Here We Go Again, Again

This will not end well.

U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 3rd Class Juan E. Diaz, via Wikimedia Commons

“A great satisfaction of growing old—one of many—is assuming the role of witness to the wobbling of the world and seeing irreversible changes. The downside…is hearing the same hackneyed opinions over and over…the discoveries that are not new, the proposed solutions that will solve nothing.”

—Paul Theroux

I’m old enough to remember when, after years of diplomacy, our country had a solid deal with Iran to halt its nuclear proliferation program that included international inspectors on the ground. That was 2015 when the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was enacted.

Enter the Art of the Illegal Deal conman and draft dodger Donald Trump who tore up the deal because, well, it did not have a trace of his oily little hands on it.

I am also old enough to remember the first Gulf War in 1990 and the falsehoods that led to that U.S. incursion into Iraq. Were Iraqi soldiers really pulling babies off incubators as they invaded Kuwait or was that just a slick PR campaign to get us to enter the first Gulf War and become mercenaries for an oil-rich country? The baby incubator story turned out to be a hoax. The Washington Post wrote, ‘We could find no credible evidence to support this allegation, notwithstanding the tremendous efforts on behalf of the Kuwait government undertaken by Hill and Knowlton….’ Hill and Knowlton is the world’s largest public relations firm.

I am also old enough to remember the lies that led to forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Weapons of mass destruction? Still looking? How did that work out? Not well for civilians.

Let us review those failed regime changes: “An estimated over 940,000 people were killed by direct post-9/11 war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan between 2001-2023. Of these, more than 432,000 were civilians. The number of people wounded or ill as a result of the conflicts is far higher, as is the number of civilians who died “indirectly,” as a result of wars’ destruction of economies, healthcare systems, infrastructure and the environment. An estimated 3.6-3.8 million people died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting.”
—Brown University’s Thomas J. Watson Jr. School of International and Public Affairs.

American service members deaths in Iraq: 4,500; wounded: 31,194. American service members deaths in Afghanistan: 2,456; wounded 20,719. And for what?

“And don’t they look just like on “SEAL Team”?
Lord, don’t they look the best?
When we trot them out at halftime
Or the seventh inning stretch
They stand up in their uniforms
And they help us sell the show
Dying by their own hands
For reasons we don’t know”
“Operation Never Mind,” by James McMurtry

And I am certainly old enough to remember the failed Vietnam War. Do you remember?

“American service members are bravely risking their lives to protect their country from nuclear dangers—and to restore freedom to the Iranian people who have sacrificed so much to reclaim that freedom for themselves. The instinct to rally around the flag is, and should be, strong. It’s also urgent to rally around the principles and ideals for which the flag stands.”
—David Frum, The Atlantic, February 28, 2026

Huh? No thanks. I will not be rallying around the flag as we bomb Iran into the Stone Age and pry open even wider the Pandora’s Box that is the Middle East. I pray our service men and women will not be killed or maimed at the behest of a president who knows nothing of the sacrifice of our troops and their families.

“Operation Epic Fury” is an illegal war that no one asked for except for the profiteers and Israel’s Prime Minister and America’s biggest welfare recipient Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu.

Colorado Representative and military veteran Jason Crow: “You know, Americans are sick of this. I’m sick of this. I went to war three times for this country, and I saw the working-class people that I grew up with, that I fought with, bearing the burden of deployment after deployment, conflict after conflict. Meanwhile, the elites in Washington continue to bang their war drums and talk tough, and it’s always the working-class people who pay the price.”

Congress was not consulted as mandated by the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 11: “The Congress shall have Power . . . To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; . . .”

The American public, at least the non-billionaires and Trump insiders that send those men and women to their deaths or to the prosthetic store while profiting from arms sales and oil thefts, were not told why we are again mucking around in the Middle East.

Cost to U.S. taxpayers? Not important. Besides, the American Industrial Military Complex has unlimited funds thanks to cutting Medicaid, USAID, firing tens of thousands of public servants, withholding needed monies to blue states, etc.

Instead of exporting soft power through successful programs such as USAID, we now only export death from the skies, led by an unstable leader who has not told us why we are sacrificing troops and treasure in this latest escapade at this time.

So here we go again, again. Results? I think by now we know. Here is one from today’s New York Times:

“Dozens of people, probably most of them children, were killed in a strike that hit a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran, according to Iranian health officials and state media. It was one of two strikes that appear to have hit schools since U.S. and Israeli warplanes launched their attack on Iran around 10 a.m. local time. Saturday is the start of the workweek in the country, and many Iranians had already dropped off their children and headed into their offices as explosions began to shake the capital and many cities across Iran. Iran’s Red Crescent and several state news outlets said more than 60 people were killed in the strike on Shajarah Tayyebeh school in the southern town of Minab. By Saturday evening, Iran’s state news broadcaster, IRIB, raised the toll to 85 dead and 93 injured. Hossein Kermanpour, a spokesman for Iran’s health ministry, said mostly “young martyrs” were killed at the school. Minab is in Hormozgan Province, which sits along the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic international shipping lane.

“God knows how many more children will be pulled out of the rubble,” he wrote in a post on social media. “May God give their families strength and patience.”

God help us all in another godless era.