Every new war that the U.S. wages — at least over the past six decades — is accompanied by a series of official lies, shifting and inconsistent claims about the war’s goals, and constant exaggerations about the grand progress toward glorious victory. Now, a full week into the Iran War started by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his partner, the American President Donald Trump, this war already equals, if not surpasses, the brazen war propaganda that instigated and fueled those prior ones.
For the first few days, Trump’s most loyal supporters insisted — over and over — that this was not even a war at all. Americans have been so accustomed to a state of constant, endless war that when some watch their government heavily bombing another country, deliberately killing its leaders, sinking its navy, all while the U.S. President warns that “bombs will be dropping everywhere,” this somehow does not count as a “war.” We are told by supporters of the Iran War that whatever Iran has been doing to the U.S. constitutes a vicious, 47-year terrorist war against the U.S., but when the U.S. sends a “massive armada” to Iran and then attacks it with aircraft carriers, fighter jets, and 2,000-pound bombs, that this is somehow not a war? O.K.
That insulting not-a-war propaganda was crushed, thankfully, by a rather large obstacle. Namely, “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth began calling it a war and invoking war clichés virtually from the start. Israel has always described it as a war. And now President Trump is also calling it a war. That ought to end this rhetorical tactic among all but the most shamelessly dishonest.
Once that defensive wall fell, defenders of this new Netanyahu-Trump war resorted to a new rationale: Fine, it is a war. But it will be a very short one. It will not be like Iraq. Donald Trump is not George W. Bush.
Hellbound and Down 