A Dumb War Makes Trumpworld Dumber

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A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

War is an extreme action and, thus, triggers extreme reactions. Including extreme stupidity. It’s always disheartening—or ought to be—to see what should be a last resort comes to pass. It’s worse when a war is accompanied by cruelty, callousness, recklessness, and idiocy, though for obvious reasons that might be unavoidable. As for Trump’s war in Iran—which could well be an immense blunder—it has been enveloped in layers of excessive dumbness.

I’m not talking about the strategic wisdom—or lack thereof—of this attack, which could precipitate calamities throughout the region and beyond. Or the madness of impulsively launching such a war without planning for what comes afterward. I’m referring to how it has prompted imbecility among its supporters, including at the White House.

At 1600 Pennsylvania, the belief seems to be that war is the continuation of trolling by other means. First, the White House released a video intercutting scenes of bomb strikes with video game footage. (Look how fun it is to slaughter people!) Then it posted a video featuring movie clips to hype the awesomeness of this war—a military action that opened with a strike, probably American in origin, on a girls’ elementary school that massacred scores of students.

This White House video moves quickly from Iron Man 2 to Gladiator to Braveheart to Top Gun to Better Call Saul to John Wick to Breaking Bad to other fare, including Tropic Thunder, Superman, and Transformers, and ends with a sound clip from the Mortal Kombat video games declaring, “Flawless victory.” Then a fade to the White House emblem. In the middle of all this, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth intones, “F.A.”—as in “fuck around, find out.”

It’s juvenile and demonstrates a lack of somberness about the nasty and brutal business of war. Kudos to Ben Stiller, who directed, co-wrote, and starred in Tropic Thunder, for demanding the White House remove the clip from his film: “We never gave you permission and have no interest in being part of your propaganda machine. War is not a movie.” Or a video game.

Making light of warfare that’s killing hundreds, perhaps thousands, and creating potential environmental and health disasters and perhaps a humanitarian crisis shows an utter disregard for human life and dignity.

The video is also pretty dumb. Several of the characters featured, such as Saul Goodman and Walter White of Breaking Bad, are ethically challenged criminals, not the types you want to hail as role models or heroes. Russell Crowe (Gladiator) and Mel Gibson (Braveheart) are from New Zealand and Australia, respectively, and each play a rebel who opposes an invasionary and imperial force. That’s not quite the current storyline.

Making light of warfare that’s killing hundreds, perhaps thousands, and creating potential environmental and health disasters and perhaps a humanitarian crisis shows an utter disregard for human life and dignity. But, hell, pop open a Red Bull and let’s have a ball. There’s no better way to convince the public this war is being run by adults who care about the sanctity of life, respect the Iranian people, and went to war only because there was absolutely no other choice.

We also saw what might be called war frivolity at the Free Press, where Nellie Bowles, who created the site with spouse Bari Weiss, found lots of fun in the latest war news, joshing that Trump will pick Iran’s new leader “via swimsuit competition,” celebrating the torpedoing of a ship (“Welcome back to water warfare, baby!”), and joking that it was a good thing a downed American pilot “didn’t land in Minneapolis.”

Curtis Yarvin, a self-proclaimed political theorist of the far right who denigrates democracy and celebrates monarchy, got into the act. He blamed the United States’ problem with Iran on the American left, tweeting, “The Iranian Revolution was a diplomatic crime of the American left. The Islamic Republic, like its proxy Hamas, is a client power of the American left. Trump is only bombing Tehran because he can’t bomb Brooklyn.”

There is so much inanity in those three sentences.

The Islamic Revolution was a product of 26 years of repressive rule from the Shah, who was installed by the United States after Washington and London orchestrated the coup that overthrew Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, a democratically elected leader who dared to nationalize the British-controlled oil industry. Moreover, the fundamentalists of Tehran have more in common with anti-woke Trumpists than they do with NPR listeners in Park Slope. (Ask them about queer people, abortion, and secular relativism.) And it’s swell of Yarvin to suggest that fellow Americans deserve to be bombed.

Such nonsense from him is not surprising. After all, he has called for liquidating democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law and handing power to a CEO-ish leader who would turn the US government into “a heavily-armed, ultra-profitable corporation.” Sounds like a nutball, right? Yet he’s pals with JD Vance and Peter Thiel. So be afraid.

For outright ignorance, we have Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.). On Fox News, he proclaimed, “We have been at war with Iran since 1947.”

Nope. As noted above, from 1953 to 1979, Washington was pals with the Shah, helping him run his authoritarian regime. And here’s the kicker: Crawford is the chair of the House intelligence committee. Ponder that.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) probably knows the United States has not been at war with Iran for 79 years. But he sure doesn’t know how to talk to a skeptical public about Trump’s war. One recent poll found that only 36 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s actions in Iran and that a majority believes Iran poses a minor threat or no threat to the United States.

Yet with public sentiment tilted against this war, Graham believes it’s fine to turn up the warmongering dial to 11. On Fox News—of course—he bellowed, “We’re going to blow the hell out of these people.”

Performances like that are sure to settle the nerves of worried Americans. Even Republican pundit Meghan McCain saw how counterproductive such rhetoric can be for the fans of this war. She tweeted, “I’ve known Lindsey Graham since I was a child. I am imploring anyone who will listen in the Trump administration to stop sending this man out as a surrogate. He is scaring people and doing damage to whatever message you’re trying to sell to the American public about the Iran war.”

Daniel Pipes, a longtime Islamophobic foreign policy analyst, expressed his disappointment and surprise that the Iranian people last week did not mount a revolution against the regime: “The populace now appears cowed into near-silence.”

When bombs are raining down, many people might prefer to seek shelter and protect their families rather than hit the streets in protest. Also, given Trump’s erratic signals—first he suggested the US would support an uprising, then his team drew back from that—Iranians opposed to the regime might be a tad reluctant to move on the government, while the 200,000-member Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is still intact. Perhaps they can apologize to Pipes for letting him down.

The biggest dunderhead move, though, was Trump’s. As the war raged, with reports of new American casualties and US embassies in the region being ordered to evacuate, Trump this weekend showed the nation and the world that he was on top of things by…golfing. Nothing says you’re serious about protecting the troops and ending a war as soon as possible as zipping about in a golf cart at Trump National Doral in Miami and then signing autographs in the clubhouse. (Look, a buffet!)

You might think that a demagogue keen on imagery and PR stunts would realize the value in creating the impression that he’s a committed and engaged commander in chief during wartime—even if he was only faking that—by spending the day in the Situation Room with military brass or in the Oval Office on the phone talking to world leaders about the various crises being triggered by his war. Instead, he’s devoting hours to swinging a stick at a tiny ball.

Didn’t any of Trump’s brilliant advisers suggest that for just this weekend he skip the links? This decision demonstrated tremendous lack of judgment. It suggested Trump views himself as an emperor who can do whatever he pleases and need not worry about consequences. Anyone who pulls such a dumb move cannot be trusted to run a war—or a country.

This post has been syndicated from Mother Jones, where it was published under this address.

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