Recession-proof your summer reading now with 50% OFF an annual Bulwark+ membership. Ride with us through the mid-terms and beyond.One of these days, we might get an Iran ceasefire that actually involves a cessation of fire. Not yet, though: Iran warned this morning it will respond to last night’s U.S. attacks—which CENTCOM described as “self-defense strikes”—in southern Iran. “The nations and lands of the region,” Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said in a statement, “will no longer serve as shields for American bases.” That peace deal is apparently all but worked out, though! Happy Tuesday. Join Bill and Andrew for Morning Shots Live on Substack and YouTube at 10 a.m. EDT. Trump’s War Ends With a Whimperby William Kristol Whoa. This past weekend, as the outlines of Donald Trump’s Iran deal became clear, not one, not two, but three Republican senators were so appalled that they did something heretofore unimaginable in the era of Trump: They told the truth. On Friday, Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker had warned that President Trump was “being ill advised to pursue a deal that would not be worth the paper it is written on. Further pursuit of an agreement with Iran’s Islamist regime risks a perception of weakness.” On Saturday, Wicker followed up: The rumored deal “would be a disaster. Everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury would be for naught!” Later that day Sen. Ted Cruz joined in voicing his alarm:
Even Trump’s lickspittle extraordinaire, Sen. Lindsay Graham, weighed in:
Needless to say, this brief spasm of Republican truth-telling will likely prove . . . a brief spasm. Since Saturday, Wicker and Cruz seem to have fallen silent. Graham, for his part, has already reversed course. By yesterday he had fully entered fantasy-land in order to be back in Trump’s good graces:
Still, even as the truth-telling subsides, the question Graham posed will linger: “It makes one wonder why the war started to begin with.” And the answer will be hard to evade: The war started because Trump and his administration are foolish and reckless and hubristic, and those in a position to check him—like Sens. Wicker and Cruz and Graham—have utterly failed to do so. |