The Dangerous Incoherence of Trump’s War With Iran

“Epic Fury” suits an administration devoted to cheap jabs that “own the libs,” livestreams of Cabinet members awkwardly attempting pull-ups, AI videos of our obese and sundowning president flying fighter jets or posing with glistening muscles and ripped abs. “Epic” once meant sweeping, glorious—it was Lawrence of Arabia or The Ten Commandments. Now it’s just another piece of pandering slopspeak, the kind of thing that spews out of Elon Musk’s mouth as he boasts about his fascistic, child porn-generating AI chatbot. 

Still, this operation is, I suppose, epic—the largest air assault since the start of the Iraq War. It is furious too, though that fury itself raises a question this administration has not been able to answer because it cannot be provided: Why are we going to war in Iran? 

One explanation is simply that the president and his Cabinet are simply gripped with inchoate fury and rage, as are many of their supporters, and they are desperate to find outlets for release. They have vented their violent impulses in Venezuela, and in Minneapolis, and in the federal government itself, all of which have been decimated as part of the administration’s larger pursuit of destruction. Trump and his backers are obsessed with power and strength and are desperate to showcase that they and the country they ostensibly lead are powerful and strong and that no one—not their political opponents or critics, not the “international community,” to the extent that it exists at all, not Congress or the Constitution—can do anything to stop them.