Plunging U.S. into illegal war with Iran, Donald Trump reminds us he's the true menace to our country
In his half-hearted attempts to sell war with Iran, Trump sticks to a stale authoritarian script: we are beset by evil enemies that he alone can vanquish via violent retribution
Donald Trump’s announcement early Saturday morning that the United States and Israel had attacked Iran on a massive scale, with the distinct goal of toppling its government, should shock and outrage every American. The sources of nausea strike from multiple directions, but let’s start with the most prominent ones: this is an illegal and ill-advised war conducted by an unfit president, waged on the basis of blatant lies. By usurping the war-making power that the Constitution vests in Congress, Donald Trump has disempowered every American, stealing an authority that collectively belongs to the rest of us. As Will Bunch and others have reminded us in the wake of the attack, the Founding Fathers were especially alert to the dangers of a president waging self-serving wars, and could not have been more explicit, via Article 1, Section 8, that Congress has the sole authority to declare war. Adding insult to this fundamental injury to powers that rest with the American public via its congressional representatives, the president has barely sought to explain his actions to the American public; in this, his contempt for us, and his self-regard as some variety of absolute monarch, could hardly be clearer.
Donald Trump illustrates in uniquely stark terms the folly of allowing one man to make such a momentous decision as to commit the United States to war. It is impossible to think of anyone less trustworthy to lead this country into an unprovoked, unnecessary, and illegal war than President Trump. The idea that this degenerate criminal has fully studied the pros and cons of his insane assault, and made a choice to attack based on careful deliberation and weighing of the risks versus benefits for our nation, is simply laughable. As is so often the case, much news coverage of the attack makes a baseline assumption that Trump is (even if dubiously) trying to advance American interests; yet, at this late date, we all should have seen enough to know that Donald Trump has a single, overriding interest: himself. America’s vast war-making powers have fallen into the hands of a grievance-driven sociopath who almost certainly cannot perceive the value of goals and lives beyond his own, except as instruments to manipulate in service of his own ends.
All of us should be having flashbacks to the lies and incompetence that led the United States to attack Iraq nearly 25 years ago. But as mendacious and ill-conceived as that war was, the Iraq invasion appears to have been a model of forthright communication and immaculate planning compared to the torrent of lies, bombast, and contradictory justifications that have poured from the Trump White House about its war on Iran. The administration has cobbled together untruths and misleading assertions to provide cover for its action: that Iran is about to build a nuclear weapon; that Iran is trying to build ballistic missiles that can reach the United States; that Iran is suddenly an intolerable threat to American national security, despite having been steadily ground down by economic sanctions, the diplomatic maneuvers of previous administrations, and the Iranian government’s own corruption and authoritarianism (not to mention the Trump administration’s own supposedly successful attack on Iranian nuclear facilities last year).
To me, the most galling lie doesn’t concern assertions around Iran’s intentions, but rather Trump’s own claimed goals: to want regime change to bring “freedom” to Iranians. If there’s one thing we can be damned well sure of, it’s that Donald Trump has zip zero zilch interest in Iranians being free. And we know this to a dead certainty because he doesn’t even have an interest in Americans being free. In fact, quite the opposite, as over the last year he has assaulted nearly every pillar of U.S. democracy in a sordid quest to centralize power in his presidency and his person. You can be assured that Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the other architects of this grotesque violence envision an Iran only as free as they will permit it to be — which is to say, not free at all. One shudders at what sort of revived authoritarian monarchical bullshit they’re scheming for Tehran from the West Wing.
So if the reasons for this war are lies, why on earth is this happening? For all that it involves unrestrained assertions of Trump’s violent inclinations on the world stage, the proper angle here is the president’s authoritarian quest for maximal power at home over the U.S. government and society. It feels likelier than not that the attack is rooted in Trump’s deteriorating political fortunes, with his tariffs leading to self-inflicted economic damage and his anti-immigrant jihad revealed to be synonymous with the murder of American citizens and the brutalization of undocumented long-time residents. He may well believe his own hype, that he will achieve “regime change” and thus bragging rights as the “liberator” of the Iranian people and protector of America. In a more sinister direction, he may see even a protracted conflict as being to his advantage, as it would allow the GOP to go into the midterm elections with a dark message of America besieged and in need of a strongman to protect us all. More likely, though, is David Corn’s surmise that, “Trump has no plan for Iran. Just blow shit up, kill some people, and hope for the best.”
But even if this renegade attack is a sign of inherent weakness, it’s also a sign that Trump intends to keep doubling down on his authoritarian playbook. Indeed, it’s impossible to hear the president’s late-night declaration of war on Iran and not recognize a familiar Trumpian, fascistic template: the implacably evil enemy that threatens to do good Americans mortal harm; the imminent danger this enemy poses unless we respond with unapologetically violent means; and the overwhelming message that Donald Trump is the only one strong and bold enough to handle the threat. What’s grimly fascinating about his decision to make war on Iran is how he managed to tap into what legitimately has been a decades-long state of animus between that country and the U.S., while concocting a completely bullshit story that the U.S. has just now entered into a moment of extreme peril which will lead to our destruction in the absence of immediate, decisive action. It’s a lot like a con artist using shards of truth to sell a big lie. . . . actually, it’s exactly like a con artist using shards of truth to sell a big lie.
No credible Democrat should be confused as to the proper response: withering condemnation of an illegal and dangerous war whose aim is to aggrandize Trump’s power at the expense not simply of Congress, but of every citizen. This is not primarily about foreign policy, but about Trump looking for fresh ways to dominate the American people and his political opponents. Democrats would do well to stress Trump’s untrustworthiness, and to remind the public that it can’t believe a single fact that comes out of his mouth. In condemning the war, Democrats would be reflecting the views of a strong majority; a Reuters poll over the weekend found only 27% support for Trump’s actions, with 43% opposed and 56% indicating he is too willing to use military force. Americans are ready to hear straight talk; rather than blather about process concerns and feeding a narrative of relative normalcy around Trump’s insane actions, Democrats need to say and do all they can to heighten Americans’ sense that this war is deeply, deeply unsettling, as well as an affront to us all.
Finally, thinking to the longer term, Democrats must also recognize the extreme danger of unconstrained presidential war-making power that has accelerated across the last several decades, and their role in enabling it — particularly in their failure to hold George W. Bush and other members of his administration accountable for lying the nation into the catastrophic Iraq invasion and occupation. Donald Trump may be pushing past previous boundaries with his attack on Iran, what with his lack of interest in even making a case to the public for his actions, but he’s still generally acting within well-worn channels of unchallenged presidential prerogative. But the true dangers of this vast power should now be clear to anyone willing to see. First with his attack on Venezuela that deposed its president and enmeshed the U.S. with that country’s remaining authoritarian government, now with an attack that has already involved illegally assassinating Iran’s leader and killing over a hundred innocent schoolchildren, we see that this untrammeled war-making power is entangling our whole country in crimes and catastrophes we will be left to deal with long after Trump finally departs the Oval Office.