The First Rule of War

Posted on April 3, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 3, 2026

Donald Trump’s war with Iran and the events it triggers will plague us for years if not decades. ISIS kept us bogged down in the blood of Americans for twenty years, despite extensive planning and strategizing with a coalition of thirty-four willing nations that wanted to stabilize the Middle East. That would give any intelligent person pause before dropping bombs there. Anyone who expects that Trump can declare the war over, and expect Iran to thank him and promise to behave is delusional.

It’s important that we’re clear about this. There were two critical but distinct issues prior to this war. One was that Iran was a bad actor that no one was comfortable with, and that it seemed inevitable that we would have to confront it one day, especially if all of our allies’ Intelligence believed the threat of a nuclear weapon was imminent. Even our dysfunctional Congress could reach such a consensus, but that’s the easy part.

Modeling and war-gaming every possible strategy as our military did is only a starting point. Before we can employ what we learned, our experience tells us two other things must occur before we consider war. First, we have to ensure the integrity of our Intelligence. No one wants to engage in war based on misinformation, whether its simply in error or a deliberate, politically motivated lie, yet that’s exactly what the United States has done three times in the last sixty years, at enormous cost to all of us.

We apparently haven’t learned from the fictitious attack in the Gulf of Tonkin or the alleged weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein never had. We won’t know until people feel safe telling the truth, but many believe the nuclear threat Trump claimed was imminent wasn’t. Even with competent, responsible people like Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, and Dick Cheney making policy decisions, we were still drawn into wars that resulted in more than a quarter of a million Americans killed or injured over more than thirty years.

Compared to who Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Bush, and Nixon chose, Trump put Pete Hegseth in charge of military planning. His confirmation as Secretary of Defense first had to get past allegations of sexual misconduct, financial mismanagement, and excessive drinking, and we learned a lot about Hegseth when he became a cheerleader for changing the Department of Defense’s name to the Department of War. He’s no Dick Cheney.

I’ve never been to War College, but I imagine that the first principle they teach is never start a war you’re not willing or capable of finishing. But teaching our military leaders only works if they have the unbiased capacity to apply what they learned in the real world, and some arrogant bureaucrat doesn’t usurp their roles and undo it all. With Hegseth in charge of war policy, presiding over Joint Chiefs of Staff who are aware that if they disagree with Trump they’ll be fired, and by not permitting people with real expertise to comment freely, we’ve become involved in a war that violated the first principle. We opened a box we don’t know how to close with no clue what to do afterward.

This was the danger many Americans feared with a narcissistic sociopath as president. We’ve been sounding the alarm since Trump rode down the golden escalator, and now the wolf is at our door. A wolf cannot be tamed with offers food and loving care the way your yellow lab can, and Iran’s leaders cannot be trusted to behave like world leaders who care about peace and progress. If it were just Trump and his sycophants hung out to dry, there would be justice in their predicament. Watching these incompetent clowns crash and burn might be amusing if they weren’t capable of taking modern civilization down with them.

Vice President J.D. Vance was opposed to this war before he dutifully fell in line behind the administration. Now that they see Vance was right, I wonder how many Trump supporters understand that Trump is a terribly dangerous man capable of destroying everything, and realize our nation’s future may depend on removing the cancer he represents before it kills us. Don’t be surprised if we hear serious talk about the 25th Amendment as the midterm elections near or if the MAGA Republicans in the House who haven’t already thrown in the towel decide that a third impeachment is the charm to protect their seats.

Any discussion of removing Trump from office must include the Epstein files, and Trump can exert great influence over them when he replaces Pam Bondi as Attorney General. Trump knows what he’s guilty of, and he knows that when his Christian base realizes he was fully aware of the things his friend Jeffrey Epstein did and never reported them, they’ll abandon him, even if the hushed-up accusation that Trump sexually assaulted a thirteen-year-old girl proves baseless. I wouldn’t want to be the new Attorney  General.

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Trump Finally Explains His War to Americans

Posted on April 2, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 2, 2026

Forty days after starting a war with Iran, Donald Trump finally got around to addressing the people who elected him on a platform that included no more endless wars, although the fallout from this one will be felt for years. Trump ordered our matchless military to attack Iran without consulting either Congress or our allies. Considering that the number of targets attacked, (obliterated according to Trump,) is approaching 15,000, this war was never going to be a quick foray like kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

This war is about Trump’s boundless ego and his belief that he understands war and diplomacy better than anyone else. Remember how many times he referred to his generals as stupid? Surrounded by yes-people and sycophants, his administration has run completely out of control because no one tells the truth to a president who punishes people who tell him what he doesn’t want to hear. Led by the nose by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who would ruthlessly destroy every Arab neighbor if he could, Trump allowed himself to be convinced that he really is the all-powerful dictator of policy for the western world.

The war with Iran is as much a result of Trump’s domestic reign of terror as anything else. Look at who is setting American policy goals: Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, Pete Hegseth, Scott Bessent, and J. D. Vance, all of whom march in lockstep with Donald Trump’s quest to create a Fascist oligarchy to replace our constitutional republic. Trump always imagined he was someone who could set the world on fire; now he’s doing it.

Reality check: we’re not safer than we were when Trump started this war, declaring that Iran was an imminent nuclear threat to the United States, a claim that has been debunked by both military and national security experts willing to speak out and risk their careers. Political analyst Van Jones said it perfectly after Trump’s speech, last night. He noted that Trump’s contradictory ramblings since the war began seemed to have focused on three objectives: getting rid of the regime that murdered thousands of its own people and is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, preventing Iran from ever having a nuclear weapon, and assuring free passage of international shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

In addressing those concerns, Lindsey Graham called Trump’s speech a compellng explanation for the need for the war, and Ted Cruz said it made him feel safer. Mark Warner stated the obvious, that the speech had not provided evidence that Trump gave any thought to what happens after the bombing stops. Jones called last night’s speech a disaster. He said all Trump accomplished was replacing an old, murderous Ayatollah with a younger, worse one, and the revolutionary guard, which rules Iran with an iron fist is still in control. With respect to Trump’s claim that since we know where Iran’s refined uranium is buried, deep underground at Istafan, there’s no need to remove it because we can watch with spy satellites and hit them hard if they make a move to retrieve it, Jones said that is exactly what we were doing before the war. The war has left Iran’s stash of enriched uranium intact, which was what Trump claimed at the outset, was what convinced him to attack.

About opening the Strait of Hormuz, did Trump start this war ignorant of the near certainty that Iran would retaliate by attacking the small gulf states considered U. S. allies and threatening shipping in the Persian Gulf? Or was he fully aware of the threat, knowing that our European allies would suffer most from energy shortages, not to mention friendly countries like Japan and the Philippines who reported they will run out of oil in less than a month if the Strait isn’t reopened?

After putting Europe in that position, Trump tried to goad them into sending ships to reopen the Strait, and when they refused to get involved in his war, he abused all of our allies in worldwide media. Yesterday, he threatened to use Europe’s lack of support for a war about which they were never consulted as an excuse to quit NATO, the alliance that has kept the world safe for eighty years.

Trump cannot control when this war ends. He can only control when our military stops bombing Iran. But the fanatical Shia clerics who control Iran have long memories. The war will end only when they’ve exacted revenge at times and places of their choosing, and that does not address the always present risk of the war expanding into a nuclear conflict. Donald Trump has not made anyone safer by following Benjamin Netanyahu into battle without an exit plan. If he tries to extract himself from the mess he created, he will leave us with a legacy of terrorism and uncertainty that will never stop.

When you poke a beast like Iran in the eye, you’d better make sure it’s dead before you walk away, especially when all the friends you’ve alienated stop watching your back. This war has shown, as much as anything, that most world leaders detest Trump. They fear him, not as an adversary, but as a rabid animal running wild.

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Overgeneralization

Posted on March 22, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 22, 2026

Donald Trump’s greatest weakness and vulnerability may be the way he oversimplifies things. We all do it at times, but Trump seems to stop there. He doesn’t have the attention span to get into the weeds and details. The fact that he constantly contradicts himself makes it appear that either he never actually considers details until they come out of his mouth or he does it deliberately because he thinks it makes him unpredictable. Either way, in his desperation to look strong and maintain his power, there’s little or no substance behind his bluster, insults, and threats.

Trump loves to put on a big show. He urgently needs to project a greater-than-life image of himself. He never suggests reforms or moderate changes. Everything he does has to make a big splash to satisfy his ego, like knocking down the East Wing of the White House or shuttering Kennedy Center to avoid the embarrassment of people simply not buying tickets to protest Trump’s takeover.

Consider Project 2025, which history will view either as a bold attempt to completely remake America into a Fascist oligarchy or a classic case of far-right overreach that failed just as previous attempts have. Think big. Create a massive federal secret police force that follows its own rules and ignores the Constitution. Remove millions of alleged murderous and rapacious illegal immigrants from our nation. Pursue the most extreme possible gerrymandering to rig the midterm elections. Throw around America’s military might at the whims of a totally deranged narcissist. How’s all that working out, Donald?

Allowing an unfettered ICE to run wild creating havoc in America’s cities removed more than a half-million undocumented immigrants from our country in 2025. But at what cost? Aside from the injuries and deaths of innocent American citizens at ICE’s hands, the policy horrified most Americans and left Trump’s approval rating severely underwater.

His attempts to steal Congressional seats in red states while claiming similar actions by blue states were illegal collapsed in the courts, leaving the Democrats with what pollsters predict will be at least a two-seat gain in the House. Worse, for MAGA Republicans, their over-generalized analysis was based on the assumption that Trump would retain the support he received from Hispanic voters in 2024. Recent polling and special elections in Texas, for example, show that support badly eroded, with the likely outcome that Texas’ gerrymandering will have far less impact than Trump hoped.

Trump’s war of choice with Iran shows a similar lack of detailed planning with the likelihood of unpleasant outcomes increasing daily. Trump’s expectation that our military might would so intimidate Iran’s leaders that they would come crawling back to the negotiating table were nothing more than a fever dream. People who truly understood the issues in the Middle East knew the war would not go as Trump hoped. They understood that no matter how many (non-nuclear) bombs we dropped on Iran, it would retain the ability to throw the entire world economy into chaos, and the near-suicidal dedication of the Ayatollahs’ hatred for the west means there would be no surrender any time soon. Trump’s need to take full credit for everything combined with his compulsion to constantly surprise everyone alienated us even further from the alliances which have kept us safe since World War 2.

So here we are, seven months out from the midterm elections involved in a catastrophically costly military venture that is slowly spinning out of control and having exactly the reverse effect Trump expected it would on world opinion. Far from creating worldwide awe over American military power and sophistication, (the world was already aware of it,) the war has diminished us in the eyes of our allies while enriching Russia which was struggling to pay for its war in Ukraine.

In a desperate attempt to save his Congressional majority in November, Trump and his friends at the Heritage Society trotted out the Save America Act, which will require every voter to produce both a photo ID and proof of citizenship. That sounds almost reasonable until you drill down into the realities. In order to pass it, the Republicans will have to kill the filibuster, but John Thune and the other senior Republican Senators won’t do that. They understand that what goes around comes around, and even if they passed the bill and Trump signed it, it’s highly likely that the Supreme Court would find that it violates Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution.

But suppose MAGA somehow overcomes those obstacles and passes the Save America Act. Who will really benefit from it? Proof of citizenship requires either a birth certificate or passport. Do you have ready access to either? Do your friends and family members? And more to the point, are people in red states more likely to have either than people in blue states? Draw your own conclusions, but I’m convinced that this is another example of overgeneralizing without understanding the details. I hate the idea of the Save America Act – it’s nothing if not unAmerican – but if it passes, I’m confident it will hurt MAGA voters far more than Democrats.

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It’s Time to Take Our Country Back

Posted on March 16, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 16, 2026

I’m tempted to write that our president communicates as incoherently as my five-year-old grandson. But at dinner a few nights ago I spent an hour listening to him, and while I was dismayed by some of the things he said, I can’t complain about his coherence – unlike Donald Trump who sounds like he’s desperately treading water in a storm. Ever since it became clear that the White House’s planning for Trump’s war of choice against Iran was either nonexistent or incompetent, he seems unable to complete a sentence without contradicting himself and addressing every perceived injustice he’s experienced since he entered politics.

If you ever doubted that Trump lies instinctively whenever it suits him, the evidence is before you. If he contradicts himself every time he opens his mouth at least half of what he says has to be untrue. A more accurate way of putting it is that when Trump speaks, truth is irrelevant. The only thing motivating the things he says is another opportunity to salve his own ego or increase his wealth. It’s always a depressing thing to witness, but now it’s dangerous. Trump’s mouth poses an existential threat to all of us.

His antics, this week, demanding that other nations assist in escorting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, while simultaneously repeating that we have completely decimated Iran’s military and the war is over – oh wait, we still have three or four weeks of bombing ahead of us – result in the chaos we typically expect from him. But this is not a typical situation. Trump had a shiny new toy that no one else on Earth had, and he treats fighting a war like playing Call to Action. He made it worse by posting a picture of himself in his military school uniform with his “proud parents,” the same ones who sent him there to keep him from winding up in prison. Any similarity between our military personnel and Donald Trump exists only in Trump’s twisted mind.

The bombs in a video game aren’t real. Neither are the deaths and the destruction of the infrastructure that 90 million Iranians depend on for survival. In a video game, Trump can act out his need to control everything and everyone. In real life, it’s not that simple. Disparaging NATO for ten years and then characterizing their reluctance to be drawn into an ill-planned war that looks more and more, every day, like it will end in disaster as disloyalty goes way beyond Trump’s usual approach to trying to control things. This time, he has created a situation that grows more dangerous every day. This time, thousands of lives in countries all over the region, many of them civilians are being lost.

Our allies don’t want that blood on their hands, especially when it could be their own people bleeding from Iran’s retaliation to something they had nothing to do with. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz made it clear, when he said Trump’s war is not NATO’s war. It could have been if Trump had consulted them before his buddy Netanyahu played him into joining Israel’s unlitateral war. Trump might also have retained a shred of credibility had he quietly obtained approval for his war from Congress. But Trump won’t do those things because he needs to be the only one in charge with everyone else bowing to him and kissing his ring.

Now, as most of us have predicted, Trump looks to most of the world like a pariah. He has spent ten years injudiciously lashing out at everyone who didn’t worship him. It’s only common sense that when you cozy up to your enemies while disparaging your friends, when you talk about other world leaders in the insulting terms he continually uses, when you call your allies stupid and incompetent and accuse them of ripping you off, they may not rush to your defense when you’re hoisted by your own petard. If the potential for disrupting the entire world’s economy weren’t so real, if the possibility of nuclear powers fighting over the spoils in Iran when we pull out after leaving it defenseless didn’t move the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight, we might treat this as business as usual.

But it’s not usual in any sense. Trump is simultaneously risking a regional or world war, attempting to muzzle the Congress and suppress the opposition’s voting rights, and trying to silence any media voice he considers disloyal. He can’t overtly defy the First Amendment, but he had a better idea. Get his billionaire friends to buy up all the media outlets and control what they tell the public. He’s already humbled CBS/Paramount, and while his friends the Ellisons promise they will not influence editorial content on CNN. I wouldn’t bet on that.

Check out a valid history of how Adolf Hitler destroyed the Weimar Republic in 1933. Donald Trump is attempting exactly the same thing in 2026 America. Trump is trying get unarmed Iranian citizens to revolt against a vicious Revolutionary Guard force that has already murdered tens of thousands of protestors. I would like to see millions of unarmed Americans stand up and assert that we won’t put up with this anymore.

We’d better start taking our country back now if we expect have one in ten years.

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The Aftermath of Trump’s War Against Iran

Posted on March 10, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 10, 2026

In 1960, comedian Bob Newhart recorded his new comedy routines in an album called The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, that quickly shot to the top of the charts. He’d invented a brilliant gimmick. Each routine was one side of a telephone conversation, a marketer talking to someone trying to sell something to the public. (My favorite was Abner Doubleday trying to market baseball.) If you never heard them, they’re all on YouTube.

Newhart’s genius was describing things we took for granted in a perfectly literal way that made them sound absurd. Donald Trump’s war against Iran would have been a perfect subject. As Newhart would have said, “If Donald Trump called a marketer to sell his war on Iran, the conversation might go something like this.”

Hello, Donald is it? You want to Trump things? Oh, I see, that’s your name. Well, you may be selling the wrong thing. Why don’t you try selling special Bridge or Pinochle cards? The players would have to say your name every few seconds.

What’s that? You want to sell them a war? I hope your idea is original – we’ve tried that before. Remember The Mouse that Roared  and Wag the Dog? Oh, you meant a real war. With bombs and missiles and lots of dead and maimed people? Tell me about it.

Who do you want to fight with? Iran? Wow, that’s a pretty tall order. Don’t they have thousands of missiles and drones? What if they shoot your missiles and drones down? Oh, I see, you’re going to destroy all of Iran’s missiles and drones first so they can’t fight back. That doesn’t sound very fair.

Because if you don’t strike first they’ll attack us? And they’re building nuclear weapons? They’ll have as many as eleven of them within two weeks if we don’t attack now? How do you know? Your intelligence people said they’re ten years away from being able to do that. Didn’t you say last June that we had obliterated them? Well, which is it. You’ll never be able to sell this if you keep changing your mind. No, Donald, I don’t see how making a deal will help.

What’s that? You’ll win the public over by not telling them about it until the bombs are falling because you think that once we’re at war, everyone will back you and let you do anything you want to? How long will the war last? Until you say it’s over? You really think people will buy that when Americans start coming home in body bags? And what about oil? Oh, your intelligence folks are telling you Iran would never attack the Gulf oil states or shoot at oil tankers? Wouldn’t that create serious disruption in the world economy and really piss off China? Really? They wouldn’t dare?

Okay, so your plan is to blitz them and wipe out their ability to fight back and then destroy their industrial capacity so they can’t rebuild? All this so you can brag that you got Iran to unconditionally surrender and let you pick their new leaders? Okay, let’s say you accomplish all that. Won’t our forces be left vulnerable everywhere with supplies and munitions depleted? What happens next? Donald, did you hear me? I asked you what you expect to happen after you destroy Iran’s ability to defend itself and build more weapons after you kill countless thousands, many of whom are innocent civilians? Are you still there Donald? Are you alright? You sound like you’re choking.

Honestly, Donald, who sold you this pile of crap? Who the hell is Hegseth? You mean that clown from Fox News? How the hell did he ever get to be in charge? He really kisses it every day? That’s a pretty stupid way to select a Cabinet, Donald. Don’t you understand that if you break a country like Iran, assuming they don’t break you first, you’ll own them? You’ll have bought into years, perhaps decades of nation-building that will almost certainly fail and wreck your economy. You’ll wind up with a far more dangerous situation than you were in when you started bombing them.

With all their natural resources, a defenseless Iran would create a power vacuum that its predatory neighbors will rush to fill. Imagine Russia, China, the Sunni Arab nations led by Saudi Arabia and a completely unfettered Israel bent on revenge all coming together to fight over what’s left after the bombing.

You think that won’t happen? You don’t even have a plan. Are you really as ignorant as you sound? Sorry, Donald, I wouldn’t touch your war with a ten-thousand-mile pole, and neither will anyone else who knows anything about warfare. Continue down this path and you’ll cause a civil war that could destroy what’s left of law and order in Iran, leave ninety million people destitute and hungry, and put the entire world at risk.

Listen to me, Donald. Attacking Iran without support from either Congress or our allies, is not only stupid, it’s illegal and unconstitutional. What? You’ve already ordered the bombing to start?

Let’s continue this tomorrow from my bunker.

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The Real Issues Raised by Trump’s Attack on Iran

Posted on March 6, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 6, 2026

It’s essential that we maintain our focus on why a striking majority of Americans are opposed to our war against Iran. There are two issues that are completely distinct from each other, and Trump, like other presidents before him, would love to blur the line between them. Let’s be clear. There are few if any Americans who are mourning the loss of the Supreme leader and nearly fifty of his senior leaders.

It was inevitable that Israel and the United States, and therefore the world would have had to confront Iran’s murderous regime one day, and there’s logic to the argument that since the conflict was inevitable, we should embrace it at a time of our choosing. Hardly anyone disagrees that Iran in February, 2026 was weaker than it’s been in decades, while there was considerable uncertainty about how long it might take them to be a serious threat with nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles.

None of the above is in dispute regardless of politics and ideology. The point of contention, which is part of the much larger concern about the future of America, is whether our president can be permitted to recklessly ignore the Constitution. That document reserves the authority to declare war exclusively to Congress, which seems to ignore the reality that as Commander on Chief of the armed forces, the president can create a state of war simply by ordering an attack on another country. Donald Trump has repeatedly said that as president he believes he has the right to do anything he wants to. His imperial ambitions combined with his narcissistic mental illness make Trump himself the greatest existential threat to our future.

Yet, as has been the case since Trump’s first term, the MAGA-dominated Republicans in Congress have once again failed to do their jobs. Typical of this abject abrogation of their responsibilities was Senator Susan Collins (R, ME.) For years, Collins has talked a good game about being a centrist who believes in reining in extreme policies at both ends of the political spectrum. But her statement, yesterday, that she would vote against a war powers resolution limiting Trump’s ability to wage an unfettered, unconstitutional war, once again demonstrated that when really put to the test, self-interest about a likely close re-election race made all her words meaningless. Shame on her and her disingenuous colleagues!

Collins and the others who folded gave Trump exactly what he hoped for. Conventional wisdom says that when we’re involved in a major military conflict, we can never take actions that weaken the president’s options. A better description in this case is conventional stupidity. All during 2025, a majority of Americans feared that Trump would go to war with Iran for political reasons, whether to distract from his domestic failures, to give him potential options for controlling the midterm elections, or simply to gratify his psychological need to be the toughest badass in the world. He’s done exactly that, for all of the above reasons.

By failing to obtain Congressional approval for the attack on Iran and by ignoring entreaties by our allies to use restraint, Trump changed what might have been viewed as a righteous war by virtually all Americans into an issue that could tear the country apart from within. It’s clear that the administration did not expect Iran to attack the Gulf nations that host American interests and never gave any thought to the safety and likely need to evacuate nearly a million Americans who were in the region when Trump ordered the attack. And as the June attacks on Iran depleted our stock of defensive options and laser-guided munitions, many experts warn that an extended campaign will leave America vulnerable all over the world.

Never to be deterred, however, Trump is now threatening Ecuador and Cuba while we have no idea how long the war with Iran will last. Energy prices are soaring, our labor market has stagnated, and investment markets are extremely volatile. As Trump suggested we might have to rely on a ground troops to finish the job in Iran, Americans are reminded of the 7,000 American casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. All this has voters opposed to Trump’s war in Iran by surprisingly large majorities, and that makes it even more likely that the midterm elections will be disastrous for MAGA and Trump.

Trump never admits weakness and never backs down. As the midterm elections near, he will become even more desperate than his erratic behavior suggests he already is. All this points to eight months of increasing chaos as Trump tries to impact, if not delay or cancel the election. As we’ve noted before, the Supreme Court may be our republic’s last line of defense, since Congress has defaulted once again.

And then, there are the Epstein files, and the memos released by DOJ today which detail an accusation of sexual assault against Trump by a woman who claims she was thirteen at the time. 2026 is going to be the most turbulent year we’ve seen since nine-eleven.

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The Attack on Iran in the Perspective of History

Posted on March 1, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 1, 2026

In 1940 and 1941, World War 2 was already underway with a divided America attempting to avoid direct involvement. The Germany-Italy Axis was intent on subjugating all of Europe under Fascist regimes like their own, and Japan had been ravaging China and French Indochina (Vietnam) for a decade. The Roosevelt administration was split on how to proceed, as was the Japanese government. Neither side wanted to be at war with the other, and military leaders in Japan believed they could not win a long-term conflict with the United States.

In an eerily familiar scenario, Roosevelt reacted to Japan’s aggression by imposing sanctions that included suspending oil shipments which were essential to Japan’s success in China. Unlike Germany and Italy, Japan was a resource-poor nation that depended on vital imports. Japanese Prime Minister Konoye elected a two-fold approach to dealing with the United States: attempt to negotiate an end to sanctions in exchange for limiting Japan’s aggression in Asia, while secretly engaging in Naval war games in preparation for a sneak attack on Hawaii.

Negotiations stalemated, leaving the Japanese resigned to war, but knowing they could only endure if they eliminated the American Navy. Thus, with a negotiating team in Washington pretending to seek a solution, Japan launched the attack on Pearl Harbor. President Roosevelt’s Day of Infamy speech did more than ask Congress to declare war on Japan. It claimed that the Japanese had approached him duplicitously when they claimed to want to avert war, while his administration had sincerely wanted peace.

Of course, the reality was a lot more complicated, but overall it appears that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and American President Trump approached their attack on Iran in much the same manner as the Japanese approached Pearl Harbor. So much for the moral high ground and Trump’s questionable claims that Iran was only months away from being able to attack us with missiles possibly tipped with nuclear warheads after declaring in June that we had obliterated them.

Neither Netanyahu nor Trump would ever have been satisfied with a newly negotiated nuclear deal with Iran. They were both intent on regime change from the outset, and as many commentators have noted since the attacks began, lacking a credible threat of impending attack by Iran, and without support from either Congress, the United Nations, or a coalition of allies, Trump and Netanyahu’s decision to go to war was a violation of both international law and the U. S. Constitution.

There is no doubt that the world will be safer place if the oppressive theocratic Iranian government is replaced with one that prefers to coexist with its neighbors and forego religious fanaticism. There is no doubt that the current Iranian regime was evil and responsible for terrorist acts and insecurity all over the Middle East. It’s also extremely likely that at some point, pre-emptive action to neutralize the threat Iran posed was inevitable. There is no debate about any of that, nor is our obligation to defend Israel in question. The critical issues today are how the decision to attack Iran was made and in the absence of any clear path forward after the decapitation of Iran’s leadership, whether the spectacular show of force that produced our early successes will ultimately improve conditions for either the Iranian people or the region.

The American and Israeli militaries have proved themselves to be efficient and effective, seeming to vindicate their claims of being the best in the world. Our political leaders, however, have not. Both Netanyahu and Trump had competing self-serving motives for initiating the attack. One might justify acting preemptively based on the opportunity to take our much of Iran’s leaders in a single strike, but opportunism isn’t either a sound military or diplomatic strategy.

In the hours following the attack, many important questions have been raised that require answers before we’re drawn into a wider conflict we can’t control. Is there reason to believe that the Iranian people are either prepared or able to overthrow their authoritarian government as Trump urges them to? Can that be achieved without American troops in combat in the Middle East again? Will the precedent of initiating and carrying out operations that could lead to open-ended conflict without Congressional support do permanent damage to the constitutionally required separation of powers?

Finally, what of Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi? What effect will impulsive, unlawful military strikes by the United States and Israel have on the credibility of Trump’s pretense of wanting a fair resolution to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Is the attack on Iran an invitation to China to invade Taiwan? Trump fantasizes dividing the world into three spheres of influence with his two principal adversaries. In such a world, three supreme monarchs would be free to do anything they pleased, unaccountable to anyone.

The real threat to our future is Trump’s dream of an expanded Trump-Monroe Doctrine that grants him complete dominion over the Western Hemisphere and oil interests in the Middle East, which differs only in detail from Putin and Xi’s lust to control Europe and Asia without interference from the United States.

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Donald Trump: War President

Posted on February 28, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Znedell, February 28, 2026

Our crack negotiating team of billionaires Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner have been talking to Iranian diplomats for months. Their discussions have been mediated by Badr Albusaidi, the Foreign Minister of Oman. When the Friday, February 27th talks ended, Albusadi told the international press that there had been significant progress.

This morning, after Israel and the United States launched coordinated attacks against Iran, Albusadi posted on social media: “Active and serious negotiations have yet again been undermined…[n]either the interests of the United States nor the cause of global peace are well served by this. And I pray for the innocents who will suffer. I urge the United States not to get sucked in further. This is not your war.”

It’s hard to know what message to take from that. Presumably, Albusadi was a neutral mediator whom both sides found acceptable, so there’s no reason to dismiss his obvious dismay that the attacks were launched as biased. Rather, as a representative of the smaller nations in the region, he was expressing the feelings of the millions of people in countries like Oman. Diplomats from those nations have worked tirelessly for years to help resolve our differences with Iran, only to see their own countries attacked by Iran in retaliation.

It’s no secret that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natenyaho and Trump have been itching for this fight. It’s fair to ask, in hindsight, if the negotiations with Iran were always just a pretext for military action rather than a serious attempt at resolving anything. That’s not to say that Iran isn’t a potentially dangerous adversary that threatens the stability of the Middle East. Iran has been sponsoring terrorist groups throughout the region and threatening both Israel and the United States for forty-seven years, since the Shah was overthrown in 1979 by the radical Muslim regime that now rules Iran with an iron fist.

But that’s old news. There are a lot of opinions on all sides about how we’ve handled the situation over that time. The Iran Nuclear Deal that was negotiated in 2015 by the Obama administration was a typical example. In the fog of chaos that defines war and most diplomacy, there has never been a consensus about whether that deal accomplished anything. Most observers believe it at least slowed down Iran’s development of nuclear weapons, but there were many accusations that Iran was violating the agreement.

Trump muddied the waters by making Iran part of his hate campaign against Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He promised to trash the deal as part of his campaign for re-election. But his tendency to lie and exaggerate, and his total lack of integrity when it comes to balancing his responsibilities as president against the need to show the world how tough he is makes everything he said about Iran suspect. Combine that with the fact that both Trump and Netanyahu face severe opposition at home, and both badly needed a distraction to turn public attention away from their own questionable actions. Netanyahu has been under indictment for fraud for years, and we’re all aware of Trump’s history with courts.

Beyond those questionable motives for attacking Iran at this particular moment, with the Epstein files possibly about to erupt with accusations of sexual assault by Trump against a woman who claims she was thirteen at the time, we must also consider the remarkably strong influence Netanyahu has had on Trump. Netanyahu is a believer in preemptive strikes, which in the case of beleaguered Israel has made sense over the last eight decades. But does it make sense for the strongest military in the world?

The debate over whether and under what circumstances preemptive strikes are justified will probably never be resolved. But the fact that a majority of Americans have predicted and feared that Trump would involve us in a war to distract attention from his failures at home and possibly allow him to influence or cancel the midterm elections cannot be ignored. Trump has been a cheat and a liar for his entire life. Why would we believe him now?

The president who campaigned against Democrats he accused of perpetuating wars, who bragged that he ended eight wars that none of us even knew were happening, and who then demanded that he be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize has proved that he will do anything to stay in power. We’ve all seen that repeatedly. Now, he has demonstrated that he’s willing to start a war that can only be viewed as open-ended and unpredictable. The hubris required to assume that he can control the outcome when dozens of countries are involved is classic Trump. If military action against Iran is truly justified, it should be carried out by a coalition like the one George W. Bush and Colin Powell forged after nine-eleven.

Any other approach makes Trump’s motive suspect, and every American or foreign civilian casualty that results from this is on him. It makes a mockery of Trump’s Board of Peace, which so far appears to be nothing more than a fund-raising scheme for Trump’s empire. Far worse, Trump’s use of the military as his own personal toy opens the door for further aggression by Russia and for China to invade Taiwan. Is that the future you want for your children?

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Defending the 2026 Midterm Elections

Posted on February 27, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 27, 2026,

People who fear Donald Trump’s attempts to undermine our democracy recognized from the start that our greatest vulnerability might be the 2026 midterm elections. This is not hyperbole or speculation. Trump has been very clear that he considers a Republican victory the only evidence of a fair election, which he self-righteously points to as a mandate to ensure that Republicans use any means to maintain their majorities in Congress. That’s the circular reasoning of an extreme narcissist who believes his only obligation is to his own beliefs.

Trump has a number of election-related weapons in his tool bag. The first is his ongoing campaign of lies, distortions, and outright fantasies about election fraud and his oft-debunked contention that Democrats have been rigging elections for decades, and it’s his mission to stop them. The only people who still believe that are either too stupid or lazy to look at the facts, or who, having invested their fortunes or political futures in Trump are too mired in self-interest to do the right thing although they know the truth.

It’s clear from recent polling that the lies no longer influence the vast majority of Americans. Human nature being what it is, once a life-long deceiver is revealed, there’s no going back. Once people see Trump for the self-absorbed sociopath he is, he loses them for good. That won’t stop the lies or the fanatical influence on Trump of the White Nationalist Stephen Miller who continues to have Trump’s ear daily, but that approach doesn’t have the effectiveness it once did.

Thus, Trump turned to gerrymandering, something entirely unsurprising, yet foolish. In doing so, he fell into the trap that often upends zealots and extremists. Openly trying to convert blue seats to red in the most extreme manner is the kind of overreach that offends serious, fair-minded people. It exposes Trump as willing to use any immoral ploy to achieve his aims, and Americans don’t like that. Moreover, the move was not properly thought out and overlooked some obvious flaws.

First, Trump’s influencers assumed that the courts would back their gerrymandering in red states but somehow block similar efforts in blue states. Which idiot came up with that idea? And the result, according to most respected pollsters, is a two-fold loss for Trump. Our largest states are now gerrymandered beyond any reasonable measure, and the result appears to have benefitted Democrats rather than Trump, because the strategy relied, among other things, on Hispanic voters continuing to support him despite ICE’s racial profiling which Trump and his appointees fully support.

The next ploy people feared was Trump creating a crisis so severe it would (1) distract voters from his other misdeeds, like the apparent withholding of accusations against Trump in the Epstein files, and (2) possibly provide him with justification for declaring a national emergency that would give him extraordinary powers that could include postponing or canceling an election. Thus, he has spent months engaging in belligerent saber-rattling with both allies and adversaries.

He hasn’t given up on acquiring Greenland from Denmark, one of our most reliable allies. He is attempting to take over the government of Venezuela, with the implied threat that he can do the same to any nation in our hemisphere that offends him. He is loudly threatening a war with Iran that his generals warn might have open-ended consequences beyond our control and result in many American casualties. Finally, he’s talking about forcing a regime change in Cuba. All this from a president who accused Democrats of involving the United States in endless wars.

Finally, there’s a draft Executive Order going around, written by some of Trump’s most extreme handlers that would declare a national emergency based on China allegedly planning to hack the midterm elections. The Order would be an attempt to wrest control of the election away from the fifty states, to which our Constitution grants sole control of it.

How serious is this? That depends on a number of things. There’s no question that an attempt to undermine our election process has existential implications for our republic. The Supreme Court can stop it in its tracks if it chooses to, and the recent decision ruling Trump’s tariffs unconstitutional suggest they may do that. Conservative Justices John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch are now on record as valuing the Constitution over Trumps political shenanigans. But we can’t put all our eggs in that basket. The midterms are the red line on which Americans of all races, colors, and political persuasions must stand firm.

Every American citizen must be willing to defend fair, open voting this year, which includes the right to vote by mail, and the right to authorize their states to enable early voting, neither of which has ever shown evidence of fraud or cheating. You can write letters demanding action from your elected representatives. You can support peaceful demonstrations. And perhaps most important and effective, you can break through the barriers we’ve erected to interpersonal communication. Engage with people, especially those who don’t want to discuss politics. Make them hear you.

If we bury our heads in the sand, Trump wins.

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Neil Gorsuch Tells Congress and Trump the Court will Defend Separation of Powers

Posted on February 22, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, Frberuary 22, 2026

When Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court on January 31, 2017, he described Judge Gorsuch as having, “a superb intellect, an unparalleled legal education, and a commitment to interpreting the Constitution according to its text.” In other words, he described Gorsuch as a traditional, conservative Republican. His description was accurate, but it was also one of many examples of Trump practicing Orwellian Doublespeak.

As with the nominations of Justices Barrett and Kavanaugh, Trump cared about their education and other credentials only as a cover for his real reason for selecting him. Always transactional, Trump’s criteria were their loyalty and their commitment to strike down Roe v. Wade, guaranteeing Trump’s support from evangelists. But striking down Roe, while it reversed fifty years of precedent wasn’t a challenge to the Constitution, which doesn’t even mention abortion.

Trump throws around words like Conservative as if he actually were one, but he has no ideology at all except greed and an obscene lust for power. He proved that, yesterday, when he attacked Gorsuch for defending the Constitution because he joined five other Justices to rule that Trump’s tariffs were illegal. Gorsuch lived up to Trump’s 2017 words, but Trump had other intentions. He doesn’t want the Court to defend the Constitution, especially the part that assures Separation of Powers. He wants it to demonstrate its loyalty and gratitude by allowing him to do anything he wants to.

Yesterday, Trump described Gorsuch as a FOOL and a LAPDOG. The same Gorsuch whom he praised for being an originalist who would interpret the Constitution literally, he now labeled a RINO, Republican in name only. That, too, was classic Trump, who changed the definition of “Republican” to suit his narcissistic personality. Gorsuch is the same kind of Republican Barry Goldwater was. And like Goldwater, whose integrity assured that Richard Nixon was held accountable for Watergate and the ensuing coverup, he defended our democracy.

Gorsuch also went the extra mile to lecture Trump about bypassing Congress. His message was clear if indirect. He told Trump and his Heritage Society handlers that the Court will not permit them to skirt or undermine the Constitution. The Guardian put it differently. ”After an agonizing year in which the U.S. Supreme Court has stood aside and allowed Trump to run roughshod over the constitutional separation of powers, [it] has finally stirred itself to set boundaries on the president’s increasingly regal pose.”

The Guardian noted that in 2025, the Court issued twenty-four emergency rulings from its “opaque shadow docket…collectively [giving] the benefit of the doubt to Trump…[allowing] Trump, at least in the short term, to trample over powers reserved for Congress.”

Justice Gorsuch did more than join Justices Roberts and Barrett to vote with the three liberal Justices. He issued a concurring opinion of his own which directly rebuked Congress for failing to defend itself against Trump’s power grabs, and subtly told Trump the days of his imperial presidency are over, a moment the great majority of Americans were awaiting. He also attacked Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh for abandoning the “major questions doctrine,” under which any attempt by the executive to wield extradinary power must be preceded by an unambiguous delegation of the authority to do so.

The New York Times described Gorsuch’s concurring opinion as “a paean to Congress that read like a requiem for a bygone era of legislative power.” Gorsuch was explicit about the behavior of the Trump administration. “…[I]t can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design.” The deliberative nature of the legislative process is also the polar opposite of the knee-jerk whims of Donald Trump, who once changed the level of tariffs he imposed on China four times in one day.

America’s power in the world has depended on the stability and dependability of its policies. But that is anathema to Donald Trump who prefers feints and bluffs. Note to Donald: the future of the world is not a poker game. He brags that his unpredictability is his most powerful weapon. That might work when he’s being sued for breach of contract or fraud, but it’s not the way powerful nations conduct diplomacy. Diplomacy, and by implication, respect for other nations’ sovereignty, requires that diplomats understand each other. In 1962, lack of clarity over Nikita Khrushchev’s statements about removing missiles from Cuba almost led to a nuclear confrontation.

Trump’s governing is a reckless, high-risk attempt to change the structure of the American government and rework the world economic order. The hubris of a small group of right-wing extremists is remarkable. To succeed, they had to hijack a major political party, intimidate both the Congress and the Supreme Court, and then bully their way through the rest of the world, threatening other nations with our economic and military power.

They almost got away with it, and we can only hope that the Court’s decision on tariffs and Justice Gorsuch’s remarkable rebuke of both Congress and Trump will be enough to turn the tide for good.

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