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 Trumppropaganda) 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 threaton 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.
(Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a paid subscriber, click here to read the full version. This week’s issue also includes: my reaction to Trump co-opting Jesus during Holy Week; a long chat with Tom Holland on the Christian roots of small-l liberalism; reader dissents over Afroman and Israel; six notable quotes from the week in news, including two Yglesias Awards; 18 pieces on Substack we recommend on a range of topics; a Mental Health Break of a rolling tire in the desert; a woodsy window in the Southwest; and the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!)
Here’s a Dishhead who gave up the Dish for Lent:
I really love you and what you do. I just couldn’t during Lent. So much anger. So, I went to confession and my penance was to get off all podcasts and pray the rosary.
We are now in the Triduum, which means Lent is over. So here I am wondering whether I should subscribe again or just continue reading novels.
I pray you are well. I really love what you do. But I am so over the binary reality of politics, it’s hard to breathe sometimes. I am resubscribing on Easter Sunday. God Bless.
I understand, truly I do. But have faith and come back. Politics is not binary, like sex. It’s multi-faceted, constantly changing, always open to opportunity. And here at the Dish, we don’t just cover politics. This week’s podcast will speak to you, I hope.
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, including the two we discussed 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.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Jeffrey Toobin on the pardon power, Derek Thompson on abundance, Tiffany Jenkins on privacy in a liberal democracy, Adrian Wooldridge on “the lost genius of liberalism,” Greg Lukianoff on free speech, and Tom Junod on his memoir and masculinity. As always, please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
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.’”
(Read the rest of that piece here, for paid subscribers)
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.
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, and I respond at length. Please keep the criticism coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com. And follow more Dish debate in my Notes feed.
This is a feature in the paid version of the Dish spotlighting about 20 of our favorite pieces from other Substackers every week. This week’s selection covers subjects such as the continued clusterfuck of the war, the TSA/ICE saga, and Dem prospects for the midterms. Examples:
We’ve entered the age of the manosphere, but Project Hail Mary is a “textbook case in positive masculinity,” says Aaron Renn.
RIP, The Liberal Patriot. Ruy Teixeira has a final plea for the Dems to get their shit together.
Here’s a list of the substacks we recommend in general — call it a blogroll. If you have any suggestions for “In the ‘Stacks,” especially ones from emerging writers, please let us know: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
The View From Your Window Contest
Where do you think it’s located? Email your guess to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Proximity counts if no one gets the exact spot. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. The deadline for entries is Wednesday at 11.59 pm (PST). The winner gets the choice of a VFYW book or two annual Dish subscriptions. If you are not a subscriber, please indicate that status in your entry and we will give you a free month sub if we select your entry for the contest results. The archive is here. Happy sleuthing!
The results for this week’s window are coming in a separate email to paid subscribers later today. A long-lost sleuth — who’s only emailed once before, in 2010 — exclaims, “You quoted me in last week’s write-up!”
I got a kick out of seeing a few sentences from my entry for the Brookline contest in September 2010 (I’m the guy who said my girlfriend and I had our first hug on the sidewalk outside the building). Happy to report we’re still together and have two kids (ages 9 and 3). I haven’t entered a guess since then, but I still follow the contest every week and am starting to introduce it to our older daughter. Thanks for the walk down memory lane.
Reflections over the contest reaching the 500 mark continue to come in. Here’s our super-sleuth in Austin (who used to do our weekly cocktail column):
I started my window sleuthing 13 years ago, in 2013. It was a bright spot in a bleak chapter of my life, when my marriage of 21 years was falling apart. My first successful window find was #171 (Fayetteville, Arkansas). My second find didn’t happen until four months later (#189), which shows how bad I was at it at first. My skills at finding the locations grew, and by the end of 2014, I was finding about half the windows each week — until I finally won the contest in October of that year (#226, Providence). The VFYW book has been on my coffee table ever since.
Like many of the other sleuths, the greatest things the contest has given me is that feeling of triumph at finally tracking down a difficult location. Digging for clues, deciphering barely legible text, scanning coastlines in Google Maps for hours until I find one distinctly shaped cove or marina. There’s no other feeling like it. It truly never gets old.
But looking back, what really stands out to me is how the contest results have transformed from a simple breakdown of wrong guesses, correct guesses, and choosing a winner to what it is today: a detailed wealth of historical, biological, and cultural knowledge about a specific place in the world. It’s so well done that I end up feeling like I’ve traveled to these locations myself. Our good friends were planning a skiing trip to Japan, staying in Hokkaido. I told them to check out Niseko (#362), describing the town like I had been there. The contest has made me much more worldly than my actual travels would indicate.
I went back through the archives to try to nail down the moment the vibe of the weekly results posts shifted from contest results to a collection of curated columns. There’s no bright line; when the column returned with the Weekly Dish in 2020, you included verses from the “VFYW Poet” in many of the entries. But it was #274 (Somerset Village, Bermuda) when you published the first postcard by A. Dishhead. As a graphic designer, I appreciated the detail he (or she) put into it:
The postcards kept coming and the column got longer and more diverse from then on, culminating in what we have today: reports of such varied and interesting subjects that I’m perpetually amazed by the amount of effort you put in every week. It’s astounding, appreciated, and treasured.
See you two Fridays from now. Have a blessed Easter and Passover.
