White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told the truth about Tyrant Trump the other day regarding President Donald Trump’s war with Israel against Iran. She said, “The President hears all voices across the country, and he makes decisions based on his instincts.”
His instincts are wrapped around his ego, his fantasies, and his overbearing arrogance. Imagine Trump ordering 10 million Iranians to evacuate their nation’s capital, or bragging that “we (sic) control the entire skies over Iran.”
What he isn’t boasting about is the increased flow of U.S. bombs and missiles being shipped to Israel and the U.S. Navy’s daily firing at incoming Iranian missiles, and the tight planning and coordination with Israel’s military regarding targets and intelligence.
On June 18, Trump said, “Nobody knows what I’m going to do.” Trump has no idea what he should do.
All this war making and threats of much more by Trump, including annihilating Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, constitutes the most serious impeachable offense our Founders strove to safeguard against. The war declaration power is EXCLUSIVELY exercised by Congress (Article I, Section 8, Clause 1). The Founders most adamantly rejected the idea of a king plunging the nation into wars.
With American public opinion strongly against another American war in the Middle East, now with Iran, and after the Iraq disaster, Trump continues to behave as if he is above the law. He said in July 2019, “With Article II, I can do whatever I want as president.” He has also trampled the rule of law, doing this with over 100 illegal executive orders, damaging the American people in scores of deadly and costly ways at a worsening pace, and his threats of violence against foreign countries.
On June 18, Trump said, “Nobody knows what I’m going to do.” Trump has no idea what he should do. He is personally weighing the messages from his egomaniacal Minder and, thus far, Master, Israel’s cunning tyrant, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Knowing that Trump likes to be with a winner, the Israeli leader can point to many wars that Israel has won. Netanyahu can say that with the U.S. 30,000 lb. bombs to knock out Iran’s nuclear program, he will give credit to Trump and tout him as a peacemaker. He can cite Israel’s past bombings, killings, and sabotage against Iran as proof that Iran is a “paper tiger” incapable of much retaliation.
On the other hand, Trump knows that actions in the Middle East trigger unforeseen or unintended consequences. He has long denounced the bungling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His own intelligence community tells him Iran is “not actively building a nuclear weapon.” Israel, on the other hand, has about 200 nuclear warheads and a rapid delivery system.
How the climate worsens. In 2007, then presidential aspirant Senator Joe Biden shouted on Chris Matthews’ “Hard Ball” that he would lead a campaign to impeach President George W. Bush if he attacked Iran without a congressional declaration of war. Contrast this with last Wednesday’s assertion by retired General David Petraeus, the general who led the 101st Airborne Division in the criminal invasion of Iraq and who was former President Barack Obama’s CIA director from 2011 to 2012. He went berserk, saying Trump should order the Ayatollah Khamenei to completely dismantle Iran’s nuclear program (including nuclear energy) or face “the complete destruction of your country and your regime and your people.” If he refuses, Petraeus urges, Trump can “reluctantly… blow them to smithereens.”
Ninety million people. Are you crazy David? No blowback afterward, David? Without a congressional declaration of war, self-styled military historian Petraeus? He is outdoing the reemerging armchair neocons led by Bill Kristol, who pressed the Bush regime and American soldiers into the bloody Iraq quagmire.
Ironically, Trump is being blasted by his own MAGA mega-influencers—Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, and Dave Smith et al.—for betraying his campaign promises to stop “endless wars” and reject the “Deep State” and Empire. They are really incensed to take their denunciations at face value. Dave Smith told his large following that Trump should be “…impeached and removed from office…”
As for Iran, which has not invaded anybody in some 250 years, it gets little diplomatic empathy. After all, the U.S. overthrew Iran’s popular, newly elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 and installed the dictator Shah. It was bloodily invaded by a U.S.-backed Saddam Hussein in the early 1980s; was targeted along with Iraq and North Korea as part of the “Axis of Evil” by George W. Bush; and has been subjected to terror, sabotage, and military encirclement since then by the U.S. and Israel. Maybe the autocratic Iranian state has been terrified into building proxies in Syria and Lebanon, now demolished.
What would we do as a nation if confronted with such overwhelming force and regular attacks? Hardliners in Europe and the U.S. are further demanding that Iran even dump its ballistic missile capability—a level of forced unilateral disarmament, while exposed to the Israeli enemy armed to the nth degree that is actually using armed terror at will in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria—completely defenseless targets of the Israeli empire.
It could be a demonstration of some moral courage and patriotism if some retired Generals, (e.g., Mark Milley, Jim Mattis, John Kelly), who were in the first Trump administration, would inform the American people of their views regarding consequences of the new war in the Middle East being considered by Trump and his warmongering, incompetent Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The same holds for the silent retired presidents George W. Bush (perhaps he has learned something from his destruction of Iraq?) and Democrats Bill Clinton, Obama, and Biden.
The bottom line is whether the Rule of Tyrant Trump or the Rule of Law will prevail. As The New York Times lead editorial on June 19, 2025, trumpeted: ONLY CONGRESS CAN DECLARE WAR.
