New President, New War

Trying to keep up with this news cycle is as tough of a task as trying to enforce the UK’s border - at least it is for the current edition of HM Government. Recent figures show that over 15,000 people have sailed the channel year to date and ascended Britain's shores. Some days it can be as high as five to eight-hundred migrants making the two-hour journey from France. 

~Anyhow, as the border in southern England continues to be lawlessly penetrated, the news broke on Sunday morning that a handful of U-2 bombers made the thirty-seven hour journey from the U.S air force base in Whiteman, Missouri, all the way over to the three suspected nuclear sites of Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan in Iran. Much speculation mounted prior to the 47th president’s green-lighting of the covert flyover operation as to whether he would in fact back his buddy, Bibi Netanyahu, with U.S manpower - against the Ayatollah in Iran. Ignoring the fact that over 5,800 miles separate Washington D.C and Tel Aviv, the Don was clear in his message: if you mess with Israel you mess with us. 

And it was quite the message to send. ‘Operation Midnight Hammer’ was an indication still that the U.S, most likely, stands atop of the world’s military capabilities. Which is probably fitting given that they spend 40% of the world’s total military spending. Yet, with the strikes, Trump is going to prove himself to be either a genius or a fool when it comes to his butch Middle-East campaign. So far, Iran has sheepishly retaliated with strikes on U.S bases in Qatar, of which thirteen of fourteen were intercepted, according to the U.S. 

But then, it was announced by Trump that a ceasefire agreement had been reached between Israel and Iran. Then, as of this morning, Iran broke this agreement just a few hours after reaching it, effectuating missile strikes on Northern Israel - which of course were hastily responded to by the Zionist-entity, launching counter-strikes. As things stand, no further back-and-forthing has occurred between the two, but this could change at the push of a button. Trump has since lashed out in typical Trump-style at the post-ceasefire spaff. “I don't like the fact that Israel went out this morning at all. And I'm going to see if I can stop it.” He then, leaning into all of his diplomatic nouse, added: "We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing." Some assuring words. 

In terms of domestic American response, the opposition party has come to offer an array of genius retorts. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a probable 2028 candidate for Commander-in-chief in 2028, offering the deft responses that situations like this require, wrote that “The President’s disastrous decision to bomb Iran without authorization is a grave violation of the Constitution and Congressional War Powers. He has impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations. It is absolutely and clearly grounds for impeachment.” This rhetoric was mimicked by Minority House Leader Hakeem Jaeffries and Bernie Sanders and a load of others. By their logic, Obama should have been impeached on the same grounds for airstrikes on Libya in 2011; Syria in 2014, Bush jr. for subsequent strikes on Yemen following the Iraq invasion, Clinton before him for similar non-congressional approval for strikes on Kosovo, and the list goes on and on and on. 

So what if a president goes against the constitution? Countless times has the constitution been debated by federal and supreme court judges and countless times has it been abused. The ruling that the federal government should dictate abortion laws was passed in 1973, an action that Ms. Cortez supports, was a wrongful interpretation of the constitution given that it specifically outlines, in the Tenth Amendment, that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Abortion ain’t one of them “powers” that the federal government has any business legislating on. As shown by the U.S’s record on foreign policy, a little strike here and there is gonna provoke no change at the top.

So the Democratic establishment can wave the constitution about as much as they please and it ain’t gonna change much. Because even if it did miraculously change the man in the White House, it’s not gonna change the United States’ war policy: when it really matters in those key moments, as evidenced over the past forty-eight/seventy-two hours, the real fight is between those in D.C who want war and those who do not. And clearly, the neocons fighting for more intervention in the now Medlled-East, seem to be winning - a hell of a lot of the time. Iraq proved that. Afghanistan proved that, as did Vietnam before it.

It seems that when the enemy fights them ‘over there’, it’s them who wins, maybe not explicitly, but nearly always ideologically. 

So then, I ask: What good did intervening in the three aforementioned fiascoes bring? Iraq’s still a mullahfied, despotic and lawless hell-hole, as it was before the U.S sent ‘boots on the ground’, as is the now Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. And following nearly two decades of attrition, the U.S pulled its troops from Vietnam in 1975: communism ruled before it got involved in the late 1950s as it still does now. 

So if the strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities signal anything at all, it’s that D.C may still be dominated by the obsession to wage war. Maybe it’s justified. Maybe it isn’t. The problem is that you never really know. As they say ‘the first casualty in war is the truth’.