Donald Trump declares war on Iran

Donald Trump is unfit for office. That remains the plain fact of it, and it is no more or less true today than it was last week or last year. He is in the early throes of dementia, has lost whatever thin twig of impulse control he once had, remains staggeringly uninterested in any portion of his duties that does not involve self-glorification, and is increasingly driven by the impulse to do violence in any scenario he is confronted with.

After rounding up a mob to intimidate the United States Congress, he sat in smug approval as his insurrectionist goons ransacked the building, attacked police, and hunted for his designated enemies. After announcing a new plan to deport both lawful and undocumented immigrants, groups he explicitly targeted with false claims so as to stir up public acts against them, he green-lit new "enforcement" operations that brought thuggish street violence to multiple cities—the stuff of strongman regimes worldwide. A new military campaign identifies private vessels in the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific and summarily executes all aboard, a program that unquestionably has targeted mostly fishermen, not drug smuggling.

And in Venezuela, Trump and his collection of incompetent, possibly drunken cronies settled on a violent kidnapping of a head-of-state—a move that appears, from Trump's own pronouncements, to be meant mostly as a means of capturing Venezuelan oil revenues and funneling it into administration-controlled coffers.

Donald Trump is, allegedly, mentioned in the Epstein case files more often than any other prominent person aside from Epstein and Maxwell themselves. He has staffed his administration from Epstein's own circles. He is already known to be a rapist—a court determined him to be one—who has used his family wealth to engineer opportunities to ogle and assault young women and girls.

Because of his incompetence, his compulsive corruption, his dementia-aided loss of self-restraint, and a level of ignorance so staggering that he believes "asylum seekers" come from "asylums," "tariffs" are paid by other nations rather than importers, and "percentages" are whatever he claims them to be, he now heads a flailing regime plagued with scandal, widespread public disapproval, and failing policies.

That is the man who launched a new regional war this weekend. It is an illegal act according to international law; it is illegal according to American law as well. Trump and his top aides made not even a token attempt to convince Americans or Congress of the necessity of war, either because they knew it to be impossible or because they no longer think anyone outside the administration deserves such explanations. The initial strikes have been conducted by the U.S. and Israel, and as usual there remain questions as to whether Netanyahu, the indicted far-right Israeli leader who sought continued office to avoid likely prison time, has been manipulating our own easily-influenced indicted far-right leader who regained office as means of avoiding likely prison time. Nor do we know the role Saudi Arabian-purchased Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner has been playing.

The impetus for the war appears to be straightforward: Donald Trump, sundowning narcissistic would-be strongman, has been grasping for opportunities to look like the Roman emperor he imagines himself to be in his own head. And that, along with a possibly existential need to knock new Epstein revelations off the front pages, is all the reason he needs.

Much has been written about the potentially catastrophic consequences of a shooting war with Iran. Once again, the United States has proven itself deceitful, thuggish, and more enamored with military might than with either diplomacy or decency.

Trump, both because he is sundowning and because he has always been one of the stupidest figures in American public life, immediately proved his own incompetence when he took to "Truth Social" to justify the new military campaign. According to Trump, the goal of the bombings is to bring about "regime change," which is not something air power has ever by itself done, and to force the regime (which regime?) to accept Trump's own terms in a new U.S.-Iran nuclear nonproliferation deal.

Iran is not Venezuela or Iraq. They have substantial military capabilities, and have already struck back with missile attacks throughout the region.

First indications are that the missile strike in Bahrain destroyed a radar installation.

Iran also has significant drone capabilities—and has long threatened to deploy mines in the Strait of Hormuz, threatening tanker traffic in and out of the Persian Gulf.

Importantly, Iranian leadership will likely (and probably correctly) determine that expanding the scope of hostilities into a regional war is more likely to produce a favorable outcome for them than not. Striking U.S. military assets thought to be invincible would be a heavy blow to the U.S., just as inexpensive Ukrainian drone strikes against Russian naval power and infrastructure has impacted Russian operations.

Iranian leaders are also likely to presume their citizens will rally around them during the crisis, just as Trump himself presumes launching a new crisis will shore up his own collapsing public support. Whether they are right or wrong remains to be seen.

The problems with any assumption that bombing Iranian schools will rally Iranians to support the ones doing the bombing should be obvious, just as the problems with setting off a new regional war for the sake of one demented man's personal possibly-hallucinatory visions ought to be. There is no reasonable means of predicting what the fallout of this new criminal war will be.

What we do know, however, is that the United States will once again be targeted with new acts of terrorism—likely for a generation. The Middle East is likely to once again be made less stable and more violent. And all of it is happening because Donald Trump is unfit, incompetent, corrupt, and remains in power despite committing uncountably many impeachment-worthy acts, wrecking nearly everything that made America a world power to begin with.

That we have not impeached and removed him is a crime. And God help us, we are likely to suffer for it far more than even the cynics once thought.