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I was on a train this morning and drew this woman on my iPhone with my finger. I love doing this, it passes the time and I love watching people. She had quite long eyelashes.
They are loath to call it war.
Instead Republicans want to call it a “mission” or “the operation.” Maybe it started that way in their heads, maybe they thought they could just bomb Iran and it would be a done deal. Trump was emboldened by his Venezuela Mission.” The Middle East is an entirely different matter.
It’s now a war. While killing Iran’s repressive leaders and dismantling their nuclear program (if we indeed have) are positives, this war has destabilized the region in enormous ways. We are seeing proxy wars, it has perhaps ignited more to hate America and Israel.
Part of the reason for the verbal gymnastics is because only Congress can declare war, and Republicans are trying to get around that. Most of them believe that it’s perfectly fine for the president to declare war; it’s simply not true. The Constitution says so. Some Republicans had been calling it war but are now backtracking. Trump himself has described the military operation as a “war” a number of times.
“Listen,” said Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, “if I’m going to commit ground troops into combat, that constitutes war in the constitutional sense and will require some sort of authorization.” (He voted to block the war powers measure, ensuring that Congress would have no say for now.)
But we are in it now, and the War Powers Act did not pass. Democrat Susan Collins voted against it and said we have to support our troops, regardless of how we got in the war. She believes it would “send the wrong message to Iran.”
From Politico: Not all Democrats are prepared to give Trump a blank check for this. Many who left the door open to voting for a supplemental funding package said the administration would first have to provide Congress with more information about the offensive. That includes the rationale for striking Iran, a commitment to avoid putting boots on the ground and a plan for ending the conflict.
“Clearly, there’s going to be a cost to this war that we haven’t budgeted for. So there is going to be a need for funding, and we need some answers before we provide it,” Sen. Shaheen the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said. Sen. Coons, the top Democrat on the appropriations panel overseeing Pentagon spending, is also keeping open the option of supporting an emergency military funding package but said like Shaheen that administration officials need to testify publicly about “the failures in planning” in the conflict so far.
The notion that e have to trear this war as somehow okay simply because it was started by a craziman is rong.
And this infuriates me. Hegseth and Sen. Graham refer to this as “God’s war.” According to the Guardian, US military commanders have been “invoking extremist Christian rhetoric about biblical “end times” to justify involvement in the Iran war to troops, according to complaints made to a watchdog group.”
Here is a good NY Times piece on how this war could affect our economy.
Finally, we are now not talking about the Epstein Files.
Below is the videograb of the drawing I did of the woman on the train, for your amusement. Thanks for being here!
