The War He's Always Wanted
A moment of triumph for Benjamin Netanyahu; and of democratic collapse in the US.
For me and many others, the Iraq War of 2003 was a life-altering lesson in humility. In the wake of 9/11, with trauma warping my frontal cortex, I backed a pre-meditated, pre-emptive war for regime change in the Middle East — something stupid and immoral I soon realized, however well intentioned. It changed me. But at least in those tense, polarized months of 2002 and 2003, we had hashed out the case for war thoroughly beforehand, as democracies do. A thousand op-eds bloomed; critical votes were taken in the Congress; political careers were weighed in the balance; and Colin Powell went to the UN to present the “evidence.”
Seems like a wholly different world, doesn’t it?
Come with me a little further back in time to the Persian Gulf War of 1991. That was a war started by Saddam Hussein, not us. How did we go about a new war in the Middle East back then? Well, we had another big public debate, another trip to the UN, and then another vote in the Congress. It was closer than we remember: just 52-47 in the Senate (with one abstention). We then went to war with a very precise aim — ending the occupation of Kuwait — after amassing a coalition of 35 countries, and did so to cement the status of international law in the post-Cold War world.
Seems like another planet, doesn’t it?
And there’s a reason for that. We had a functioning liberal democracy then, a constitutional system that was imperfectly but actually followed, a responsible president, and international law on our side.
Today, we have precisely none of the above.
We’ve had no debate; we’ve had no search for international support or allies; we’ve ignored the UN entirely; the Congress didn’t debate, let alone vote, in advance; and the American people were told about the war after it had already begun. All of this renders this war illegal and unconstitutional and outrageous, and the fact that most people have just accepted it is proof, if we still needed it, that the extinction-level event I predicted in 2016 is now well in the rearview mirror.
In plain English, this is what is in front of our nose: a corrupt, deranged monarch pursuing an illegal and immoral war primarily to benefit a foreign country. This war makes us a textbook case of how democracies stagger into tyranny and endless war.
And how they rot from within. I watched this week as the secretary of defense did his Rumsfeld-On-Meth routine. But Rumsfeld would never express the following indecency:
This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.
That’s how fascists describe war, not Americans. It’s the mark of barbarians, not Christians. And today, we were greeted by the following obscenity from the White House itself, a depraved PR stunt that treats this war as a video-game of pure, gleeful, cowardly violence:
This after the first casualties of Hegseth’s newest “fuck the rules of engagement” war were more than 150 schoolgirls. There is no bottom to their callowness and depravity.
How then did this almost incredible thing, the one thing we swore we’d never do again — another regime-change war in the Middle East — happen before most Americans had even heard of it, let alone debated it? It’s stupefying that so many have already moved on from this foundational question.
One answer is that liberal democracy was deliberately crippled — because if we’d actually followed the Constitution, we wouldn’t be at war right now. The public is opposed by a big margin; the House vote on whether to suspend support just narrowly failed 212-219. (If all the Dems had voted for it, it would have won.) A real debate — with Gaza fresh in the minds of Dems and with MAGA deeply divided — and this war would never have started. If it was to happen, it had to be sprung on us.
The other answer, provided by the administration, is that Israel bounced us into it. They did so by deciding to assassinate the entire Iranian leadership (an act that violates all international law and sets a truly terrifying precedent for leaders of all countries, including our own). That Israeli decision instantly guaranteed America’s entry into the war, regardless of the will of the American people. Here’s how Secretary of State Rubio put it:
The president made the very wise decision — we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties …
We were then of course told that Rubio obviously didn’t mean to say that Israel dragged us into a war before we expected. Except that is exactly what he said and exactly what happened. Israel made a decision and America instantly saluted. As we do.
The Israeli decision, of course, transformed the war from one to prevent WMDs or ballistic missiles threatening the US and our allies, to full-on regime change. So the Israelis didn’t just pick the timing; they picked the purpose: theirs.
In other words, they brilliantly cornered us into fighting the regime-change war they’ve been itching to fight for four decades. No wonder the grin on Netanyahu’s face goes from ear to ear. This is the final proof of his 2010 boast:
I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in our way.
And we haven’t, have we? Here’s an interesting exchange from a hearing this week:
Senator Reed: If regime change was not the military objective, why was the first objective in the campaign the attack and death of Khamenei and key leaders of the regime?
Elbridge Colby [the under secretary of defense for policy]: Those were Israeli operations.
So whose war is this again?
Trump told us that the 2025 strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities had been “for Israel”; he told Tucker Carlson last month that “he understood the risks of an attack, but ... that he had no choice but to join a strike that Israel would launch.” Think about that last comment for a moment. “No choice”? Since when does the president of a superpower have “no choice” but to acquiesce to the decisions of a foreign country on a matter as grave as a declaration of war?
The answer to that question requires a long, complex, decades-long story about how Israel brilliantly mastered the art of getting a veto over American Middle East policy. This is not the place for that, so let me just note two big domestic constituencies who helped explain Israel’s dominance of Washington, without which this war is impossible: evangelical fanatics and Jewish Americans. It’s one of the strangest American alliances imaginable, but it explains a huge amount of why we are where we are. Up against these formidable bipartisan forces, the rest of us never had a chance.
The only way to describe American evangelicals’ view of Israel is religious fetishization, even worship. Rooted in the Old Testament, Senator Kevin Cramer declared this week, for example, that “we have a Biblical responsibility” to the Jewish state. Ambassador Mike Huckabee has told us that Israel has a Biblical right to all the land between the Euphrates and the Nile. Here’s a video of someone in the Tennessee legislature this week, asking the state to formally rename the West Bank “Judea and Samaria,” as the Netanyahu government does. Tennessee. Someone in Tennessee cares that much about a minor fact in a foreign country. And that concern is deeply genuine and passionate.
This week, according to a US soldier’s official complaint, on behalf of 15 others,
our commander ... urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.
And check out Lindsey Graham this week — his face flushed with excitement, as he urged Trump to “join Israel to attack Hezbollah.” Fuck yeah!
This isn’t “dual loyalty.” It’s much more interesting. For many fundamentalists, including the defense secretary, Israel and America are essentially fused as the same Zion. It is impossible for them even to conceive that the two countries might have separate interests. And this fusion of Israel and America is marinated in from childhood on.
Something similar is true for many American Jews. Again, it’s wrong and bigoted to speak of “dual loyalty.” This is not the “Elders of Zion”; it’s more like the open and empowered “citizens of America.” And for many, in my experience, it is also incomprehensible that the US could ever have interests at odds with Israel.
Suggest otherwise and they suspect you’re a bigot. I’ve tried over the years to get my Israel-fanatic friends to give me an example, any example, of where they think the two countries’ interests might ever diverge, and I might as well ask fish about water.
This is not a conspiracy; it’s not sinister; it’s not anti-American. In many ways, it’s admirable and very American. Americans have a history of supporting ethnic causes, as the Irish and Cubans prove. (Point out their patriotic fusion and no one calls you a bigot.) But this fusion and passion can blind you to US-Israel divides. Take the Kushner family. Netanyahu used to stay at Charles Kushner’s house just outside New York City. He slept in Jared’s bedroom one night, while the teen moved to the basement. And you wonder why Jared’s “negotiations” with the Iranians led to war.
Now, multiply that dynamic countless times among people in business and media. The Ellison family, for example, has funded the IDF, and now owns CBS News. Sure enough, CBS News feels suddenly like state media. The Adelsons make no bones about shoveling mountains of money to politicians for one reason alone: the Greater Israel project. Ask Trump: “Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet. I agree!” That was in 2015. By 2024, Sheldon’s widow, Miriam, became a top donor for Trump. During his speech at the Knesset in October, Trump gave her a shout-out:
I get her in trouble with this, but I actually asked her once… “What do you love more? The United States or Israel?” She refused to answer. That might mean Israel,” Trump says, smiling, while looking at the dual Israeli-American national.
I worked at The New Republic, which was bought by Marty Peretz to defend Israel after the 1973 war. It was the one topic on which no dissent of even the tiniest kind was ever allowed. Or think of Jeffrey Goldberg, the current editor of The Atlantic, where we both blogged 15 years ago. He’s an American who volunteered for the IDF as he came of age, and as soon as I wrote a word on the Dish calling out AIPAC, he walked into my office yelling: “You can’t publish that!” And if he’d had any editorial control, I wouldn’t have.
I could go on. And there’s nothing wrong per se about this at all. Evangelicals and Jews are just constituencies practicing normal politics in broad daylight. Many other groups do the same. They are passionate, obsessive, and if you’ve ever looked at our email in-tray, utterly relentless. And good for them. They deserve their successes.
But the upshot of this formidable, bipartisan alliance is that we’ve gotten into another regime-change war in the Middle East whether we wanted to or not. The rest of us had no chance. Here is Nancy Pelosi, speaking as a typical American politician of her generation:
I have said to people when they ask me if this capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid — and I don’t even call it aid — our cooperation with Israel because that is fundamental to who we are.
That’s the total fusion of America and Israel, in a manner that the Founders would be horrified by: a foreign country fundamental to the United States, warping its own understanding of its interests. Here is another Democrat right now, Senator Jack Reed:
I will vote to invoke the War Powers Act, which would give the president 30 days to terminate the operation, except for activities defending the state of Israel, which is critical to our reliance and alliance on Israel.
Where this ends I cannot know. One can hope, of course, for the fall of the mullahs, which would indeed be a great and wonderful thing. Some are gamely claiming that this is another part of Trump’s brilliant, four-dimensional, geostrategic vision, aimed at China. Good luck with that one. But we’ve just lost any argument against the invasion of Taiwan. But, even if this war hurts China, it would in no way retroactively justify what has just happened. As Robert Malley and Stephen Wertheim write:
No meaningful constraint exists in a system that judges wars on how they end up rather than whether they are warranted and wise.
But I’m not optimistic. A dying empire in staggering amounts of debt has just taken on another open-ended war that will likely bring chaos in its wake. The war we are conducting appears to be a brutal one — with hospitals and schools already hit. The question of our weapon supplies for the wider world after Gaza and Ukraine is an open and worrying one.
So this in many ways is where we have been headed for many decades now: a collapsed democracy, a deranged king, a bankrupt treasury, a war we cannot win for a country not our own, and a public accustomed to the learned helplessness that comes from knowing that however you vote, you will always get the same result:
A regime-change war in the Middle East, whether you want it or not.
(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: a fascinating chat with Kathryn Paige Harden on the genetics of vice and virtue; listener comments on previous pods; reader dissents over the war in Iran; many notable quotes from the week in news; a dozen pieces on Substack we recommend on a variety of topics; a psychedelic music video for a Mental Health Break; a serene window from a host city of the Winter Olympics; and, of course, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!)
From a new paid subscriber:
I admire your courage and your principled stand on Israel knowing that every time you tell the truth on that subject, you get accused of being antisemitic and get some cancellations. After a long time being a free subscriber, I have decided that the Dish is very much worth supporting and applauding.
Thanks. We have experienced a wave of cancellations over Israel. It happens if you ever criticize the country. I accept that as part of the deal here. I speak my mind, and in a free country, you can walk away. But we’re always careful to include dissent. This week’s big column, for example, is instantly followed by a stinging dissent that Chris selects to keep me from any temptation to rig it (and many more are on the podcast page). If you refuse to support a place with that policy, then I really don’t know what else to do. I’m not going to tailor my writing for commercial reasons.
New On The Dishcast: Kathryn Paige Harden
Paige is a scientist and writer. She’s a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, where she directs the Developmental Behavior Genetics lab and serves as Director of Clinical Training. She’s the author of The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality, and her new book is Original Sin: On the Genetics of Vice, The Problem of Blame, and The Future of Forgiveness. It’s about the eternal question of what sin is; and where it comes from; and whether our guilt is justified. We had a great chat.
Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — on the proclivity for violence in our genes, and even religion! That link also takes you to commentary on our pods with Michael Pollan on consciousness and Sally Quinn on Washington life. There’s also a bunch of reader dissent over my opinions on Israel, plus an astonishing and raw email from the father of a girl “who declared herself to be a boy as a high school freshman.”
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Matt Goodwin on the political earthquake in the UK, Jeffrey Toobin on the pardon power, Derek Thompson on abundance, Jonah Goldberg on the state of conservatism, Tom Holland on the Christian roots of liberalism, Tiffany Jenkins on privacy in a democracy, and Adrian Wooldridge on “the lost genius of liberalism.” As always, please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
Dissent Of The Week
A reader responds to last week’s column, “The Last War For Israel?”:
Viewing this only through an Israel lens misses a lot. The Iranian people don’t want this regime. The Gulf States don’t want them. The US doesn’t want them. And yes, the Israelis don’t want them either. That’s not some AIPAC conspiracy; it’s a rare moment of consensus.
You concede the regime is as weak as it’s been since the revolution: proxies destroyed, nuclear program degraded, economy wrecked, supreme leader aging out, senior leadership eliminated last year. But then doing anything about that is sinister because Israel also wants it?
Nobody’s talking about Iraq 2.0, with ground troops and a 20-year occupation. There’s already massive unrest in the country that the regime has to brutally suppress to survive. There are willing regional partners. The regime is the largest state sponsor of terror and the biggest destabilizing force in the region. Giving it a good shove (without American boots on the ground) and seeing what happens doesn’t strike me as foolish. What strikes me as foolish is letting this window close because we’ve convinced ourselves that any action in the Middle East is a neocon trap.
I’m not sure it’ll work, but let’s be honest about what “doing nothing” actually means: a regime that reconstitutes its nuclear program, rebuilds Hezbollah and Hamas, resumes funding terror, and continues to oppress its people.
“Seeing what happens.” If that’s the war aim, we’re truly fucked.
Many more dissents are on the pod page. As always, please keep the criticism coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com. And follow more Dish debate in my Notes feed.
In The ‘Stacks
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 Noem, Talarico, and “the anti-antisemitism movement.” Examples:
A must-read from Jean Twenge: “Non-heterosexual identity is in free-fall.”
Among the dozen new findings on sex differences is a “surprising” one on political violence.
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. Contest archive is here. Happy sleuthing!
The results for this week’s window are coming in a separate email to paid subscribers later today. Last week’s contest saw the return of the sleuth who goes by “A. Dishhead,” who hadn’t created one of his amazing custom postcards in two years:
See you next Friday.