Perhaps you once again hear George W. Bush’s familiar Texan dialect ringing in your head with all the post 9/11 talk of the Middle East lately.
In the past few days, we’ve been on edge wondering how involved the United States may become with the recent “pre-emptive” attacks by Israel against Iran. Let’s talk about what we actually know for a change.
Netanyahu’s motivations
Israeli would have you think it was seconds away from a nuclear threat. This is at odds with Tulsi Gabbard’s testimony earlier this year, informing Congress that although Iran was sitting on a stockpile of weapons-grade uranium, they did not appear to be building weapons. Trump’s response? “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one.” JD Vance took a different approach, commending Tulsi Gabbard’s service to the country (in addition to her political work, she served in the National Guard and was deployed to Iraq and received the Combat Medical Badge). Similarly, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson have been at odds with Trump’s recent Iran/Israel positions on American responses to armed conflict.
I am at least smart enough to know that I don’t have all the answers when it comes to peace in the Middle East. Even a well-intentioned attempt will draw more ire than I would frankly care to deal with even behind my pen name. What I DO know is that tensions have been sky-high for most of our lives. Here’s an NPR article from last year that spells out some of the historical context: Iran has been vocally supportive of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, and some news outlets have characterized Israel’s Gaza attacks as a “proxy war” that has now escalated to direct attacks.
It would also be callous to brush past the deep significance of anti-Semitism for anyone who remembers the last time a certain German leader decided to inflict a holocaust on millions of jews. People move forward, but they still experience intergenerational trauma: ask anyone whose ancestors were enslaved, ask anyone whose family was incarcerated in a United States internment camp (we officially called them “relocation centers”) during WWII, or ask pretty much any Laotian-American about the Secret War.
Though not always informed by genocide and prolonged instances of torture, domestic political tribalism provides even more context for what may have inspired Israel’s direct strikes against Iran. Trump supporters are widely accused of being uneducated, bigoted, blind followers. Non-Trump supporters are widely accused of being welfare-grubbing communists, traitors to the country (and I could go on, but the language might become a tad colorful for ANC). These assessments don’t need to be remotely accurate to erode the patience of a people.
So my guess? Netanyahu is sick of playing nice. But a good commander is not an emotional one.
Why the United States?
The United States Military, fresh off its clearly-a-protest birthday parade march last weekend, has war power that Israel simply doesn’t. There’s enriched uranium stored deep inside Fordow, a fortified Iranian nuclear site that could potentially be destroyed with the help of a GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) carried to target by a B-2 Bomber. There is only one country with this level of military power, care to guess which one?
But even if we engaged such a mission, the problems don’t stop there. Barack Obama in 2015 resolved to use tactical diplomacy instead. I can already envision some creepy and probably racist comments for the mere mention of Obama in 2025 (or ever), but this deal resulted in close monitoring by U.S. intelligence and those who are familiar with the nuts-and-bolts of nuclear superpowers seem to agree with Gabbard’s assessment that the Iranians did not appear to be close to a working nuclear warhead.
If you’re anything like me, you probably didn’t just already know offhand how nuclear radiation doses (“rads,” apparently) are calculated, or what a “dirty bomb” is. So in order to better understand the genuine significance of the media reports, the political talking points, the social media noises—I did what more of us should be doing any time we need honest answers. Find the subject-matter experts. Today I checked out r/nuclearweapons on Reddit. Reddit is already the place where you can find these esoteric little answers to questions like “how can I actually get rid of this stain on my carpet?” or “anyone recognize this 1980’s vacuum I found at a garage sale?” and you will often get insanely helpful answers if you just know where to look or how to ask (or not ask, because someone will have already done so).
Here’s an example: someone asks r/nuclearweapons if there may be a warhead in a bunker in Iran without RAD detection by other countries, and within a day, you get informed answers.
Not by folks who don’t understand the industry lingo or screech about politics—by people who have stories of working with the actual equipment and can talk about how much it hurts if you roll a warhead across a hand or drop it on a foot and knows why they’re wearing special safety equipment. When in doubt, I tend to trust regular (working-class) nerds over the rich politicians—just look at Elon Musk’s descent into chaos once enough money and political power got involved.
Which is why I’m reasonably confident that this next image sums it up nicely:
The President of Petty
The administration’s achievements so far have even soured some of the staunch MAGA supporters—not all of them, but that’s probably more indicative that we are way overdue to address the mental health crisis in America than a suggestion that they have sound reasoning.
Some familiar Republicans that have spoken out against Donald J. Trump:
-Steve Bannon
-Michael Cohen
-Rand Paul
-Mike Pompeo
-Mitch McConnell
-Marjorie Taylor Greene
-Mike Pence
-Tucker Carlson
-John McCain
-Anthony Scaramucci
-John Bolton
-George W. Bush
-Dick Cheney
Actually, here’s an interactive list of GOP leaders with the instances where many have denounced Trump. That list was created way back when Trump was caught on video making the infamous “locker room” talk comment about grabbing women, so I’m sure it would be longer today.
Lest ye forget why, here’s just a few of Trump’s more recent escapades:
Promise: Bring down prices on day one.
Result: a tariff war that has likely done lasting damage to international trade, turned the stock market into an unpredictable roller-coaster that only seems to benefit Trump insiders, grocery prices that continue to upset everyday Americans, and a slew of merch: Trump’s meme coin, his newly-announced golden mobile phone prototype, Trump bibles, watches, paid exclusive dinners, and other grifts I don’t care to attach my IP address to.
Promise: End the Ukraine/Russia war on day one.
Result: Trump’s televised incident berating the leader who was defending his own country from an invasion seeking to annex Crimea and other territories. Trump claiming that he would help with a “deal” and then being too busy accepting an unethical Qatar Force One gift from a country long suspected of harboring terrorism financiers within its borders.
Promise: Deport the millions of dangerous criminals who have crossed our borders to commit atrocities, namely rape and murder.
Result: Due process and constitutional rights are optional now. ICE is told to get their deportation numbers up by invading those infamously terrorism-infested parking lots of places like Home Depot. The National Guard is then called in to defend the entirety of Los Angeles from an apocalyptic protest that spanned about two city blocks. Meanwhile, on the other approximately 210,172 blocks in just the city of Los Angeles, home to about 3.8 million of the 13.3 million who live in the Greater Los Angeles area, people are still stuck in traffic, blowing bubbles, and ostensibly not dying in a fiery socialist hellscape. The bright side of this whole situation was that Gov. Newsom, who did not want or ask for this expensive military escalation, was inspired to release this particularly funny video comparing the nationwide protests to Trump’s military-birthday parade.
I could go on and turn this entire article into a lengthy summary of the constant chaos that “Making America Great Again” has wrought, but I’ll get back to the point.
Our country is being run by someone I wouldn’t even trust to look after someone else’s cat. He wants to aim our military force, expensively and dangerously, at Iran. Why? Because he’s petty and he still hates Obama that much over all that birth certificate nonsense that got him roasted at the White House back in 2011. I never thought I would agree with Marjorie Taylor Greene about literally anything, but I do think Trump’s MAGA agenda is war enough without him abandoning his isolationist promise to be a “no wars” president. We need to clean up our own house, and I hope that some of these remaining fierce loyalists remember that their duty is to the country, not the individual currently cast in the role of the president. I hope they do it soon, and I hope they impeach him before we’re embroiled in yet another endless war in the Middle East. And before some political extremist dares to tell me I’m wrong for not wanting to get involved in a war and thinking that Trump just needs to be taken out of power already—look around you. We’re already at war—with our neighbors. It’s been a decade of this. This fantasy land where we fight-fight-fight and “own” people because we can’t see the fault in our own stars? It’s as likely to see returns as a slot machine or a lottery ticket. We need to hang it up and try to move forward. We already have inflicted intergenerational traumas on ourselves that we’ll pass on in our children and in the history books. We need to stop while we still have a country that might recover someday.
And recovery begins with a single step: not war—impeachment.
