TOM EATON | Some are better off for this war on Iran (and it’s not Americans)

Last week American lawmakers voted against imposing any restrictions onDonald Trumpassassinating foreign leaders or launching cruise missiles at schoolgirls, and now, as some US soldiers complain about superior officers enthusiastically telling them that the attack on Iran might hasten the Second Coming, it’s tempting to believe that the US is rapidly becoming a lot like the country it is obliterating. False equivalences, however, are dangerous, and we should all be very clear that the US and Iran are very, very different. The US, for example, has killed substantially more people around the world thanIranhas, and, with its gigantic, high-tech military apparently serving nothing but the legal and financial interests of Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and their respective cabals, it is fairly obvious that it is the US, not Iran, that is the greatest threat to security on the planet right now.

Still, at least we don’t have to worry about presidential paranoid delusions. Last week, when Trump’s very own Chemical Ali, Karoline Leavitt, told the world that Trump had attacked Iran because “he had a feeling” Iran might attack first, it seemed as if we’d returned to Hitler-esque war-by-intuition. After all, just because Pete Hegseth is a Christian nationalist with crusader-themed tattoos beloved of the far right, who wants to end the separation of church and state and who has shown an eagerness to revel in the killing of Iranians who were not leading members of the regime, it doesn’t mean that the world is lurching in a terrifying new direction, right?

These fears, however, are unfounded: Trump may well have had a feeling, but I don’t think it was that sort of feeling. Instead, I suspect it was the sort of feeling you get when Israel tells you it’s about to attack Iran and reminds you of all the reasons you need to do it, too, which gives you no-feeling because you thought you were in charge; and then you think about all the years you told your cult that petrol prices over $3 were a sign of a useless president, and your no-feeling gets worse; but then you remember that they’ll believe literally anything you tell them, so you end up with a yes-feeling. I am also trying to remind myself that those 200 US soldiers who have reportedly filed official complaints about officers delivering briefings blazing with Evangelical holy fire, full of apocalyptic End Times hokum, are a tiny minority. I know I’m clutching at straws, not only because the dogs of war are running mad but because gathering straw is probably a good option for when the inflation tsunami arrives and I need somewhere warm to sleep.