By Abe Greenwald
Wednesday, March 25, 2026
The point of democracy is to elect leaders who govern
with the public’s consent. In a democratic republic, therefore, it’s good
political hygiene for elected officials to make a clear case for their policies
before implementing them. This applies most crucially to matters of war. So I
sympathize with the growing chorus lamenting Donald Trump’s failure to make his
war aims in Iran clear and thereby get the public on board.
He should have presented a strong, lucid argument for the
necessity of war because that’s his job. But I don’t for a minute believe that
it would have made much of a difference in public opinion. And whatever support
it might have garnered would have dissipated by now. Because whatever Trump
might have said would have been challenged by and buried in the omnipresent
antiwar media coverage.
If Americans can look at the stunning success of the war
so far and proclaim it a failure, we’re not, at this moment, a people who can
be convinced of the necessity of war (without a direct attack on the homeland).
We no longer believe the evidence of our senses, let alone the pleadings of
Donald Trump. America currently suffers from a set of stubborn comorbidities
that make persuasion on military affairs a nonstarter. Our Vietnam Syndrome was
compounded by Iraq and Afghanistan Syndrome and further complicated by Trump
Derangement Syndrome.
On the left, the anti-colonialists view every U.S.
military action as a prima facie war crime. Meanwhile, over the course of
decades, they’ve conquered and colonized the liberal mainstream. On the right,
patriotism has been eaten up by nationalism, which considers only the narrowest
interpretation of the country’s national interests.
What about all those independents out there in the
middle? Well, Trump has already turned his independent supporters into his
largest group of detractors before the war began. He wasn’t going to get them
back with a case for bombing Iran.
The whole thing reminds me of the argument that Israel
failed to make an effective public case for its actions after October 7. As if
Hamas itself hadn’t made the definitive case on that day. Sympathy for Israel,
already in decline by that point, leveled off for a few days before the bottom
fell out altogether. And that was well before the claims of genocide,
starvation, and so on.
As I wrote in an earlier newsletter:
The vital information that Israel
needed to disseminate … was this: We will not perish. We are fiercer in battle
than you could ever imagine, more accomplished in intelligence and operational
execution than any nation in history, peerless in the art of war, and
unapologetic in our commitment to survival. We don’t bend to public opinion; we
stop at nothing to defend our existence.
There’s a lot of talk about how Israel and the U.S. are
different countries with different concerns that don’t always overlap. And it’s
true. But in this case, what applies to Israel applies, mutatis mutandis, to
America. The vital information we need to disseminate is that Iran, and other
adversaries, cannot indefinitely threaten us or our allies with the world’s
most dangerous weapons. They cannot blackmail or deter us from destroying them
before they have an opportunity to destroy us. Or as Trump put it, “I don’t
care about polling. I have to do the right thing. I have to do the right thing.
This should have been done a long time ago.”
And when it’s done—successfully, God willing—it might
reopen a space for persuadability in our doubtful and dug-in culture. Victory
is Trump’s strongest argument.
No comments:
Post a Comment