Assenting to Trump's insane Iran war would mean accepting a broken and malevolent vision of America
Democrats who are considering funding the illegal attack on Iran risk tossing the opposition into a moral abyss, while betraying the American people in favor of the president
The past two weeks have only amplified the illegality, gratuitousness, and moral grotesquerie of the U.S. war on Iran that were already apparent from its start. This is a war that should never have been started, waged by a president who should never have been trusted to serve a second time as commander in chief. Not only have the main justifications for the attack been shown to be lies or unfounded assertions, but the President Trump’s shifting stated goals for the attack have introduced a sickening funhouse mirror quality to utterly serious matters of life and death. He appeared to marvel at how the administration’s plans for propping up alternative Iranian leaders have been undermined by the military campaign’s brutal effectiveness, telling reporters a week ago that, “The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates. They’re all dead. Second or third place is dead.” He has nonetheless declared that he must have a role and apparent veto power over the selection of Iran’s next leader — a dubious and even insane assertion given the theocratic government in question, and suggesting he sees a path to the U.S. transforming Iran into some sort of American satrapy. And this past weekend, he double-downed again on maximalism, saying that only “unconditional surrender” of Iran would be acceptable, and accompanying this with vows of massive new destruction to come.
Perhaps most ominous is another possibility: that absent the unlikely installation of a pliant Iranian leadership, the Trump regime and Israel would find it desirable to reduce Iran to a state of civil war and anarchy. As The Nation writer (and recent Theory of Change guest) Jeet Heer observes, “Maybe Trump was willing to join in a war that had been advocated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the last four decades because, for many advocates for this war, the prospect of Iran’s collapsing into turmoil and becoming a failed state is a welcome one.” Heer notes not only the killings of multiple layers of Iranian leadership (including those Trump had apparently considered as possible interlocutors in a new government, but the targeting of opposition leaders and of border guards (the latter of which would assist separatist group infiltration from neighboring countries). The idea of plunging a nation of 90 million — three times the size of Iraq — into a failed state square in the heart of the Middle East is sheer madness and folly, at least for anyone who holds rational ideas of American national security.
In the face of all this tremendous violence half a world away, including retaliatory missile and drone strikes by Iran, it might seem counter-intuitive to say that for Americans, the primary way to view this war is through the lens of domestic politics: specifically, as a bid by Donald Trump to appear powerful on the American political scene by illicitly deploying the U.S. military into a bloody war that he seems to alternatively think will be over quickly in a way that he can claim as a popularity-enhancing victory, or that will benefit him by providing a long-term hum of danger and mayhem that will cleave frightened Americans to his strongman pretensions.
The lack of actual justifications for the war, combined with the absence of congressional authorization, the lies used to justify it, the dangers it will create for Americans long after Trump has left office, and the hideous violence and death it’s inflicting on innocent Iranian civilians, means that this is a war that the Democratic opposition must find a way to stop as soon as possible. In real time, every American can see that our nation’s fate is currently in the hands of a madman and aspiring authoritarian.
Although there are obvious continuities between Donald Trump’s unconstrained exercise of U.S. force abroad and that of presidents of both parties over the past half century, Trump has amplified such abuse of power to striking new levels that grow out of the authoritarianism he and MAGA are attempting to impose upon the American citizenry. The vision of a supremely powerful chief executive who rides roughshod over Congress, the courts, and the Constitution can hardly be fire-walled off from abuses of power overseas. Remember: Iran is merely the latest of an escalating rush of recent foreign policy outrages, including the killing of some 150 sailors in the Caribbean and Pacific for alleged drug-running; the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and the intertwining of U.S. power with that country’s remaining corrupt regime; the bombing of targets in Nigeria out of a supposed interested in protecting Christians; and a 12-day bombing attack on Iran last June by the U.S. and Israel.
The growing evidence of slipshod planning for this current war, including obvious retaliatory moves by Iran to widen and escalate the conflict, are worth noting and attaching to the president — but even this otherwise important line of attack is secondary to the fact that this an illegal war waged under false pretenses. Should opponents, including Democrats, really waste time arguing for a better-conducted illegal war? That would not just be illogical, but edge up to a “loyal opposition” territory that holds that Americans should simply get on board once a president has commenced hostilities, not matter how unjustified (more on this point below).
Rather, reflecting on the president’s ongoing authoritarian onslaught at home reminds us that the opposition’s primary responsibility is to protect the United States from Donald Trump, not from a grossly exaggerated if not outright fictionalized threat from Iran that in no way legitimizes a war against that country. The president’s open efforts to rig the upcoming midterms; his dispatch of ICE and other immigration forces to brutalize and murder Americans in Minneapolis and elsewhere; his targeting of multiple Democratic members of Congress for spurious and illegal Justice Department investigations: it is safe to say that any Democrat who fails to see Donald Trump as an immediate, existential danger to American democracy lacks the political judgment to hold office and to do their duty in defending the Constitution. And protecting the United States from Trump most certainly involves doing all in their power to stop a war that is not only harming U.S. interests in the world, but itself represents a direct assault on the sovereignty of the American people while seeking to implicate all of us in unspeakable horrors.
I want to be very clear that his assault on our rights and power as Americans via the war on Iran is hardly abstract, though of course very basic and important principles are also at stake. The first layer of the indictment against Trump — that he’s gone to war without a congressional declaration of war or other authorization — is vitally important, as it underlies the basic illegality of his actions against Iran. Yet a fundamental illegitimacy would still exist even if the Republican-controlled Congress did vote to empower the president, for some basic reasons of the president’s own making: because he has repeatedly lied to the American people for why this war is necessary. He lied about “obliterating” Iran’s nuclear program six months ago; he lied about Iran being two weeks away from obtaining a nuclear weapon; he has lied about Iran suddenly being an existential danger to the United States.
The only existential danger at play is the one currently experienced by Trump himself, as his popularity and political standing have crashed downward as more and more Americans grow crucially aware of his basic unfitness for office. THIS is the actual “crisis” the Iran war seeks to remedy.
And this is where I see a crucial missing piece in the public discussion about the Iran war. There is simply not nearly enough emphasis on how Trump’s lies don’t just expose the war as an unnecessary, unprovoked act of aggression against another country (however vilified Iran has been in the American imaginary over the past half century), but also are in themselves an unforgivable attempt to deceive and betray the American people on some of the most important public questions possible — whether to go to war, and for the country to assume all the risks that war inevitably entails. Through his lies, the president is attempting to deceive us into supporting actions that are not actually in our interest. Through his lies, he is attempting to implicate the American people in mass death and destruction against the Iranian people. And through his lies, he is engaging in a bottomless contempt for each and every one of us: our collective right to play some part, however individually small, in the destiny of our country, to be treated as political equals, to be accorded a baseline dignity and respect as citizens.
This bottomless contempt becomes still more unforgivable when we understand that not only is Trump trying to implicate us all in a pointless war that appears set to make us less safe, but in killings of civilians and possible war crimes that chill the blood of any decent person (and here were must include the possibility that this war will end up plunging Iran into civil war or anarchy). The most sickening single incident to date has been a U.S. strike on a girl’s school, which slaughtered an estimated 175 innocents, most of whom were children. In the administration’s heartless denials and rejections of culpability, we get a sharper sense of the nauseating abyss at which we stand, or perhaps have already begun tumbling down.
And by contextualizing such incidents, the ongoing psychotic, bloodthirsty proclamations of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about the “death and destruction” the U.S. is reigning down on Iran, along with his celebration of loosened rules of engagement, give voice to this administration’s interest in fundamentally re-defining the nature of the United States via this war: into a country whose most basic identity is not its embrace of democracy or promotion of egalitarian values, but its willingness to inflict limitless violence on other countries. Donald Trump and his allies want us to be as bad as they are, to join them in an orgy of state violence against faceless, evil “others” that we shouldn’t hesitate to label as fascistic.
To Trump, the American people are simply chumps and marks to be manipulated and exploited. And this holds true for his supporters as well, to whom he long promised no more forever wars in the Middle East. Given that the current attacks on Iran are accurately seen as a continuation of the 12-day bombing of Iran last year, we could argue that we’re already well into a new forever war with which we will be dealing long after Trump has left office (points made by former Obama administration official Ben Rhodes in a recent interview by Ezra Klein). Donald Trump is attempting to distract the American people from the danger he poses to us by conjuring a foreign enemy against which he alone can defend us. Are Americans really going to fall for his tired authoritarian schtick?
If the Democrats are serious about defeating Trump’s authoritarianism, then they need to be serious about stopping this war that both grows out of and aims to nourish that authoritarianism. And if they’re serious about stopping this war, then they should be expending furious energy and outreach in a campaign to incite the American people — including persuadable Trump supporters who believed his lies about opposing forever wars — into a righteous fury against the president’s appalling, violent betrayal of the public trust.
So if unflinching opposition to this war is as obvious as I’ve been arguing, then why are we seeing reporting that some Senate Democrats are ready to vote to fund the attacks on Iran, which are currently costing $1 billion every day, and may soon require the passage of supplemental spending? According to Politico, their number includes includes Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Gary Peters of Michigan, Tim Kaine of Virginia, and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan. Their rationale appears to be a combination of long-standing support for taking down Iran’s government, alongside the notion that Democrats are simply required to support a war that’s already ongoing, regardless of its fair or foul beginnings.
As to the first justification, I would re-iterate that in choosing between Iran or Trump as a more dangerous threat to the United States, the honest answer is the latter. To believe that this authoritarian president should be further empowered as a wartime leader is to truly believe that the destruction of Iran is more important than the preservation of American democracy. But of course, on top of this, we have the plain facts of Trump’s incompetence and malevolence in pursuing this war even according to his own vaguely stated aims (unconditional surrender, replacement of Iran’s government with some sort of pliant leadership), as well as the overriding fact of his contemptuous betrayal of the American people by lying straight to our faces about why this war is necessary. Even for so-called “Iran hawks,” the idea that they would sign on to a war with such badly articulated goals, massive civilian casualties, and lack of exit strategy defies logic; why would they subordinate themselves to the leadership of an authoritarian (who, not incidentally, is currently engaged in means foul and fouler to ensure that the Democrats never win national power again)?
As for the idea that Democrats must support a war once it is started — well, that’s so laughable as to almost not even merit a response (“I need to know the goals and the plan. … I don’t rule anything out,” said Senator Slotkin. “I mean, we’re in it.”) If a war is bad and wrong, it should be stopped, especially if this can be accomplished in its early days. The power of the purse is the Democrats’ input into a war that should not have been waged in the first place, and to give this up is to surrender their power over war and peace a second time, voluntarily, abjectly. Politico reports that, “Many who left the door open to voting for a supplemental funding package said the administration would first have to provide Congress with more information about the offensive. That includes the rationale for striking Iran, a commitment to avoid putting boots on the ground and a plan for ending the conflict.” But this is just looking for reasons not to do their duty to the American people by moving decisively to end a war that is already, obviously catastrophically stupid.
I note these instances of Democratic cowardice not to say that the whole party has been blind-sided by Trump, but because the party must aim for much more unity if it hopes to stop this war and fashion it into a tool for ending his presidency. The fact that some Democrats are contemplating making themselves complicit in an illegal war that could otherwise be key to Trump’s political undoing points up some truly monumental political misjudgments. It seems astonishing that any Democratic politician could have witnessed the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency, and concluded that the thing we really need right now is to give him more money for a deranged war in the Middle East. It is likewise astonishing that any might think that Americans should trust him to tell us the truth about this war’s goals, when he’s already lied about its justifications. And its is nearly beyond comprehension that any might look at how the war has been conducted to date, and conclude that Democrats and ordinary Americans should align themselves with the fascistic, nihilistic values on display.
Democrats shouldn’t need more polls to know that with a little more encouragement and a little less gaslighting, Americans of a wide variety of political persuasions will increasingly and emphatically reject Trump’s insane new war.