From America First to Israel’s Useful Idiot

Trump vowed to end forever wars. Now he’s approved the strike—just not the order or the truth.

Illustration (Donny Evans)

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He told Iran “good luck” when they refused to surrender. He told Netanyahu to “keep going” as Israeli warplanes turned Tehran’s skyline into a smoke map. And when asked if his patience had worn thin, he snapped, “It’s worn out”. But what Donald Trump hasn’t said—what he won’t say—is the only thing that matters: the United States is at war with Iran. Not debated. Not declared. Just refueled—without a vote, without a briefing, without a whisper of constitutional process. He didn’t announce it. He outsourced it. America First has become America Last to Know.

Trump hasn’t just escalated a conflict—he’s turned his back on his own doctrine. He mocked neocons and vowed to end what he called Middle East’s “stupid, endless wars.” He campaigned on preventing World War III—at CPAC in March 2023 he bragged he was “the only candidate who will prevent it.”

That was the pitch. Now, as we teeter on the edge of a war he won’t name or claim, the president who vowed to dismantle the war machine has become its oil—the stealth backer of a conflict he won’t admit to starting.

White House spokespeople insist the U.S. has no direct role—Secretary of State Rubio called Israel’s campaign “a unilateral action” and claimed, “We are not involved in strikes against Iran.” But the battlefield layout exposes the lie. Senator Ted Cruz, cornered by Tucker Carlson, let it slip: “Israel is leading them, but we’re supporting them.”

Meanwhile, Pentagon deployments now include over 30 KC‑135 and KC‑46 tankers to refuel Israeli jets, three carrier strike groups stacked in the eastern Mediterranean like floating ultimatums, and B‑52 bombers stationed at Diego Garcia—each one a 488,000-pound promise to vaporize Iran’s buried nuclear sites. 40,000 U.S. troops fan out across Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, and Syria. It is choreography for a first strike—sealed with deception, polished with propaganda, and aimed straight at the heart of a war we refuse to name. The official line says: “Not us.” The war map says: “Prove it.”

The war in Iran has torn straight through the movement that resurrected Trump—splitting its core between bomb-builders and isolationists. Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, and Ted Cruz beat the war drums. Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene bark about restraint, but the missiles move anyway. And between them stands a base in open revolt: 53% of Trump voters oppose U.S. involvement, many of them veterans of his 2016 anti-war gospel. Trump rose by denouncing Bush’s wars—then stole his playbook and slapped his name on the cover. What was once a populist coalition is splintering—one B‑52 deployment at a time.

The decision is no longer in the hands of generals, diplomats, or Congress. It belongs to one man—cornered by scandal, addicted to spectacle, and desperate to look strong. Trump has already approved the strike plan, according to senior officials. He scorns restraint. He approved the strike plans, then stalled—not to spare lives, but to savor the suspense. War is his stage, not his burden. He doesn’t study consequences; he scripts headlines. And if the order comes, it won’t be strategy. It will be theater—performed in flames, paid for in blood, and remembered as the moment one man mistook power for immortality.

A U.S.-backed strike on Iran would do more than crater a nuclear facility. It would detonate the foundations of global order. Preemptive war, once discredited by history and drenched in shame, would become policy again—licensed by the same country that once vowed never to repeat it. China would cite it. Russia would echo it. Smaller autocracies would follow suit, dragging old grudges into new fires. Trump isn’t just dragging America into a war. He’s rewriting the rules of engagement for every strongman watching—and lighting the fuse on an era where might no longer pretends to ask permission.

Iran has promised retaliation if the U.S. takes part in the strikes—and they won’t aim for headlines. They’ll target American bases, oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz, diplomatic posts, and civilians caught in the wrong city at the wrong hour.

Hezbollah has warned it may intervene if Iran is hit directly. Militias in Iraq and Syria are gearing up. The Strait of Hormuz, chokepoint for a third of the world’s oil, could be sealed in hours. And on every base from Bahrain to Diego Garcia, American troops will be on the front lines in a war they didn’t vote for—because one man wanted to look strong on television. There is no surgical strike. There never was. There’s only the illusion of control, followed by the sound of everything breaking.

Trump has stripped war of its last illusions. No doctrine. No transparency. Just velocity. He isn’t hiding behind classified intel or legal pretense—he’s staging the strike like a primetime finale, where the suspense is choreographed and the consequences are real. The Apprentice taught him timing; this war is his spin-off. Only now the cliffhanger ends in fire, and the script is written in the blood of soldiers in uniform and families who won’t make the closing credits. Each day the order is withheld, he builds tension—not to avert disaster, but to savor the control.

Policy has nothing to do with it. This is spectacle with a body count.

History won’t need a verdict. It will have footage. Billions of screens lit by the glow of something righteous turned monstrous—American power, once cloaked in ideals, now naked and aroused. Trump has no options left to weigh—only timing to perfect. The applause is the objective. The strike will answer nothing. It will advance no cause. It will satisfy the ego of a man who thinks legacy is earned through fire.

He vowed to end our wars. Instead, he’ll leave behind a crater wide enough to bury the promise—and deep enough to echo for generations. There won’t be a mission accomplished, only silence and smoke. No treaty. No memory of why. Just the sound of children learning to fear the sky, and a nation too proud to ask what it burned for.

We won’t walk away from this. We’ll watch it burn—stitched into our flag, scorched into history, and sold as strength.