War, huh (good God y'all)
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
This lyric, performed by Edwin Starr and later The Temptations, hit the top of the charts in 1970. After eight years of the American war in Vietnam, almost 60,000 US killed and perhaps a million Vietnamese, most of us knew what we thought of wars.
Donald Trump's idiotic Persian adventure isn't yet causing carnage on that scale, but the longer it goes on, the more death and destruction that results, the more vehement the opposition will likely grow.
Dozens of veterans and military family members protesting the Iran war were arrested by U.S. Capitol Police on Monday after they occupied the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C.
U.S. Capitol Police said 66 people were arrested during the demonstration, which was organized by several veterans groups including About Face, the Center on Conscience and War (CCW), Veterans For Peace, Common Defense, the Fayetteville Resistance Coalition, Military Families Speak Out and 50501 Veterans. (The Hill)
Military historian Phillips P. O'Brien is frankly aghast at what he is seeing of Trump's war:
All wars are horrible and this is no exception. However the US-Iran War of 2026 will never be the most horrible war in US history, the longest, the most destructive, etc. That is a good thing. However, something pretty horrible is unfolding in front of us. The US government is being used as a tool to corruptly enrich certain people, to a tune of billions of $’s. And that means US service personnel and Iranian civilians (the people who are suffering the most in this war) are being sacrificed so that others who have enriched themselves through their loss can enrich themselves further.
For the US military, this has to be a devastating situation. Soldiers sign up to defend the Constitution of the USA, on the assumption that when they are put in harms way, it is being done for the greater good of the country. To understand that they are now tools for corruption of their masters, not for the country at large, has to destroy the whole idea of serving the country.
For the Iranian people, whom Trump encouraged to rise up for their freedom, with no intention of actually helping them, the effect is something similar. They might have had hope for a while, even with Trump’s track record, that the USA would help them. Now they know the US cares not at all for them, used them for what Trump had hoped to be his political advantage, and has now abandoned them to a worse version of their original government.
O'Brien goes on to recount how Trump's gyrations, whether intentionally or not, seem to encourage gambling on the price of oil by traders with inside information. Perhaps these are some of his inner circle? This is a leaky bunch; we'll eventually find out who benefited.So those who serve or want freedom get nothing. However, the corrupt at the top seem to be using every opportunity, even manipulating the course of the war, to cash in wherever and however they can. ...
Though the Israel's attacks on Iran and concurrent invasion of Lebanon, are popular with many on the home front, Israelis sure know how to denounce the motives of politicians. Israeli journalist Alon Pinkas is scathing.
Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu share a lot of traits. They are both solipsistic, mendacious, narcissistic, and paranoid megalomaniacs who perceive themselves as victims of a cabal of elites. Now they share something else: They have lost a war together. Driven by vanity and hubris, the U.S. president and Israeli prime minister miscalculated Iran’s mettle, and now their mutually inflicted failure is causing them considerable political harm at home. What started as a Smith & Wesson partnership has degenerated into a Thelma & Louise ending....
So ... here we are. President Barack Obama's national security aide Ben Rhodes [gift link] is trying to figure out how the idealistic country he thought he worked for came to spread stupid, unnecessary carnage around the world. He shares some insights from listening to thar very damaged, but very thoughtful, veteran of our Wars on Terror, Graham Platner, an aspiring Democratic Senate candidate in Maine.... [There will be no conqueror's statues for these two.] Trump and Netanyahu, in their infinite delusions of grandeur, expected this to be a quick win that would buoy their respective political fortunes. They probably envisioned being showered with praise by their countrymen and the media, and relished the thought of rubbing the victory in their opponents’ faces. The exact opposite has happened instead, and they have no one to blame but themselves—and each other.
... “We are so broken emotionally when it comes to our politics that we’ve literally created this story that it’s inherent in being a competent political leader to kill civilians,” Mr. Platner told me. “If you’re not willing to do some hard things and drop some bombs, then you’re not up to the task of power. I think it’s the opposite. You’re not up to the task of being in power if you do not think about the cost of violence. If that’s not at the front of your mind, then I don’t think you are morally in the right place to be in positions of power.”
We like to frame our wars as virtuous, but they are not. Instead, they resemble a declining empire sowing chaos along its periphery as a matter of strategy: Economic and political elites profit while the Americans who fight suffer along with the places they attack.
“The only way we change that is by talking about it publicly,” Mr. Platner told me. “If we start to revisit the morality of military conflict and how we use violence, that’s going to have a direct correlation to what is good for America.”With the decline of American empire which is certainly underway, proven every day by the ascendancy of the Orange Toddler, maybe yet another generation can teach us that war is not the answer.
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