Trump Getting A Taste For War Is Not Going To End Well

0:00In 1848, a first-hand congressman wrote to his law partner about how the then-president had taken the United States into a war with Mexico. And he wrote this, kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing the suppression upon us. Well, that was then. This is now. And his Royal Majesty Donald I, obviously thinks the author of that letter, who of course was one Abraham Lincoln, was probably a far-left lunatic, which depends on which dictionary you're using I expect. Now the so-called president of peace has established himself indisputably for better or more

1:03likely for worse as a war president, because what's happening with Iran is less ambiguously a declaration of total war than anything the United States has done since Iraq in 2003. And as many are pointing out, it is a war of choice, because there were no imminent threats from Iran presenting immediate danger. Indeed negotiations were ongoing in relation to the issues between the two sides. And then Trump, of course, declared quite openly that the objective of this operation is regime change, to take out the current leadership by implication to install a more US-friendly government to take over, a process that used to be known as conquest. And yes, he waffled some bullshit about Iran aiming to have missiles that could reach for the United States, but the defense intelligence agency said it would be at least a decade before

2:03Iran could get to the point where that was a serious issue. In any case, Trump sent a message to the Iranian people saying, the hour of your freedom is at hand, telling that once the strikes were over, take over your government, which suggests that the plan here is basically to take out as much of a top leadership as possible, to do as much damage to the military capacity as possible, and then hope that that is just enough, along with a bit of encouragement to the masses, to affect said regime change. Now there's a rational argument for confronting Iran. It has been a terrible regime, surely deserved to be brought down. For criticisms you may have of this operation, more about that in a moment, it's certainly not based on a huge amount of sympathy for the safety of the Iranian leadership. For now deceased supreme leader presided over a massive slaughter of protesters recently,

3:05approaching half as many were killed in just two days, 30,000, as were during the two years war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, which was around 75,000. While supporters of the action point to such facts to justify the assault, as not really have his stuff works, his most of the same people, and certainly many others besides, believe that the US war on Iraq fought by George W. Bush in 2003 to have been a major mistake. Now have had assessment isn't based on any kind of argument that, oh well actually on the balance of things, they've decided Saddam has saying was a just bang up kind of guy that you'd want to share a beer with. Well, except for this guy because of course he has, rather it was the mismatch between the objectives and the execution and therefore all the major negative unintended consequences that followed over subsequent years. Given the day-to-day shambles of the United States over this year, the cruelty, the incompetence

4:05for hubris, you would ask serious questions about whether it's currently the one that you would ever entrust with something this serious and historically difficult. Now, one assumes that rather than Pete Hegseth, actual grown-up military planners are responsible for the action on the ground as they were in Venezuela, the fall of the Iatolars, rather than just the replacement of the old with close to identical knew that is possible and conceivably that could result in a better alternative, but there are so many more ways for it to go horribly wrong. So say the regime falls and is replaced by just as bad or worse, or the US assault runs out of steam, they haven't achieved their goals, but now they've much more actively focused the enemy in the region on doing them harm, or the US assault is hit with major casualties, leading to a much bigger backlash at home, riffing off that whole incompetence of a leadership

5:07thing, or the US assault results in major civilian casualties, leading to the US becoming or remaining more hated than the regime that they're attacking. So many ways, they already hit a goal school reportedly with many casualties into the hundreds, and not least because the leadership is incompetent, they can't answer questions like, what is the strategy, what are the goals? If Ani's not like any regime, Trump has pushed in the past, and he'll be seeking to make what he's doing today, something that comes with a very high cost in the future. And Trump has now made himself personally responsible for killing a highly potent religious leader, just ask Selman Rushdie, how long memories hang around, for much lesser offences than that. The current regime is continuing for now, and seeking to establish itself as stable and fighting back against America.

6:08A temporary leadership council has been set up assuming supreme leader duties until a permanent successor is selected. There's no obvious front runner for that role, which is probably good news for whoever that would have been, because doubtless the Israel-strote US strike force would be quick to try to take him out as well. Geolocating individuals and killing them, so they prove they have immense skill and indeed appetite for. Is that alone, to be counted as the success, probably not? But how would we ever know, because bear in mind what we learned from Trump's hit on Iran's nuclear program last year? The moment the attack happened, he came in with bombastic statements about how completely successful the attack had been, even though all the people who know said it takes a lot longer than that to know for sure what the impact was, anyone saying those sorts of things in public, they got fired.

7:10There was one official line, it came from Trump's wishful thinking, immediate reaction, that's all there was to it. Trump will claim success whatever, but the consequences for people on the ground, the consequences for people on the front line, that may be much more difficult to evaluate, if you're not allowed to contradict the bombastic, immediate statements made by Trump. Now, if you're a student of US politics, you should be very well aware of another factor here, which is very yes, this is quite unambiguously a war. Trump himself referred to it as such, when he was basically saying that the lives of some American soldiers may be lost, but that was a sacrifice he was prepared to make. Accidentally paraphrasing Shrek II, which is arguably not an inappropriate source for Trumpian wisdom, and that's funny, but not so much as the reports of the first American casualties have actually started to arrive.

8:10Congress is supposed to be the body, but agrees when the nation should or should not go to war, because it's meant to be a serious moment. Yes, various presidents have skirted the issue when carrying out some degree of military engagement. But the last time, something this specifically about launching a full-on assault, going after regime change, was the aforementioned Iraq war, and George W. Bush did get Congressional approval. Various mega voices on social media, the sort of people who would have screened a blue murder about it at the time, point to when Clinton or Obama ordered military strikes as some sort, without such approval. Which really only works if you can show that your side is consistent, not just pointing out the other side is as inconsistent as you are. If you complained about them doing it, but you're not complaining now, pointing out that it was the other way round for them, you know. But that stupidity aside, in any case, it was always a serious process, not undertaken lightly. Here they are now, with a president for whom doing

9:16stuff on a whim, he's very much his daily habit. Republican representative Thomas Massey, called the Strikes Act of War, unauthorized by Congress. And of course, he and Representative Rocana were already pushing a vote for next week to curb Trump's ability to take unilateral military action against Iran without Congress. But too late, maybe the action was even brought forward to avoid it. Of course, Trump would have vetoed it, and indeed will if a vote gets passed still. But it would have been a moment of clarity. Democratic Senator Mark Warner said this, the American people have seen this playbook before, claims of urgency, misrepresented intelligence and military action that pulls the United States into regime change and prolonged costly nation-building. Now, I've not seen anything that gives me the impression that President Trump is interested in something like nation-building. Encouraging the Iranians to do the nation-building

10:22themselves, and then just watching what happens, that does seem to be more his style. And look, you could argue. That's exactly how to avoid the mistakes that were made in Iraq, which might have more weight if there were an organized opposition, some group with weight and authority that would rise up in the aftermath of all this. But the reckoning is that just isn't the case. Hence, encouraging the people to rise up in this situation as Trump did is more akin to what happened in Iraq in 1991, when people tried to do exactly that and they was slaughtered for their pains. The regime was weakened, but became all the more dangerous for it. As I say, it's not enough to point to how horrible the other side is, it's down to you to have some sort of a clue why your intervention will make things better not worse. Because we've seen how this works, right? When Trump claims it's all about how much he cares about the Iranian people,

11:27we do know that's just noise. The same sort of noise he used to promise that, as president, he, unlike all of those others, would never get the US mixed up in more foreign wars. And of course, there's been lots of quotes from the Trump of days gone past, flying around social media, and like this op-ed in the Wall Street Journal from JD Vance, Trump's best foreign policy not starting any wars. As I have said many a time on this channel, there are no principles that Trump holds consistently that will in any way constrain him from doing exactly what he wants to do at any given time in the future. Now, of course, despite all of that, the Republican majority lined up behind the action. Senate Majority leader John Thune said he commended Trump for taking action. Foreign leaders had mixed reactions. On the one side, you had Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney amongst others saying that the country supported the United States, acting to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons. France, Germany and the UK released a

12:32joint statement that hit the world with the force of wet porridge, saying that they didn't participate in the strikes, and they probably got that in because of a whole international law being broken angle, I expect. They reiterated, though, their commitment to regional stability, condemned Iran for attacking countries in the region, and urged the Iranian leadership to seek a negotiated solution, which not wanting to stand up for the loathsome repressive Iranian regime in any way, but I expect they would probably retort that that was exactly what they were doing before Trump decided to jump straight into attack mode, and it's a lot harder to do when the bombs are dropping. You could make the case. It wasn't in good faith that they were negotiating before, but then you can say the same about Vladimir Putin's Russia over Ukraine, so does that mean for the Trump bombing campaigns? I doubt it. Other leaders were less ambiguous.

13:36Spanish President Pedro Sanchez referred to it as a unilateral military action by the United States and Israel, saying that the strikes were an escalation that would create, quote, a more uncertain and hostile international order, and then others were focused on the potential for action escalating air control. What none of them are saying for all the usual reasons is the obvious thing in plain sight. None of them trust Trump specifically, being in charge of some immense importance will the potential for far-reaching consequences. He has shown himself time and time again to be detached from reality, which is kind of a bad feature in a war president. He has shown himself time and time again to be duplicitous, self-serving, and agent of his own hubris. In the past, the U.S. had taken actions that others found controversial, overbold, whatever, but they still had some degree of grounding in the world order in what America was supposed to be

14:40within that world order. Inconsistent and hypocritical as the U.S. often was, it still had one foot in that camp. But now you have untethered self-interest and opportunism, matched with zero instincts for geopolitical realities, zero empathy for anyone who may have been hit by the consequences. You have someone dismantling democratic guardrails at home, starting to get used to the idea that the bullying abroad that he enjoys so much. Yes, it's been done so far, mostly with tariffs, but nothing gives via adrenaline surge quite like this approach. And we know that even if the Europeans are not saying any of that, they are nevertheless clearly thinking it, which is exactly why the United Kingdom didn't let America use its bases to launch this attack. Why the joint French German and British statement explicitly what goes out of its way to state that they were not involved in this action,

15:43even while they failed to specifically condemn it or indeed to praise it. And also why many people, people who wholeheartedly detest the Iranian regime, believe it would be good for the world if it were to become history as soon as possible, they are really not sure that this isn't the ushering in of something considerably worse in the process. It is rational to somewhat fear for the world if Trump gets the giddy taste of winning an actual regime change war because he's getting increasingly comfortable operating in a space where he never got even close to in his first term and you've got to presume it's only going to ratchet up, it's not going to wind down. I mean, look at how the Trump Hegsir thing has been going down with anthropic. Yes, it's relevant, stay with me. A company refused to change the terms of its contract, did so relatively gently and respectfully.

16:45Their reaction to that wasn't just to end the contract, it was to designate the company as a national security threat, meaning all government suppliers had to drop them as customers. In other words, they used every lever within their grasp in totally unprecedented ways to seek to completely destroy the other side, not to punish them, not to disparage them, to put them out of business. Now, take that mindset, embolden it with a couple of successful military adventures, each one being more audacious than the one before. Where do we think that takes us? And the short answer is surely not somewhere we want to go. If excuses are enough, then we have a might makes right world and we should brace ourselves with a fallout. The only way to avoid that is to stand up for rules, rules about not invading neighbours

17:46unprovoked, not assassinating their leaders to get regime change. Those are rules that were designed to help the world survive the fact it's made up of such strongly differing perspectives on the world. And the rules within the United States come to that, about when war should or should not be declared and how, they were designed to stop individuals, king-like, being able to take the country into such adventures on a whim. Applying international law to the United States, applying congressional oversight to a Trump presidency, doesn't seem likely we're going to see either of us soon, so we are into the time of consequences.