Calling a War a War

By Kevin D. Williamson

Monday, September 07, 2026

 

Epidemic math gets pretty complicated pretty fast if you’re really thinking through the issues, because you have to consider geometric growth, but if you happen to be both a mental defective incapable of complex thought and, simultaneously, a moral defective incapable of caring about anything beyond your own immediate comfort—and if you happen to be president of these United States when a disruptive epidemic emerges—then the math is pretty simple:

 

“Public Fear” + “Stock Market Contraction” = “I don’t get reelected.”

 

“The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,” Donald Trump wrote in the early days of the COVID-19 epidemic. “We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” By all reports—including Trump’s own—he spent most of the early part of the COVID outbreak watching stock market news on television. COVID was, from his point of view, less of a public health issue than a political issue—a political issue relating to his own self-interest. The stock markets go up and down, but it is difficult to run for reelection during a sharp market downturn while claiming that the U.S. economy is performing better than it ever has thanks to the unique economic insights of Donald J. Trump, a half-literate gargoyle. Preposterous as the claim would be at the best of times, it would be preposterous enough to register in the minds of American voters—perhaps even Trump voters—during a crash.

 

Trump insisted on many, many occasions that the COVID epidemic would simply “go away”—it would go away in the spring with the warm weather, it would go away because the Chinese were so effective at dealing with that sort of thing, etc. At the end of March 2020, Trump said of the epidemic: “It’s going to go away, hopefully at the end of the month.” He said that while there were on average nearly 20,000 new infections daily. On April 3, he said: “It is going away” while there were nearly 27,000 new infections daily. By April 7 there were nearly 32,000 new infections daily, and Trump said: “It did go. It will go away.” Did, will, whatever.

 

With diesel just under $6 a gallon around the country, Vice President J.D. Vance has a message about the Iran war: It did go. It will go away.

 

“I wouldn’t call it a war right now,” insisted the dead-eyed Damien Thorn of American politics. There is, he claimed, “no active shooting”—words spoken in the very echo of Iranian attacks on U.S. assets through the region and a U.S. strike on what was, apparently, a wedding party. I suppose it is possible that there was no active shooting at the wedding until U.S. bombs started falling, but that would be an overly generous interpretation of the remarks of the sniveling and insipid little sycophant who currently serves as vice president of these United States. And Vance sounded precisely like COVID-era Trump when he insisted: “When will the Iranians shooting at ships stop having an effect on world energy markets? The answer is it has less effect day by day.”

 

Trump is moving rhetorically in the same direction: The Iran war, he now insists, is no big deal, “small potatoes.” Trump has declared victory over the Iranians a half a dozen times and has insisted that the Strait of Hormuz is open almost as many times as he has driven his businesses into bankruptcy, but happy talk don’t make it so. Trump’s base is not made up of very bright people, but even the most cretinous Trumpkins in the coalition know, as they drag their bloody knuckles across the asphalt to the fuel island at Buc-ee’s, that it now costs $270 to fill up an F-250. As a friend of mine says: Stupid should hurt. And it does hurt, though not apparently enough to have kept Americans from electing Donald Trump president, the second time after he had attempted to stage a coup d’état.

 

“A lot of people don’t call it a war,” the president said. “I call it a military conflict." Helpfully, Trump—whose poker face is so bad that he managed to bankrupt his own casinos in Atlantic City—has explained before why he does not call the Iran war a war. “I won’t use the word ‘war’ because they say, if you use the word war, that’s maybe not a good thing to do,” he said at a GOP fundraising event in March. “They don’t like the word ‘war,’ because you’re supposed to get approval, so I’ll use the word ‘military operation.’” I must admit that I am less scandalized by the fact that Trump is a moron than by how obviously—insultingly—transparent he is in his belief that he is supported by morons. The notion that a war isn’t a war if you don’t call it a war is on par with the notion that a Ford becomes a rutabaga if you pry the blue oval off the thing—without quite appreciating that it’ll still cost you the better part of $300 to fill ’er up.

 

Maybe Trump and Vance believe that horsepucky. Without question, they believe that they can convince you to believe that horsepucky.

 

In the Analects, Confucius speaks famously of the “rectification of names.”

 

If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.

 

When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot.

 

Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect.

 

And so:

 

If a superior man love propriety, the people will not dare be irreverent. If he love righteousness, the people will not dare not to defy his example. If he love good faith, the people will not dare to be insincere.

 

... Though a man may be able to recite the 300 odes, yet if, when entrusted with a governmental charge, he knows not how to act, or if, when sent to any quarter on a mission, he cannot give his replies unassisted, notwithstanding the extent of his learning, of what practical use is he?

 

J.D. Vance and Donald Trump both are expensively educated men, men of the Ivy League. Of what real use is either of them? Confucius himself might have a tough time answering that question.

 

It is important to call things what they are: What is happening in Iran is a war—an illegal war, imbecilically conceived and incompetently executed. Trump’s “bluster” and “salesmanship” and “passion” are none of those things—they are lies, and Trump is a habitual liar who has made his political career on the support of people, often dumb and mostly angry, who enjoy being lied to. J.D. Vance is a schmuck, a spineless yes-man without honor or integrity who will do and say whatever shameful and humiliating thing must be done or said in the moment as he inches, wormlike, toward what he imagines to be real power. Trump is surrounded by a team of cretins, incompetents, nepotism beneficiaries, drunks, degenerates, and sundry clueless clowns. Their political goal is tyranny and the displacement of the American constitutional order by a Trump-fronted mafia state.

 

It is not only the names that need rectifying, but speaking good plain English about this mess would be a good start.