Donald W. Trump, Neo-Conman

Starting another war, just like the predecessor he branded himself as hating

Article by Mike Prysner

The hot war we have feared for decades appears to be here.

What we know for sure is that Trump used the smokescreen of negotiations to collude with Israel to launch this war, secretly sending hundreds of Hellfire Missiles to Israel two days before the attack while at the same time signaling they were looking forward to negotiations with Iran and drawing down US forces. A plot to hit them while their guard was down, including assassinating the negotiators themselves: the same script he used in his 2020 assassination of Iranian General Soleimani. Trump immediately confirmed he was completely involved in the attacks of Tehran, calling them “excellent strikes,” promising more, and indicating willingness to use US forces directly.

At the time of this publishing, Trump has just posted that more than 10 millions residents of Tehran should evacuate.

But a lot of coverage, across the political spectrum, absolves him as a chief leader. It is only ever described as only an “Israeli” operation despite its open coordination and support from the US. Even just “Netanyahu’s war.”

A common narrative in both corporate and alternative media is that Trump is dragged into this, a war for Israel’s interests. Even better, that the US isn’t engaged in the war at all! That the US is just a passive actor in all of this, and waiting to decide whether or not to back Israel.

The takes come from both sides: from Bernie Sanders foreign policy advisor Matt Duss writing “Joe Biden let Netanyahu destroy his presidency. We’re about to find out whether Trump will let Netanyahu destroy his” to longtime War Enjoyer Tucker Carlson stating the US is “on the cusp of entering a war on behalf of a political leader in a faraway country.”

There is a pattern of denial and shock because Trump has successfully built a conman brand of saying everything at once, so people can hear what they want: a big part of that being an “anti-war” figure. To meet this moment head-on, we need to be clear about what is happening: Trump has been a willing vehicle for the neoconservative Iran hawks his entire political career, rescuing their agenda from the claws of George W. Bush.

Trump, the Neo-Conman

I often think back to when I first became politically active, during the mass upsurge against the Iraq War.

The war was led by an extensive cast of Republican ghouls, with widespread support among Democrats. Over 39% of Dems voted in support of the resolution to launch war on Iraq in October 2002, joining 96% of Republican lawmakers. You could barely find a dissenting voice in the news media.

But as the war predictably unravelled, all the opposition (including by former supporters) became embodied in a smaller and smaller circle of its architects, the center being Fortunate Son George W. Bush.

The height of the anti-war movement was in many ways an anti-Bush movement. A perfect avatar: the oil industry political dynasty trust fund kid who failed upwards, and suddenly altered the lives of millions as he sent us to an oil war based on lies he told to the world. And he did deserve the most blame.

Obama won a historic primary, and general election, in large part for his standout critiques of “Bush’s War.” He was considered the one who would finally end it. Prior to his victory, I remember how easy it was to get tens of thousands to an anti-war protest in Los Angeles on a regular basis. Lots of Obama signs started appearing at those actions. Then right after he won, before an Iraq policy was announced, it was hard to get a couple thousand out.

Most of the war's supporters could rehabilitate their images as the war wound down. But the central players Rumsfeld, Cheney and especially Bush would be forever tainted.

Bush had to skip the Republican National Convention that year in 2008, and every subsequent RNC since then.

For the neoconservative brain of the Republican Party to survive, they had to reconcile with this. How could they ever recover without giving up their core foreign policy?

Donald J. Trump enters the 2016 Republican Primary with a solution: Excoriate Bush, echo the national anger and trauma of the Iraq War, denounce the policy of regime change and other neocon tenants. Pretend you don’t have the same overall agenda, and say enough to let people hear what they want.

It didn’t matter if he believed it or not. People believed him. After wiping the primary he focused on Hillary as an embodiment of Bush foreign policy, and took office described by a disturbing number as an “anti-war president.” This brand was somehow maintained his entire term.

At Empire Files, we focused a lot of his first term debunking this idea, or that he posed a challenge to the Pentagon “Deep State”, by exposing what he was really doing behind the scenes: vastly escalating bombings, drone strikes, combat troop numbers (particularly in Afghanistan), sanctions, weapons contracts, etc.

Chief among this was a textbook neoconservative agenda towards Iran.

The anti-Bush-foreign-policy President brought back the same neocons who helped Bush craft the Iraq War: Ultra-hawk John Bolton became National Security Advisor. Brian Hook, another neocon who previously worked for George W. Bush, became his U.S. Special Representative to Iran. Neocon think tanks, like the American Enterprise Institute and Foundation for Defense of Democracies, helped build the policy.

Together they torched diplomacy with Iran, shredding the JCPOA which kept Iran far from the nuclear weapon they supposedly care so much about. They brought sanctions on the country to new, miserable heights.

Then, in a shocking move, Trump lured Iran’s chief negotiator and partner in the war on ISIS to a neutral location and executed him.

War seemed like an absolute certainty, with Trump promising to launch a massive bombing campaign on Iran (specifically, promising to immediately destroy 52 sites) if Iran were to retaliate to the lawless assassination of their country’s most popular figure.

The only thing that kept us from that war, really, was Iran’s restraint: a largely symbolic strike on a pre-announced target that would take the lives of zero Americans.

Somehow, people still credited Trump with not going to war. It later was revealed that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley, was the main internal opposition to Trump on escalating with Iran. (Trump had Milley’s portrait removed from the Pentagon immediately after taking office this year.)

January 2020 was the beginning of the end for Trump 1. The country was turning against him. He was cooked; so cooked that he suffered a humiliating loss to someone nobody ever really liked. Anti-Trump sentiment was so strong that even Joe Biden could win.

When he rose from the ashes of Biden’s disaster term, they had to use the old strategy: Trump-Vance was the pro-peace ticket! He hit main challengers Nikki Haley as a “globalist,” and astro-turfed tech fantasy Ron DeSantis as too hawkish on Iran. (Right-wing media even promoted the story I broke about DeSantis’s involvement in the Bush torture program).

Of course, Trump again spoke out of both sides of his mouth. At a 2024 town hall, where he attacked Biden on being soft on Iran, he said Israel should attack Iran and “Hit the nuclear first, worry about the rest later.”

Here We Go Again, But Worse

After Trump was sworn in again he stated his intention to “stop all wars” as a “peacemaker and unifier”.

There was a brief moment of victory lap content from “Trump is anti-war” creators when he supposedly ended the Gaza genocide with a phone call. That quickly proved to be a ruse, conveniently timed for his inauguration. Trump appointed absolute freaks to his foreign policy and defense positions. He launched a failed military campaign against Yemen and began setting the stage, once again, for war with Iran.

This time, with a staff completely composed of Yes Men. Trump immediately ousted the Biden-appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and replaced him with General Dan Caine: notably an Iran hawk. At his confirmation hearing, he declared Iran an existential threat and promised to back Trump in destroying their nuclear program.

His Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is foaming at the mouth for war on Iran, arguing the US must “rewrite the rules of war” to accommodate the viciousness of the campaign he wants to wage.

The truth is, Trump and his subordinate freakteam are at the helm. Trump wants this, and Trump is doing this. Just because Israel wants it too, doesn’t negate the US role. The neocons never left, they just evolved.

Trump Is Taking Us to War

Trump has repeatedly pledged “US military support for an Israeli campaign” which translates to a US-Israeli war.

He threw red meat to his content farm pledging to not send US troops to fight Iran, clarifying later that he “absolutely” would in numbers comparable to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

When the Wall Street Journal asked him if he had a “heads-up” about Israel attacking Tehran, he replied “Heads-up? It wasn’t a heads-up. We know what’s going on.” He continues to threaten more military action if Iran does not meet impossible demands.

As there seems to be a split in MAGA world with prominent America First-ers calling for no US military involvement, Trump responded by handing them a Fell For It Again Award, stating: “ Look, it’s very simple. Not complicated. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Other than that, I want them to be successful. We’ll help them be successful.” He is selling the Iran nuke as the new Iraq WMD, and doesn’t even care how obvious it looks.

He even replied directly to Tucker Carlson, posting: “Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!”

The rightwing media complex that doesn’t want a “war for Israel” is hoping they can influence him through videos and posts, primarily to rescue what they see as a flawless Presidency of waging a domestic ethnic cleansing campaign using masked paramilitary gangs at elementary schools and federal troops on the streets.

Also prevalent is that this can all be explained as the US having a “Zionist Occupied Government” – that Israel has successfully taken charge of US policy rather than existing as a totally dependent US military garrison.

The US and Israel do not have the same interests, but they do have congruent interests. Israel wants to complete an ethnic cleansing for an expanding colonial state. The US wants hegemony over the world and its resources. Different goals, that both require the destruction of any country with a military that does not support those ends. Iran’s decapitation is the greatest prize for both those agendas. The neocons are the more aggressive wing of a unified imperialist goal. They took power back in 2016 and are now simply picking up where they left off–now with an even scarier clique of psychopaths and no setbacks handed to them by the Biden-Harris interruption. And they see Israel’s post-Oct 7 warpath as the perfect opportunity to hit the gas.

To continue to launder Trump’s image as a potential peacemaker, who is being tricked or misled or dragged into something simply “for Israel” that he’ll stop if he just listens to the right voices in his base, distracts from him as the central figure in this whole criminal operation. And it distracts from the system that Trump is the CEO of: vicious global capitalism that uses military force as its guarantor of profits.

The situation is urgent. Trump is leading us down the same path Bush did; post-9/11 hysteria has been replaced by pro-Israel hysteria. The outcome could somehow be worse.

The Democrats, just like in 2002, are already indicating they will back the war. Democratic Leader Hakeem Jefferies issued a statement June 13 indicating such. Tim Kaine has made headlines calling for a vote to authorize US military force on Iran, but such a move would likely just rubber stamp the war of aggression like it did in the Iraq war.

The only dependable opposition is the grassroots, a domestic crisis based on the reality of their lawlessness at home and abroad.