I was about to scroll to Wordle on Sunday when the following paragraph in the Times distracted me from my morning distraction.
“The Iranian attack that killed two U.S. soldiers and left one service member missing on Friday was the fourth in five days on U.S. forces in Jordan, multiple American officials said. Taken together, the attacks have wounded dozens of U.S. service members and damaged a number of helicopters.”
That was bad enough, but then there was this chilling sentence: “Iran’s supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei warned of ‘unforgettable lessons’ if the U.S. keeps attacking the Islamic Republic.” Yikes.
President Trump has alluded to using a nuclear weapon in Iran and just ordered the military to “open the gates of hell” on that country. Khamenei has threatened a mysterious attack that sounds almost equally dire. So what could go wrong? A crazy religious zealot out for revenge lined up against an emotional narcissist with the self-control of a 6-year-old (and nukes)? What couldn’t?
Welcome to the world’s existential horror show: another stupid war over oil, religion, ego, and testosterone. It’s the World Cup of Disaster and everybody loses. We never learn.
It seems likely the escalating saber-rattling on both sides will lead soon to an increased number of deaths in that conflict. Why that has to happen is the looming question that no one can give a straight answer to. And how does a war ever end if neither side trusts the other to keep its word in a peace agreement?
It’s certainly clear the American war effort is not being run by serious people. Last weekend, as some of our troops were being killed and wounded by Iranian missiles and others were attacking that country’s military and civilian targets, the president played golf and went to a soccer game. “War Secretary” Pete Hegseth thought it was a good time to announce that he wanted our “warfighters” to dose up on testosterone. What a clown show. Our military deserves better, as do the American people.
How many of our troops will have to die before the members of the GOP stop acting like followers of Jim Jones — blindly swallowing the toxic Kool-Aid from Dear Leader? How many times will they hear Trump say the U.S. has “destroyed” all of Iran’s military assets before some brave Republican points out that Iran appears to have plenty of weapons, more than enough to attack targets in several Middle Eastern countries last week. And the situation could soon get worse.
The U.S. assault on civilian infrastructure and military targets along the northern shore of the Persian Gulf has geared up to new levels. There are now roughly 50,000 U.S. troops in the Gulf arena, and rumors of a proposed joint ground assault with Israel are circulating on various media sites. We can only hope someone in the administration has the brains and clout to put a halt to such a disastrous decision. No more troops should die for another of Trump’s diversions, which is what this war really is.
Consider the fact that in the midst of all this bloody quagmire he created in the Middle East — the president is more obsessed with revisiting an election he lost six years ago and ginning up outrage about forthcoming election interference. It’s rich, coming from the guy who called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in 2020 and begged him to find 11,780 votes — one more than he needed to win the state — the very definition of election interference.
And remember, Trump won the presidency in 2016 and in 2024 when Democrats held the office, and lost a “rigged election” in 2020 when he was president. Lord, what a piece of work.
Not to mention other current nightmarish diversions: The “safe task force” shootings on our streets, including four dead in Memphis since September; the deconstruction of the nation’s capital and its monuments; the currency, passports, and buildings bearing Trump’s name and image; the incessant billion-dollar grifts and payoffs. All of it, including the unfolding disaster in the Middle East, is itself an “unforgettable lesson” that is already unfolding. But no matter how all of it plays out, what remains is for us not to get distracted — and not to forget any of this. Any of it.
