Trump Starts His Criminal War of Aggression

Trump and Netanyahu are responsible for everything that happens next.

The president and the Israeli prime minister launched a criminal war of aggression today:

The U.S. and Israel said they launched an attack on Iran, which retaliated with strikes on Israel and targeted U.S. bases. President Trump confirmed major combat operations against the regime, and urged Iranians to “take over your government” as the strikes continued.

The U.S. has waged many stupid wars of choice, but this stands out as one of the most senseless we have ever seen. There is no cause for war. The U.S. and Israeli governments started this war because they could and because they felt like doing it. Trump has condemned the region to endure another pointless and unnecessary conflict that will leave only ruin in its wake.

Trump and Netanyahu are responsible for everything that happens next. They own this war and its consequences. Every life lost in Iran and throughout the region as a result of this war is their doing. They are war criminals, and they should be held accountable for the death and destruction they have chosen to cause. They have set the region on fire on a whim.

The president has attacked Iran for no good reason. He has told many lies to give himself a pretext for doing it, but there was no threat that warranted resorting to military action. If there was any doubt that Trump’s fake diplomacy was a smokescreen, that doubt has been laid to rest. There was no concession that the Iranian government could have offered short of unconditional surrender that would have satisfied him. As he always does, the president has sided with the ghoulish Iran hawks, and the U.S., Iran, and the entire region will suffer as a result.

The Iranian people will be the ones to pay the steepest price for this aggression. It is their country’s infrastructure that will be wrecked by the bombing campaign, and they will be living in fear as their cities are struck. The government will be even more repressive during wartime. To the extent that opposition leaders are seen as cheering on foreign aggression, it will likely backfire on them.

The last thing that the U.S. needed was a new conflict in the Middle East. Starting a war with Iran is a crime against that country, but it is also a betrayal of U.S. interests. Attacking Iran puts Americans in harm’s way for nothing, and it is bogging the U.S. down in an unjust war.

Even a relatively brief bombing campaign will kill many people, both military and civilian. Trump’s bombing campaign in Yemen lasted less than two months and it still managed to kill hundreds of civilians. War with Iran will be more destructive, and now that it has started it will be much harder to halt. The destabilizing effects on the entire region will be felt for years to come.

U.S. military interventions are effective at destroying things and throwing countries into chaos, but tend not to achieve much else. Our government’s interventions typically leave the targeted country worse off than it was before. There is no reason to think that this time will be any different.

War with Iran will not be another Iraq in the way that it is fought, but it is exactly like the Iraq war in its illegality and its needless destruction. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed during that war and millions more were displaced. Even a fraction of those losses would be a catastrophe for Iran, and it is possible that it could end up being much worse.