"Death and Destruction ... All Day Long"
What a glorious time to be Pete Hegseth. He can openly revel in killing, cheered on by his carnage-loving boss.
The sadism of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is unmistakeable. Oh, the delight he takes in the killing of others. You can be sure that this white Christian nationalist takes particular pleasure knowing that his boss, Donald Trump, applauds and shares his hunger for deadly violence. No wonder they both preferred renaming the Defense Department the Department of War.
We learned this week that a U.S. submarine torpedoed an Iranian warship in international waters off the coast of Sri Lanka, a first for the U.S. Navy since 1945. So far, Sri Lanka’s Navy recovered 87 bodies and rescued 32 survivors from the frigate, the IRIS Dena, that reportedly had as many as 180 people on board. All that was left at the scene, according to Buddhika Sampath, a Sri Lankan Navy spokesperson: “some oil patches and life rafts…people floating on the water."
The pumped-up Hegseth’s summary of the event: “An American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters. Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death.”
Quiet death.
Pause and think about that for a moment: Quiet for whom? Not for the families of the dead soldiers. Not for the survivors. Not for clapping Pete.
Note that the former Fox weekend host also telegraphed that no Iranian ship is safe in international waters—including, by the way, this unarmed ship that was returning from a port visit and multinational naval exercise hosted by India in New Delhi. (In fact, the U.S. was invited, but withdrew “at the last minute, presumably with this operation in mind.”)
Is such a premeditated attack supposed to make the world safer? Is that supposed to give Americans confidence that Trump’s war of choice will not keep escalating?
Note the comment of India’s opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi. “The conflict has reached our backyard, with an Iranian warship sunk in the Indian Ocean.” Note the response of Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi about the deadly attack: “The U.S. has perpetrated an atrocity at sea, 2,000 miles away from Iran’s shores…Mark my words: The U.S. will come to bitterly regret the precedent it has set.”
It doesn’t take much imagination to see how this unauthorized war will continue to spread—airstrikes and retaliation have already touched a dozen countries—yet this war has not been properly explained, justified or planned for by the reckless Trump regime beyond hitting more targets and killing more people. Is it any surprise that most Americans oppose it?
The death toll as of this writing, according to Reuters: at least 1,230 in Iran, including 175 schoolgirls and staff, as well as six American soldiers and more than 100 others in Israel, Lebanon, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Syria and Iraq.
Oh, what happy days for killer Pete, who wanted us all to know how indifferent he is to human life, how unleashed he feels to cause maximum damage:
B-2s, B-52s, B-1s, Predator drones, fighters controlling the skies, picking targets, death and destruction from the sky all day long. We're playing for keeps. Our warfighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly.
Death and destruction from the sky all day long.
Got it? That’s a sadist’s poetry of love. That’s the policy of Trump’s America toward a country of 90 million people that did not pose an imminent threat.
And more: “This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight,” Hegseth spat. “We are punching them while they're down, which is exactly how it should be.”
War begets war
Contrast that with the thinking of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander during WWII and America’s post-war president for two terms. “I hate war,” he said, “as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility and its stupidity.”
He said this in 1946, when the horrors of war were still painfully fresh. Four years later, he remained convinced of the folly and the futility. Here’s what he said in 1950 at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh:
Possibly my hatred of war blinds me so that I cannot comprehend the arguments they adduce. But, in my opinion, there is no such thing as a preventive war. Although this suggestion is repeatedly made, none has yet explained how war prevents war. Worse than this, no one has been able to explain away the fact that war creates the conditions that beget war.
It would be futile for me to say that I dream of a day where there are no more wars. But it seems only practical to assert that launching a war of choice as Trump has done—an unconstitutional, ill-planned war for which he and his bloody henchmen cannot provide a consistent or legal rationale—necessarily “begets” more war.
I’ll trust the wisdom of Ike over the muscle-flexing of Pete. The utter inability of Hegseth to grasp the life-and-death gravity of what he’s doing is—and will never not be—both shocking and appalling.
A final word from Eisenhower, just off the battlefield in 1945: "Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in blood of his followers and sacrifices of his friends.”
“I have to be involved”
But there’s no humility to be found in the Trump regime as this war enters its seventh day—a regime led by an unwell, unfit man who reminds us each day that his reckless sociopathy is only surpassed by his bottomless narcissism. Yesterday, he told Reuters that he expects to be involved in selecting Iran’s leader in the wake of the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and many other top leaders of the Iranian regime.
“We're going to have to choose that person along with Iran,” Trump said. “We want to be involved in the process of choosing the person who is going to lead Iran into the future, so we don’t have to go back every five years and do this again and again.”
This unhinged madman—that Senate Republicans refused to limit Wednesday by rejecting the War Powers Resolution—talked like he was casting a reality TV show. He told Axios that Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, a possible successor, “is a lightweight.” Asked about exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, son of the last shah before the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Trump said, “I think everybody’s in the mix. It’s very early.”
And then: “I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodriguez] in Venezuela.”
That would be Donald Trump—imagined ruler of Venezuela, ruler of Iran—the man who cannot govern America except to follow Hegseth’s maxim: “death and destruction…all day long.”
We cannot look away from this war, as hard as it is to tolerate the daily onslaught. Nor should we lose our confidence that this sick chapter can and will be overcome. We must hold onto both our sanity and our belief that the rule of law, justice and the will of the people will eventually triumph.
May that be soon.
One other note: Yes, the firing yesterday of Homeland Security’s Kristi Noem was good news. She is the infamous dog killer and sociopath who has carried out Trump’s lawless deportation operation, reveled in terror tactics and demonized Minnesota’s Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti as “domestic terrorists” to justify their murders by federal agents.
Yes, in a sane world, the firing of the sadistic Noem would be a reason to celebrate. But we don't live in a sane world—and we have every reason to assume that Trump's lawless ICE and border operation despicably conceptualized by Stephen Miller will continue apace...now with a hostile male face at the helm.
Trump’s promotion of Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a former professional MMA fighter and Trump sycophant, does not bode well for positive change. We must hold Noem accountable for her criminality to reassert right from wrong.
Our fight for a lawful, decent government that respects its people and remains committed to justice carries on.
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WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE???? The naked cruelty and glee they exhibit is utterly appalling, especially since they're all praying and waving their bibles. The only thing that would ever make me believe in a god was if they all went directly to hell. Right now.
And evidently a third of this country thinks this is just fine. I read years ago that third of a population would kill another third of that population, while the remaining third watched. Are we at that point?
"The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous." - George Orwell