Brains vs. ....
A lesson in metaphorical anatomy for MAGA dead-enders
NEW ORLEANS — Fuel prices driven up by Donald Trump’s war on Iran hit Louisiana shrimpers hard this spring but at least one shrimper I heard on the radio said he still supported the war effort.
Past presidents have only talked about dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, the shrimper said on NPR, but Trump is “the only one that’s had the balls to do it.”
I’d heard this argument before (sometimes using other anatomical symbols of courage like “guts” or “stomach”) and there are a few problems with it.
Problem No. 1: It ignores the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was a multilateral deal negotiated by the Obama administration to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
In case you haven’t noticed, the ol’ JCPOA is looking better and better these days. If 45 hadn’t ripped it up six years ago, 47 might not be dealing with the biggest blunder of his second presidency.
Problem No. 2: It really doesn’t take balls for a powerful 79-year-old man to send young people to war or to drop bombs. Bombs that might degrade an enemy’s ability to attack us or our allies. Or that might hit a school full of children.
Problem No. 3 — the main problem here — is that the argument puts too much emphasis on “balls” and not enough on brains.
Ascending to the presidency takes intelligence. Usually. But, if we’ve learned one thing from the Trump presidencies, intelligence is not a given.
Not that being smart guarantees success. Smart people got us involved in Vietnam. George W. Bush peopled his presidency with politically savvy, smart, experienced government veterans who got us bogged down in Iraq. (Which, by the way, Donald Trump, in 2016, aggressively argued was a stupid decision.)
But now we’ve got an abject lesson in how not being smart is even worse. There may have been broad disagreement about whether the war should have been launched, but less than four months later, across the political spectrum there is broad agreement that things are worse now. Conservative columnist Bret Stephens, an early supporter of the war, said Trump has betrayed Iranians hoping to shed a repressive government (see today’s The Wall Street Journal for the latest on this) and is well on his way to betraying Israel.
“The worst betrayal, however, is of Americans who supported the war — not only neocons like me but also most of Trump’s MAGA base — because we believed that Iran, which has waged a 47-year war against us, posed an increasingly intolerable threat to our security and vital interests,” Stephens wrote in The New York Times. “This cease-fire neither ends nor eases that threat; it hardens and magnifies it.”
Stephens, a strong advocate for Israel, is among conservatives who made the case for military action against Iran. Perhaps they were right, or they would have been right if that action had been planned and undertaken by someone who consulted allies instead of alienating them, someone who didn’t further alienate them by excoriating them for not helping him clean up his mess, someone who listened to generals when they said an attack on Iran might just result in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Someone with brains.
“Reagan is rolling over in his grave,” lame duck Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, newly free to say what he really thinks after finishing third in the Republican Senate primary, wrote on X. “Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works and will undoubtedly leverage it in the future. Now, Iran gets to build brand-new infrastructure under this deal.”
Unfortunately, Cassidy is a rarity among Louisiana politicians.
Rep. Julia Letlow, the Republican who currently appears to be most likely to succeed Cassidy, remains in fawning mode. “I trust President Trump to ensure that any agreement protects American interests, supports our allies and leaves Iran with no path to a nuclear weapon,” she said in a story in The Times-Picayune.
State Treasurer John Fleming, running hard to defeat Letlow in Saturday’s primary runoff, acknowledged having a question or two about the deal but also proved he can fawn with the best of them.
“He said that if they don’t do what they’re supposed to do, he’ll bomb the hell out of them,” Fleming said. “With Trump staying on Iran, there will be much less loss of life in the Middle East, and we’ll have a permanent good outcome. We cannot allow them to have nuclear weapons.”
At least Sen. John Kennedy, a safe Republican incumbent, acknowledged doubts about the agreement. But, his response was largely deferential to Trump. And John Lennon.
“We ought to give peace a chance,” he said multiple times on the Senate floor.
No sign among any of them of willingness for Congress to assert itself in its role as a check on presidential power, its responsibility to decide when we should be at war, its power of the purse.
Surely they have the brains to do it. What are they lacking?