What we know about this war so far, more or less for sure:
- Trump said it would just be a few days and now he’s saying a few weeks, and good luck with that, if you don’t grasp that even a weakened military force can go on being deadly trouble for months and years.
- Most Americans don’t want it. Popular support in the USA for Dubya’s Iraq war was in the order of 70%. Support for this one is in the low 20s.
- He’s been completely unable to make a case for doing this beyond promises of regime change for the long-suffering people of Iran, like he ever gives the slightest fuck about what happens to anyone else.
- There is no plausible case for doing this and there is no evident strategy he’s following and why should we be surprised when he has never pursued a strategy with any more complex ambition than: get money, get fried chicken, get pussy.
- They don’t know shit about the place. There’s no question that many people have suffered horribly at the hands of a repressive regime but it’s also true to say that this has prompted huge crowds to turn out in protest at this deadly action, for which the president has no legal basis to act.
- Oil prices will spike, gas prices will spike, inflation will spike.
- Travel could be disrupted to an extent airlines have not seen for a long while, if at all.
- Luxon has been dependably craven and spineless.
This is the wallpaper of the past few days and it’s familiar to us all. But now thanks to the always excellent Jonathan Larsen, there are some fresh frames to see in this portrait of deadly mania.
Since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Saturday, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has received over 110 complaints from service members across more than 30 military installations in every branch of the armed forces. The complaints share a common theme: commanders are telling troops that the Iran war is part of God’s divine plan to bring about the End Times as described in the Book of Revelation. One combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a Monday briefing that President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.
According to MRFF President Mikey Weinstein, commanders are expressing “unrestricted euphoria” about this “biblically-sanctioned” war and are “especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be,” emphasizing how bloody it must become to fulfill fundamentalist Christian end-of-the-world prophecy. The troops filing complaints—including Christians, Jews, and Muslims—say these statements destroy morale and unit cohesion and violate their constitutional oaths. One NCO, speaking on behalf of 15 service members, wrote that their commander “feels as though he is fully supported and justified by the entire chain of command to inflict his Armageddon views” on subordinates.
Bloody hell, what will the Defense Secretary have to say about this?
Bring it on and hallelujah, probably. Pete Hegseth has embedded evangelical Christianity at the highest levels of the military. He has been a full-throated champion for what the MRFF have styled as “blood-soaked, Christian nationalist wet dreams” in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and constitutional prohibitions against injecting religious beliefs into official military instruction.
I don’t know about you, but this little bit of intel is helping me quite a lot in understanding how it could have got so far with so little thought.
This has been fogged not by the smoke and the shock and the awe but by the zealotry of people who imagine they are commanded by a Higher Power. Mania, in other words, of the kind that drove the Crusades.
These people, it seems, want to keep cranking the handle backwards on history as far as it can take us. Back to feudalism, back to the divine right of kings, back to a time where men could be as despicable as they liked and you and your great friend The Duke of Epstein could live the lives of happy depraved tyrants.
