The Trump Regime is giddy with this War of Choice on behalf of Israel
“Power is a poison well known for thousands of years.” Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
The poison spreads across the Middle East, from the rubble of Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, from the bombed-out suburbs of southern Lebanon, from Syria to the black rain of Tehran, to Oman and Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. According to journalist Ken Klippenstein, eighteen countries are involved in the war Bibi Netanyahu has dreamed of and schemed to bring about for decades. Alongside George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, Bibi is the most murderous leader of the twenty-first century. This threesome of war criminals will never be held accountable in any legal sense. Historians may do what laws failed to do, though that feels completely insufficient.
Israel has been hit by Iranian rockets, but relatively few images have escaped the strict blackout imposed by the Israeli military authorities. Israel never hesitates to show the world the results of its ferocious attacks on civilian targets, but it cannot allow the world to see its own casualties, for this might erode the myth of Israel’s biblical invincibility.
Some 1,300 Iranian civilians, including some 200 students and and their teachers, have been killed thus far, a figure which is likely an undercount. The students and their teachers were killed by an American cruise missile. The Trump Regime has gone to great lengths of mendacity to deny responsibility for the strike on a girls school, plucking a page from Israel’s War Book to claim that it was the Iranians who launched the American-made cruise missile at their own people. When Palestinians are killed in Gaza, the IDF is always quick to blame Hamas or the Palestinians themselves. Unarmed Palestinians have a habit of blowing themselves up, even shooting themselves in the back of the head.
The Trump Regime is giddy with this War of Choice on behalf of Israel, though it still can’t decide which of several justifications the public will swallow — just as that gullible public swallowed the idea that a career criminal, convicted felon and insurrectionist was the man for the White House. What’s been most disgusting and unforgivable to me is the unabashed glee with which Trump, “Whiskey & Jesus” Hegseth, Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff and Lindsey Graham describe the destruction and lead the cheers for more. Isn’t it strange how the most cowardly men talk the toughest, like Clint Eastwood playing Dirty Harry. “What are you going to do now, Inspector Callahan?” “I’m gonna’ kill them all with my .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world. Boo-yah.” Like a little boy with a new toy, Hegseth can barely contain himself, barking about lethality and precision targeting and non-stop death and destruction from the skies. On the Sunday news shows — if we can stretch credulity and call them that — Senator Graham practically wet himself so manifest was his excitement over the death and destruction. That the US and Israel are jointly bombing hospitals, civilian infrastructure, schools and police stations is of no consequence, as we have left the Geneva Conventions and other international rules in the dust.
Israel claims a lifetime exemption from international law, as does the US.
One doesn’t need to be a military analyst to know that Netanyahu and Trump have overplayed their hand. In their boundless hubris they’ve underestimated the Iranian theocratic regime. Iran’s civilian and military leaders know they cannot win a conventional war against the combined might of the US and Israel, but they can extract a terrible price by merely surviving; they’ve already inflicted significant damage to the security infrastructure that rings the Gulf. Trump can sputter and spew about “unconditional surrender” all he wants, but it’s an unlikely outcome — unless, that is, Trump is insane enough to introduce tens of thousands of American soldiers and Marines. To that possibility all I can say is: Remember Afghanistan.
Trump, Netanyahu and Putin share a trait common to weak little men who should never hold coercive power over others, and that is their utter disdain for human life, either that of their adversaries — be they Iranians, Palestinians or Ukrainians — or their own citizens. Putin would gladly sacrifice a million more lives in Ukraine. Netanyahu bears major responsibility for the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack. Americans who remember the Covid pandemic know how little Trump cares about American lives.
At this moment the majority of Americans share something in common with the majority of Iranians: we’re both captives of murderous regimes which are widely hated. One is a deeply entrenched repressive and kleptocratic theocracy, and the other a fledgling kleptocracy that expands by the day and is colored by a warped and twisted brand of Christian nationalism. The Iranian people have suffered much longer, obviously, and have had their periodic uprisings put down at great cost of life. Americans are new to overt autocratic rule and as yet have only had a taste in Los Angeles, Portland, DC, Chicago, and of course Minneapolis. Our time is coming, however, and I won’t be betting my chips on the restorative possibility of the midterm elections. Trump is prepping the ground on two fronts. First, voter suppression and disqualification. Second, by employing claims of widespread fraud or “irregularities” to invalidate the results if they go against him as most observers expect they will.
Very few people in this country understand or have the honesty to admit that we crossed the Rubicon on Election Day 2024. The choice presented to the nation was clear and obvious, and we chose stupidly and unwisely. And now we must learn the lesson so many others have learned: once an autocrat claims power, they do not relinquish it voluntarily.
