“What I was not prepared to do on Saturday was for the U.K. to join a war unless I was satisfied there was a lawful basis and a viable thought-through plan. That remains my position.”
— Keir Starmer, PM of our longtime greatest ally
And so the PM sits (aside from sending some assets to the area to protect British subjects and interests).
And so do I. This started over the weekend, and I haven’t said a word about it here on the blog. Or about anything else, to be honest. I’ve been busy. But when you have something to say, you find time to say it.
Unfortunately, I have nothing to say beyond what I’ve said in the past. The basic math of this hasn’t changed. To set out the problem:
- Donald “What-Irrational-Impulse-Am-I-Feeling-At-This-Moment?” Trump is the president of the United States, thanks to the fact that the American electorate has gone mad. If any other president in U.S. history were telling me this battle is unavoidable I would have a basis for trusting him.
- I could do that because the possibility of an unavoidable war with Iran has been one of the standing threats for this country since the late 1980s. Handling the real threats Iran presents while avoiding that war has been a top American priority for all that time, because such a war would be far too destructive — for us, for them and for the world.
- We haven’t wanted war despite the fact that the post-shah Iran was largely founded upon hatred of the United States and any country resembling the Great Satan; the additional fact that Iran is the world’s dominant force in supporting terrorism here, there and everywhere, including the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that pulled Israel into the war that Hamas wanted so much; and the biggest fact of all, that Iran has been obsessed with, whatever the risk, developing the capacity to hurl nuclear weapons at the U.S., Israel and anyone else who has made their list. (That list tends be quite long, including non-Shiite states in the area.) And Iran is not inclined to send indignant notes to those on its list. It is far more inclined toward the apocalyptic approach.
- So leaders of the United States, a once-rational country, have until now done what they could to contain that nuclear threat, short of outright war. But our presidents and their administrations have known that the time may come when we have to go in “bigly,” despite the fact that we believe the oppressed people of Iran have kindly intentions toward us — and we wouldn’t want to change that. The hope has always been peaceful regime change.
- It is possible that before this started over the weekend, we had reached the point when a rational leader would say, “It’s time. The nuclear threat is now imminent, and we have no choice but to go all-out to prevent it.” If Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George Bush fils, Bill Clinton, Bush pere, or Ronald Reagan” announced that, I might be dismayed, but I would accept the situation as necessary. They were all rational men, surrounded by rational men and women who would have done all they could to avoid that step, but now saw it as unavoidable.
- I can’t for a second take that position under the present circumstances. Donald Trump airs a video of himself in the middle of the night on the weekend wearing a hat that looks like it was bought from a souvenir stand at the Olympics and tells us that in his considered opinion the time has come. And I’m supposed to trust him, the convicted felon whose other current international obsession is threatening our closest allies with war if they won’t give him, for some insane reason, Greenland? And remember, this is not like the first Trump term, when grownups like James Mattis were in the room. In the place where decisions are made, there is no one around Trump who is both smarter than he is, and willing to stand up to him.
- Do I “support our troops” — not only the pilots taking the most immediate risks now, but the soldiers, sailors and marines in the region who are targets for retaliation now, and likely to have to go in later? You bet. Always. I want them coming home safely to their families. I also want them, now that it’s started, to accomplish their missions. That means fully destroying Iranian nuclear capabilities, doing the same with conventional capacities (I think; can’t pretend to know what dangers lie in suddenly creating such a vacuum), toppling those presently in power, and standing ready to support a new regime that is better for all concerned.
- And I want those missions accomplished with zero noncombatant casualties. I know that’s impossible, but it’s what I want. In this real world, though, I just have to hope for the fewest casualies possible. We need the good people of Iran to go home safely to their families. Then we need then to construct and run that new Iran, a place far better than the Iran of the ayatollahs or the shah who preceded them. That, of course, is almost as tall an order as zero collateral damage.
- I also hope that our own electorate — including all those isolationists who thought Trump was one of them — turn the once-Grand Old Party out of power in the fall, because that would (or at least might) restore the legislative branch as a check on the executive. Then I hope the electorate completely recovers its sanity and elects a president who is entirely unlike this guy or the people with whom he surrounds himself. You know, someone like every other president we’ve ever had.
- After all, this is why elections matter, and the one we had in 2024 more than ever. If we had put (or kept) a normal person in the White House, that person would have made mistakes, but would have been persuadable to change course. That person would have have been subject to reason, to the law, to tradition, to foreseeable consequences. These ways of changing course are unavailable to us. Trump is immune to such things, with a Congress that doesn’t dare oppose him, because of all those supporters who will back him no matter what.
I’ve set out a lot to hope for, plenty for cynical — or even just plain sensible — folks to laugh at. But what else can I do? No practical path for changing this situation lies before me, or any of us at this moment. All any of us can do is hope — and pray — for the best.
Related Posts
I am completely dissatisfied with that post, just as I am with the current situation.
If you’d like to read something that’s better reasoned and offers clearer hope, read “The Case for Striking Iran,” by Never-Trumper Bret Stephens, for whom I have great respect. I just can’t be quite as sanguine about the situation as he manages to be in this piece, and in a later column, “Trump and Netanyahu Are Doing the Free World a Favor.” He’s still a Never-Trumper, and no friend to Netanyahu, but he sees this as “a war that Iran has been waging against the United States since 1979.”
Or you can read something published the same day by the NYT’s editorial board that condemns this action. See “Trump’s Attack on Iran is Reckless.” Which of course it is, because we know that Trump will do even the most sensible thing recklessly, and he’s sticking to his habits in this case. But the NYT is compelled by facts to acknowledge that “A responsible American president could make a plausible argument for further action against Iran.” Because they’re looking at the same facts, the same history and the same threat that Stephens is.
The NYT says this is just not the guy to do it, and of course, Trump is not doing it: “Mr. Trump is not even attempting this approach.”
One of the things wrong with the post is that I started with Keir Starmer for a reason, and didn’t get back to him.
I started to fix that at the end, but I’d gone in a different direction and didn’t see a quick way to work it in without a lot of rewriting.
The thing is, not having Britain by our side is a very bad sign. They’re ALWAYS with us, at least since that one time they burned Washington.
That indicates that MI6 is not confirming whatever Trump and Netanyahu are telling him about the status of the nuclear threat. And I trust MI6, in this situation, more than I do the American intelligence apparatus. That’s because Tulsi Gabbard is not running MI6, to put it simply.
His refusal also appears to testify to how much Trump, with his Greenland farce and other foolishness, has gratuitously alienated even our very best friends.
Maybe it WAS necessary to strike Iran now (something that a responsible president could tell us, and be believed). Maybe we had no choice, and MI6 doesn’t know it. But how sad, and dangerous, it is to take such action with no one at your side but Netanyahu.
That’s why you go to great lengths to preserve alliances — something Trump doesn’t know, and doesn’t care about…
Are we really supposed to believe Trump unilaterally decided on his own to bomb Iran? That there wasn’t a single dissenting opinion from anyone in the Pentagon (you know, the generals who have likely been involved in every single war this century)? The “bomb Iran” message flows upward and then they let Trump think he is making the decision. The military-industrial complex NEEDS a war to keep that never ending supply of deficit funded dollars flowing. Peace isn’t an option.
You use the term “isolationist” with a high level of scorn. I am proud to be a lifelong isolationist… our involvement around the world in my lifetime hasn’t done a single bit of good and came at a significant cost of human life – including the innocent people our military has killed — as well as draining our resources to literally blow up tax dollars that should have been used domestically. Our military doesn’t want to defeat an enemy — with our military strength we should be able to defeat Iran in a matter of days. But that’s not the objective.
Yes, we know that about you Doug.
Y’all — Lindy and the rest — pretty much had control of the country up to Dec. 6, 1941. Those were the glory days, and they’re coming back.
Which is why Trump painted himself as an isolationist. Of course, he wasn’t. He’s never anything other than what he thinks will benefit him at a given moment…
If you want to speculate about what a potential post-clerical, post-IRGC Iran might look like, you need look no further than what’s happened in Iraq since it fell off our national radar. In short, it’s been a story of sectarianism (forged and underpinned by the power-sharing arrangement drawn up by the US), armed factionalism, violent ethnic and sectarian conflict, authoritarianism, battling over oil resources, and political polarization with attendant institutional dysfunction and widespread corruption.
Iran’s post-war prospects could worsen now that the US president (with operational support from Israel) appears to be encouraging the country’s potential dismemberment, with Kurdish assistance (after he effectively abandoned them in Syria). The Kurds should be wary.
We are fulfilling a decades-old dream of Netanyahu’s to destroy Iran as a regional power, and perhaps as a state (see: Trump’s proposition to the Kurds that effectively calls for Iran’s potential dismemberment). Saudi Arabia likewise shares the desire to deplete Iran. Meanwhile, Trump, recently enamored of “kinetic action” in the wake of the decapitation operation in Venezuela, now sees military action as a boost to his ratings (big spectacles always draw in eyeballs) and to his ego. After all, no mere businessman can send massive military force around the world and smash stuff up, the way a president can.
The point is: no American interest is served here.
Writing in Foreign Policy, Middle East analyst Aaron David Miller and former US ambassador to Egypt and Israel Daniel Kurtzer sum things up briskly: “It is clear that Witkoff and Kushner appeared to sense what Trump wanted and, at his direction, played out a deception strategy by engaging with Iran and making unrealizable demands while Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were plotting war. In the run-up to both the June 2025 war with Iran and the current conflict, the Trump administration scheduled follow-up talks and even a trip by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Israel when it knew war was imminent. An unwitting foreign minister from Oman found himself haplessly isolated in Washington the day before the United States went to war.”
They conclude that the current US diplomacy and strategy demonstrate “no expertise, no process” and “no discipline.” And does not serve American interests.
Rubio wants Cuba next.
I contend that Cuba is a “demolition buy”. You want the property, but the building needs to be razed.
– Cuba’s infrastructure has failed and needs rebuilding.
– Its electrical grid is off more than it is on.
– Its healthcare system is in ruin.
Yeah, but there are all those cool old cars still running about…