Texas Mom

Here is another one from I Fucking Love Australia. This one from "Texas Mom," about Kristi Noem no longer running HHS. BTW, I heard that Bibi Netanyahu is urging Australia to come and join the war breaking out in the Middle East. WTF? Are they trying to expand this into World War 3? It kinda feels like it.  Rumors that Iran has destroyed several US air bases in the area are circulating. And we have only lost 6 US soldiers?You know what they say: the first casualty in war is truth, but in our case, we've been living under one barrage of lies after another from Trump and his thugs for quite a long time now.

“Look I did not vote for Trump. Either time. I have been standing in the car pool line for nine years listening to every other mom in this zip code tell me that Donald Trump was going to run this country like a business and I needed to get on board or get out of the way. My sister in law cried into her green bean casserole at Thanksgiving because I would not stop asking her to name a single policy beyond build the wall. My book club uninvited me from two meetings because I kept bringing up the deficit. Karen from church told me I had Trump Derangement Syndrome and I told Karen that having standards is not a syndrome and she has not made eye contact with me since.

And now I am sitting in the pickup line at three fifteen on a Thursday afternoon, AC blasting because this is Texas and March already feels like July, and I am scrolling my phone and every single notification is about the Secretary of Homeland Security getting fired because the news broke a couple hours ago and by now the whole internet has lost its mind. And I am reading that this woman was asked on live television yesterday if she is screwing her coworker and she could not say no. While her husband sat behind her. In a room full of cameras. On C-SPAN. At one o'clock in the afternoon on a weekday like it is a goddamn soap opera except the stakes are national security and the acting is worse.

I have three kids in this school right now. If their principal got caught maybe possibly sleeping with the vice principal and then spent 200 million dollars of school funds on a billboard campaign starring herself, she would not get reassigned to a made up position called Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas. She would be fired. By lunch. The PTA would have that handled before the car pool line and we would make sure she never worked in education again. Brenda would have the email chain going before the woman's desk was cold.

But apparently the federal government operates on different rules. Apparently when you spend taxpayer money on a vanity project, lie about who approved it, call dead American citizens terrorists, get caught flying around on government jets with the man you are definitely not sleeping with, and then refuse to confirm or deny any of it while your husband is sitting six feet behind you, you get a gentle reassignment and a thank you note on Truth Social.

And her replacement found out he got the job at the same time as the press. A sitting United States senator learned he was about to run the third largest department in the federal government because he checked his phone. That is not a vetting process. That is a gender reveal party. Surprise Markwayne it is a catastrophe.

I cannot get my health insurance to cover a routine mammogram without three forms and a blood sacrifice but this woman got a quarter billion dollars to make TV commercials about herself. In English. To tell Spanish speaking immigrants to leave. That is like me taping a note to my front door in Mandarin telling the neighbors to stop letting their dog crap on my lawn. Who was that for, Kristi. Who was the target audience. Was it the undocumented immigrants who do not speak English or was it the Fox News viewers who needed to see you looking tough in a bomber jacket so you could run for president in 2028. We all know the answer. You spent 200 million dollars of our money on a campaign ad for yourself and the only person who did not figure that out was apparently Donald Trump who says he never approved it. Which means either you are a liar or he is a liar and honestly it is probably both.

And the affair. Lord have mercy the affair. I am not even mad about the affair itself because honestly at this point fidelity in Washington DC has the same survival rate as a snowball in August in Houston. What I am mad about is the absolute stone cold disrespect of sitting there under oath with your husband in the room, the man who sells crop insurance in South Dakota while you are gallivanting around on government jets with a guy who got arrested for groping a woman at a charity dinner, and you cannot say the word no. One syllable. Two letters. My eight year old can deny eating cookies with chocolate smeared from his eyebrows to his chin more convincingly than a cabinet secretary under oath. She sat there and called it tabloid garbage and said the liberal left attacks conservative women. Ma'am nobody attacked you. Somebody asked you a yes or no question. Those are the two options. There is not a secret third option where you give a speech about sexism and hope everyone forgets what you were asked. Pick one. Say the word. Unless you cannot because it would be perjury, which is a whole other level of stupid that I do not have the energy for today.

Her husband was right there. Right behind her. The man got up early, put on a suit, flew to Washington DC to support his wife at her congressional hearing, sat in that chair, and watched a room full of people ask her if she is sleeping with another man. And she would not say no. That man sat there like a crash test dummy taking a hit he did not sign up for on national television. And then reportedly he got up and left to catch a flight right before the questions got really personal, which is either incredible timing or the most dignified exit in the history of men finding out things they did not want to know.

And Trump. Donald Trump, the man with the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, satellite surveillance, wiretapping capabilities that would make Cold War spies weep with envy, he figured out the affair because he saw them share a soda can. A soda can. The leader of the free world cracked the case because two grown adults put their mouths on the same Coca Cola and his germophobe brain short circuited. That is not intelligence gathering. That is what Brenda three doors down does at the block party. Oh I saw Steve and Linda share a drink, something is definitely going on there. The President of the United States has the same investigative methodology as a bored suburban housewife with a ring doorbell camera and too much time on her hands.

And apparently he tells this story all the time. Frequently was the word they used. He frequently shares the moment he figured it out. He is proud of it. He solved the case of the shared Coca Cola and he tells people at dinner parties like it is his Sherlock Holmes moment. Meanwhile actual national security threats are presumably walking through the front door while the man who is supposed to be protecting the country is doing forensic analysis on who drank from whose can.

And can we talk about this boyfriend for a second. Corey Lewandowski. This is the man she could not deny sleeping with. This is who was worth the career and the marriage and the public humiliation. A man who got fired from Trump's first campaign for grabbing a female reporter. A man who was charged with criminal sexual harassment after a Republican donor accused him of groping her and stalking her at a charity event and he signed a plea deal. A man who reportedly was out there picking clothes for Noem designed to show off her chest. A man who fired a pilot because his girlfriend's blanket got left on the wrong plane. Her blanket. He fired a pilot over a blanket. That is not a professional relationship. That is a man who thinks he owns you and if you cannot see the red flags at that point it is because you are wrapped in one.

This is the cabinet of the United States of America. This is who is running the country. A woman who shot her own dog and wrote about it in a book like it was a leadership seminar got put in charge of 260,000 federal employees and a department responsible for border security, cybersecurity, disaster relief, the Secret Service, and the entire Coast Guard. And she spent her time making infomercials about herself, letting her boyfriend sign off on government contracts, bottlenecking FEMA disaster relief because she needed to personally approve every expense over a hundred grand like she was managing the petty cash drawer at a frozen yogurt shop, and calling two dead American citizens terrorists before anyone had done an investigation.

Two people are dead. Shot by federal agents during an immigration operation in Minneapolis. And this woman went on television and called them domestic terrorists before anyone had bothered to figure out what actually happened. One of them was 37 years old. Where I come from that is called bearing false witness and it is literally in the Ten Commandments that Karen from church claims to live by but apparently the commandments are flexible when the person breaking them has an R next to their name.

And she is not even the worst one. That is what sends me right over the edge while I am sitting in this pickup line watching Jennifer walk back to her Tahoe with the Trump bumper sticker. She is not even close to the most embarrassing cabinet pick. She is just the first one to get fired this term. There is a whole roster of these people lined up like a clown car at the circus and we are only thirteen months in. The first term he burned through cabinet members faster than my kids go through school shoes. Four Chiefs of Staff. Four. Rex Tillerson fired on the toilet via Twitter while he was on a diplomatic trip to Africa. Jeff Sessions publicly humiliated for two years straight like a dog that peed on the carpet except the dog was the first senator to endorse him and the carpet was American democracy. John Kelly a four star general who figured out that managing Donald Trump was less like running the military and more like trying to put a diaper on a cat in a bathtub. Scott Pruitt buying forty thousand dollar soundproof phone booths and sending his security detail to get his dry cleaning and track down a used mattress from the Trump International Hotel. A used mattress. From a hotel. There is not enough Lysol in Texas to make that okay. Ryan Zinke turning the Interior Department into his personal travel agency. Tom Price chartering private jets to go to lunch like he was too important for first class.

And what did we all think was going to happen the second time around. That he learned something. That the man who has been firing people on television for entertainment since 2004 was suddenly going to develop emotional intelligence and a stable management style in his late seventies. He went through more staff in four years than I have been through pediatricians and I switched three times because Dr. Mitchell kept telling me my kid's ear infection would clear up on its own.

Fifty three Republicans have already announced they are not running again in 2026. Fifty three. Thirty two of them are Republicans. They can see the tsunami coming. They can see the numbers. They are not retiring. They are evacuating. That is not an election on the horizon. That is a controlled demolition and the smart ones are getting the hell out of the building before the charges go off.

And the department she was running has been shut down for three weeks. A hundred thousand employees sent home. The people responsible for cybersecurity. Disaster relief. FEMA. Sent home. In March. In America. Where hurricane season starts in June and the power grid in my state cannot survive a stiff breeze without collapsing. But sure. Everything is fine. Strong leadership. Best people. Art of the deal.

The bell just rang and my kids are coming out and my 12 year old daughter is going to get in this car and tell me about her day and I’m going to smile and say that sounds great honey because I am not going to tell her that the woman who was supposed to be keeping this country safe got fired for being a corrupt incompetent liar who could not keep her story straight or her personal life out of the headlines. I am not going to tell her that the government in charge of protecting her is shut down because the adults in the room cannot agree on how to fund it. I am not going to tell her that 53 members of Congress have already given up on the next election because they know the ship is sinking.

I am going to drive home and make dinner and help with homework and just pretend everything is normal because that is what moms do. We hold it together while everything falls apart.

But I swear to God if Jennifer says another word to me about how “he tells it like it is” I am going to lose it in the H-E-B parking lot and Brenda is going to have to pull me off a Tahoe.”

~Texas Mom (via I Fucking Love Australia)

Love Australia

With AI being what it is these days...WTF IS IT?!...you don't know any longer who or what is writing what. It seems there is suddenly a lot of pretty long pieces on Facebook these days. Are they written by AI? Hard to say. Some of them are not signed by any person. But if something that you read "seems" accurate and true, is it wrong to spread that to others? If a piece is accurate (as far as you know), I see no problem in replicating it. We may have reached a point where computers are writing most of what we read. Not sure if that is a good or bad thing.

I found this one under the heading "I Fucking Love Australia."

Read that again. Read it slowly.

The President of the United States just bombed a sovereign nation, killed their head of state, killed 40 of their senior officials, lit the entire Middle East on fire, and then got on Truth Social.. His personal fucking crayon drawing wall to tell Iran that if they dare to retaliate against the country that just bombed them, he will hit them with a "force that has never been seen before."

"Thank you for your attention to this matter."

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

This man is wearing a nappy and controlling nuclear weapons. Let that sink in for a moment.

Now I want to stop on that phrase. "A force that has never been seen before." Never been seen before. You sure about that, big fella? Because I'm pretty confident the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have a very different fucking story to tell about American force that nobody had ever seen before. Their grandchildren are still telling that story. It's etched into the fucking ground where their city used to be. So maybe wind your fat neck in with the "never been seen before" rhetoric, you bloodthirsty, mango-coloured, dementia-riddled maniac.

Let's be crystal clear about what just happened here, because the media is going to dress this up in the usual diplomatic language and I refuse to do that.

The United States illegally launched a preemptive military strike on Iran. No declaration of war. No UN mandate. No international legal framework of any kind. Just bombs. Just death. Just 40 bodies and a dead Supreme Leader and hundreds of civilians caught in the middle. That is not a military operation. That is state-sponsored murder conducted by a man who spent his first term dodging criminal charges and his second term apparently deciding that starting a world war was a good way to stay out of prison.

And now, having done all of that, having committed what any honest legal scholar would call a war crime, he's on Truth Social warning the people he just bombed that they are not allowed to respond.

You blew up their country. You killed their leader. And you're telling them to sit quietly and take it.

Or what? Or you'll nuke them? Is that what "never been seen before" means? Are you actually threatening to drop nuclear weapons on Iranian civilians? Are you going to turn Tehran into another Hiroshima because Jared fucking Kushner whispered in your ear that it would be good for real estate values in the region?

Because let's talk about Jared. Let's talk about the plastic-faced, silk-shirt-wearing, failed property developer who has been Benjamin Netanyahu's personal little errand boy for the better part of a decade. This is the man who brokered the Abraham Accords and then stuck his hand out for two billion dollars from the Saudis the moment he left office. This is the man whose Middle East "peace plan" was so laughably one-sided that every Arab nation on earth rejected it on sight. This is the man who has been whispering in Trump's ear about Iran for years, nudging, suggesting, planting seeds, because Netanyahu has wanted this moment for twenty years and Jared Kushner was his inside man in the White House.

Trump just handed Netanyahu the war he always wanted. And now Trump is standing at a podium in a USA cap, doing his tough guy voice, threatening a nation of 90 million people with annihilation because the guy whose cock his son-in-law has been enthusiastically slobbering on for the last decade finally got what he wanted.

And here's the thing that should terrify every single person on this planet right now.

Trump is not going to win this. He cannot win this. He has stumbled drunk and nappy-clad into a conflict that has no clean exit, no achievable objective, and no endgame that doesn't involve either a humiliating withdrawal or a catastrophic escalation. Iran is not Iraq. Iran is not Afghanistan. Iran has a population of 90 million people, a hardened military that has been preparing for this exact scenario for 40 years, allies in Russia and China who are watching very carefully, and absolutely nothing left to lose now that their Supreme Leader is dead and their nation has been bombed in broad daylight.

You cannot threaten your way out of a war you chose to start. You cannot post on Truth Social and expect a nation that has just been attacked to read your all-caps tantrum and decide to stand down. That is not how war works. That is not how any of this works.

But this doddering, diaper-wearing, walking liability doesn't know that. He's never fought in a war. He got five draft deferments. He has never experienced a single physical consequence in his entire soft, pampered, fraudulent life. He thinks strength is a Truth Social post. He thinks dominance is a threat. He thinks the whole world operates like one of his shitty real estate negotiations where you just bluster loud enough and the other guy folds.

Iran is not folding.

And the rest of us — the Australians sitting here watching our fuel prices explode, watching our stranded citizens try to get out of a Middle East that's on fire, watching the global economy start to shake because 20 percent of the world's oil supply just got a cork shoved in it — we're the ones who are going to pay for this man's stupidity.

Not him. Never him.

Us.

PS: No offence to normal people suffering from incontinence issues.

bombing Iran

From what I can see, it appears that the US and Israel want to level Iran to the ground. Repeated bombing raids? Pictures that look like they were taken in Gaza, but instead from downtown Tehran. Obviously, the Iranian authorities and their evil mullahs have been plotting and assisting terrorism all over the region, but this is not the work of the Iranian people, who crave freedom after decades of abuse. Indiscriminate bombing is the work of evil people. 

An Iranian man left this comment on a YouTube channel recently, and it breaks my heart.

"As an Iranian, I can tell you the situation is no longer just political—it's existential. We are trapped between two collapsing structures: one internal, one external. On one hand, we face a deeply dysfunctional government, led by the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Republic’s unelected institutions. 

Decades of economic mismanagement, suppression of dissent, and brutal ideological control have alienated multiple generations. No one believes in reform anymore—because every attempt has either been co-opted or crushed. But here's the paradox: We are also terrified of regime collapse—because we've watched the aftermath of Western intervention in countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan. Each was promised freedom; each descended into chaos, civil war, or foreign occupation. 

So no, we don't trust the U.S. or Israel. Not because we support our regime—but because we know how imperial powers treat ‘liberated’ nations in the Middle East. 

Freedom, in their language, often means vacuum, fire, and permanent instability. Right now, many Iranians live with three truths at once: The Islamic Republic is morally and politically bankrupt. The alternatives offered by foreign actors are not liberation—they’re collapse. 

A bad government is survivable. No government is not. We are not silent because we agree. We are cautious because we’ve learned—too well—what happens when superpowers decide to "help." In a sentence: Iran is a nation held hostage by its own regime, but haunted by the fate of its neighbors. We are stuck in a house we hate, surrounded by fires we fear more."

He's not worth it

John Pavlovitz is one of many ex-preachers who have left the ministry but still largely practice "Christian values," and practice them much better than, I have to say, those politicians and greedier preachers who proclaim loudly how "Christian" they are, while schtupping their mistresses and  condemning those horrible "godless Satanist Democrats."

He is Not Worth This, America

JOHN PAVLOVITZ

MAR 02, 2026

This unrelenting chaos that we find ourselves emotionally drowning in: the manufactured emergencies, fabricated culture wars, and conjured crises that hound us from the moment we rise exhausted, until the second our besieged nervous systems finally allow us a brief, though uneasy respite. 

He is not worth this prolific corruption, the boundless breach of ethics and legality that is enabling a tiny cadre of billionaires to gorge themselves on the lunch money of hungry schoolchildren, the salaries of public school teachers, and the insurance subsidies of sick seniors.

He is not worth this incomparable political malpractice; a kleptocratic Cabinet filled with the grossly unqualified, the morally compromised, the emotionally ill-equipped, and the unrepentantly cruel.

He is not worth this division; the billions of relational fractures he has, if not created, then purposefully exacerbated with a decade-long verbal torrent of incendiary war rhetoric, bottom-feeding dehumanization, and all-or-nothing tribal demands. 

He is not worth this bloodshed; Good Samaritans assassinated in their neighborhoods, immigrant fathers dying alone in glorified dog kennels, young women expiring on hospital gurneys, cancer patients denied sustaining medication, Iranian schoolchildren buried beneath a senseless war of distraction.

He is not worth the end of our Republic, an imperfect but determined two-hundred-and-fifty-year experiment in Democracy having its life and liberty choked out by a sneering, narcissistic, intellectually fetal, morally bankrupt bottom feeder.

It could have been so easily avoided if, for a day two Novembers ago, we had simply come to our collective senses and chosen a steady, empathetic prosecutor and public servant instead of inexplicably embracing a felonious, predatory carnival barker with a lengthy resume of filth and fraudulence.

Had we done so, we’d have avoided having our military weaponized against our citizens, being illegally taxed for a year on nearly every expense, and battling an Attorney General who is harboring sexual predators. Hungry kids would have food support, our allies wouldn’t be abandoning us, and women would have body autonomy. 

Most of all, had we spoken wisely at the polls in 2024, we wouldn’t have to spend nearly every waking hour defending ourselves from an authoritarian regime we alone coronated.

And yet, despite how far afield we’ve found ourselves from the nation our founders dreamed of and our forebears fought for, we could still course correct.

We could be delivered from this preventable, seemingly permanent hell scape this very day, if our representatives in both chambers of Congress weren’t afflicted with fearful spirits, stilled tongues, and feet of clay.

We could be immediately emancipated from the clutches of a heartless, joyless, dementia-brutalized sociopath if our elected leaders had the courage to abandon their unwavering tribalism, to stop worrying about saving their own political asses, and to do what the entire world knows they should do, and is waiting for them to do.

We could be released from this death spiral today if he were simply removed as our Constitution and the consciences of good people demand.

And if our leaders still refuse to bravely and righteously meet this moment, as they seem determined to do, what are We The People going to do? 

How are we, as the shared heirs to this place, as beneficiaries of the activism, sacrifice, and bloodshed of billions, going to respond?

When our systems and safeguards and representatives have all failed, what are we willing to do together in order to pull ourselves from the abyss? 

We will need to respond to these unprecedented existential threats in a way the people who have called this place home for a quarter of a millennium have never had to. 

He is not worth being the hateful, bloated, spray-tanned hill this beautiful nation dies on.

How are we going to make sure that he isn’t?

(And, to his still ardent supporters: he is not worth your unwavering loyalty, your hatred of strangers, your disconnections from your loved ones, or your moving of the legal and moral goalposts. He is not for you or for this nation. I hope you’ll see this, one day soon.)

Original.

Trump bombs Iran

Keeping up with Trump's bullshit is difficult. In my humble opinion, this attack on Iran (with Israel) is yet another attempt to distract from the Trump-Epstein files. There must be some really, really ugly shit in those files for Trump to act this way. My question: is Trump willing to drop nukes on someone to distract us from the Trump-Epstein files? He's been willing to do practically anything else.

Trump's Attack on Iran is Reckless

The New York Times Editorial Board

Feb 28, 2026

This article has been updated to reflect the latest news.

In his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised voters that he would end wars, not start them. Over the past year, he has instead ordered military strikes in seven nations. His appetite for military intervention grows with the eating.

Now he has ordered a new attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran, in cooperation with Israel, and Mr. Trump said it would be much more extensive than the targeted bombing of nuclear facilities in June. Yet he started this war without explaining to the American people and the world why he was doing so. Nor has he involved Congress, which the Constitution grants the sole power to declare war. He instead posted a video at 2:30 a.m. Eastern on Saturday, shortly after bombing began, in which he said that Iran presented “imminent threats” and called for the overthrow of its government. His rationale is dubious, and making his case by video in the middle of the night is unacceptable.

Among his justifications is the elimination of Iran’s nuclear program, which is a worthy goal. But Mr. Trump declared that program “obliterated” by the strike in June, a claim belied by both U.S. intelligence and this new attack. The contradiction underscores how little regard he has for his duty to tell the truth when committing American armed forces to battle. It also shows how little faith American citizens should place in his assurances about the goals and results of his growing list of military adventures.

Mr. Trump’s approach to Iran is reckless. His goals are ill-defined. He has failed to line up the international and domestic support that would be necessary to maximize the chances of a successful outcome. He has disregarded both domestic and international law for warfare.

The Iranian regime, to be clear, deserves no sympathy. It has wrought misery since its revolution 47 years ago — on its own people, on its neighbors and around the world. It massacred thousands of protesters this year. It imprisons and executes political dissidents. It oppresses women, L.G.B.T.Q. people and religious minorities. Its leaders have impoverished their own citizens while corruptly enriching themselves. They have proclaimed “Death to America” since coming to power and killed hundreds of U.S. service members in the region, as well as bankrolled terrorism that has killed civilians in the Middle East and as far away as Argentina.

Iran’s government presents a distinct threat because it combines this murderous ideology with nuclear ambitions. Iran has repeatedly defied international inspectors over the years. Since the June attack, the government has shown signs of restarting its pursuit of nuclear weapons technology. American presidents of both parties have rightly made a commitment to prevent Tehran from getting a bomb.

We recognize that fulfilling this commitment could justify military action at some point. For one thing, the consequences of allowing Iran to follow the path of North Korea — and acquire nuclear weapons after years of exploiting international patience — are too great. For another, the costs of confronting Iran over its nuclear program look less imposing than they once did.

Iran, as David Sanger of The Times recently explained, “is going through a period of remarkable military, economic and political weakness.” Since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, Israel has reduced the threats from Hamas and Hezbollah (two of Iran’s terrorist proxies), attacked Iran directly and, with help from allies, mostly repelled its response. The new recognition of Iran’s limitations helped give rebels in Syria the confidence to march on Damascus and oust the horrific Assad regime, a longtime Iranian ally. Iran’s government did almost nothing to intervene. This recent history demonstrates that military action, for all its awful costs, can have positive consequences.

A responsible American president could make a plausible argument for further action against Iran. The core of this argument would need to be a clear explanation of the strategy, as well as the justification for attacking now, even though Iran does not appear close to having a nuclear weapon. This strategy would involve a promise to seek approval from Congress and to collaborate with international allies.

Mr. Trump is not even attempting this approach. He is telling the American people and the world that he expects their blind trust. He has not earned that trust.

He instead treats allies with disdain. He lies constantly, including about the results of the June attack on Iran. He has failed to live up to his own promises for solving other crises in Ukraine, Gaza and Venezuela. He has fired senior military leaders for failing to show fealty to his political whims. When his appointees make outrageous mistakes — such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sharing advanced details of a military attack on the Houthis, an Iranian-backed group, on an unsecured group chat — Mr. Trump shields them from accountability. His administration appears to have violated international law by, among other things, disguising a military plane as a civilian plane and shooting two defenseless sailors who survived an initial attack.

A responsible approach would also involve a detailed conversation with the American people about the risks. Iran remains a heavily militarized country. Its medium-range missiles may have failed to do much damage to Israel last year, but it maintains many short-range missiles that could overwhelm any defense system and hit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other nearby countries. Mr. Trump did acknowledge this in his overnight video, saying, “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties.”

He should have had the courage to say so in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, among other settings. When a president asks American troops and diplomats to risk their lives, he should not be coy about it.

Recognizing Mr. Trump’s irresponsibility, some members of Congress have taken steps to constrain him on Iran. In the House, Representatives Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, and Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, have proposed a resolution meant to prevent Mr. Trump from starting a war without congressional approval. The resolution makes clear that Congress has not authorized an attack on Iran and demands the withdrawal of American troops within 60 days. Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, and Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, are sponsoring a similar measure in their chamber. The start of hostilities should not dissuade legislators from passing these bills. A robust assertion of authority by Congress is the best way to constrain the president.

Mr. Trump’s failure to articulate a strategy for this attack has created shocking levels of uncertainty about it. He has called for regime change and offered no sense of why the world should expect this campaign to end better than the 21st-century attempts at regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those wars toppled governments but understandably soured the American public on open-ended military operations of uncertain national interest, and they embittered the troops who loyally served in them.

Now that the military operation has begun, we wish above all for the safety of the American troops charged with conducting it and for the well-being of the many innocent Iranians who have long suffered under their brutal government. We lament that Mr. Trump is not treating war as the grave matter that it is.

Original. This is an Archive link.