PHOTO COURTESY OF MIDDLEEASTEYE.NET

Iranians mourn the lives lost in the city of Minab.

This past weekend, the United States and Israel carried out a coordinated attack on the country of Iran. Bombs rained down from one end of the country to the other and when the dust cleared, the damage was immense. 

The casualties included Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, a dozen or more of the nation’s highest-ranking military officials and, according to Iranian State Media, over 100 children at a girls school. 

Despite the devastation, Trump and other members of his administration have championed “Operation: Epic Fury” (give me a break) as a massive success to this point with plans to continue the attacks in the coming weeks. 

One could be forgiven for being confused at this turn of events. When Trump campaigned for re-election, his commitment to ending America’s involvement in foreign conflicts to focus on the issues affecting our nation directly was a main calling card. 

But the release of the Epstein Files was also a massive part of his campaign and we’ve seen how that’s gone thus far. 

Personally, I am starting to become skeptical of the things our commander in chief says publicly, as seditious as those words might sound to the man himself. If you can spend month after month and rally after rally saying one thing and then once elected, declare that you didn’t actually say that thing and instead do the complete opposite, what is even the point of politics anymore? 

But that’s a bigger fish best left for another fry. 

With regards to Iran, the official reasoning given for the coordinated attack can be summarized in two words that have been repeated by every member of the administration on every platform imaginable: preemptive strikes. 

Preemptive strikes typically come in anticipation of an enemy attack and are carried out to disable the enemy’s ability to attack, effectively swinging first in a fist fight to avoid being sucker punched. 

This has been further supported by Israeli claims that Iran remains on the verge of developing their own nuclear weapons, which would put Israel and the entire Middle East into uncharted territory by becoming the only other nation in the territory with that kind of power. 

Ignoring the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first claimed that Iran was “3-5 years away from obtaining a nuclear weapon” in 1992 and they still have yet to do so, the fear of such a development remains the only definitive reason given to the American people for our involvement. 

Israel is one of our closest allies and in the name of their defense, US forces aided in the killing of a nation’s leader and dozens of their children. An unsurprising if infuriating reality given the circumstances of Israel’s own prolonged bombardment of Gaza, during which, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), over 50,000 children have been killed or injured since the invasion began in October of 2023. 

In the wake of these attacks and Iran’s retaliation, close to a dozen Israeli citizens and three U.S. service members have been killed and that number is likely to rise the longer we continue down this path. 

The “No New Wars President” has launched us into yet another war and material conditions for the average American remain unimproved. 

As Attorney General Pam Bondi so eloquently put it, the “DOW is up,” but working-class citizens of this country are feeling the brunt of a worsening economy, a militarized immigrant agency terrorizing and killing citizens and immigrants alike and a President whose name is mentioned in the Epstein files so many times that he trails only the titular figure. 

In short, things look dire. But all you have to do is turn on the television and see the leader of the free world proudly declaring that America has never been better. 

And if this is as good as it gets, I can only imagine what fresh hell awaits us next. 

But of course, that’s just one man’s opinion. 

Categories: Opinion