Snark really is all that President Trump’s critics have left. They greet his every utterance, whether made in the flesh or on Truth Social, with instant sarcastic derision. Their cliquish cynicism was on full display during Trump’s address to the nation on the Iran War last night. No sooner had Trump said the US was nearing victory than his opposing army of nay-sayers was gleefully crowing: ‘Nah, it’s a disaster, we’re screwed.’
I can’t be the only person who now finds this voguish gloom more grating than Trump’s starry-eyed statements? Give me Trump’s possibly premature declarations of victory over these wet dreams of defeat any day of the week.
The US is ‘near completion’ of its ‘core strategic objectives’ in Iran, Trump said. Too sanguine? I reckon. War, once started, has a nasty habit of being unpredictable. But the other side, with its almost joyful prophecies of catastrophe, leaves me far colder.
Trump’s address didn’t really contain much that was new. On that, some of his critics are right. It was less a grand presidential address than a ‘tired compilation of his Truth Social posts’, as a writer for the Telegraph put it. He said the US and Israel have ‘decimated’ the Islamic Republic’s navy drones and ballistic-missile capacity. Nuclear sites have been ‘obliterated’. He assured the American people he would hit the regime hard for ‘the next two to three weeks’, and then we’re out of there. We will be ‘out of Iran pretty quickly’, he told Reuters.
Perhaps keen to shake off the critique that his battering of the Islamic Republic is a breach of his promise to end the ‘forever wars’, he drew a distinction between this war and past wars. ‘It’s very important that we keep this conflict in perspective’, he said. He pointed out that the US was in Vietnam for ‘19 years, five months and 29 days’. And in Iraq for ‘eight years, eight months and 28 days’. So far the Iran War – he paused briefly before delivering the punchline – has lasted ‘32 days’.
Even Trump must know those 32 days could become 32 more, and even longer. Especially if he decides to send marines to seize Kharg Island (where 90 per cent of Iran’s oil is exported from), an option that’s apparently still on the table. And yet his ‘perspective’ felt refreshing. The media establishment’s noisy handwringing over the Iran War has been infused with a kind of ahistorical hysteria. Readers could be forgiven for thinking it is a uniquely barbarous event executed by a singularly mad president. Ignorance of history underpins such fevered commentary far more than morality does.
Only people who had never heard the words ‘Nixon’, ‘Cambodia’ or ‘Operation Freedom Deal’ could view the Iran War as an unprecedented tear in civilisation’s fabric. The New York Times’ Bret Stephens is right that ‘panic’ is a more important driver of such agitated coverage than principle. He points out that the price of oil has spiked many times before. In March 2012, it reached $123 a barrel (the equivalent of $175 in today’s money), and everyone just carried on going to see Hunger Games and campaigning for Obama to be re-elected president. Earlier generations who saw millions perish in war would ‘marvel’ at our ‘comparative good fortune’, Stephens says.
Of course, Stephens, like many of us, is not blind to the possibility of Iran turning truly disastrous. He rightly laments the Trump administration’s ‘failures in planning’, in particular its failure to ‘get more allies on our side before the campaign began’. And yet the cultural elites’ insistence that the war is a historic calamity feels more like groupthink than critical thinking. Even before the war started, the Nation was telling us it would be a ‘bigger catastrophe than Iraq’. You can balk at Trump’s premature triumphalism, but you should likewise bristle at the premature defeatism of these cultural pessimists larping as anti-war critics.
Such de rigueur fatalism was everywhere following Trump’s address. The BBC positively dripped with it. Its coverage cocked a knowing eyebrow at Trump’s ‘claims of victory’. The broadsheet media marvelled in horror at Trump’s ‘slurred’ address which only confirmed there is ‘no end in sight’ to this insane war. Leftish X was awash with claims – hopes? – that actually the Islamic Republic has shocked the world and held its own against the murderous oaf in the White House.
I have no special insight into this theatre of war, and find myself not trusting a word the mainstream media says about it. But can it really be the case that the US and Israel have not achieved any objectives and are floundering in the face of the Islamic Republic’s zealous fightback? Doesn’t that seem unlikely? Entire layers of the regime have been taken out. Weapons installations and nuclear facilities have been blasted. The idea that the US has suffered a massive ‘strategic defeat’ strikes me as a far more hasty call than Trump’s talk of swift victory.
Here’s what concerns me most about the ‘anti-war’ catastrophism of Trump’s critics – it seems to be motored less by a principled objection to wars of intervention than by a low, opportunistic urge to see Trump get a bloody nose. It’s anti-Americanism, not anti-imperialism. It’s the heir less to the noble anti-war movements of old than to that scourge of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has ailed so much of the Anglo-American elite this past decade. I don’t like war, but I’ll tell you what I like even less: that there are people in our societies who seem to view the victory of Iran’s Islamist death cult as a small price to pay for rapping the knuckles of Trump, ‘the West’ and the populist project.
We’ve seen Islamists on our streets openly cheering the Islamic Republic. Leftists crow, on the basis of thin information, that the mullahs are winning. Even in the esteemed journal Foreign Policy, the cry goes out that it would be bad if America won. A ‘US victory in Iran would be bad for Washington, and the world’, it says. Such a foreign-policy boon for Trump would be ‘even more frightening than US failure’, we’re told. Imagine how morally cossetted you would need to be, how luxuriantly out of touch with brutal global truths, to think that a win for a regime that sponsors armies of anti-Semites and massacres its own people would be preferable to a win for Trump.
The Iran catastrophism, the belief it will all blow up in the face of arrogant America, is not what I recognise as anti-imperialism. ‘I denounce European colonialism’, CLR James famously wrote, ‘but I respect the learning and profound discoveries of Western civilisation’. In stark contrast to such honourable intentions, the hysteria over this war feels more like an extension of today’s fashionable rejection of ‘Western civilisation’ – like a dark dream that the wicked West will be brought down a rung or two. How else to explain that some are dreaming – whether openly or quietly – of an American defeat at the hands of those implacable foes of our civilisation: Tehran’s tyrants. All good people want this war to end, but like that? Really?
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
Trump’s address didn’t really contain much that was new. On that, some of his critics are right. It was less a grand presidential address than a ‘tired compilation of his Truth Social posts’, as a writer for the Telegraph put it. He said the US and Israel have ‘decimated’ the Islamic Republic’s navy drones and ballistic-missile capacity. Nuclear sites have been ‘obliterated’. He assured the American people he would hit the regime hard for ‘the next two to three weeks’, and then we’re out of there. We will be ‘out of Iran pretty quickly’, he told Reuters.
Perhaps keen to shake off the critique that his battering of the Islamic Republic is a breach of his promise to end the ‘forever wars’, he drew a distinction between this war and past wars. ‘It’s very important that we keep this conflict in perspective’, he said. He pointed out that the US was in Vietnam for ‘19 years, five months and 29 days’. And in Iraq for ‘eight years, eight months and 28 days’. So far the Iran War – he paused briefly before delivering the punchline – has lasted ‘32 days’.
Even Trump must know those 32 days could become 32 more, and even longer. Especially if he decides to send marines to seize Kharg Island (where 90 per cent of Iran’s oil is exported from), an option that’s apparently still on the table. And yet his ‘perspective’ felt refreshing. The media establishment’s noisy handwringing over the Iran War has been infused with a kind of ahistorical hysteria. Readers could be forgiven for thinking it is a uniquely barbarous event executed by a singularly mad president. Ignorance of history underpins such fevered commentary far more than morality does.
Only people who had never heard the words ‘Nixon’, ‘Cambodia’ or ‘Operation Freedom Deal’ could view the Iran War as an unprecedented tear in civilisation’s fabric. The New York Times’ Bret Stephens is right that ‘panic’ is a more important driver of such agitated coverage than principle. He points out that the price of oil has spiked many times before. In March 2012, it reached $123 a barrel (the equivalent of $175 in today’s money), and everyone just carried on going to see Hunger Games and campaigning for Obama to be re-elected president. Earlier generations who saw millions perish in war would ‘marvel’ at our ‘comparative good fortune’, Stephens says.
Of course, Stephens, like many of us, is not blind to the possibility of Iran turning truly disastrous. He rightly laments the Trump administration’s ‘failures in planning’, in particular its failure to ‘get more allies on our side before the campaign began’. And yet the cultural elites’ insistence that the war is a historic calamity feels more like groupthink than critical thinking. Even before the war started, the Nation was telling us it would be a ‘bigger catastrophe than Iraq’. You can balk at Trump’s premature triumphalism, but you should likewise bristle at the premature defeatism of these cultural pessimists larping as anti-war critics.
Such de rigueur fatalism was everywhere following Trump’s address. The BBC positively dripped with it. Its coverage cocked a knowing eyebrow at Trump’s ‘claims of victory’. The broadsheet media marvelled in horror at Trump’s ‘slurred’ address which only confirmed there is ‘no end in sight’ to this insane war. Leftish X was awash with claims – hopes? – that actually the Islamic Republic has shocked the world and held its own against the murderous oaf in the White House.
I have no special insight into this theatre of war, and find myself not trusting a word the mainstream media says about it. But can it really be the case that the US and Israel have not achieved any objectives and are floundering in the face of the Islamic Republic’s zealous fightback? Doesn’t that seem unlikely? Entire layers of the regime have been taken out. Weapons installations and nuclear facilities have been blasted. The idea that the US has suffered a massive ‘strategic defeat’ strikes me as a far more hasty call than Trump’s talk of swift victory.
Here’s what concerns me most about the ‘anti-war’ catastrophism of Trump’s critics – it seems to be motored less by a principled objection to wars of intervention than by a low, opportunistic urge to see Trump get a bloody nose. It’s anti-Americanism, not anti-imperialism. It’s the heir less to the noble anti-war movements of old than to that scourge of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has ailed so much of the Anglo-American elite this past decade. I don’t like war, but I’ll tell you what I like even less: that there are people in our societies who seem to view the victory of Iran’s Islamist death cult as a small price to pay for rapping the knuckles of Trump, ‘the West’ and the populist project.
We’ve seen Islamists on our streets openly cheering the Islamic Republic. Leftists crow, on the basis of thin information, that the mullahs are winning. Even in the esteemed journal Foreign Policy, the cry goes out that it would be bad if America won. A ‘US victory in Iran would be bad for Washington, and the world’, it says. Such a foreign-policy boon for Trump would be ‘even more frightening than US failure’, we’re told. Imagine how morally cossetted you would need to be, how luxuriantly out of touch with brutal global truths, to think that a win for a regime that sponsors armies of anti-Semites and massacres its own people would be preferable to a win for Trump.
The Iran catastrophism, the belief it will all blow up in the face of arrogant America, is not what I recognise as anti-imperialism. ‘I denounce European colonialism’, CLR James famously wrote, ‘but I respect the learning and profound discoveries of Western civilisation’. In stark contrast to such honourable intentions, the hysteria over this war feels more like an extension of today’s fashionable rejection of ‘Western civilisation’ – like a dark dream that the wicked West will be brought down a rung or two. How else to explain that some are dreaming – whether openly or quietly – of an American defeat at the hands of those implacable foes of our civilisation: Tehran’s tyrants. All good people want this war to end, but like that? Really?
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
21 comments:
No one is taking glee at dead soldiers and schoolchildren, or at skyrocketing gas prices, mate.
Has Brendan read even a pamphlet on Middle East history? Does he support Sisyphean wars? His focus on Trump and media seems bizarre in the face of such madness from America. Are articles like this the new propaganda? Wars by their very nature are catastrophic. I’ve never read such low-rent doublespeak.
Anon 815, I shifted your comment to the article to which it appears to belong.
"They have no anti-aircraft equipment, it's all been blown up."- DJT March 10th
"They have no anti-aircraft equipment. Their radar is 100% annihilated. We are unstoppable". - DJT April 1st
I wonder what happened with the two US aircraft being shot down since those pronouncements were made. Either the planes weren’t actually shot down, or someone is lying.
Quite right Brendan. You clearly pre-empted the negative comments like those appended below with your assessment "Here’s what concerns me most about the ‘anti-war’ catastrophism of Trump’s critics – it seems to be motored less by a principled objection to wars of intervention than by a low, opportunistic urge to see Trump get a bloody nose. It’s anti-Americanism, not anti-imperialism. It’s the heir less to the noble anti-war movements of old than to that scourge of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has ailed so much of the Anglo-American elite this past decade. I don’t like war, but I’ll tell you what I like even less: that there are people in our societies who seem to view the victory of Iran’s Islamist death cult as a small price to pay for rapping the knuckles of Trump, ‘the West’ and the populist project."
Keep up the good work and your perceptive analysis.
Ir'a a war Anon 9.34. Everybody lies. But it seems to me the Americans have become complacent and have not learned the lesson of the Ukranian war that the Russian airforce could be denied air superiority by the use of cheap, portable, ground to air missiles like the Stinger. How hard would it be for Iran to procure these, or something similar, and if they have already done so, how likely is it that they have been found by the Americans, much less "blown up" by them.
Anon 1055, your argument is invalid, the USA have said in no uncertain terms that the war is NOT about regime change. Also you seem to have Trump stuck in your brain, no one making anti war comments on this site is talking about out that man, they’re only talking about out the war.
Jones: no, everybody does not lie. Lying is immoral and we must call it out. It’s the kiwi way.
A noble sentiment Anon 12.55. But not a comment on the real world. But first a correction to my first line which should have read "It's a war Anon 9.34. Everybody lies." In a war that is.
But psychological research demonstrates that we all lie all the time even when we are not at war. Even good moral Kiwis. Lying is a well documented personal defense mechanism used to simply help us get through our day.
In wartime, that mechanism elevates to a patriotic duty to defend the State. And in the United States, the example is set right at the top. A database developed by the Washington Post disclosed that Donald Trump made 30,573 lies or false statements during his first term in Office, and he wasn't even at war with anyone at the time. I'm not sure anybody has bothered maintaining that database through to the present date, but the evidence of Trump's ongoing serial lying is reported daily in the mainstream media.
That's a lot of lies for the moral Kiwis amongst us to call out!
Jonesy, have you borne in mind that a falsehood is only a lie when the person uttering it knows it to be false and tells it in order to deceive?
30,000 lies is a fair batch of lies for someone in a leadership position. If I was American, I wouldn’t vote for someone who tells that many lies.
Thank you for that sage observation Barend. Given Trump's position, and his access to massive intelligence resources, his indifference to the truth is equally repugnant whether his incorrect utterances are made out of simple ignorance or with malicious intent. The consequences are the same where other folk rely on his judgement.
the TDS people here will be overjoyed to know two of the young US pilots who's planes went down have been rescued. The third young American has been heard from. Millions of us around the world are rejoicing.
Honestly, many of you say your posts are not anti-American and anti-Trump but when I read them I simply find that hard to believe.
Jones(and others). Can you not see you are the very type of person the writer is talking about? Your entire focus on the article has been totally pouring contempt on Trumps shortcomings(as the writer succinctly explains). C'mon, understand how this works. The top military make these decisions and present the president with options. Trump does not appear to be a war- monger. If anybody made the decision it would be the military who have been wrestling with this and building up to it for years.
The reporting to date indicates the planes were shot down. They didn't just "go down" Janine.
Yet Trump said "They have no anti-aircraft equipment, it's all been blown up."- DJT March 10th
"They have no anti-aircraft equipment. Their radar is 100% annihilated. We are unstoppable". - DJT April 1
He was clearly wrong. What is unstoppable is Trump's hubris. Whether he was lying or just badly advised in this case is beside the point.
The outcome is the same. People die. And only Trump would turn the solemn ceremony accompanying the repatriation of the bodies of the fallen into a political fund-raising photo opportunity.
Commenting on the obvious is clearly anti-Trump. Why do it otherwise. You may call it TDS. I call it richly deserved. And criticising the American system is also clearly anti-American so why deny it. It was the system, and the morons currently running the system, that installed their representative in office.
So I plead guilty to being both anti-Trump and anti-American. You can't be one without being the other.
This article really clarified for me what is going on with anti Trumpism. 'Cut off your nose to spite your face " , I believe is the expression to describe this behaviour.
Trump is trying to save our Western Culture but many would rather self-destruct.You don't have to like the man but he is a thousand times better than the other choice.
Apparently he isn't half as bad as MSM make him out to be .This from someone who had actually met him .Remember his son-in -law is Jewish and our culture is supposed to be Judeo- Christian.
The enemy is within as well as without . Marxism has aligned itself with Islamists who have infiltrated more and more of our society including particularly academia.
In Auckland Muslims celebrated one of their holy days by eating out on tables in the street . Make no mistake they intend taking over Western Culture .The Quran tells them they must.
Jones. That is the best comment you have written. It is really honest. I have no problem having a discussion with someone who "pins their colours to the mast." You are anti-American and my family have close US connections.
We will never agree on anything but that doesn't really matter. At least you don't pretend to be something you are not.
Regarding the pilots: When I wrote my comment there was still speculation about why the planes went down.
Some things change but most things stay the same - especially when you’re watching the cringeworthy TV One News.
If it wasn’t bad enough having to digest the daily “Anti Trump”coverage of the Iran war from that bastion of impartiality - Logan Church, tonights edition was the doozie that beat them all.
Not happy with barely mentioning the successful recovery mission to find and safely bring home the missing US airman, the crude attempt to downplay what this could have meant in the propaganda war had it gone the other way was an insult to the whole US effort on behalf of the Free World.
One could be forgiven for thinking that the MSM were praying for the day when they would report a US defeat irrespective of the obvious implications for the rest of us.
The Jones Boy says as much.At least he is honest about it.
This is where hate gets you yet l thought there were laws in this country that forbid its use in open conversation.
Yeah right!
If you read the words Mr Bibby you will see that I didn't say I hate Trump and I didn't say that I hate the United States. I daresay they may both have redeeming qualities that history may identify. They just aren't immediately obvious and unfortunately we have to live in the present imperfect world they are corrupting, not Trump's promised future paradise.
You could have fooled me Jonesy. Nice try.
I guess the description of hate is the point at which intense dislike moves to a point where it becomes impossible to see any redeeming quality in the person’s character that would justify his or her continued existence.
As far as you are concerned, he should not have been born. You like others, attribute virtually all the world’s ills to this one man.
Sounds to me, from your own description of Trump, that you have moved beyond just not likening the guy.
Why not admit it?
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