Trump's War: Israel First vs. America First

What would JFK the internationalist say?

Left: emergency workers sift the rubble of an Israeli-U.S. missile attack that killed scores of Iranian schoolgirls. Right; authors of the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump.

The once debatable notion that we live in a democratic republic, governed by the Constitution of the United States, has been definitively debunked by the bombing of Tehran. We do not.

Under Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the U.S. Constitution, Congress holds the exclusive power to formally declare war, “ensuring this decision rests with elected representatives rather than a single executive.” Or so Google’s Artificial Intelligence agent tells me with a straight face.

Is Gemini a conscious being having a private laugh at our human naivete? Or is it algorithm machine regurgitating this defunct fallacy to insulate the bankroll of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin with the illusion of constitutional democracy? The two Google gods are worth $519 billion, which tells you this: They need the illusion more than the dough.

So, by all means, let us celebrate the semiquincentennial of our independence by glorying in the irrelevance of the Constitution. If you want to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, don’t pretend that antique parchment has much influence on this administration, the Congress, or the courts.

The House of Representatives and the Senate show feeble interest in their constitutional role in the run-up to this war. There’s a handful of principled Republicans and a larger cohort of principled Democrats who voiced opposition to the Trump administration’s strategy but they’re not in leadership positions. The leading Democrats, like leading Republicans, offer no alternative strategy, only statements ingeniously constructed not to offend their donors or the president.

Times have changed. In 1966, J. William Fulbright, a racist senator from Arkansas and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, held extensive, detailed (and, our media today would say, boring) hearings on the Vietnam War. Policymakers and experts explained the delusions and self-delusions that drove military intervention in a conflict we did not understand. Fulbright’s educational hearings turbocharged the teach-in movement that galvanized popular opposition to a criminally stupid war that wasted the lives of 50,000 American men (and eight women). By contrast, our Congress has courageously scheduled a vote Thursday about the war that began on Saturday.

This, of course, has been a long time coming. Ever since passage of the 1947 National Security Act, Congress abdicated its war-making powers. No president has felt the need to get a declaration of war from Congress. Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected 90 years ago, is the last president who felt the need to respect the original intent of the founders.

The federal courts, now dominated by judges who call themselves “originalists,” are skilled at inventing elaborate justifications for ignoring the Constitution when it comes to war and peace. Just as a majority of the Supreme Court (and their apologists) have sophisticated arguments about why concealing gifts from conservative activists with business before the court does not constitute a conflict of interest, they too can supply us with learned exegesis about why the intent of Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 does not reflect the original intent of the Founders. Trust these six justices! They wear black robes. Just like the ayatollahs of Iran. They too claim to speak in the name of God.

This corruption of language and the law has deep roots. The Bush-Cheney invasion of Iraq 23 years ago was justified by a series of statements, known to be false at the time, endorsed by some of our leading liberal intellectuals (you know who you are) and promulgated by all of our neoconservative brethren. In 2016, Trump accurately described these lies as “lies,” and promptly wrapped up the next three Republican presidential nominations. Now exiled Bush spokesman Bill Kristol worries about a president who mouths lies. (Some will mock him. I say “welcome.”)

Trump’s strategy of lies is more primitive, more promiscuous than the Bush-Cheney junta. He hasn’t even bothered to come up with a coherent cover story. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that Iran’s nuclear capacity was obliterated by U.S. attack. Now White House envoy Steve Witkoff says Iran is “a week away” from developing a nuclear weapon. Logically speaking, one of those two statements is false. Choose your favorite prevarication, and you have exercised your American freedom on war and peace, circa 2026.

The Bodyguard of Lies

Some say the reasons for the war are “murky.” Not really. The bodyguard of lies conceals a plain truth: This is a war on Israel’s behalf with the specific intent of preserving Israel’s monopoly on nuclear weapons and advancing its plans to dominate the region with regime change ambitions. Its why JFK sought to bring Israel into the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1963 and establish a nuclear-free Middle East: to forestall such a war.

Last month, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said the quiet part out loud to Tucker Carlson. The Trump administration has no problem with the Zionist ambition for Eretz Israel, a Zionist state made Great by waging a seven-front war on its neighbors. Huckabee approved of this fundamentalist fever dream (which many, if not most, Jewish Americans reject), saying it would be “fine if [Israel] took it all.”

Asked to repudiate Huckabee’s statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said ... well, actually he hasn’t been asked to repudiate it because any competent journalist knows he never will. Or he will lie (he’s under Israeli indictment for fraud and breach of trust). Truth be told, Huckabee’s statement is the essential to Israeli strategy. To wit: “Tell the world that America is fine with our war of aggression.”

But is America fine with this savage exercise of gunboat diplomacy and targeted assassination? Maybe. What the president’s America First supporters think of this Netanyahu First war depends on whether the attack achieves some goal that Trump says is worthy. Once upon a time, Trump promised “no regime change wars,” and Tulsi Gabbard wore a t-shirt saying, “No war in Iran.” What changed?

Not much. In Trump’s mind, campaign promises (like military service and crypto-currencies) are stuff for stiffs, bait for suckers — not binding commitments. The art of Trump’s war deal seems to be not alienating his partners in a promised Gaza resort for the Epstein Class, and the hell with the one million hungry human beings who live there.

Of course, Bari Weiss, the very model of a successful Substacker, will (along with righteous progressive pundits) tax Carlson for saying racist things. Which is true. He does do that. The argument is, he’s such a bad man, you must not listen to anything he says. He’s “anti-Semitic.”

This made-in-America hasbara, however, is having the opposite of its intended effect, resulting in the bipartisan reality that more Americans now sympathize with Palestinians than with Israelis. Every week, Weiss runs a column, by a wise man or woman called Things to Remember. I’m looking forward to restacking the Free Press recollections of the now-canceled concept of “Palestinian human rights.”

The racism charges could be leveled with equal credibility against Fulbright. But you didn’t hear Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. denouncing his racial politics. In fact, King said praised Fulbright as “one voice crying in the wilderness that may ultimately awaken our people to the international facts of life.”

In any case, the absolutes of identity politics do not invalidate Fulbright’s critique of American imperial power. Carson’s no Fulbright, but he did Americans a service. He illuminated why constitution-less America suddenly finds itself in an undeclared war: because Trump and Co. are “fine” with Israeli ambitions to dominate the region.

As for the Democrats, criticism of Trump is now weak tea and weaker policy. The president who does not need a declaration of war was happy to steal the “Unitary Executive” concept from the neoconservatives he professed to loathe. The continuity of U.S. policy since the National Security Act— the aggrandizement of executive war-making power — is impressive.

But Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush did not always kowtow to Tel Aviv. They made sure everyone in Israel understood they ran the American empire in the service of American interests. That has changed. The continuity of U.S. policy from Bush-Cheney to Trump-Vance is impressive mostly in its fealty to Zionist priorities.

The Democrat presidential nominee will be a 21st century JFK who unifies the party—and poaches the MAGA base—by articulating a “strategy of peace” as the constitutional alternative to the Israeli-Trump strategy of war.