As someone born in 1944, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, who lived through 12 other presidencies before Donald Trump took — and that word has a different meaning with him — office in 2016, the truth is that I’ve simply never experienced anything quite like this (and I know that I’m in good company). Yes, I’ve certainly lived through other wars, from the Korean War of my childhood to the nightmarish war in Vietnam of my collegiate years (though it began well before and went on long after that) to the invasion of Afghanistan (that led me to launch TomDispatch) to George W. Bush’s nightmarish war in Iraq that was a critical part of my reportorial (or at least TomDispatchian) life. And now, in my old age, yet another war! (Why is it that my country, with or without Donald Trump, just can’t seem to stop going to war?)
Iran is, of course, being trumped (or rather Trumped!). The “president of peace” was only the president of peace until he wasn’t. Ask Nicolás Maduro and his wife if you doubt that for a second. And give Donald Trump credit for his unpredictability. One moment he is indeed the president of peace and the next moment — no question about it — he’s making war like a maniac or blowing staggering numbers of boats (almost 50 as I was writing this) out of the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.
You might wonder, under the circumstances, if it’s even possible to cover his presidency as a reporter the way any journalist might once have covered a presidency. The very name for his latest assault (on Iran), Operation Epic Fury, is distinctly all Trump all the time. As he told a crowd at a rally in Kentucky recently, “They gave me a list of names to choose. ‘Sir, you could pick the name you’d like, sir.’ I said, ‘The name of what?’ ‘The name of the attack on Iran, sir.’ And they gave me, like, 20 names, and I’m, like, falling asleep. I didn’t like any of them. Then I see ‘Epic Fury.’ I said, ‘I like that name! I like that name!’”
In short, the president of peace has distinctly made peace with war and, when it comes to Latin America, his version of war may just be beginning. (Watch out, Cuba!) With all of that and, sadly, more in mind, let TomDispatch regular Nan Levinson take you into a world in which reporters do indeed have to cover (whatever that may mean these days) Donald Trump making war on this world of ours.
Hellbound and Down 