Where are you right now? Trying to digest the latest news brought to you by the Trump administration or just too busy to be concerned? Or, perhaps, you are one of those who eschew the news and politics out of contempt for all things political. Worst yet, are you a silent MAGA type filled with admiration and high on macho hype supporting the courage of Trump’s actions?
Whatever the outcome of this latest imbroglio, it will most likely not solve anything definitively and may sow the seeds for unprecedented violence and turmoil in the Middle East and beyond. And that’s saying something!
Trump’s plans go only as far as the edge of his desk, and his partnership with Israel is fraught with danger. His actions are driven by winning the midterm congressional elections and making a name for himself in the remaining time during his presidency. Long-term benefits for American policy, the region and the world-at-large don’t concern him. He is not a statesman but a bully drunk on his own importance.
The attack on Iran most likely will become just one more failed attempt by the United States to intervene using force or nefarious means to bring about regime change to affect history. The list is long: the overthrow of Madero in Mexico in 1910, the intervention in Russia after the 1917 revolution, the Iranian coup in 1953 that put the Shah on the throne, the deposing of Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, the US involvement in Vietnam in the sixties driven by the domino theory, the disaster of the 1961 Bay of Pigs and the overthrow of Allende in Chile in 1973. The list goes on with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars being the latest. Ask yourself how these all came out. The point being that, despite some immediate successes, most turned sour and solved little.
What this picture begs is that we, as a nation, go to war only after sober deliberation and congressional approval and, then, only when our national interests warrant it such as self-defense.
I certainly do not know all the answers to the questions raised by our undeclared war on Iran, but I don’t believe our leadership does either. The Trump government should join our European allies in vigorously opposing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; not doing so is appeasement, pure and simple, a folly discredited by history. By attacking Iran, we joined the Russians as aggressors.
*Normalcy is the “state of being normal, typical, or expected, representing a return to a stable, routine condition.” The term was made popular by President Warren Harding referring to post WWI stability.