A Strongman's Kind Of War
The current clusterfuck in Iran makes the best case for a republic, and its virtues.
What has the war with Iran achieved since it was launched on February 28?
The Iranian regime’s navy has been largely destroyed; its air force crippled; its missile sites and capacity have been pummeled; and the upper echelon of the regime has been murdered. You can scour the president’s padded weave of delusion Wednesday night (or even Trump propaganda) and find little more than that on the positive side of the ledger. And, to be sure, it’s not nothing. The regime is a tyranny and a threat to the region and the world; degrading its military is a good thing.
But when you review the other side of the ledger, the negatives swarm like a murmuration.
Soaring oil prices — which will last with no opening of the Strait of Hormuz — are a huge boon to Russia in its war against Ukraine and a blow to the global economy (including our own). The cost even prompted the US to issue a sanctions waiver on oil exports that gave Iran a windfall of $14 billion in unexpected extra revenue. (Compare with Obama’s “shocking” $1.7 billion in Iranian assets unfrozen by the JCPOA.) Our Pacific allies’ economies will be particularly clobbered. So much for that pivot.
And, compared with before the war, Iran’s strategic position is enhanced, not weakened, because a regime that survives this kind of asymmetric war wins it. Buoyant oil prices are now providing Iran with twice the oil revenue it had before the war! IRGC control of the Strait of Hormuz opens another stream of tolls — up to $2 million a ship — for the regime, funding rearmament. If Iran ends the war with strategic control of almost a fifth of the world’s oil supplies, the Gulf states will have to accommodate it. That’s a huge strategic defeat for us.
And for what? Iran’s nuclear threats had already been defanged last year. There was no immediate threat. There was no looming threat. There was simply an immediate temptation: to exploit Iran’s weakness by launching Netanyahu’s long-sought-for war. And Trump was dumb enough and vain enough to fall for it.
America’s global credibility is shred. Macron put it gently enough: “When you want to be serious, you don’t say every day the opposite of what you said the day before. And maybe you shouldn’t be speaking every day.” From the utterly incoherent war aims at the start — which seemed to change hourly — to the torrential bullshit on Wednesday night, no one believes the word of the US anymore. Do you? Now, having thrown the world economy for a loop and devastated the Middle East, America’s president says he may just walk away. That’s quite something for a US president to say. It takes decades to build credibility, but just a couple of Truth Social posts to destroy it.
America’s moral standing is also finished. This is the first war in which the defense secretary has baldly celebrated “death and destruction” for their own sake, and the president has boasted “we’re going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong.” It’s a war where an American president doesn’t even express regret for the killing of 150 schoolgirls in a mistaken strike on the first day, joining the death toll of 1,500 civilians and 15 US servicemembers.
It’s a war where Trump hits bridges, hospitals, and schools, and is now threatening civilian infrastructure, like desalination plants and refineries. Lindsey Graham threatened to bomb Iran so thoroughly it can “no longer function as a nation.” Pete Hegseth, who has renamed the Pentagon for war rather than defense, prayed for the troops thus:
Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.
Christianity with the mercy removed! This is a different America than the one the world once knew: this one is indecent, imperial, theocratic, brutal.
NATO has been shattered. The contempt the US showed our European allies by not even informing them in advance about a war that is already hurting them, is of a piece with Trump’s earlier threat on NATO territory itself (Greenland). Trump saying he wants to leave NATO — a defensive alliance — because it refused to join an offensive war of choice, was a new low. (NATO wasn’t in Vietnam either.) And this kind of breach is, at this point, irreparable. One Trump term could be rationalized away by our friends and allies. Not two. This is America now.
The recklessness of walking away also invites a new alliance of global powers — without America — to police the Gulf. It gives the Chinese an epic opportunity to present themselves as the only superpower left concerned with global order and free shipping lanes. And the contempt for international law shown by Trump, Rubio, and Netanyahu removes any legal basis the West might have for opposing the invasion of Taiwan. Wars of aggression with no immediate threat have now been blessed by the US. Enjoy the rest of the century!
If you are a supporter of Israel, this war is also bad news. The way it began, exposing the unseemly entanglement of our national interests, was bad enough. The accompanying wave of ethnic cleansing on the West Bank, the Knesset approval of a new Palestinian-only death penalty with no right to appeal, the demolition of Southern Lebanon along the lines of the razing of Gaza: Americans have seen all this, and recoiled. Hauling out the old techniques — you’re antisemites! Israel is a democracy! the nuclear threat is real! — is a sign of desperation. Especially for the young, the neocons and evangelicals have finally killed the thing they loved.
Am I being excitable again? As I read the foreign press, I suspect not. With Trump unleashed as an unfettered king, America has become a floundering farce of a superpower: profligate, indisciplined, cruel, and cringe. And yet nearly 40 percent of Americans still actually manage not to see this, still even imagine that what is happening is normal, precedented, even a success. That’s what triggers in me a Ben Franklin dose of fatalism. If four out of ten Americans cannot see how truly awful this is, how vast and long-lasting the domestic and global damage this president is inflicting on this country is, our 250 years really are up.
But with catastrophes also come opportunities. In many ways, this war has the potential to strip us of any remaining illusions that our constitution is working as designed. Only a de facto monarchy could launch this kind of war: secretly planned by a select few, kept from public scrutiny, launched by surprise, unbudgeted, with no discernible logic or strategic plan. Republics are designed to avoid precisely this kind of autocratic crash-out — to provide transparency, offer contrary advice in advance, air debate, flush out errors, ensure public support, think through unintended consequences, and provide guardrails and off-ramps so that wars can succeed. Our constitution is not just about liberty; it’s about a republic capable of making wise decisions rooted in deliberation and reason — not a mad king ad-libbing us into disaster.
Maybe, then, this fiasco will help more people understand the magnitude of what we have so carelessly thrown away for a cult figure. One-man rule is a crap shoot, larded with error and whim, dangerous, kleptocratic, and fond of the deepest of ditches. That was the understanding of strongman rule that once gave birth to America.
May it be born again.
New On The Dishcast: Tom Holland
Tom is a historian, translator, and podcaster. He hosts with Dominic Sandbrook the most downloaded history pod in the world, “The Rest Is History.” He’s the author of many books, and we discussed two this week: Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic, and Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. Those two erudite, beautifully written books made a huge impact on me.
Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — on the paradoxical power of Christ’s crucifixion, and the Christian roots of “secular”. That link also takes you to commentary on last week’s pod with Jonah Goldberg on the dismal state of conservatism. We also hear from readers on Israel, Islamophobia, and Holy Week, and I respond at length.
Heads Up
Chris and I are taking our Easter break next week. It’s been a hell of a quarter. So next Friday, we’ll just be sending you the Dishcast. See you then.
Trump, Power, and Jesus
In an Easter week gathering, just before the president threatened to bomb an entire country “back to the stone ages,” his White House “spiritual advisor,” Paula White-Cain, went there. She equated Trump with Jesus:
Mr. President, no one has paid the price like you have paid the price. It almost cost you your life. You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused. It’s a familiar pattern that our Lord and Savior showed us. But it didn’t end there for him, and it didn’t end there for you.
God always had a plan. On the third day, he rose, he defeated evil, he conquered death, hell, and the grave. ... And sir, because of his resurrection, you rose up. … And I believe that the Lord said to tell you this — because of his victory, you will be victorious in all you put your hands to.
She wasn’t done. Wearing what looked like a pink, bejeweled piece of lingerie, she recalled her morning prayer, when suddenly, “it was like the Holy Spirit just zoned me in and said, ‘Tell President Trump how thankful you are for him.’” Amid cheers, she continued: “I felt like I was conveying the heart of God for all of us — that we are thankful for the greatest champion of faith that we’ve ever seen in a president.”
Franklin Graham was next, and even worse. He called the Iran War a Biblical imperative:
Father, you tell us in the book of Esther that the Persians — the Iranians — were wanting to kill every Jew — woman, child — and to do it all in one day. But, you raised up Esther to save the Jewish people. Father … today the Iranians — the wicked regime of this government — wants to kill every Jew and destroy them with an atomic fire. But you have raised up president Trump “for such a time as this.”
Words fail. The Trump era has defined itself perhaps above all by its sickening abuse and inversion of Christianity. It’s far worse than W Bush’s Christianism, which was sincere if misguided. It’s entirely utilitarian and cynical. It’s why I despise Trump more than any public figure in my lifetime. He is everything I was taught not to be.
His values are, in descending order: power, money, pussy, fame, and cruelty. He is not just not Christian; he is a living rebuke to everything Christians believe in. And so, observing this religious obscenity in the White House, and its justification for an immoral war, one reaches for language strong enough to convey the kind of rage Jesus himself once felt as he turned the money-changers’ tables over in the temple.
And mercifully, another American was able to provide the antidote. On the Sunday before the smug, rich warmongers prayed for the most powerful man on earth, the Pope was clear:
Rather than saving himself, [Jesus] allowed himself to be nailed to the cross, embracing every cross borne in every time and place throughout human history… Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: Your hands are full of blood.”
Yesterday for Holy Thursday, he was talking of the crucifixion’s inversion of the paradigm of earthly power:
The cross is part of the mission: the sending becomes more bitter and frightening, but also more freeing and transformative. The imperialist occupation of the world is thus disrupted from within; the violence that until now has been the law is unmasked. The poor, imprisoned, rejected Messiah descends into the darkness of death, yet in so doing he brings a new creation to light.
It really does begin to feel like the madness of the Trump era is building to a head, doesn’t it? — that its Christianist madness may be fully exposed in Iran as the myths of the cult begin to fade and fall. Maybe the darkest of night really is just before the dawn. Or maybe I’m just dreaming.
The View From Your Window
Portal, Arizona, 9.59 am
Money Quotes For The Week
“On Palm Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem as crowds welcomed him with praise honoring him as king. They call me king now, do you believe it?” - Donald Trump.
“Just because I don’t like brain tumors doesn’t mean that if you show up with a kitchen knife and a rusty spoon, I’ll say, go at it,” - Phil Klay, an Iraq veteran, arguing against an unjust war against an evil regime.
“Thesis: Bibi Netanyahu is the Ahmed Chalabi of the US war on Iran — a canny foreigner who manipulated US leadership into a war it wanted to fight anyway, by telling them what they wanted to hear, especially that it would be an easy win that would change the Mideast for the good,” - Rod Dreher.
“When your ankles swell up three times the size they were before, that means heart failure. And he does look sick. And he does babble, and it sounds like the brain’s not doing too hot. So we just cut bait on Trump and mobilize against the Democrats,” - Alex Jones.
Yglesias Award Nominees
“We lost the plot. ... We brought a set of culture wars to the schools,” - Rahm Emanuel on his own party.
“I spent years amplifying a movement that treated fossil fuels as the enemy and net-zero as the solution. I was young, and I didn’t fully understand the system I was criticizing. … In this worldview, the moral clarity of the goal far outweighs the inconvenience of reality,” - Lucy Biggers, a former net-zero activist.
Dissent Of The Week
A reader takes issue with last week’s column, “Afroman For President!”:
While I 100% agree with you about the hilarity and strangely perfectly appropriate way that Afroman handled this situation, I think we should be very careful about lionizing such an odious figure as this guy. I’m not sure if you remember this incident from 11 years ago (or if you hadn’t heard about it in the first place), but when a woman — clearly nothing more than a fan — jumped on stage to dance with Afroman as he was playing a (truly horrendous) guitar solo, he threw a haymaker her way and knocked her out for precisely no reason whatsoever. Here’s a TMZ video of the incident:
And his apology at the time was beyond laughable. He said he thought it was a guy on the stage with him, and that this guy had been yelling at him throughout the entire show. Yet, as you can see from the video, after he sucker punches this woman quite literally half his size, he looks down at her for a minimum of three seconds by my count — MORE than enough time to recognize, “Oh shit! That’s a small woman, not a threatening man. I should help her up and apologize and get her medical attention!”
But what does he do? Turns around and proudly continues his truly horrendous guitar solo. (Also, I find it quite strange that he knew precisely where to land that punch so that it connected perfectly with her face. If he actually thought it was some bigger guy threatening him, I doubt he would’ve aimed so low and maintained such precision.)
Please don’t misunderstand me. I totally agree with what you’ve written about Afroman in this current incident, and I think the humorous headline you’ve put on this article is fine as well, but I just wanted to point out that Afroman is a really bad person himself. (And it’s not just this one incident with this particular woman; the TMZ video also shows him throwing another fan off the stage — literally). I just think it’s worth considering the totality of someone’s character before offering a jokey title like “[Terrible Person] For President!”
Okie dokie. A few more dissents, over Israel, are on the pod page, arriving in your in-tray shortly. Please keep the criticism coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
Mental Health Break
For when you’re tired of the news:
In The ‘Stacks
Bob Wright illustrates “why we keep stumbling into stupid wars.”
Enter the Houthis.
Greg Sargent digs into Hegseth’s “bloodthirsty” Christianism.
Jeff Maurer fisks Marc Thiessen over his blind loyalty to Trump’s war.
You probably wish you had an electric car right now.
“As DHS employees work without pay,” writes Gabe Fleisher, “Congress gets paid without working.”
Will ICE stay in the airports?
We’ve entered the age of the manosphere, and Project Hail Mary is a “textbook case in positive masculinity,” says Aaron Renn.
Why are men especially prone to gambling addiction?
A dating coach illustrates “why high-achieving women stay too long” in broken marriages.
To the moon!
“New music is slowly dying,” laments Ted Gioia.
Is your home making you sick?
Catherine Rampell looks ahead to Trump’s “gift-wrapped oppo ads for Democrats.”
Will the Dem obsession with identity flip to straight white Christian men?
The party has a Hasan Piker problem.
Ruy Teixeira has a final plea for the Dems to get their shit together. RIP, The Liberal Patriot.
The View From Your Window Contest
Where do you think? Email your entry to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. Proximity counts. The deadline for entries is Wednesday at 11.59 pm (PST). The winner gets the choice of a View From Your Window book or two annual Dish subscriptions.
See you two Fridays from now. Have a blessed Easter and Passover.