By Tim Hartnett
March 25, 2026
It was the same year John McCain ran for president that he took a page from Weird Al. "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," didn't make its way up the charts. Barack Obama routed the GOP by 10 million votes in 2008. The also ran of that race fell out bigly with the next Republican to reside at 1600 Penn. As the end neared, McCain said he didn't want the president among his mourners. 45 was probably the first in history to be banned from an official state funeral. Trump's firsts have a way of putting diabolical new spin on the NT's "first shall be last" prediction.
American democracy is topsy-turvy stuff, is it possible that those two could have patched things up ? Had he lived, is there chance the senator from Arizona might have come around to orange blobsterism after all ? By attacking Iran, 47 granted the McCain coterie's dearest wish.
The Ayatollah-phobes have been at it a while now, their hooks were in McCain early on. The Iran-ocide lobby left many footprints on Clinton era Whitehouse carpets and butt prints on W era Whitehouse toilets. There's no doubt Obama got earfuls of it too. A guileful, persistent bunch has had Persia in its sights for more than a generation. They probably convinced Trump the whole thing was all his own idea. Like college boy Casanovas post kegger, they are not too proud to bed the easiest prey staggering dorm-ward.
Now, speaking of "bombs," here's a page of Google hits covering Jane's Defense Weekly's original report that Iran was closing in on the big one over 40 years ago. Incessant updates have been assuring us they've been getting nearer ever since. And, speaking of blobs, the inside the beltway one has pressed this dire message for 500 months straight. The situation was so urgent that Trump got on it by his second non-consecutive term.
Foreign policy propagandists have been busy rendering their reasoning indecipherable since, at least, The Crimean War. The rights and sovereignty of the decrepit, despotic, debauched Ottoman Empire, the story went, were worth the lives of common Brits and Francais with zero interest in the matter. Huge numbers of them were maimed and died defending and preserving the cruelest, most enslaving, massacring, gang of cutthroats known to modern Europe up to that point.
Will Rogers said: "Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it You take diplomacy out of war, and the thing would fall flat in a week."
The Russians finally defeated the Turks decisively in 1878. The Sultanate had been crushing Slavic speaking peoples mercilessly for hundreds of years; vanquishing them served humanity's highest interests. Self-righteous English diplomatists refused to accept the settlement negotiated in the Constantinople exurb San Stephano. The Congress of Berlin was called to give Albionian aristocracy say so in what was none of their business. Disreali demanded that Bosnia-Hercegovina be kept in the care of the Hapsburg Empire. Barring the South Slavs' Slavic big brother, the Russki, from warm water was an Anglo obsession at the time. The demand was imposed in pursuit of that age-old diplomatic cover line "balance of power." Beaconsfield's "balance" turned out to be on a high wire with no net. The first plunge came 36 years later, when a Hapsburg archduke was assassinated in Sarajevo.
I never tried counting how often so-called "neo-conservatives" used the expression "national interest" pleading their ever martial case in op-eds. But the sum of the times any of them explained what they meant by those two words came to zero. Every major newspaper in America ran these kinds of screeds, many thousands since 9-11. Our "national interest," apparently, was presumed so self-evident by editors that expounding what it is or was, is redundant. Installing the Shah, Viet Nam, removing Arbenz in Guatemala and the like flew under the same slogan. These international actions did about as much for average Americans as the assault on Tsarist forces in Crimea did for peasants in the 1850's.
Is there something in scripture, that the laity missed, about the almighty commissioning an American sovereign to spark the final battle ? The first "war to end all wars" gave David Fromkin his title " A Peace to End All Peace." Wilson's contribution to that development may be the book's weakest point. Without the US arming and funding the Allies from nearly day one, their free hand to enforce the Sykes-Picot Agreement might have to have been committed elsewhere. Meanwhile, we've had reports the Pentagon finds allusions to Armageddon an appropriate way to instill esprit de corps in the ranks.
There are people here, in Iran and the world over keen on this war. Their reactions were to be expected. What about voices traditionally opposed to US interventions that have changed their tunes ? Have the "paleos" switched ideological diets?
Whatever has been said about Chronicles Magazine it has taken a stand against nearly every US military intervention since its founding in 1976. They never expressed much keenness for any that preceded the bicentennial year either. Content that opposed imperial ambition and foreign entanglement marked nearly every issue. The coalition of professional influencers gunning for Tehran has been busy and loud for well over half the periodical's lifespan. The article, "Trump's Foreign Policy is a Return to Hobbesian Reality," was posted in the periodical's March issue. It was written by foreign policy editor Srda Trifkovic. Although everything succeeding the first paragraph
"States define their goals through the acquisition, maintenance, or expansion of power-the ability to impose their will on others. U.S. military action in Venezuela on Jan. 3, President Donald Trump's claim to Greenland, and the smouldering conflict with Iran provide three recent examples that confirm the basic postulate of realism: that international politics is defined by"national interest as power."This is the primary and rational goal of foreign policy."
Is redundant, it is nonetheless an astounding tract. It features nearly every argument for foreign intervention from sources like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the now defunct Weekly Standard that it unequivocally opposed for decades. There isn't a single sentence in Trifkovic's piece describing any new circumstances to elucidate this 180. The editor took over 3000 words to say what Stalin did in eight: "The Pope ? How many divisions has he got?"
Of course, it's true that international systems of order and law cannot restrain states of serious strength. But to say that imposing state will on "others" is a way to "define" national goals is route to justification of any national policy. In "defining" Trifkovic's view of "state interest" he cites the same passage from classical history many paleos used opposing the two American Gulf Wars:
"There is nothing new in Trump's behavior. A famous passage from Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, known as the" Melian Dialogue,"describes an episode in 416 B.C. when Athens demanded the surrender of the neutral island of Melos. Athens promised mercy for submission but threatened destruction for disobedience. The Athenians declared that justice existed only between equals; otherwise,"the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must."Invoking natural law in the form of divine justice, the Melians refused to surrender. Athens attacked them, killed all adult males, and sold their women and children into slavery."
This, Srda maintains, remains the reality of statism 2500 years later. No wonder the Nazis had tacitly, and the Soviets aloud, drawn a bead on Christianity. All attempts at rising to any kind of moral decorum are pretentious "fantasies" by new lights shining out of The Rockford Institute. We could quibble away with the citations from Hobbes and Grotius in this piece; that's a path that immediately breaks down into sophistry. Trifkovic is right saying there is nothing "linear" in "progress." That hardly means running roughshod over "others" is perfectly justifiable with "national interest" at stake. It is doubtful that this war's most ardent proponents would subscribe to Srda's reasoning.
The issue of alleged primacy of rights over state sovereignty remains the key point of contention between Grotius's disciples and realists like Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and most other national leaders outside the EU and Canada.
It was certainly problematic when a man, later president of the United States, wrote passionately to a king about "consent of the governed" while possessing nearly 200 slaves in 1776. It is also disturbing to hear that things haven't improved... and never can. A faction of more deranged "paleos" insist the American Civil War was mostly about central government's "acquisition, maintenance" and "expansion" of power. Even if you hold that true, it hardly stacks up "morally" weaker than demanding the extension and maintenance of a system that deprived nearly 4 million people of any rights at all. What could be more acquisitive than stocking your larders through application of the lash on perpetual hostages ? Seizing their property and killing them outright would exact far less plunder, even in the short run.
"Progress" may not be "linear," but a much larger proportion of Americans suffer less and live longer than in the 19th century. That this "progress" evolved out of principles articulated by a slaveholder is something we'll just have to live with. In any case, the Declaration's principles are easier to swallow than Srda's.
The absence of Christian morality in foreign policy has ended in far more disastrous consequences than positive ones. American participation in the coup against Mohamed Mosaddegh in 1953 is a classic example. And that's before we consider the administration's slipshod planning in the present conflict. The idea that the almighty was waiting impatiently for an American president to set the ultimate plan in motion is psychotic. Although, thankfully, Trifkovic does not stoop to this extreme as others have.
There's no doubt this attack serves the interests of defense contractors, think tanks, the DJIA and cranks who blabber about "projection of American power." Whether it will serve various foreign interests involved by day's end is damned sketchy. People sent abroad for these projects of projection, who come back missing arms or legs, may see things differently in hindsight. Kids blown up in schools never knew what hit them. Donald Trump would gladly stifle anyone who opposes his actions aloud. War, going by historical precedent, provides his best opportunity to get away with doing that.
The paramount "American interest" is making the country fairer, healthier and more prosperous for its inhabitants. Attempts at fine tuning places afar comes at a cost, as Eisenhower pointed out, to improvements we can make here at home. It is functionally illiterate to believe anyone can safely predict what the outcome of war will be. In the present state of global tension nearly any large scale martial action taken by the US is a risky venture. We can already see numerous results the administration never appeared to take into account logistically alone. As matters of global strategy go, they look even more short-sighted.
"Trump's vision of international order is based on a single"rule"-the American interest, as he understands and pursues it. This may seem disconcerting, but it has the potential to make relations with other actors, and especially relations between the great powers, more predictable. Coherently defined interests-devoid of ideological phraseology-and geographic zones of interest can be defined and negotiated. The resulting system is likely to be more rational, more calculable, and ultimately more morally sustainable."
This writer would rely on a man who wants his name on the money - while alive - to define "national interest" by starting an unnecessary war. That position certainly stretches traditional bounds of "conservatism." What he means by "morally sustainable" is about as clear as gulf waters after an oil tanker hits a mine. Iran's more proximal neighbors are already hostile and look trigger happy. Srda expects a large-scale military endeavor in their backyards will make them more "predictable." This supposition is based on his extensive knowledge of history and human nature recorded in books no one else can get their hands on.
The last line goes: "In devising his long-term grand strategy, however, he will serve the American interest well by continuing to accept the supremacy of Hobbesian existential realism and acting accordingly." Every foreign policy expert knows that if he throws enough syllables at the cause, he can't be contradicted.