“The rank deceptions, the slippery wordplay, the willful ignorance…” That’s a succinct description of the Trump regime’s bumbling bid to win our support for war in Iran.
But hang on a sec. I wrote those words a long time ago, to describe George W. Bush’s fake rationales for his invasion of Iraq – the weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist, the imminent threat that didn’t exist, and so much more.
If Bush and his aides proved the old adage that truth is the first casualty of war, then let history record the MAGA gang has already kidnapped truth, bombed it to smithereens and cast its ashes to the wind.
The dictionary defines the word imminent as something that’s “about to happen,” but the MAGA dictionary renders all timelines meaningless. Trump poodle Lindsey Graham says Iran is building ballistic missiles that could reach us “eventually.” Trump propaganda minister Karoline Leavitt said ballistic missiles could “pose a risk” to us “one day.” Pentagon beefcake Pete Hegseth defined imminent as any future “pathway” to a nuke, and said Iran could maybe “eventually get to a place” where they could build a “shield” to protect nukes. Even though Trump said last June that he’d already “obliterated” Iran’s ability to build nukes.
Even Bret Stephens, one of the New York Times’ in-house war hawks, lamented Trump has done “a terrible job explaining himself. Americans have a right to know why he’s putting service members in harm’s way…Do you really trust Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth to fight and finish this war?”
But wait, is it even a “war”? Not according to the MAGA congressional lickspittles. If they were to embrace that word, they might be compelled to assert some congressional authority – but that would be unthinkable. So instead they’re calling it “an operation,” or “a mission,” or “hostilities,” although Oklahoma senator and future Homeland Security boss Markwayne Mullin slipped the other day when he declared “this is war,” but quickly said, “That was a misspoke.”
All that wimpy wordplay is out of sync with the warlord, who keeps using the W-word and says more Americans will die, as “often happens in war.” (Pretty brave for a guy who dodged Vietnam with a note from his doctor.)
The Feb. 28 bombing deaths of Iranian schoolchildren meets the criteria of war. Video evidence strongly points to an American strike. Trump quickly decreed without a shred of evidence “it was done by Iran,” but his BS was too odorous even for Hegseth, who simply said, “We’re investigating.” (Don’t hold your breath.)
And who started this war/operation/mission, anyway? Early last week, doormat Marco Rubio said it was all Israel’s doing: “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” so “we went proactively in a defensive way.” But a day later, Trump yanked the mat from beneath Rubio’s feet and told reporters, “No. I might have forced their hand.” Whereupon Rubio, when reminded by reporters later that day of what he’d said about Israel the previous day, insisted he’d never said it in the first place.
What about the end game? While Hegseth said at the outset this was “not a so-called regime change war,” Trump called for regime change and called on the Iranian people to “take over your government…It will be yours to take.” But late last week Trump said it wasn’t really up to the Iranian people because “we want to be involved in the process of choosing the person who is going to lead Iran.” Over the weekend he said he’d be happy to install an undemocratic religious leader who treats America “fairly.” That sounds a lot like regime change, the precise opposite of what Hegseth said. And Trump’s regime change fantasy seems doomed to fail anyway; a classified prewar intelligence report warned that even a major assault on Iran would be unlikely to oust its military and clerical establishment.
There’s also no word how long this war might last, because planning is not his forte. He says the war could last “four or five weeks” or “far long than that,” while the U.S. Central Command is saying at least 100 days or maybe through the end of September.
We have traveled light years from the era when people of stature charted our national course, comported themselves with gravitas, and said things like this: “I hate war as only a soldier has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
Thank you, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Copyright 2026 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at [email protected]