Vague Reflections On Trump’s War of Civilization Annihilation
Bear with me as I meander through a few vague thoughts about the war in Iran (and by extension everywhere else) that have been swirling around in my head this past week, and which I have deliberately chosen not to catch, ground, and tie to a spot, for the simple reason that some realities are too ugly to entertain for more than a moment; for that reason writing them down might be a convenient way of expelling them from my soul, like opening a window to let out a wasp that has been terrorizing one’s bedroom.
I have had neighbors I thoroughly disliked. I did not kill them. I have personal acquaintances whose attitudes and behavior I find disagreeable, even antithetical to my core principles. I do not assume this disagreeableness authorizes me to burn down their houses, killing their children at random as necessary. Believing that the Iranian mullahs are evil men, and that the world would be better off if they were no longer in power, does not in itself grant any other government the moral authority to initiate a decapitation strike on that country, let alone a campaign aimed at the complete annihilation of every institution and every weapon left in the country. The practical logic of any such sweeping assumption of moral authority has almost limitless applicability in a political world made up largely of regimes or rulers about which similar criticisms could legitimately be levelled. In other words, if everyone believed he had the authority to act on such logic, wars of aggression, based on nothing but the distastefulness, vice, or ill intent of this or that national government, could be initiated on a regular and random basis, and would inevitably become nearly routine affairs, as the normalization of such acts of quasi-righteous hostility would put almost every government in a constant posture of “kill before you are killed” calculation.
I have seen many anti-Trump “conservatives,” up to and including George Will, for whom I recently had very kind words here, praising the attack on Iran, on the grounds that the Iranian regime is evil, and its people long-suffering. Here we see the problem, which has been an American conservative weakness for decades, of what we may call “pragmatic principles.” That is, there is a tendency among many on the American right to assume that a goal that seems worthy in principle warrants full support in practice, even when undertaken by unprincipled and insupportable men. That is, whether the evil of the Iranian regime in itself justifies the expenditure of American treasure (during an era of crushing national debt), American military resources (during an era of multi-front threats from major powers), and American lives (both military and civilian, given the terrorist-supporting ways of the Iranian regime), is a separate and vexed question. But that these sober and profoundly dangerous endeavors are the sorts of things one should ever willingly put in the hands of a man as morally corrupt, mentally unstable, and aspirationally authoritarian as the very regime you are wishing for him to attack, is as irrational an instantiation of “ad hoc support” as one could possibly imagine.
Meanwhile, you have the sycophants like Lindsey Graham out on the airwaves declaring Trump greater and braver than Ronald Reagan, because Reagan never initiated a regime-change war against Iran or Cuba (the next target on the wish-list, even for George Will) — as though this difference were evidence of Trump’s moral and intellectual superiority as U.S. president, rather than Reagan’s.
Is the world a better place without Iran’s theocratic doomsday cult leadership? The de rigueur reply of the moment, from proponents and opponents of the war alike, is an enthusiastic and unqualified “Yes of course!” Perhaps, however, at the risk of being politically incorrect (a risk I am always happy to take), we might answer without deference to the great god Moral Conformity, and simply note that while in an ideal world, there would be no Iranian mullahs, the real-world fallout of the ongoing scorched earth assault on Iran’s political and civil infrastructure remains very far from clear and settled at this time.
The best case scenario, as of this writing, would be that the whole war will wind itself down within a few weeks, leaving Iran stably in the hands of a new and more responsible and peaceable regime which stops inflicting harm on its neighbors, supporting terrorists and Russian dictators, and violently oppressing its own people. Should that best case scenario actually materialize — which, we must note with some understatement, seems extremely unlikely at this moment — its price would be, among other things, a massive and arguably unnecessary expenditure of American and Israeli wealth and military equipment, the deaths of more than a half dozen American military men and women and a few Israeli counterparts, a large number of civilian casualties in Israel and Arab countries hit by Iran’s retaliatory attacks, billions of dollars in damage to property and infrastructure within those surrounding countries, and of course hundreds if not thousands of deaths of Iranian civilians, severe damage to Iran’s energy and water supplies that will bring significant hardship to the civilian population for some time, and economic damage to Iran that will either take generations to fully overcome or will cost the U.S. untold billions in post-war rebuilding costs, assuming Donald Trump’s regime (and regime, not administration, is the proper word for this anti-American, anti-constitutional gang of globetrotting hustlers and thugs) would trouble with such long-term moral concerns as rebuilding what they have destroyed.
In truth, that very problematic and precarious best case scenario has already become impossible, as the U.S. has already used the war as an excuse to give special exemptions to the international sanctions against Russia by allowing that country to resume selling its oil to India, thereby strengthening Vladimir Putin’s war machine as he continues his unprovoked war of annihilation against Ukraine. In addition, the manner of the Iran war’s initiation has already deepened the precedent-setting path toward absolute executive lawlessness in defiance of the American constitutional system, dragging yet more cowardly concessions of its rightful power from a MAGA-terrified and feckless Congress. Meanwhile, far from winding down within the coming days, the war appears to be in the process of spiralling ever further out of control, partly due to Benjamin Netanyahu’s vested interest commitment to endless crisis and war, and partly due to Donald Trump’s absolute lack of any sort of aim, strategy, or long-range consideration, beyond how this little TV war might help him rig the U.S. midterm elections and divert attention from his starring role in the Epstein files.
Of course, the worst case scenario would be a complete devolution into world war. Short of that, which is to say the second-worst outcome, would be a sudden and complete about-face by the coward Trump, selling out a country and its people after reducing much of it to rubble and killing hundreds of its civilians for no apparent reason, and for no significant gain. Now, what would make the coward Trump do that?
It appears, as I write this, that Trump has just spoken to Vladimir Putin, and then immediately called a reporter at CBS — his official mouthpiece in the mainstream news media — to announce that the war is “very complete, pretty much.” In other words, he is looking to escape from the monster he has unleashed and the economic crash he has precipitated, and in typical Trump style, he is trying to frame his complete failure and folly as a brilliant success like the world has never seen — and to portray his obedient ring-kissing for his hero in the Kremlin as a tough-guy victory lap.
Meanwhile Putin, a failed dictator of a dying economy with a pathetic military currently being humiliated and decimated on a daily basis by an under-equipped and under-manned Ukrainian defense force, is calling the shots on the world stage, simply because two cretins nearly as corrupt as he is, and beholden to him for reasons only they know, happen to be the leaders of the two formerly worthy countries that started this unnecessary and careless war in the Middle East.
