by W.D. Ehrhart
So here we are again, engaged in another war that can only be called “legal” by the most dubious and twisted reasoning while ignoring the right to go to war vested only in Congress by the Constitution. Let’s call this one the “Who-Is-Jeffrey-Epstein-Anyway?” War. And it’s certainly working. Once again, as he has done over and over and over again in his charmed life, our Grifter-in-Chief has evaded responsibility or accountability for his immoral, amoral, criminal behavior.
Nevermind if the primary beneficiary of crippling Iran happens to be Israel, a nation that has maintained an apartheid state for over 80 years, has killed over 70,000 innocent civilians in Gaza just since October 2023, and whose “settlers” are actively engaged in the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank with the collusion of the Israeli Defense Forces and police.
Nevermind if other major beneficiaries of war against Iran happen to be the Arab Gulf States, whose governments are no less repressive than the government of Iran. States where women still live under “male guardianship” without anything like full legal or civil equality, and things like freedom of expression and of the press are unheard of, and executions—by beheading—are still conducted in public.
Indeed, states that have given multi-millions of dollars to benefit directly Trump, Trump family members, and the billionaire friends of Trump including—but certainly not limited to—investing $500 million in a cryptocurrency operation co-founded by our 45th & 47th president, his three sons, and other investors including Steve Witkoff, who happens to be Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, a deal concluded just days before the 2025 presidential inauguration, and coming on the heels of a deal to sell highly sensitive technology to the UAE previously not permitted for reasons of national security.
(But hey, what does national security matter when the Trumpsters stand to make yet more multi-millions? After all, the UAE is going to pay somebody for those AI chips, and it ain’t gonna be you or me.)
Nevermind that less than a year ago, Trump claimed to have destroyed—with the assistance of Israel—Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon, thus removing whatever threat Iran posed, though it actually posed no threat because it didn’t possess a nuclear weapon in the first place, and supposedly—after June 2025—could no longer build one.
And nevermind if more than 150 Iranian schoolgirls ages 7 to 12 were killed in an air strike last week. It reminds me of that famous statement attributed to a U.S. Air Force officer during the American War in Vietnam: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
Vietnam, as we now know, was a war fought under false pretenses. There never was an unprovoked attack by the North Vietnamese on U.S. naval vessels minding their own business in international waters, and the U.S. government knew this at the time. In fact, those ships were operating in Vietnamese waters in support of South Vietnamese combat operations against the North. The premise justifying the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that opened the floodgates for undeclared executive wars was simply a lie. A flat-out flagrant lie. And 58,000 Americans died for it along with millions of Asians.
In 1983, we were told that the Cubans were building an airfield on Grenada to accommodate Soviet bombers, so we had to invade to stop that construction. After we took control of Grenada, we finished the airfield, which was actually being built to facilitate tourism to the island.
In 1989, we were told that Manuel Noriega was trafficking drugs to the U.S., though he’d been on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency for a couple of decades. You mean he was selling drugs out of the trunk of his car in his spare time, and the U.S. had no idea this was going on until the last years of George H. W. Bush’s presidency?
In 2003, we were told that Saddam Hussein was trying to build a nuclear weapon, and had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, though we now know that he had neither nukes nor WMDs, and we know that the U.S. government knew this at the time.
We were told only recently that Venezuela is flooding the U.S. with a drug called Fentanyl, and therefore we have to attack small boats in international waters and hijack ships carrying Venezuelan oil, and kidnap their head-of-state to protect Americans, though there is absolutely no evidence that Venezuela has any significant involvement in the trafficking of Fentanyl.
Meanwhile, “Executive Wars” are the only kind of wars this nation has fought since Congress declared war on Bulgaria in June 1942 (bet you didn’t know about that one). The Korean War was justified as a United Nations “police action” because Harry Truman knew he would face major opposition in Congress if he tried to get a declaration of war.
And since then, the United States has engaged in armed conflict—we generally call that war—in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Iraq (repeatedly), Somalia, Serbia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Libya, Nigeria, Venezuela, and now Iran (again). Did I miss any?
Way back in 1973, Congress did pass something called the War Powers Act that was supposed to curb the president’s ability to engage in “Executive War,” but that’s obviously been about as effective as treating a traumatic leg amputation with a band-aid. War after war, the members of Congress either pass some resolution that says, “Do whatever the heck you want, Mr. President; we’re certainly not going to stop you,” or just sit there bleating like the wooly little sheep too many of them are.
Looking back at the track record of excuses the U.S. government has offered for undeclared war after undeclared war over the course of the past 81 years, one has to wonder what lies have been foisted upon the American people in order to justify an unprovoked war of aggression against Iran. And how many innocent Iranians like those elementary schoolgirls will have to die before this latest round of killing ends.
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W.D. Ehrhart is a retired Master Teacher of History & English, and author of a Vietnam War memoir trilogy published by McFarland.