Your Weekly Message From The Master
Another Gem From The Bartender At The Shebeen
I’m just going to leave this here:
A Must-Read Takedown of the Iran War
Deaf to the trumpets and the fanfare, the great mass of Americans entered the war apathetic, submissive, and bitter. Their honest sentiments had been trodden to the ground, their judgment derided, their interests ignored. Representative government had failed them at every turn.
A President, newly reelected, had betrayed his promise to keep the peace. Congress, self-emasculated, had neither checked nor balanced nor even seriously questioned the pretexts and pretensions of the nation’s chief executive The free press had shown itself to be manifestly unfree-a tool of the powerful and a voice of the “interests.” Every vaunted progressive reform had failed as well. Wall Street bankers, supposedly humbled ... had impudently clamored for preparedness and war. The Senate ... had proven as impervious as ever to public opinion. The party machines, supposedly weakened by the popular primary, still held elected officials in their thrall. Never did the powerful in America seem so willful, so wanton, or so remote from popular control as they did the day war ... began. On that day Americans learned a profoundly embittering lesson: They did not count. Their very lives hung in the balance and still they did not count. That bitter lesson was itself profoundly corrupting, for it transformed citizens into cynics, filled free men with self-loathing, and drove millions into privacy, apathy, and despair.
Forgive the several ellipses, which I will now explain. This was written in 1988 by the late Walter Karp. It was a lament for how easy this country slid into war in 1917.
The target of Karp’s well-earned derision was Woodrow Wilson, whose grandiose plans for remaking to world led him to betray all the progressive principles that got him elected, and that, as Karp explains, were not as strong in practice as they were on the stump. Power in this country remained in the same hands. And it still does today, even in a time in which our president is as different a person from Wilson as a meat ax is from a rapier. All Trump and Wilson share is megalomania. Our current president’s is just wilder and profoundly dumber.
On Friday, by a vote of 52-47, the Senate voted down a measure that would have ended the United States war on Iran. It was not a straight party-line vote. Career apostate senators Rand Paul and John Fetterman each jumped the aisle, obviously to no effect. The sponsor of the bill was Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois. During the last time our country got misled into a war of choice in the Middle East, Duckworth was a helicopter pilot and lost both of her legs. In defense of her measure, Duckworth bore powerful witness.
I have come to the floor today as a U.S. Senator, of course, but also as a former soldier who served in uniform the last time a President rashly sent our men and women into an unjustified war in the Middle East. I spent nearly a year in Walter Reed Army Medical Center recovering from injuries I earned in Iraq. Every morning, as I struggled to sit up straight, every time I was rolled into yet another surgery, I made sure to read the poster I had next to my hospital bed. It was a framed copy of the Soldier’s Creed, the words that those lucky enough to wear the Army uniform live by. That same framed copy now hangs by my desk here in DC.
As I glanced at it this morning, I realized there is perhaps no greater proof that Donald Trump never deigned to serve a day in his life than the mockery he makes of the Soldier’s Creed’s commitments every single day he has been in office. The creed may be associated with the Army, but the sentiments hold true for all of those who wear the uniform of this great Nation. Its 13 lines tell us to be disciplined, physically and mentally tough, trained, proficient, and to look out for those who look out for us, to look out for one another. Donald Trump is supposed to be our servicemembers’ Commander in Chief. The very, very least we should expect of him is to epitomize the standards that we ask our troops to swear by, to live by. The very, very least we should expect of the Commander in Chief is to be as competent, disciplined, and professional as the men and women whose very lives hinge on his capacity to lead, on that competence and professionalism we expect to see in the White House. The creed makes clear that our troops will never quit, that they will never leave a fallen comrade behind. Yet ‘‘Cadet Bone Spurs’’ is someone who will always quit. And every hour he orders our servicemembers to remain in unnecessary, growing danger, he is proving that Donald Trump does not give a damn about leaving a comrade or so, so many comrades behind.
Every moment that Donald Trump leaves our heroes mired in the muck of this illegal war of choice with Iran, he is showing that he cares more about saving face than leading our troops. So I come to the floor today with a simple question. Our military men and women go out there every day and do their jobs, no matter the risks—all on Donald Trump’s orders. So I ask you, Mr. President: Why the hell can’t you do your job too? Why can’t you live up to the same level of proficiency as our troops? Look, I am proud of every mission I completed in Iraq, but I would never ever wish another endless, needless, un justified war like the one I served in on anybody else. I wouldn’t wish it on the heroes who are packing up their rucks right now, knowing they may never touch American soil again. I wouldn’t wish it on their families, who are being forced to spend their days anxiously awaiting news from half a world away. And I wouldn’t wish it on the American people, who want their President to focus on bringing the costs down here at home, not starting new, expensive, taxpayer-funded wars continents away. But Trump either doesn’t understand or he simply doesn’t care about that. From the moment this conflict began, the President has tried to shroud his incompetence behind the valor of our servicemembers. When asked to justify his illegal actions, Donald Trump has tried to hide his cowardice behind our heroes’ courage. He has tried to act as if questioning why we are at war is the same as questioning the skill and bravery of our troops themselves. It isn’t.
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The problem here is that the person who is supposed to be leading them spends more time talking about his Marie Antoinette ballroom than he does sitting in the Situation Room, trying to get us out of this war. The problem is the guy who claims to be making America great again looks at the word ‘‘America’’ and only sees the letters ‘‘M’’ and ‘‘E’’ in the middle of it. The problem is that the Commander in Chief not only has no idea what the end state is like for his war of choice but probably doesn’t know what the term ‘‘end state’’ means at all. The problem is that even in the last 2 weeks, the man who is in charge of our Nation’s nuclear codes has himself gone increasingly nuclear. He is not believing literal war with Iran is enough. He has now gone on to proverbial war with the Vatican, choosing to pick fights with the Pope, of all people—the Pope. Rather than trying to engage in any semblance of real diplomacy to end the conflict in the Middle East, he has threatened to annihilate an entire civilization, terrifying people overseas and here at home, who are understand ably worried about retaliatory strikes. Now, after one half-assed day of so-called negotiations with Iran, he has whipsawed to the next risky frontier in the region—a dangerous, complex, partial military blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, launching it at our Nation’s expense with no justification, no expla nation, or any real plan as to what comes next. His only plan seems to rely on the valor, willingness to sacrifice, and professionalism of our military men and women. But let me tell you, that is not enough They need a true commander.
Look, war is always tragic, but when it is preventable, when it is unjustified, it is not just tragic, it is a travesty. Trump wouldn’t let himself be dragged by the bone spurs to serve in Vietnam, so how dare he—how dare he—drag our Nation into a war of his choice today? But this draft dodger—this five-time draft dodger—is too infatuated with maximum pressure to make a serious effort at even minimum diplomacy. Once again, the Trump foreign policy doctrine has proven reckless, senseless, and dangerous—a doctrine in which fact and fiction are one and the same, one in which our Commander in Chief seems to come to military decisions by virtue of temper tantrums and announces them via tweet in the middle of the night, and one in which avarice outweighs advice every single time.
Senator Tammy Duckworth sponsored a bill to end Trump’s war with Iran. It failed to pass.
Bill Clark // Getty Images
In truth, Duckworth’s emphasis on Trump’s draft status during Vietnam makes my teeth itch just a little, as any variation of the “chickenhawk” argument does. (However, the president is a third-generation draft dodger. In fact, his grandfather emigrated to avoid serving in the army of the Kaiser.) But her witness is of inestimable value, as is her genuine contempt for the president, whatever its sources. Once more, we return to Walter Karp’s valedictory to what he called, “The America That Was Once Free and Is Now Dead.”
Apathy and cynicism were the universal state. The official propaganda of the 1920s meant little to most Americans, but by now they were inured to a public life that made no sense and to public men who never spoke to their condition. Like any defeated people, they expected their rulers to consider them irrelevant.
If we ever are to recover from the damage done by this political era, and by the decades of misrule that made this era not merely possible, but inevitable, the work does not end when the Trump presidency does. It only begins. Only if we’re up to it. If we are not just any defeated people.