The Dumbest War Ever?
MAY 19, 2026
It’s increasingly hard to remember how and why America is supposed to go to war. First, war is supposed to be a last resort, not a knee-jerk reaction to Israeli actions. Second, war is supposed to be a deliberative process, a constitutional one, involving Congress and needing its approval since war is declared in the name of the American people and only in response to America itself being directly threatened. Of course, presidents are expected to take the lead here, but prosecuting wars is supposed to be a national act of will requiring the mobilization of consent.
Yet when it comes to Iran today war just seemingly happens based on the whims of President Trump, a small network of loyal advisers, and the wishes of Bibi Netanyahu and Israel. The American people aren’t even asked if they approve. Little effort is made to mobilize national will. We’re simply told by the POTUS that “Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon.” Never mind that the DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, testified that Iran wasn’t actively pursuing such a weapon. Never mind that America has thousands of nukes and Israel a hundred or more. Iran simply can’t have one, apparently because that country can’t be trusted. America and Israel, of course, can have all the nukes they want.
The Iran War, put bluntly, might be the dumbest war ever for America. It has strengthened hardliners in Iran, weakened America’s economy and moral stature (what’s left of it), and arguably revived and accelerated Iran’s nuclear ambitions. It’s done the exact opposite of what the Trump administration claimed it was supposed to do and at enormous cost.
Nevertheless, despite this dumbass war (to put it in Trumpian terms), a frustrated U.S. president seems determined to double down on more war. If only those pesky Arab allies would stop getting in the way, what with all their concerns about getting hit by Iranian drones and missiles in retaliation for U.S. and Israeli attacks. How dare Iran defend itself!
War is the first refuge of the brain dead, to coin a phrase, which led me back to a book I read as a teenager, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. Asimov wrote that Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Springing into action, blowing things up, kicking and punching people when they’re down (to cite the noble sentiment of Pete Hegseth), is surely the refuge of the incompetents in the Trump administration.
If only we could put this confederacy of very unstable dunces in time out until they grew up and smartened up.
Bracing Views 
Bill, I just want to say that in a world that has seeming gone mad, it does my heart good to hear you speak. You come from a sense of what is just, what is decent, what is right. Your voice is much needed and I need that. Thank you. “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ’round, turn me ’round, turn me ’round, Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ’round I’m gonna keep on a walkin’, keep on a-talkin’, Marching up to freedom land.” Thank you brother.
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Thank you!
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“It’s increasingly hard to remember how and why America is supposed to go to war. First, war is supposed to be a last resort, not a knee-jerk reaction to Israeli actions. Second, war is supposed to be a deliberative process, a constitutional one, involving Congress and needing its approval since war is declared in the name of the American people and only in response to America itself being directly threatened.”
I’ve given thought to writing a piece – more for ego gratification than anything else – on “war” not only in the tangible, military sense, but also in the symbolic metaphor sense in the American conscience, and sub-conscience. Consider the following:
• There is the present “war” with Iran, which in reality is an unprovoked, unwarranted, concocted, and thoroughly illegal attack on that country. As were the similarly termed overt cases with Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Nicaragua… back to the “Remember the Maine!” fabrication, and more, both overt and covert, e.g., Cuba, Guatemala, elsewhere in Latin and South America.
• The term has also been applied to domestic policy, “War on Poverty,” “War on Drugs,” “War on Cancer,” “War on Crime,” “War on This-or-That.” There’s a certain appeal to that, to muster the resources and attention to meet the urgency of the matter. Also a less obvious authoritarianism, in a sense “military law” and “courts martial.”
• Not overtly discussed, except among certain academics, and social observers, critics, and activists such as Martin Luther King, Jr. have been phenomena such as the “War on Poor People” which once that was won moved on to become the “War on the Middle Class.” Interestingly enough, these latter wars also arranged by those responsible for those launching the wars listed above these.
• We continue to obsess over WWII, underscoring our virtue, eighty-one years after its conclusion – or did it really end, has it really ended, much as WWI is still the basis for the world today? WWII has been called “The Good War,” or “Last Good War,” fought by “The Greatest Generation,” with reason, given the conquests and brutalities of the Nazis and the Japanese Empire. Then again, there has been some deflating of the sobriquets. Completely overridden, avoided, ignored, neglected, marginalized is the fact that it was the Soviet armies that defeated the Wehrmacht, albeit with American money and American matériel. Twenty-seven million military and civilian dead is what the Soviets paid.
We are not to relinquish our obsession, our identity, our posturing and triumphalism, our “thank you for your service” rhetoric, our virtue signaling with victory in WWII, we make sure to have some military presence, some stamp at every sporting event. What Eisenhower famously – but intentionally incompletely – described as the “military-industrial complex” has morphed, metastasized since January 1961 into the now $1+ trillion (and ever growing) “defense” budget, its acronym keeping pace in becoming the MICIMATT-SH (see Ray McGovern and William J. Astore). It now seems standard that on the two explicitly military holidays Memorial Day and Veterans Day (the latter co-opted from Armistice Day, a related story for another time) for there to be all-day marathons on cable t.v., with airings of war movies on Turner Classics (though few if any showings of Stanley Kubrick’s searing “Paths of Glory,” along with his brilliant “Dr. Strangelove” among other anti-war masterpieces) and the complete “Band of Brothers” series). The other day I happened to notice a banner on the station lineup on my satellite t.v. service about a Tom Hanks WWII documentary starting 8:00 a.m., then apparently onward throughtout Monday. The article from “The Hollywood Reporter” https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tom-hanks-wwii-documentary-series-1236519515/ is pithy in its opening:
“On the brink of World War III, let’s look back at World War II.
“WWII historian and sometimes actor Tom Hanks has a new documentary series set at History channel reexamining the Second World War through a modern lens. Across 20 episodes (in 200 territories and 40 languages), World War II with Tom Hanks will offer ‘a sweeping and definitive retelling’ of the deadliest war in history. There are probably spoilers.
“History channel’s D-Day, the series’ premiere date, is appropriately set for Memorial Day.”
What is my point? That attitudes toward, extolling the notion of, war pervades this society, overtly, subtly, explicitly, subconsciously, that with it is the accompanying notion that enemies abound, and must be utterly destroyed, there is no hint of some other approach, some form of less lethal accommodation. This is not to say that pacificism is to be the sole, virtuous, inadequate response to dire situations. Some wars need to fought, the conditions warranting them being too costly to bear, i.e. there should be a “War on Poverty” to save lives from lifelong despair and lost opportunity, a “War on Cancer” to save lives from the ravages of those diseases, but not a whole social outlook embracing war, with its costs in blood and treasure, in the functioning of our economy, in some acknowledgement that civilization has meant more than ways of killing one another has kept pace with all our other advances in the both the natural and the social sciences, in our understanding, as Kennedy said in his commencement address at American University on June 10, 1963:
“So, let us not be blind to our differences–but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
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