No one knows how long the war with Iran will last, how many more war crimes will be committed, or how many more innocents will be killed. But Americans are apparently so inured to Trump’s violations of human rights and the rule of law and so overwhelmed by the constant flood of breaking news that they have barely mustered any protest. Even at our universities, usually hubs of protest and dissent, fear reigns. As under all repressive regimes, the threat of economic consequences or worse — losing one’s visa or facing expulsion from the country or a criminal investigation — is achieving its intended effect.
It is true, as Alexander Pope once said, that to err is human. But while everyone is fallible, some humans are more prone to error than others. That is a justification for democracy — for subjecting decisions that affect large numbers of people to deliberative processes that include checks and balances. The history of authoritarian and absolutist political rule is rife with figures whose mistakes proved calamitous not just for themselves but for the societies they ruled.
No decision is more important than waging war against another country. Yet the US has done exactly that without even a nod to its own system of checks and balances and reasoned deliberation. Like the kings of old, America’s mendacious, impulsive president, Donald Trump, remains unchecked by the legislature and surrounded by sycophants who will tell him only what he wants to hear. The disastrous result is now clear: America is once again embroiled in a Middle East war that has already cost thousands of lives — mostly civilians — and in which it has almost certainly committed multiple war crimes.
