Like most, I was astonished when my country performed an unprovoked military attack on another country. My initial reaction was to note that every journalist had pulled out a thesaurus to look for synonyms for “war” because in the United States, according to the constitution, only Congress could declare war and no such declaration was made.
Since then, I’ve watched with horror as my country assassinated the leaders of the other country and committed war crimes by attacking water supplies and sinking unarmed naval vessels. It’s appalling.
I was hopeful that Congress might actually develop a spine and reign in the brutal madness of this administration. But no such luck.
As I said on Mastodon, I am anti war, but not just anti war:
The Iranian regime has been a disaster for the region since the United States destabilized the democratically elected government in 1953. The puppet government the CIA installed oppressed and tortured people and precipitated the Iran revolution. The fundamentalist Islamic government took over the US embassy, oppressed women and minorities, and has worked to destabilize the entire region, funding militia groups and supporting terrorism.
Personally, I think it’s most likely that destabilizing Iran will prove to be disastrous. At best, we’ll end up with a strongman bent on revenge. At worst, a failed state with warring groups that align with different regional powers where fighting spills out across the entire region.
Another likely possibility is that we get someone who says the things that Trump wants to hear. Some people might take that as evidence that Trump’s intervention was “successful.” I think that’s not the right lesson.
Trump is good at getting people to say things that aren’t true. This sometimes make it seem like he’s being more successful than he actually is. Getting people to say something is one thing, but what they actually do when they’re seething, is likely quite different. But we won’t see the effects of that immediately.
The other related thing is that we don’t have any journalists anymore. So, irrespective of the facts on the ground, we may well only see reporting that gives the impression his intervention was successful.
I still think that’s the least likely scenario. Far more likely is that we’ve bought ourselves another “forever” war and it will take a generation to extricate ourselves from trying to provide security for the region. And, in the meantime, we’ve dramatically increased the value of the oil that both the US and Russia produce. That’s probably what this is really all about in the first place.