Loser Trump the Latest President to Launch Far-Off, Failed US War

I was almost six years old when the Korean War began and Korea was a mere 7,000 or so miles from Washington, DC. I’m now 82 years old and my country is at war with Iran, whose capital, Tehran, is—phew!—only about 6,300 miles from Washington, DC. What a relief!

By the time I’m 110, there’s a dim possibility that, should that be a pattern (and don’t forget Vietnam, a mere 9,000 miles from Washington; Afghanistan, a mere 7,000 miles away; or Iraq, a mere 6,000-odd miles offshore of the United States, all of which suggest that distance has indeed been a significant—and significantly unnerving—part of American imperial war making since 1945), the US might be warring with a country merely 5,000-odd miles from our capital. And by the time I’m 126, the war of that moment might, for all I know, be right next door. (Of course, if Donald Trump, who would then be 124 years old, is still president, it might even be in Canada, “our cherished 51st State.”)

I should, in truth, be more used to my country’s distant wars by now. After all, I can still remember my opposition to the Vietnam War, a moment when I actually took to the streets and turned in my draft card in public protest—yes, back then, the military wasn’t an all-volunteer outfit—and also learned how to be a draft counselor to help potential draftees like me, who were against that all too literal war from hell.

There are so many things that are truly needed on this overheating planet of ours, how deeply sad (not to say genuinely pathetic) that the best thing the president of the United States and his advisers could find to do this year was launch a war halfway around the world that would kill all too many people.

Almost 60 years later, I find it strange that my country is once again fighting a distant war for reasons that, at best, make no sense whatsoever to me, and at worst are simply horrific and repetitive beyond belief. It’s a war that, as The New York Times reported, was essentially sold to the president by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as a “near-certain victory” against a weak Iranian regime that would prove incapable (no question about it!) of blockading the Strait of Hormuz, could do little harm to America’s allies in the Middle East, and “could foster the conditions for the Iranian opposition to overthrow the regime.”

Yes, it’s true that my country may indeed have been the most imperial—in the sense of influencing so much of the world—country in history with a truly global reach. Of course, there were also the other two great powers of the last half century. There was the Soviet Union—now, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which, to give him credit of an unnerving sort, is at least fighting his nightmarish war against Ukraine right at or near its own border rather than in Asia, Africa, or Latin America. And then there is China, which has so far proven itself a remarkable imperial force by having but a single military base anywhere else on the planet—unlike the 750 American ones scattered around the globe—and not fighting a war anywhere other than not particularly successfully against Vietnam in 1979 and border skirmishes with India in 2020 and 2021 (which, historically speaking on this planet of ours, is almost the imperial equivalent of pacifism).

No such luck for the United States of Donald J. Trump, of course. “Our” latest president has continued a tradition now more than 75 years old of launching distant wars that simply never succeed. Never.

You would think, of course, that there might be some extremely modest learning curve when it came to such conflicts, but if so, you would think wrong. Logical as that might appear, it’s proven to be anything but the reality of our world. And after so many failed wars globally, that’s once again our reality in relation to Iran, despite the fact that “our” president in his first term in office offered this description of himself: “They said: ‘He will start a war.’ I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”

And curiously enough, with the exception of an ongoing conflict in Syria, he stuck to his... oh, sorry, but it is the phrase... guns then. No such luck recently, of course. And Iran is turning into a disaster first class, while the harm to that country is, as with all such wars (remember the millions killed in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia), or at least should be considered, unbearable. And mind you, while “our” president was turning our world into an ever greater mess at home and abroad, he was still planning to extend his renaming frenzy from the Gulf of Mexico (oh, sorry, the Gulf of America) and Lake Ontario (oh, sorry, again, Lake America) to the Strait of Hormuz, which he was hoping, believe it or not, could be renamed the “Trump Strait.” As he wrote at his Truth Social account: “Now that we have it under U.S.A. control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to TRUMP STRAIT??? Like America itself, it would be ‘hotter’ than ever before! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

Imagine that, will you—not that the Strait of Whatever You Want to Call It was, in fact, faintly under American control.

And for what acts might it be renamed? Well, just as I was writing this piece, for instance, accounts appeared indicating that a missile launched by my country reportedly killed at least four people, including a 4-year-old child, and wounded another 68 at a wedding—yes, a wedding!—in Iran.

Oh, and let me at least add that, right here at home, one American was finally brought to justice for his acts—in this case, US Air Force Major Jason Watson, who had stood on the steps of the US Capitol and called for the impeachment of President Trump. As he told CNN: “Not only is [Trump] a failure as president, he is flagrantly violating the Constitution, breaking the law, engaged in rampant corruption, and is killing Americans. And that is unacceptable to me.”

And as it turns out, it’s also unacceptable to the Iranians. Since, despite what Benjamin Netanyahu assured “my” president about, they have indeed been capable both of attacking American allies and a whole string of American military bases in the Middle East with missiles and drones, while indeed largely shutting down traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and so driving up oil prices strikingly on a global level.

There are so many things that are truly needed on this overheating planet of ours, how deeply sad (not to say genuinely pathetic) that the best thing the president of the United States and his advisers could find to do this year was launch a war halfway around the world that would kill all too many people, ruin worlds (and weddings), pour greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and waste enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars thousands of miles from home at a moment when all too many people in this very country still need so much.

Why is it, I wonder, that American presidents of seemingly any stripe simply can’t stop launching distant, disastrous wars with our tax dollars? In some sense, I simply don’t understand. How can there be no learning curve whatsoever when it comes to American wars abroad since 1945? How thickheaded do you truly have to be not to notice an overwhelming pattern of lack of success (not to say outright failure)? It’s so obvious that there should be no way it wouldn’t be a front-and-center phenomenon no one could miss or ignore?

No such luck, of course.