Operation Epstein Fury
We're Off To War Again. But Why?
Wasn’t I just writing about 2002, and the George W. Bush administration’s Iraq War blunder?
(There’s also this piece from my novel, in which two characters consider the war in Iraq, the way it mirrored Vietnam, and the cycles of history…)
It sure feels like déjà vu all over again.
In case you’re late to the party, surprise! We’re at War again!
And not the perpetual war on the poor waged by the Trump administration and its billionaire bootlickers. Not the wars on science, education, and democracy, brought to you by many of the same players. We’re now embroiled in a capital-W War, alongside our bosom buddies in Israel, against Iran and its proxies in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. In the early hours of Saturday morning, President Donald Trump traded rage tweeting for the podium, where he stood in a freakin’ trucker hat and announced sustained military action in Iran without congressional authorization.
Donald Trump is certainly not the first U.S. president to overstep their constitutional authority by bypassing congressional authorization for acts of war. In just the last 60 years, Democrats and Republicans alike have pulled the stunt. Nixon did it when he bombed Laos and Cambodia from ‘69-’70. Reagan invaded Grenada in ‘83. Clinton bombed Iraq in ‘98, and then Yugoslavia and Kosovo in ‘99. Obama intervened in Libya in ‘11. None of these operations received full and formal congressional approval.
And U.S. presidents have long wagged the dog and used military operations in attempts to hoodwink the citizenry and distract from crises at home. But I don’t think it’s ever been this pathetically obvious.
(Even John Dean, the Nixon attorney disbarred for his role in the Watergate scandal, claimed that Nixon—the previous standard-bearer for presidential misconduct—would be “horrified” by how things have escalated since then. And he’s right: Nixon’s improprieties were a drop in the bucket compared to what we’re seeing today.)
The drumbeat of war with Iran, led by a genocidal, criminal regime in Israel (and backed by Democrat and Republican politicians alike), has been audible for some time now. And despite Trump’s alternate-reality State of the Union address, in which he touted his many accomplishments and reverted to his asinine reassurance that “we’re winning so much”, the majority of Americans know what it is: Life in the U.S. is more expensive than ever—despite Trump’s insistence that this is a ‘hoax’, and only exacerbated by his idiotic and illegal and naked-transfer-of-wealth tariffs. Our “healthcare” system continues to be an abject and shameful disaster. Immigration enforcement under this administration is a resounding and embarrassing failure. And the Department of Justice is engaged in what the House Oversight Committee has called “the largest government coverup in modern history” as they shield administration members and even the POTUS himself from accountability in a global criminal pedophilia enterprise. So is it a coincidence, despite all this winning—and just four days after it was revealed that the DOJ removed and withheld files alleging the president’s sexual abuse of a minor—that now is the time for war?
The president can prevaricate and snooker his people, and he can post A.I. images and fake magazine covers and accept fake peace prizes all he wants—but deep down, he too knows what it is: the spectre of Epstein and accountability for his association is haunting him, as is a struggling economy, atrocious domestic and foreign policy decisions, and ever-worsening poll numbers.
We’ll all remember that Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to end foreign wars, even stating in his election-night victory speech: “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”
He even disparaged president Obama in 2011, suggesting Obama would start a war with Iran, because “he’s weak and he’s ineffective.”
It is, of course, merely one more Daedalian expression of the president’s America First policy, much like the tariffs taxing American consumers, or the destruction of America’s international alliances, or any number of other SMFH decisions that very clearly do not put America first.
And of course we can always trust in the douchebag par excellence, our Secretary of Defense War (his revision), to come up with a properly cringeworthy name for the military campaign: Operation Epic Fury.
And, of course, I have not yet mentioned the several illogical justifications for this operation.
The U.S. Constitution and International Law requires an imminent threat to justify acts of war. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that, while the White House claims Iran is close to weapons-grade nuclear material, experts refute this claim, stating that it has not advanced significantly since the Trump administration struck Iranian nuclear sites in June of 2025—after which Trump himself announced that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated.” So the rationale is “protecting the American people” from a nuclear program that he himself, less than one year ago, claimed to have destroyed? At least make it make sense, dude...
What about the missiles? In his State of the Union address, the president cast his spell of jingoism, speaking of Iran building missiles that would soon reach the U.S. But an unclassified 2025 U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency assessment stated that Iran could take until 2035 to develop a “militarily viable intercontinental ballistic missile”. So this doesn’t check out either.
What of the Iranian regime’s killing of protesters, casualties which the regime itself has estimated to number in the thousands? While in January the U.S. president voiced support for the protesters, encouraged their unrest, and even promised to come to their rescue, T.A.C.O. : he stood back and watched the carnage continue, before baselessly declaring that “very important sources” informed him that the killing “is stopping, it’s stopped, it’s stopping.” Is there any sentient being who truly believes that this president, who has consistently displayed flagrantly demented behavior and a pathological inability to empathize, and who has dehumanized nations, races, and his own citizenry...is anyone really buying that he gives a hoot about the Iranian people? Based on his utter contempt for his own people, I’d give that one a big-ol’ Happy Gilmore thumb-down-fart-sound.
And that big-ol’ Happy Gilmore thumb-down-fart-sound is what I give this whole charade. 24 years after Iraq, we’re once again being led into an unauthorized and unjustified war. American service members will die, as will civilians throughout the region. Billions will be spent on the bloodshed and destruction and the enriching of defense contractors and energy companies, which might otherwise be spent in our own country on healthcare, education, infrastructure, and ensuring that all of us can live with a modicum of dignity.
But the dereliction continues, the transfer of wealth abides, and so we beat on...
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