Bro, this Iran attack is based. So epic. Such fury. Secretary of Half-Completed Pull-Ups, Pete Hegseth, freaking killed it as his press conference laying out the American plan in Iran going forward. “Death and destruction from the sky, all day long,” he promised.
NOT!
And stop saying it’s a war! Because it’s not! It’s a major combat operation! A special military operation! An existential battle for Christianity! Ok, maybe don’t say that last one either. But whatever you do, stop saying it’s a war.
Even though Trump keeps calling it one. “We’re doing well on the war front,” Trump declared during one recent White House glazing session, giving himself a “15 out of 10” on the conduct of the conflict—and to be clear, this is not the kind of grade the Nobel Peace Prize board is looking for—before excusing himself to “go look at the war.” See? Not a war.
Unless you agree, as so many Republicans have been (totally organically, not at all coached to say) that we’ve been at war with Iran for 47 years. In which case, yes it’s a war, but THEY STARTED IT!!!
Lest you think Hegseth’s ire is purely focused on those perfidious Iranians, he also made a special point of lambasting the “fake news” assembled before him. When asked about the six American soldiers killed in the opening stages of the not-a-war this week, Hegseth took exception, claiming that the only reason American journalists ask about our war dead is to “make the president look bad.”
If that’s true, we also need to assign a certain amount of blame to the soldiers for getting killed in the first place. Very unpatriotic of them.
(By the way, considering that Hegseth’s main qualification for his current position seemed to be looking lantern-jawed on Fox & Friends, one would think his press briefings would go a little smoother. But no.)
We should be focusing on other matters, Hegseth said, such as his assertion that “we’ve taken control of Iran’s airspace and waterways without boots on the ground.” I don’t doubt this assessment of the tactical situation, but did anybody doubt that the US military would be able to take out Iranian air defenses and navy? That’s exactly what a trillion-dollar military budget gets you—a lot of things that go boom.
“We will be using 500-pound, thousand-pound and 2,000-pound laser-guided precision gravity bombs,” Hegseth crowed, “of which we have a nearly unlimited stockpile.”
Cool story, bro.
The US blew up a lot of stuff in Afghanistan, too. Twenty-something years later, we left, having accomplished exactly nothing. Detonating munitions isn’t the problem. The problem is what happens after the dirt clods fall back to earth. If the last few decades of American military adventurism taught us anything, it ought to be that all the bombs in the world will do little to endear a populace to the ones doing the bombing.
Not that our Secretary of Peloton Classes cares. Hegseth has said that “we start the terms of this war”—ignoring, again, the fact that this isn’t a war—before stating that the US is not going to be bound by “stupid rules of engagement.”
Of course, he didn’t elaborate on which rules of engagement he considers “stupid,” but according to the US Government Accountability Office, they traditionally “(require) U.S. military forces to adhere to international and domestic laws during armed conflict, focusing on protecting civilians, treating detainees humanely, and limiting destruction.”
Weak sauce, bro.
The situation appears to be spiraling out of control, and quickly. The list of nations involved in—and suffering from—our special military operation is already extensive: Israel, Iran, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Cyprus, and Pakistan. You could also throw in Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Spain. Not to worry, though—Greenland remains untouched.
Even Trump’s former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, has expressed concerns, telling Politico that Trump doesn’t “particularly think strategically.”
“It’s just not his pattern or practice to do long-term strategic thinking or to say, ‘The objective now is regime change.’ How do we go about it? What are the risks? What are the contingencies? What’s plan B? What’s Plan C?’ Bolton continued. “He just doesn’t do that… There could be a lot of turmoil, lot of bloodshed.”
That’s quite a statement from somebody who spent the last three decades pleasuring himself with thoughts of invading Iran. In that way, Bolton mirrors Benjamin Netanyahu, who in Trump found a sugar daddy willing to indulge his kink for Iranian destruction.
Meanwhile, the situation at home isn’t favorable for the president. As the independent journalist Parker Molloy pointed out this week, “Afghanistan started at 92 percent approval. Iraq started at 71. Iran started at 27.” Which begs the question: how did Trump manage to go all-in on an issue that underperforms even his own pathetic approval ratings?
What will happen when those original six dead Americans turn into sixty? Or 600? American military families suffer under the best wartime circumstances. How much worse will it be for them when their loved ones return injured or dead from an invasion their Commander-in-Chief launched because of vibes? What kind of vibes? The Epstein kind.
As for timelines, who knows? Hegseth told us it could last two weeks or it could last six. Or more. Boots on the ground? Absolutely not. Unless so ordered. The campaign appears to have been subjected to Michael Bay-style military planning coupled with zero political or diplomatic solutions for what happens after Trump and Hegseth have satisfied their Middle Eastern bloodlust and go back to blowing up speedboats in our hemisphere.
The president who promised us “no new wars” has embroiled the nation in another one of his making. Not that it’s a war. Wars generally have a predicate and a purpose. This has neither. Iran didn’t attack us anymore than Iraq did 25 years ago. We had no business in Baghdad and we’ve got none in Tehran.
The “death and destruction” our Secretary of Grab Ass promised has already visited the Gulf. Initial estimates already have the war dead at over 1,000. That number will almost certainly look paltry a few weeks from now. I doubt Trump cares. As for Pete Kegstand, he’ll just add it to his tab.
