That Warship Has Sailed

The Death of the Constitutional Republic

BILL ASTORE

FEB 21, 2026

My fellow Americans, it’s nice to think we have a semblance of a constitutional republic, but that warship has sailed. This time, to Iran.

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This AM, I read an interesting story on the Supreme Court’s repeal of Trump’s tariffs. Justice Neil Gorsuch made the point that his fellow justices’ interpretation of the law often changes based on whether the president is a Republican or Democrat. This, to state the obvious, is not how the law is supposed to work.

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Years ago, I spied a bumper sticker that read: “I’m already against the next war.” It’s on my mind again.

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I’ll support a war when Hollywood celebrities and sports stars willingly enlist. And when the sons and daughters of presidents and senators and CEOs happily join them in the ranks.

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Do you think it’s a coincidence that Bibi Netanyahu keeps visiting the White House even as the Trump administration prepares for yet another war in the Middle East?

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A great book for this moment is “Deadly Betrayal: The Truth About Why the United States Invaded Iraq” (2024) by Dennis Fritz. Fritz, a retired AF command chief master sergeant, was in the halls of power when the Bush/Cheney administration decided to invade Iraq in 2003. He identifies three main reasons for the Iraq War fiasco: U.S. leaders’ concerns about “credibility” and the perpetual fear of being perceived as “weak”; serving the security needs of Israel, especially by weakening Hamas and Hezbollah together with Iraq; and neocon fever dreams of imperial dominance in the Middle East connected to the control of oil.

In his conclusion, Fritz is scathingly blunt:

More than 4,500 [U.S. troops] made the ultimate sacrifice, and 100,000 have been wounded for life. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Saddam Hussein posed no threat to our national security. The Iraq War wasn’t an honest mistake. It was a calculated lie—a deadly betrayal. Our service members were used as pawns by the government to fulfill an imperialist ideology. Their sacrifice had no basis in national defense. All Americans should be outraged, and we should never let this happen again. The troops didn’t even know why they were going to war.

It saddens me to think that Fritz may soon need to write “Deadly Betrayal II” about the forthcoming war with Iran.