Tag: Iran war

Wars Are Protean and Dangerous Beasts

We Should All Hate War

BILL ASTORE

AUG 31, 2026

Wars are protean and dangerous beasts. Even when necessary, which is rare, it is well that we remember the horrifying costs of them.

The Russia-Ukraine War is in its fifth year with no clear end in sight. Suffering on both sides has been extreme. Trump’s war with Iran is in its sixth month with no clear end in sight. Hopes of a quick and low-cost regime-change war, encouraged by Israeli propaganda directed at Trump, have proven illusory. With Trump refusing to admit defeat, further escalation and dramatic economic consequences seem likely.

Certainly, Ukraine could not have sustained its military efforts without massive support from the U.S., NATO, and the EU. From the Russian perspective, they likely see this as a Ukraine/US/NATO/EU effort to weaken Russia. I blame Russia for invading. I blame the USA for exploiting that invasion for its own purposes (the Nordstream pipelines didn’t blow themselves up). I continue to worry that this war could widen leading to the use of nuclear weapons. I favor diplomatic efforts to end the war on terms Ukraine and Russia can accept.

The costs of war (Western Front, 1917)

I lament the costs of war, all the dead and wounded on both sides, and the continued destruction of Ukraine’s environment. I lament the damage war does to liberty, freedom, and truth. War always exacts a toll.

Whether the toll of the war is “worth it” for Ukraine or Russia to pay is not my decision. Only the people of Ukraine and Russia can say. Many have voted with their feet, leaving their respective countries, or the affluent pay bribes to avoid military service. This is hardly surprising. Affluent Americans paid bribes in the U.S. Civil War to avoid military service, or they hired substitutes to serve in their place.

Too often, wars are fought by the poor for the rich. Inequities in demands are obscured when wars are glorified as national wars of liberation.

Though not a pacifist, I’m strongly antiwar and very skeptical of justifications for the same, especially by “our” government. Just think of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and so on. I’m not an isolationist (an impossibility given how the world is interlinked, along with America’s 750-800 foreign military bases). But we’ve got to downsize the empire and make major cuts to Pentagon spending.

A major problem with war is that it fosters authoritarianism and abridgments of liberty. Even wars allegedly for liberation can be contrary to liberty. War also fosters the most Orwellian language. I’ve run across “justifiable repression” to explain away the authoritarianism of the Zelensky government in Ukraine. Forced conscription in Ukraine is explained away as “a regrettable but justifiable limitation of personal freedom.”

War is intoxicating and a powerful disturber of clear thinking. It corrodes intellectual honesty — while killing lots of people and destroying the earth.

As a retired military officer, I come back to Ike and his charge that we must be alert and knowledgeable citizens committed to democracy and individual liberties. Yet we seem immersed in a system designed to keep us somnolent and ignorant, or, put more plainly, lazy and dumb.

Ike said he hated war as only a soldier could hate it with all its waste and brutality. We would all do well to hate war and find ways to settle differences through diplomacy. The problem is that too many powerful entities actually love war because it makes them money and because it supports authoritarian agendas and because there are always megalomaniacs willing to sacrifice others for power.

Telling Headline at the New York Times

Trump Is the Real Victim of Gaza and the Iran War?

BILL ASTORE

AUG 11, 2026

Caught this headline at the New York Times this morning (8/11):

Top News

Trump Wants to Move On From the Middle East. It’s Not Letting Him.

President Trump is eager to declare success in Iran and Gaza, but he is struggling to impose his will in either conflict.

*****

Poor Donald Trump! He “wants to move on” from his violent illicit affair with Iran and the Middle East, but his mistress won’t let him. He just has to keep pummeling Iran until she sees sense and lets him go.

The mainstream media always presents war as something inflicted on U.S. presidents, a weighty burden over which they have no control, their iron cross to bear. It’s ludicrous and loathsome.

Mary McCarthy

It reminded me of what Mary McCarthy said about the American press during the Vietnam War—the way that war was framed as a burden LBJ had to carry and for which he should earn our sympathy. Disgusting, right?

Back in 2009, I wrote about that for TomDispatch; here’s an excerpt.

Even now, we speak too often of “Bush’s war” or, more recently, “Obama’s war.” Before we start chattering mindlessly about Iraq and Afghanistan as American tragedies, we would do well to recall what McCarthy had to say about the war in Vietnam: “There is something distasteful,” she wrote, “in the very notion of approaching [Vietnam] as an American tragedy, whose protagonist is a great suffering Texan [President Lyndon Baines Johnson].”

Yes, there is something distasteful about a media that blithely refers to Bush’s or Obama’s war as hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans suffer. For American troops, after all, are not the only ones paying the ultimate price when the U.S. fights foreign wars for ill-considered reasons and misguided goals.

If only U.S. presidents like LBJ and Trump could do something to stop these terrible wars! They want to move on, they want peace, but Southeast Asia or the Middle East or some other foreign region just won’t let them.

Right … What U.S. presidents really learn is that it’s far far easier to start wars than to end them, that other peoples have a say as well, and that imposing one’s will (nice euphemism for bombing Iran and facilitating genocide in Gaza) is difficult because other countries and peoples do object to being bombed and murdered.

P.S. Note how Gaza is framed as a “conflict.” Note the conceit that Trump is actually trying to impose his will there to end the “conflict,” even as Zionist Israel pursues a genocide and land grab there with total support from Trump.

Promise Peace, Deliver War

Of Presidential Betrayal

BILL ASTORE

AUG 10, 2026

U.S. presidents since Lyndon B. Johnson, if not before then (think here of Woodrow Wilson’s false promises in 1916 to keep America out of the Great War, known now as World War I), always promise peace, especially while running for office. Trump is the most recent example here. Yet whether Democrat or Republican, as soon as they become president, it’s war and more war. LBJ led America into the disastrous Vietnam War; Trump led America into the ongoing disaster of the Iran War; and the overseas wars just never seem to end, whether George W. Bush is issuing the orders or Barack Obama.

LBJ lacked the courage to resist the siren call of war

I had this thought as I re-read a comment from Mike Murry, a frequent Bracing Views contributor and an astute student of U.S. political and cultural history. Murry, a Vietnam War veteran, had this to say back in 2018:

Then, in the first semester of my senior hear in 1964, JFK’s successor as President: Lyndon Johnson, started his campaign for re-election, promising not to send us American boys to fight a war in Asia that Asian boys could fight themselves. He sounded just like Donald Trump did last year [January 2017], before assuming office. Johnson beat Goldwater in a landslide. The American people did not want another Korean War and made that overwhelmingly clear. But President Johnson betrayed us all, the way all U.S. Presidents now regularly do. Every one of them without exception preaches peace to win election. Then they invariably give their generals the wars that they demand. It happens every time. The stunning cynicism of that betrayal by President Johnson, I think, severed once and for all time any sense of “patriotism” that I might once have felt for the “America” of my youth. From that point on, I became an alien in my own land. My government would later send me abroad for the worst possible reasons, to do the most unnecessary and shameful of things. That same me never came home again. Someone else did. A damaged, but better man, I think. But much less an “American” one.

Today, the most important act to restore America is to end these needless and disastrous wars overseas. And not just overseas but here at home, as Trump promotes the malicious and mendacious notion of an enemy within, often labeled as the “radical left” with “terroristic” tendencies.

Nothing, I think, is more important to America’s health now and in the future than ending wars that waste so much, that kill and destroy so many, and that estrange our own citizen-soldiers from their country.

Random Sunday Thoughts

On Long Wars, the DSA, Aborigines, and Democracy in America

BILL ASTORE

AUG 09, 2026

On a very warm and humid Sunday morning, here are a few random thoughts for today:

1. It’s rather amazing that the U.S./Israel War against Iran has entered its six month with no end in sight. Remember when the Trump administration suggested it would last no longer than eight weeks? The war is holding the world economy hostage, apparently for “greater Israel” and continued U.S. dominance of trade in fossil fuels. I say “apparently” because the war doesn’t make much sense to most Americans, who are in the main against it. The only selling point Trump keeps repeating is that Iran must not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon, even as Israel is allowed to have up to 300 of them. His own intelligence chief told Trump that Iran was not working to field a nuclear weapon, but the Israelis told him otherwise, and we know who Trump is most obeisant toward.

2. Patrick Lawrence has a great piece on the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, and how they want to abolish ICE and possibly the presidency itself while defunding the police, the Pentagon, and other instruments of authority and coercion. One sympathizes, but it’s neither a practical nor a winning political message. So I wrote this comment at his site:

Echoing George McGovern, “Come home, America.” You can’t abolish or dismantle everything. But we can downsize the imperium and reinvest in America rather than “investing” in more wars and Zionist Israel.

If the DSA wants to make a contribution, it should focus on that — downsizing the empire, putting the American people first, rather than dreaming of abolishing everything. For what will replace it?

Make the lives of average Americans better, more affordable, more livable. Clean up our environment. And forget the magical thinking and empty posturing.

Come home, America. Come home from wanton, wasteful, and immoral wars.

3. I was breezing through “The Devil’s Dictionary” by Ambrose Bierce and stumbled on his acerbic definition of “Aborigines”:

1. Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.

2. Considerate persons who will not trouble the lexicographer of the future to describe them.

Bierce, a veteran of the U.S. Civil War, didn’t mince words here. There are always “persons of little worth” to oppressors who’d prefer that they leave or die. What was true of aboriginal peoples of the 19th and early 20th centuries is true of the Palestinians today: they are seen as obstacles to be overcome, even as terrorists to be exterminated.

4. Antiwar forces in America remain fragmented, and that’s partly by design. To oversimplify, you have the so-called radical left, which is antiwar, sometimes anti-military, often as critical of America as it is of empire, versus the “unpatriotic” (to Trump) right, which is anti-dumb wars, generally pro-military, and animated by putting “America first.” Left and right have much in common: they want less war, less militarism, and more investment and support for Main Street USA. If they could combine, they would make a formidable force against the MICC and incessant warfare. Which is why each side is encouraged to distrust and even hate the other, i.e. the “radical left” is told the right is racist and reactionary and the “unpatriotic right” is told the left is woke, arrogant, and un-American.

The MICC and “Deep State” know that these two groups must be kept divided. They must never be allowed to cooperate in meaningful ways.

5. Ike said only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry could tame and reduce the anti-democratic forces unleashed by the MICC. Note how Ike said nothing about the left or right. Being for democracy, freedom, and liberty isn’t a right or left issue. The same applies to being against war and killing and massively wasteful military budgets. These are human issues that should unite everyone irrespective of political allegiances.

Caveat: Any foolishness written above is on account of the heat, but fortunately I’ve been told global warming is a Chinese hoax. Stay cool, everyone.

The Militarized Insanity of this American Moment

A “Top Ten” List

BILL ASTORE

AUG 04, 2026

There’s so much militarized crazy in America today that it’s entirely overwhelming. Here’s a “top ten” list:

1. The illegal and unconstitutional war against Iran.

Remember when Trump told us he wouldn’t start wars? Remember when attacks on Iran began, the Trump administration told us they’d be over in a matter of days, perhaps a few weeks, ending in Iran’s total defeat? Instead, the U.S. government and military is engaged in yet another disastrous losing undeclared war that is unsupported by most Americans. As if our opinions matter!

2. The continued blanket support of Israel’s genocide against Gaza, pogroms in the West Bank, and demolition/seizure of land in Lebanon.

The Trump administration remains 100% committed to the project of a “Greater Israel,” no matter how many Palestinians suffer and die in the process.

3. The obscene $500 billion increase in military spending in FY2027.

The U.S. military hasn’t won a major war since 1945. It’s failed eight audits in a row. The “punishment” is a vast increase in military spending in the next fiscal year.

4. The escalatory and nearly impossible Golden Dome proposal.

The golden dome missile defense system is a golden boondoggle for weapons makers. It’s unlikely to work, and if it does, if only partially, it may make nuclear war more likely.

5. The unnecessary “modernization” of the nuclear triad at a projected cost of $2 trillion.

U.S. militarists still believe the nuclear triad is the Holy Trinity. It isn’t. Land-based ICBMs and nuclear bombers should be scrapped as obsolete. The Navy’s Trident-missile-firing submarines are all the U.S. needs for nuclear deterrence.

6. The continued headlong pursuit of artificial intelligence (AI) and the ongoing empowerment and enlargement of the surveillance state.

AI combined with ever-more intrusive cameras and digital monitoring is creating a dystopic “Big Brother” state. Imagine sweeping AI with a steroidal Homeland Security; now imagine the total disappearance of privacy.

7. The war against the ICC and UN and indeed any legal check on U.S./Israeli aggression.

As the U.S. and Israel engage in global aggression, they attack institutions such as the International Criminal Court and the United Nations that attempt to limit and stop that aggression.

8. Related to (7), the proposal to merge the U.S. military with Israel’s for research and development, intelligence sharing, and the like.

Incredibly, the Trump administration is proposing a merger between the U.S. and Israeli militaries that would compromise U.S. national security at the highest levels of classification. Obedient to Aipac and Israeli imperatives, Congress seems prepared ultimately to support it.

9. Continued environmental damage due to war and military operations and the complete disregard of climate change.

Rarely in the U.S. do you hear any talk of how war and global military actions accelerate global warming and aggravate environmental damage. Check out the documentary by Abby Martin, “Earth’s Greatest Enemy,” and her interview with Chris Hedges.

10. The abandonment of the citizen-soldier tradition in the U.S., the embrace of a warrior ethos, and the increasing contempt for diversity within the military.

The last war America won (with serious help from allies like the Soviet Union) was World War II, also the last time America had a true citizen-soldier military. Since then, America has increasingly embraced a warrior ethos. And while diversity used to be a hallmark of the U.S. military, it is now under attack as “woke” by Pete Hegseth.

There you have it: ten signs of America’s increasingly militarized madness. Greater sanity would involve the reversal of all of these.

More than 600 U.S. Casualties in the Iran War

Ministry of Truth Strikes Again

BILL ASTORE

JUL 27, 2026

An article at the New York Times today cites the creative accounting of the Trump administration on U.S. casualties in the Iran War. That count now exceeds 600 wounded, with eighteen service members killed. And for what, exactly?

Words fail…

President Trump claims America’s service members are being killed and wounded so that Iran doesn’t get a nuclear bomb. However, his former Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified that Iran wasn’t actively trying to acquire said bomb. In fact, because of the Iran War and U.S. and Israeli attacks, Iran now seems much more determined to acquire nuclear weapons. Can’t say that I blame them.

U.S. and Iran attacks in the region are suspended for the moment, which is one small bit of good news. However, with Netanyahu set to visit the White House tomorrow, we should expect more bellicose rhetoric and surely more bellicose action soon.

One more point: Iranian attacks have done far more damage to U.S. bases and facilities in the region than the Trump administration is prepared to admit. The New York Times also did a story on that. Here’s a report on that from March and a recent onethis month.

America truly has its very own Orwellian Ministry of Truth.

War Is Too Easy

We’ll End the War by Escalating It?

BILL ASTORE

JUL 18, 2026

War is too easy in America today. We’ve come to accept it as normal. Peace is now aberrant. As war grows ever easier, peace becomes ever harder.

“Escalation,” not diplomacy, is touted as the smart way to end wars. Logic doesn’t seem to matter. How do you end a war by launching more damaging and deadly strikes? How is killing even more people a way to peace?

President Trump now seems to believe that climbing the “escalation ladder” in the Iran War and in the Russia-Ukraine War is the best way to resolve these deadly conflicts. It reminds me of that Vietnam-era quip that waging war for peace is like screwing for virginity.

Journalist Aaron Maté’s piece today also cites Washington’s belief in escalation:

Shortly before returning to the White House for a second term, Donald Trump criticized the exiting president, Joe Biden, for letting Ukraine fire long-range US missiles into Russia. “Why are we doing that?” Trump complained. “We’re just escalating this war and making it worse.”

Just as his campaign pledge of “no new wars” gave way to a regime-change war on Iran, Trump’s professed aversion to a US-fueled escalation in Ukraine is no more. At this month’s NATO summit in Turkey, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio endorsed Ukraine’s drone attacks deep inside Russia. With the Russians “finding it more difficult to defend their own airspace,” Rubio explained, this will “create the space now to negotiate the end of this war.” Added Trump: “It’s an escalation, but it’s also an escalation that could help lead to an end.”

How often do “escalations” help to end wars? Does anyone remember how escalation in Vietnam turned out?

Maybe if we truly seek to end a war, we should deescalate attacks, then engage in diplomacy. No, that makes too much sense.

Spock learns that logic often doesn’t apply to murder or war

There’s a great line in an old Star Trek episode, “Journey to Babel,” where Spock is advised he’d do well to “forget logic and devote yourself to motivations of passion and gain,” for “those are the reasons for murder” — and often for war as well.

Of course, these aren’t the only reasons for war, but logic often has little to do with how and why wars are waged. That much is obvious as “climbing the escalation ladder” is seen or sold by Washington as the best way to deescalate in Iran and in Russia and Ukraine.

Who’s the Weak Link?

The New York Times Strikes Again

BILL ASTORE

JUN 20, 2026

I love getting The New York Times daily summary of the news. It makes for great hilarity.

Here’s today’s example:

Top News

Lebanon Emerges as Weak Link in U.S.-Iran Deal to End War

The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, once seen as a secondary front to the American-Israeli war on Iran, has become one of the main obstacles to ending it.

*****

It’s not Lebanon that’s the weak link here—it’s Israel.

Israel is the attacker. The aggressor. The country that wants to scupper the MOU between the USA and Iran. Everyone knows this—except the NYT, apparently.

I like too how the NYT describes it as the “American-Israeli war on Iran.” At the very least, it should be Israeli-American war of aggression against Iran.

And when was Lebanon a “secondary front” to the USA? America has no desire to seize land and water in southern Lebanon. That goal is entirely Israel’s, as is its fight against Hezbollah, which is responding to Israeli aggression.

The Iran War has been a huge loser (to put it in Trumpian terms) for the U.S., and only Israel seeks to prolong it. Again, who’s the weak link in the U.S.-Iran deal to end the war?

I’ve been playing with Trumpian language to describe the Iran War and its outcome. As Trump might say, it’s been a defeat for America the likes of which we’ve never seen before. No other defeat comes close.

I think Trump finally understands that. The question is, will “weak link” Israel let him withdraw or will the war become even more catastrophic?

It’s a Most Confusing Time to be in the U.S. Military

Who knows why we fight?

BILL ASTORE

JUN 14, 2026

It’s a most confusing time to be in the U.S. military. Who knows why we fight?

At the top, there’s a lack of principles, a lack of clarity, a lack of care.

There’s no accountability for losses and bad decisions.

The government keeps the people isolated from war’s true costs. There’s no call for sacrifice. No war bonds, no draft, no increase in taxes. Costs are largely kicked into the future as the national debt soars ever higher.

An all-volunteer military is essentially told to follow orders. Never mind about the morality or legality of the same.

The people are encouraged to cheer on or otherwise to support their warriors and warfighters. Basically, to wave the flag but otherwise to go about their business.

A divided Congress has essentially rendered itself powerless over war-making. Meanwhile, Members of Congress fight for their share of an expanding Pentagon pie of money (or pork) for their districts.

The Secretary of State says we went to war with Iran because Israel forced the U.S. government’s hand. So apparently in this case the U.S. military fights for Israel.

So far, the main beneficiaries of the war appear to be defense contractors, fossil fuel companies and banks, so apparently the U.S. military is fighting for them as well.

Clearly, with Iran the U.S. military is not fighting to defend the American people or to support and defend the U.S. Constitution.

Again, who knows why we fight?

The HAL 9000 knows the score

It’s always useful to ask Cui bono? while following the money. I asked my AI friends who’s benefiting from this war, and this was the answer the HAL 9000 spit out:

*****

The primary beneficiaries of the Iran war are Western defense contractors, major oil and gas corporations, and geopolitical rivals like Russia and China. The conflict has resulted in billions of dollars in windfalls for arms manufacturers and energy producers, while simultaneously shifting regional power balances. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Defense Contractors

  • Stock Surges: Arms manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have seen multi-billion dollar gains.
  • Missile & Defense Demand: High demand for THAAD interceptors and other Raytheon systems drives excess revenue. [1, 2]

Oil & Gas Majors

  • Record Profits: Surging crude prices have boosted revenues for producers like ExxonMobil and Chevron.
  • Energy Traders: European giants like Shell and BP capitalized on market chaos and sharp price movements. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Geopolitical Rivals

  • Russia: The conflict acts as a fiscal rescue by diverting Western attention and skyrocketing global energy prices.
  • China: China’s regional strategic influence is strengthened as the US is forced to divert military resources to the Middle East. [1]

Regional Powers

  • Israel: The war has neutralized immediate adversaries and solidified the country’s military posture in the region.

*****

Certainly, it’s indisputable how much the weapons makers and fossil fuel companies are profiting here.

Famously, Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler confessed in the 1930s he’d served as a gangster for capitalism with Standard Oil being one of his biggest clients. The Iran War seems to have benefited Israel, oil and gas interests, and military contractors the most, even as the average American has been hurt by inflation with much higher prices for gas, oil, groceries, and the like.

Interestingly, my AI friend didn’t list Iran as a major beneficiary of the war, but many have argued persuasively that Iran will emerge stronger from this conflict.

Again, it’s a most confusing time to be in the U.S. military.

PS: I thought I’d add this response I made to TomR’s comment below:

In 1985, when I pinned on those 2LT bars, I thought I had some clarity. America, though hardly perfect, was better than the model offered by the Soviet Union. Then the USSR collapsed in 1991, and the government went looking for new dragons to slay. And we found them and we keep finding them because we keep sowing the dragon’s teeth.

So the U.S. military has become a perpetual fighting machine, never mind the Constitution, never mind democracy, never mind morality or legality. If we don’t have enemies, we’ll create them.

The War Against Iran Continues

Until Trump’s Morale Improves

BILL ASTORE

JUN 11, 2026

I caught this headline at the New York Times this AM:

World

Analysis of Satellite Image and Videos Suggest Precision U.S. Strikes on Iranian Water Facility

It is unclear if the U.S. intentionally struck the facility or knew what it was. Deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure could constitute a war crime.

*****

America’s leaders are always boasting of precision weaponry. Yet the NYT suggests that a precision strike against an Iranian water facility was possibly unintentional, an accident, I guess. Since an intentional strike against critical infrastructure (you can’t get more critical than potable water) for civilians would constitute a war crime—and obviously America would never do that! 

Even asking that question, self-styled Secretary of War Pete Hegseth bloviated, is both “disingenuous” and “impugning” the motives of America’s military professionals.

We can’t have reporters asking questions that might impugn the motives of our brave leaders.

Hegseth seems to enjoy himself the most when he’s attacking the media for their lack of faith in him.

The Iran War, yet another disastrous war for the American people (and of course even more so for Iranians), may continue until President Trump’s morale improves. And that may prove to be a very long time. Remember when Hegseth suggested that the war would last eight weeks at most? It’s already roughly double that with no end in sight.

Check out the Iran War Clock. And the war clock keeps ticking …