Cromwell

C: I’ve called you together to discuss the state of the war. How would you rate it so far?

M: A disaster that will probably get worse before it gets better.

S: So far, so good.

C: Mark, why do you think it’s a disaster?

M: I’m a car dealer. For years, my company invested billions in creating electric cars because they were the wave of the future. Trump basically flushed those investments down the drain with his environmental policies. He also drove up prices with his tariffs. Now his war is making the case for EVs again. What am I supposed to do with that?

C: And you think it will get worse?

M: We haven’t felt the worst of the inflationary impacts yet. No wonder the Democrats can’t wait for November.

C: Sebastian, why do you think the war is going well so far?

S: Because, as Trump and Hegseth keep telling us, we have destroyed Iran’s military assets. We can hit them anytime and in any way we want. It’s just a matter of time before they surrender.

C: What makes you think they plan to surrender? The regime is still in control. Trump doesn’t have any leverage to make it go away. The deal it is offering on nukes sounds a lot like the Obama deal.

S: Trump won’t accept an Obama deal. The nuclear program has to go away permanently.

C: The supposedly obliterated program still exists. We don’t have the practical ability to get the enriched material out of the country without an agreement. How are we going to get that agreement?

S: Trump will figure out a way to escalate enough to get it done. I trust him.

C: If that requires an invasion and an occupation by large numbers of ground troops, are you ok with that?

S: I hope it doesn’t come to that, because it would sound like Iraq. But I trust Trump. He’ll find a better way. He always does.

C: At what point did Trump go to the American people before the war and ask them to accept much higher gas prices as the price for a war that might or might not put a permanent end to the Iranian nuclear program?

S: The American people voted to trust Trump and his instincts in 2024. Whether you like it or not, all of America is in his hands. He can do whatever he wants, and nobody can stop him. That’s what presidential elections are for.

C: Does that theory of American democracy apply if AOC is elected in 2028?

S: Of course not. Trump speaks for God, so we are bound to trust and follow him. AOC speaks for the devil. We are bound to resist her.

C: I think we’re done for now.

18th century European wars of choice were given different names in the colonies. The War of the Spanish Succession, for example, was known as Queen Anne’s War. The Seven Years’ War was the French and Indian War. Most colorfully, the War of the Austrian Succession was called the War of Jenkins’ Ear in light of an incident involving the Spanish at sea.

If we follow this line of reasoning, the Iran war should be called the War of Trump’s Gut.

Europe used to be overly dependent on cheap Russian energy. The Ukraine war put an end to that. Fortunately, America provided an adequate alternative. The Euros adapted, and life went on.

But today, the Euros are vulnerable to blackmail by a different predator. Can you imagine Trump threatening to cut off gas exports to Europe unless he gets Greenland? Of course you can.

Backed by unassailable science, the environmental movement told us for decades that it was essential to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to avoid a catastrophe. The public initially disregarded this advice on the basis that the catastrophe was too remote. When the impacts of climate change started becoming unpleasantly real, the public then decided it was too late to make any meaningful improvement, so there was no point in trying.

Joe Biden tried to change the terms of the debate by making green energy a jobs program. The rollout of the program was too slow to create many jobs during his term, so Trump managed to terminate it without much fuss.

Today, Trump is making a powerful case for clean energy, which has no world market or Strait of Hormuz, with his stupid war. Will the green team seize the moment? History says no.

Trump posted an image of himself as a Christ-like figure on Lying Psycho yesterday. When faced with backlash from the religious right, he removed the image and explained that he was depicted as a doctor, not Jesus, which was patently untrue. J.D., for his part, responded to the furor by arguing that the post was a joke that some stupid Christians just didn’t get. While he was at it, he minimized the differences between his secular and spiritual bosses and told Leo to stay in the “morality” lane.

Two observations are pertinent here. First, J.D.’s story and Trump’s are mutually exclusive, so if Trump was actually joking, he was also lying. Second, launching aggressive and unjust wars is in the “morality” lane whether Vance thinks so or not.

Our old friend Rod is so distraught that he is planning to move from the New Right Jerusalem to Vienna. He attributes Orban’s defeat, probably correctly, to widespread corruption and economic underperformance. Were those features or bugs of the strongman regime?

Dreher clearly thinks they are bugs, but he is wrong. Corruption is always an important attribute of a right-wing strongman regime because it is the way in which the leader maintains the unquestioning loyalty of his biggest supporters. Underperformance is the likely result of ignoring expert advice and relying solely on your golden gut.

If you’re an American, a Russian, or a Turk, is this ringing any bells?

For some completely inexplicable reason, Leo doesn’t think highly of our bombing for Jesus campaign. He even had the temerity to suggest that there was irony in the name of Trump’s social media platform. Trump snapped back, accusing Leo of being soft on crime.

Trump probably misses Benedict. In the meantime, J.D. is in the process of releasing a book about his conversion to Catholicism. How will he deal with this latest conflict between his secular and spiritual bosses? Probably by keeping quiet and praying it blows over.

Negotiations having failed, Trump has decided to seek more leverage by blockading Iranian ports. On its face, depriving the Iranians of the oil revenues they need to run their regime makes perfect sense. But is there a down side?

Of course there is! Gas prices will shoot even higher. The regime’s ability to adapt may well exceed our tolerance for even more expensive gas. And Trump is doing nothing to even acknowledge the hardships he is imposing on us, let alone to justify them.

Hitler destroyed his country. Mussolini didn’t actually make the trains run on time. Stalin, Lenin, and Mao killed millions just because of their supposed class identity. Putin invaded Ukraine and thereby caused hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian casualties without accomplishing much. Orban’s Hungary is poor and corrupt. Oh, and Trump started a war against Iran because his golden gut told him it was a good idea.

That’s what you get when you give uncontrolled power to people who are only too inclined to misuse it.

Not to be confused with Viktor, who just suffered a crushing defeat in the Hungarian election. J.D., Rod Dreher, and the rest of the national conservative crowd will be devastated.

The message here is that an illiberal government can lose an election if it is inept and corrupt enough even if the rules are skewed heavily in its favor. Will Trump take note? If he does, what lessons will he draw from it? TBD.

Notwithstanding the points of commonality discussed in my last post, the Iran war is unique in two respects. First, Trump made no effort to obtain public support in America prior to the war, and he has done just about everything possible to alienate everyone outside of Israel since then. This is a war started by an autocrat for autocracy, just like Putin in Ukraine. Second, Trump never came close to committing the forces necessary to accomplish regime change. This, presumably, is because he thinks he is omnipotent, so nothing could possibly go wrong.

Ross Douthat sees a basic continuity running from our previous Middle East excursions to Iran. In many respects, he is right. How does Iran stack up against Iraq and Libya?

Iraq was a war of choice designed to create regime change that was dishonestly sold to the American public as a war to stop a nuclear weapons program. George W. Bush threw enormous resources, including ground troops, into the war to guarantee that the desired regime change would occur. It did, but the Iraqi public fought back, and the new regime was predictably closer to Iran than the US. It was a massive strategic blunder.

In Libya, a tyrannical regime threatened to wipe out an armed resistance. Obama provided air support to the resistance in an effort to create regime change. He succeeded, but the result was civil war and anarchy that continues to this day. It is debatable whether the intervention was worth it.

Like Iraq, the Iran war is an attempt at regime change that is being sold primarily as a campaign to stop an Iranian bomb. Unlike Iraq, the war has been given inadequate resources to bring about regime change, and it has failed. Like Libya, this war is being fought from the air. Unlike Libya, there is no Iranian resistance that can bring about regime change.

In short, what we have now is an unsuccessful and more expensive Libya campaign that is having negative spillover effects all over the world.

Assume that the war concludes on the following terms: the regime remains in place; it agrees to reopen the strait without imposing tolls, but retains the practical ability to close it at any time; its ability to project military power is diminished in the short run; and its nuclear program still exists. Trump attempts to sell this as a victory for the rest of the world. How does the public react?

Iran hawks consider it a job half done that piles up problems for the future. Doves think the war was a mistake from the beginning. Both sides consequently agree that it was a strategic failure, albeit for different reasons.

An important segment of the right believes that America was settled by WASPs, whose culture made us great. Everyone else who lives here, even if they are citizens, should accept their subordinate status, be grateful, and shut up.

J.D. clearly accepts this line of reasoning. He was born a WASP, and his family apparently was here before the Civil War, which for some reason appears to be the cutoff date, even for other WASPs. But Vance is now a Catholic—historically, the political and cultural adversary of the WASP—and he married an Indian woman.

Has Vance consequently forfeited his right to be considered a first class American? Someone should ask him.

Five years ago, I would have predicted that the GOP would ram a nationwide abortion ban through Congress in the absence of the filibuster. Events and Trump’s singular sensitivity to the politics of the issue have made a ban implausible. Without the filibuster, however, the welfare state would be in tatters today, and we would be marching towards federal election legislation that would make Viktor Orban proud. In short, you can argue that only the filibuster stands between us and the illiberal state.

On the other hand, the combination of the filibuster and the major questions doctrine makes it virtually impossible for a blue team majority to accomplish anything meaningful in office, so there will be pressure to get rid of it in 2028. Which of these bad choices will prevail in 2028? That decision will be made during the primaries.