When I was a kid, my sister and I had to spend occasional weekends with my maternal grandmother, because my mother had to work overtime on Saturdays. It was not fun, because my maternal grandmother lived in an inner-city neighborhood in which there was no sign of grass. Even her entire backyard was paved. Anyway, one weekend there, I did something incredibly and spectacularly wrong. I won't say what it is, but when my grandmother called my mother and told her what happened, my mother demanded to speak to me. When I took the receiver and said hello, the first thing my mother said was, "What have you done?"
If the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) had the same directness and indignation as my mother had in that moment she spoke to me, they would be asking Donald Trump the same question about the war he started against Iran. But WHCA's president, apparently, is a wuss, and so are the other correspondents, so no one is asking that.
But I'll answer that unasked question. What Trump has done is spark a regional war that includes attacks on Iran from Israel, whose leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is a war criminal who is continuing his crackdown on Gaza. Iran has retaliated not just by attacking American military installations but attacking civilian targets in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and several other Middle Eastern countries with drones. Trump and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth are responsible for having destroyed a girls' school in Iran in which nearly 170 students were killed. Oil prices are going through the roof. (That's the one good thing that has come out of this war; maybe Detroit will revert to making small cars - Ford has said it has the ability to do so in short order - and Americans will dump their sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, and maybe Volkswagen will finally sell the Polo in America and maybe Honda will bring back the Fit.) An explosion at the U.S. Embassy in Norway - whose capital, Oslo, is the site of the accords that tried to establish peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians - may have been an Iranian terrorist attack and could be a portent of things to come . . . not just in Europe but here in the U.S.
And as if that weren't enough, Christian nationalist commanders in the military, no doubt with Hegseth's tacit approval, have declared that this war is the prelude to the End Times, when Christ returns to judge the living, the dead, and likely the undead - including MAGA zombies.
Well, that's going to ruin my summer vacation plans!
And as if that weren't enough, Russian leader Vladimir Putin - supposedly Trump's best bud - is giving intelligence on American military positions to the Iranians!
You know, when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the war that began was, at first, a minor conflict over the status of Poland., with the Third Reich claiming it as living space and the British and the French fighting to help Poland preserve its independence. Unable to send troops to Poland, Great Britain and France occupied land along the German border with France, and both sides exchanged harmless volleys, leading to the war's original name, the "phony war." (The Winter War, which began with the Soviet invasion of Finland in November 1939, was a separate conflict.) In April 1940 the phony war became real as Adolf Hitler attacked and occupied Denmark and Norway, followed by a major blitzkrieg that result in the Nazi occupation of the Low Countries and the fall of France, prompting Italy to enter the war and prompting Japan, already at war with China, to join what then became known as the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis. By 1941, even before the Japanese attack on Peral Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt began referring to the conflict as "World War II."
My point - and I do have one - is that we are likely at the beginning of World War III, but it may take a year or two before that becomes apparent. Such a war will likely redraw national borders at least, ,and end millions of lives at worst, and possibly wipe currently existing countries off the map.
Like the United States.
Oh yeah, that horrible thing I did at my grandmother's house? It turned out to be no big deal in the end. My mother would later laugh about it, though, I remembering the terror I felt at the time, did not. And no one will look back in 2026 years from now and laugh. They won't even have the urge to chuckle.
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