Trump’s Callous War

This partially redacted image from video provided by US Central Command shows a complex of structures in Iran being struck by missiles fired by US forces on March 1. AP

On Wednesday morning, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth held a press briefing in which he spoke of the ongoing war in Iran as if it were a video game. “They are toast, and they know it!” he exclaimed. He vowed there would be “death and destruction from the sky all day long.” He loudly stated, “We’re playing for keeps…We’re punching them when they’re down.” And hours after that pumped-up performance, White House released a video that combined footage of US strikes on Iran with animation from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

A day earlier, during a White House ceremony honoring veterans of past wars who were receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor, Trump spoke briefly and perfunctorily about the US service members killed during the first days of this new war. Then he shifted to topics that seemed to engage him more: drapes and the ballroom he’s building on the White House grounds:

See that nice drape? When that comes down right now you see a very, very deep hole, but in about a year and half you're gonna see a very, very beautiful building. And there’s your entrance to it. In fact, it looks so nice I think I'll leave it and save money on the doors. Because it can’t get more beautiful than that. I picked those drapes in my first term. I always liked gold. I believe it’s gonna be the most beautiful ballroom anywhere in the world.

Trump spent more time talking about the ballroom than about the servicemembers who lost their lives in his war.

When thousands of bombs are being dropped on another country, these vignettes may not be the most significant developments. But they reveal a disturbing component of Trump’s war: how cavalier it has been.

This has been reflected in how the purported reason (or reasons) for the war has been presented, in the absence of planning—or concern—for what comes after the Khamenei regime is smashed, and in, yes, how Trump and his aides talk about the destruction and death they have unleashed.

It’s been widely noted that Trump and his crew have not been able to get their story straight on why they launched this war. When Trump bizarrely announced the operation in a video made public in the middle of the night, he claimed he was “eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime,” and he said to the Iranian people, “The hour of your freedom is at hand.” But there was no immediate danger posed by Tehran, and in the days following Trump’s announcement, his squad insisted this is not a regime change war.

Throughout the past week, there were conflicting and confusing statements from Trump and his national security team about why they initiated this assault. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters, "We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action" against Iran, and “we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces" by the Iranian regime. He added, “And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before [Israel] launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”

Rubio was contending that Trump had to start this war because Israel was about to start this war. That sounded absurd. As if someone said, my buddy was about to punch this guy in the face, and I knew that if he did, that guy would punch me in the face, so I had to punch this guy in face first. This also made it appear as if Trump was forced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into the war, and that’s not a good look for an American president. Naturally, Trump publicly rejected Rubio’s explanation and said, “No, I might have forced their hand,” referring to the Israelis. So scratch that rationale from the president’s own national security adviser?

Asked about intelligence indicating Iran was a present danger to the United States, Hegseth said the intelligence showed that, during the talks with the Trump administration over Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, Tehran was “not negotiating in good faith.” That’s quite different than intelligence stating the US was in real-time peril.  

Yet this is sort of where Trump eventually landed. He said, “You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. They were going to attack. If we didn't do it, they were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that." And on Wednesday, he went so far as to claim, “If we didn't hit within two weeks, they would've had a nuclear weapon. When crazy people have nuclear weapons bad things happen."

This was ridiculously false. There was no make-or-break point approaching. Last year, Trump claimed he had obliterated Iran’s nuclear program with a bombing raid. Now he was asserting that the program was back and only two weeks away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon.

No intelligence showed this. And there couldn’t be, given how outlandish this assertion was. Ultimately, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt gave away the game when she said, “The president had a feeling, again, based on fact, that Iran was going to strike the US.” A feeling. This war was kick-started on a vibe.

It seems too obvious to mention, but in this case it ought to be said: It’s reckless to attack another country on a hunch. But that’s what Trump has admitted doing. And on Thursday, Hegseth added a Christian nationalist twist to the war, noting it was an “essential test” of “[w]hether our nations will be—and remain—Western nations with distinct characteristics—Christian nations under God.” So does this give the war a Crusades-ish justification?

Trump’s administration has also demonstrated it engaged in no serious planning for the postwar period. It was not prepared to evacuate Americans from countries that would become targets of Iranian retaliation. And it didn’t bother to think much about what would occur in Iran after the fall of the regime. Trump and his advisers explicitly rejected the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it. They recoiled at the idea of nation building, which didn’t fare well in Iraq and ultimately failed in Afghanistan.

This showed they didn’t give damn about what might transpire in Iraq—a country of 93 million people and four times the size of California—after it was pummeled by US and Israeli forces. Trump initially encouraged the Iranian people to revolt, but then he offered no support and dropped that exhortation. And his administration had no idea what to do about achieving stability in the country once it annihilated the ruling government. The attitude was, let there be chaos or whatever. If a better government emerges, we can take credit for that. If something worse ensues, we can say it’s not our fault. Trump was not going to assume responsibility for the consequences.

During a phone call with Trump on Thursday, ABC News’ Jonathan Karl asked what comes after the military operation. Trump replied, “Forget about next. They are decimated for a 10-year period before they could build it back.” This glib response shows that Trump and his posse haven’t considered what might happen within Iran and within the region should the country collapse, split into warring factions, or decide to seek revenge through terrorism or the production and use of a dirty bomb or other nuclear weapons. (At the start of Trump’s second stint, the White House shifted resources and agents from the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, which investigates international and domestic threats, to Trump’s immigration crackdown.)

Trump’s overall approach is that he doesn’t care. Not about the American people. He didn’t bother to inform them of his intentions or establish a public discourse, and he bypassed Congress, violating the Constitution. Not about the Iranian people. His message to them is you’re on your own. Not about other nations in the region. He says to them, good luck, guys. Not about US allies. He didn’t engage them before taking this impulsive action. When asked whether Americans should fear retaliatory attacks at home, he replied, “I guess so.” He added: “Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.”

He and Hegseth, so far, have declined to evince a dollop of decency about the regretful loss of life they are causing. Military action may sometimes be necessary—not that this one is—and deaths will occur, but getting all giddy about it is a dangerous sign of callousness. Trump was more interested in the drapes than the deaths of Americans he put in harm’s way. These are troubling indicators that the people in charge are lost in hubris and the poison of power.

A famous description from The Great Gatsby has often been applied to Trump and his crew: “They were careless people…they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” It’s keenly appropriate for this situation. The thinking devoted to this war or to its aftermath was not serious. But the fallout will likely be.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland.corn@gmail.com.

A few days ago, I interviewed Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), who sits on the House intelligence committee. Not surprisingly, he told me that there are no signs that intelligence existed suggesting Iran presented an imminent threat, and he described how the Trump administration stopped sharing intelligence on Iran with the committee following the bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June.

I asked if there might be an investigation of Trump’s use or misuse of the Iran intelligence, should the Democrats win the midterms election. Gomez answered, “We not only have an obligation but we do have a right to conduct these investigations. We have to see if intelligence was politicized…We have to know what really happened….I’m looking forward to holding them accountable.”

He then added—somewhat ominously—that “there are things we have to look at that people don’t even know about, and they’ll never know about.” That piqued my interest.

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, is a faithful lackey for Trump. She has cooked up phony intelligence so the Justice Department can pursue investigations of his perceived enemies. But once upon a time—not so long ago—during Trump’s first presidency, Gabbard excoriated him for being a warmonger supporting a “genocidal war” in order to score billions of dollars in arms sales and for pushing an “insane” policy “to protect al-Qaeda.” I wrote about that a few months ago.

More relevant for the moment, when she ran for Democratic presidential nomination in the 2020 election, she repeatedly slammed Trump for being eager to start wars, most notably a war in Iran. As she said in this campaign spot, “We've gotta stop Donald Trump from starting a war with Iran."

Gabbard, long a critic of regime change wars, came across as rather passionate then in her desire to prevent a US military strike on Tehran. And as DNI last year, when Trump was weighing military action against Iran’s nuclear facility, she said intelligence indicated Iran was not building nuclear weapons, and she posted a video decrying “political elites and warmongers [who] are carelessly fomenting fear and tension.” That pissed Trump off.

These days, she’s apparently okay with Trump launching a war with Iran. It’s quite the U-turn. We can certainly wonder if this woman believes in anything other than her own career.

Sometimes a contestant can earn entry into this contest for what they don’t say. Such is the case for the White House. This past week, it sent suggested talking points on the war in Iran to Republican members of Congress. If a member were asked if the United States is at war with Iran, the recipient was advised to say that Trump initiated “major combat operations.” That is, don’t call it a war.

Not a war. Just bombing the hell out of Iran and torpedoing its ships in the largest U.S. military assault in 23 years. I don’t think the Party in George Orwell’s 1984 would have tried to pull off such gaslighting.

You can see how this guidance confused some Republicans, especially Markwayne Mullin, the GOP senator from Oklahoma, whom Trump picked Thursday to be the new secretary of homeland security:

House Speaker Mike Johnson went beyond the White House talking points. Speaking to reporters in the Capitol, he proclaimed, “It’s a defensive operation.”

One can argue the merits of this war and the necessity—or lack thereof—of the strikes against Tehran. But you can’t call an all-out unprovoked bombing campaign “defensive.” Unless you’re trying to brazenly hornswoggle the public.

While Trump and his henchmen struggled to articulate a coherent rationale for the attack on Iran, former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), had no problem. She noted that the Iranian regime erected a countdown clock that ticks off the days until the mullahs “annihilate” and “kill every Jew with a nuclear bomb.” She noted Tehran’s leaders “are so filled with demonic rage, they’re filled with Satanic rage.” And she explained, “That’s why they need to be defeated…This literally goes back to the Garden of Eden with Satan and Satan's hatred for God.”

That’s bonkers—and brings us back to a modern-day Crusades. But it’s at least a reason. By the way, that countdown clock says nothing about exterminating Jews with nuclear weapons. It marks the number of days until 2040, the year that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei predicted Israel would cease to exist.

Dumping on California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) during a Fox News appearance, Minnesota Republican Senate candidate Michele Tafoya, a former sideline reporter for NBC Sunday Night Football, exclaimed, “Almost 30 percent of Californians are homeless on any given night.”

The real number is 0.48 percent. Tafoya was off by a factor of 60. Alas, there are no penalties for offsides punditing.

Our winner went through a tough stretch this week. Before Trump tweet-dumped her on Thursday, defenestrated Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was grilled by both the House and the Senate, and Democrats and Republicans pounded her for a long list of transgressions, including ICE abuses, the $220 million DHS contract to produce ads promoting her, the department’s acquisition of a private jet (with a bedroom—wink, wink!), and the time she shot an unruly dog.

In one heated exchange, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) repeatedly asked Noem if she would apologize for having called Renée Good and Alex Pretti each a domestic terrorist. She refused to do so. “As you know,” she said, “there are ongoing investigations.” Referring to these fatal shootings, she asserted that federal agents “risked their lives to protect that scene so evidence could be reclaimed, so it could be used an investigation.”

Raskin pressed her: “Do you regret” branding them terrorists? All she could muster was this: “I offer my condolences to those families.”

Noem couldn’t bring herself to admit that she had erred by slandering these two Americans. Though she now was saying she couldn’t answer the question due to ongoing investigations, she had no reluctance to malign Good and Pretti before investigations had even begun. Plus, she pulled a whopper when she claimed that ICE and CBP agents “risked their lives” to secure the scenes of these executions. We’ve all seen the videos. After Good and Pretti were each gunned down without justification by trigger-happy agents, there was no threat to the lives of the officers who remained. There were outraged and shocked witnesses. But the agents were not facing lethal peril.

This week the dethroned ICE Queen gets to wear the crown.

In a rare alignment, Inspiration of the Week features the winner of the Dumbass Comment of the Week. Noem is obviously not the source of inspiration. Instead, it’s Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), who grilled her about a $143 million no-bid contract that DHS awarded to a GOP consultant to make those ads featuring Noem. The company that was handed this contract—which had no website and no previous experience working for the government—was incorporated just eight days before the contract went out. And the firm used as a subcontractor a political firm tied to Noem.

Neguse showed how you question a Cabinet official about a sleazy—and maybe illegal—government deal:

When I wrote about the racist dog whistle in Trump’s State of the Union speech, I didn’t think the piece would have therapeutic value. But Sammie Lipscomb wrote:

Your article today is very important to me, as I cannot express all the jumbled feelings I have inside. 

I was born in 1953. I'm appalled every single day at what this regime is doing and planning. It keeps my nervous system in an uproar, even though I do my best to stay centered. You being able to express these things that match the way I feel is an important outlet for me. That's why I'm signing up for your newsletter. Keep on keepin' on, please.

Like a bird that flew. I will.

Judith Moler emailed:

First off, I have long felt that while Trump enjoys being a tyrant, his tendency to dominate is fed by Stephen Miller, even more of a culprit than Trump himself. Secondly, a strong ray of hope showed up this past week with Kevin Stitt, the Republican governor of Oklahoma—of all places—who argues that we need to keep our immigrants because we need them. This man, with whom I would disagree on most things, probably, makes me proud to be an American, and there hasn’t been a lot of that lately.

I would really like to see less of what Trump has to say and more about the many people across our country who are speaking out, and more about average citizens with average incomes and what their struggles are to maintain their households.

I had to look up what happened in Oklahoma and learned that Stitt has been emphasizing the need for immigration reform that would create pathways for noncitizens in his state to gain legal status and work. That used to be a mainstream position in the GOP. And I do try not to overly focus on Trump. But I’m in DC, and it's tough for me to survey what’s happening elsewhere.

Lynn Biddle had a question shared by many:

With the joint US-Israeli attack on Iran, who could step in and create a new government there. I wonder. Trump has called on the people of Iran to overthrow their government, but who will replace it? Administer it? And keep the peace domestically? Possibly a joint occupation force from Trump’s new world-government? Possibly a group of Israel’s troops?

Trump and his advisers insist they’re not going to engage in what they derisively call nation building. It seems clear they have no plan. Before the Iraq War, a Pentagon unit tried to figure out what would be needed to provide security and maintain law and order there after the fall of Saddam’s regime. Its analysts came up with the back-of-the-envelope assumption that Iraq would need about a force equivalent in size to the number of law enforcement officers as California—meaning about 120,000 people. As I pointed out above, Iran is four times the size of California and more than twice its population.

Gary Dunlap shared a concern:

Trump and his team spreading discontent in this nation is part of his plan to declare martial law and have no midterms. We are playing right into his plan by protesting his maneuvering and causing civil unrest.

I think it’s a distinct possibility that Trump is conniving to interfere in the midterm contests, though suspending them or taking over the election is not that easy to do. But my view is that protests do seem necessary at this point. And they can be held without prompting civil unrest, as we've seen with the No Kings marches.

“Is the snow finally gone for good?”
“You can never be sure, Moxie.”
“Then maybe we should take advantage of this weather and put in some extra time playing with the ball.”
“Good thinking.”