How to think about what’s happening with Trump on Iran
What to think and feel when the president of the United States threatens Iran, as Trump did on Tuesday, that its “whole civilization will die tonight?” (The Associated Press describes how he backed down and agreed to a two-week cease-fire later that day.)
I wouldn’t presume to suggest how others might respond, but I’d like to share with you my reaction since Trump initially began making wild threats on Sunday, with his Truth Social Post: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
I’ve started my mornings since then with some very helpful sobbing over two things — the news that the Iranian people were preparing for destruction and the fact that Trump is making our country the world’s most dangerous. He has the nuclear codes.
I’m finding that Elvis Presley’s “If I Can Dream” song is helpful to cry to right now. He recorded it in 1968, another difficult time, after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy and amid Vietnam War and civil rights protests.
Another oldie from that era that touches me right now is “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.”
Getting my feelings out and doing 4-4-8 breathing (inhale for four seconds, hold it four seconds, exhale 8 seconds or longer — the long exhale is the key) to calm my nervous system usually takes me from anxiety to gratitude. Gratitude to be with you on this cute — at least from a distance, as the Artemis II photos remind us — little planet.
As Iongtime readers know, I studied politics and economics in college and subsequently worked in Congress and in political journalism because I wanted to understand at the broadest level the factors that determine our human experience.
But none of the political principles I’ve learned over these many years apply to Trump because he’s doesn’t know anything about politics or economics.
Trump does remind me of my father, another man whose reactions were those of a small, frightened boy who would say anything to get his own emotional needs met. When my dad was 87, he told me that if I didn’t do what he wanted, he would destroy my small publishing company.
I’ve also been feeling guilty. Some of you readers have said you’re getting your news only from my blog these days, and I’ve been thinking I should be writing something during these days I’d taken off.
In the future if I’m not around, the best summaries and context I’m aware of are from Heather Cox Richardson, Robert Reich, the former Republicans at The Bulwark, and AP.
Here’s what they’ve been saying:
“Trump’s threat was so broad it did not seem to account for the harm to civilians, prompting Democrats in Congress, some United Nations officials and scholars in military law to say such strikes would violate international law,” AP reported.
Richardson wrote early Wednesday morning: “The American people spent the whole day [Tuesday] wondering if their mad king would destroy the world, only to find out he was terrorizing them in order to protect his ego after starting a disastrous war. Throughout the day, Democratic members of Congress have called for Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to recall the Senate and for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to recall the House of Representatives from break to end the war in Iran and start the process of removing Trump from office.
”Trump’s threat that ‘a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again’ was not just a reference to Iran,” Richardson said. “If he had destroyed Iran in our names, unhampered by the Republican Congress members who have vowed to defend the U.S. Constitution, it would also have been an epitaph for the United States of America.”
Reich’s post Wednesday builds to this conclusion: “There’s now a clear blueprint for how to defeat Trump, available to any country, organization, or person on which he seeks to impose his will: Reject his demands and then use your own asymmetric power — a form of jujitsu — to turn Trump’s power against him.”
William Kristol at The Bulwark: “All we can do in the short term is prevent further acts of gratuitous damage to our country and the world. The public can punish Trump’s Republican party this fall. Democrats can try to check Trump through the legislative and appropriations processes.
”But the warning is this: thirty-three more months of an increasingly reckless and unhinged Trump in control of the executive branch of the United States poses too great a risk,” Kristol says. The Founders set up a mechanism to deal with such an unfortunate eventuality in the presidency: impeachment, conviction, and removal from office. So Congress should heed the words of the young prince Guiderius in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline: ‘Come on then, and remove him.’”
I’m sending you gift links for the articles below that have paywalls and hope the links will work:
NYTimes: How Trump took the U.S. to war with Iran
”In a series of Situation Room meetings, President Trump weighed his instincts against the deep concerns of his vice president and a pessimistic intelligence assessment. Here’s the inside story of how he made the fateful decision.”
Experts say Trump threats to destroy Iran’s infrastructure could be considered war crime
Former military lawyers on when war crime rhetoric becomes battlefield reality: The slippery slope to total war on Iran
After Trump’s threats, Iranians on Tuesday formed human chains to protect power plants
Eclectic, bipartisan group calls for removing Trump using the 25th Amendment
Roll Call: Trump rhetoric galvanizes congressional Democrats and even some Republicans
How The Wall Street Journal covered Trump’s 12-hour Iran ‘civilization’ countdown
”Some U.S. officials said they were worried Iran wouldn’t fully meet Trump’s demands, potentially bringing both Washington and Tehran back to the brink in two weeks.”