Donald Trump, like Joe Biden before him, was unable—or unwilling—to restrain Israel from genocide, lawlessness, and slaughter.
A view of a damaged building in the Iranian capital, Tehran, following an Israeli attack, on June 13, 2025. Firefighting teams are dispatched to the area. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has announced that Israel conducted strikes on Iran.
(Photo by Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Richard Eskow
Jun 15, 2025
For a while, at least, Donald Trump talked a good game about diplomacy, including negotiations with Iran and Israel. But Israel is America’s id. We can’t restrain Israel because Israel is the skull beneath the American mask.
The “id” was Sigmund Freud’s term for the hidden reservoir of passions and desires that fuels the personality. The ego—“what we call reason and sanity,” as Freud phrased it—tries to restrain those passions by riding them “like a man on horseback.”
The horse has thrown its rider once again.
Read the newspaper today. Watch cable news tonight. See if they mention the plain fact that Israel’s attack is a violation of international law.
“Monsters from the id!” That's what Dr. Morbius shouts at the end of the 1956 science-fiction movie Forbidden Planet, as he tries to shut down the all-powerful alien engines he’s learned to control with his thoughts. His subconscious urges and desires have begun to destroy his deep-space paradise, and he’s powerless to stop them. The vast machinery is serving his true self, not the civilized veneer he presents to himself and others.
So it is with military might. Just as Israel is the American id, America is the id for a financialized planet driven by greed and exploitation. American war machinery is global lust made manifest: lust for power, lust for wealth, lust for more.
Donald Trump, like Joe Biden before him, was unable to restrain Israel from genocide, lawlessness, and slaughter. Both presidents aided and abetted snuff-movie violence on a massive scale, because that violence reflects the shadow self of the nation they represent.
If “the sleep of reason produces monsters,” we’ve been in a coma for a long time.
John F. Kennedy may have been an imperfect vessel for change, but he spoke often and well about the need for international law and world institutions. “We must create even as we destroy (nuclear arms),” he said, “creating worldwide law and law enforcement as we outlaw worldwide war and weapons.”
Read the newspaper today. Watch cable news tonight. See if they mention the plain fact that Israel’s attack is a violation of international law. The mass assassination of another country’s leaders and the under-reported deaths of civilians will be debated in tactical terms, while moral and legal questions receive little (if any) attention.
These attacks may temporarily serve Israeli and U.S. interests, but their benefits won’t last. Iran isn’t Gaza, impoverished and defenseless and populated primarily by women and children. Iran is home to 91 million people and possesses considerable resources. Trump was already forced to back down from a confrontation with the Iran-allied Ansar Allah (the Houthis) in the Red Sea, and they’re essentially desert fighters. This attack may weaken Iran, but what will happen if, and when, it regroups and retaliates?
The Israeli state isn’t acting rationally; neither is the American national security state. But how could it be otherwise?
Like the passions of Dr. Morbius, the drive to kill inevitably becomes self-destructive. “In 20 of the 24 countries surveyed,” Pew Research reports, “around half of adults or more have an unfavorable view of Israel.” That’s from a poll published June 3. Those figures may well be even lower now. Pew continues, “Around three-quarters or more hold this view in Australia, Greece, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey.”
In the United States, the percentage of adults with a negative view of Israel has risen 11 points since March 2022; 53% of Americans polled now hold “a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion of Israel.”
This trend represents an existential threat to both the Jewish state and the American military empire. The political consensus in Washington, however, remains unchanged.
The Israeli state isn’t acting rationally; neither is the American national security state. But how could it be otherwise? They are the manifestation of our own cravings. Our warlike impulses are leading us down the path of conflict and confrontation, seemingly oblivious to peaceful alternatives. By refusing to cooperate with China and the rising nations, we are surrendering our future to them.
That is, if we even have a future.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency tried to remind the world that “armed attacks on nuclear facilities could result in radioactive releases with grave consequences within and beyond the boundaries of the State which has been attacked.”
The world didn’t seem very interested.
Evangelical Christians—some of them, at least—are undoubtedly thrilled. With this development From the Bible (Matthew 24:6-7):
And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in diverse places.
Meanwhile, Americans have forgotten the words of their fallen president. “Mankind must put an end to war,” said John Kennedy, “or war will put an end to mankind.”
Some Americans consider Matthew’s prophecy a harbinger of deliverance—for them, not for the rest of us. They’re counting on eventual, if selective, salvation through rapture.
The rest of us, believers and nonbelievers alike, will have to conclude with the verse that follows:
All these are the beginning of sorrows.
The Ignorance That Pervades Us
The uncalled for attack on Iran by the most insane group of people who ever inhabited this planet is expected; what do the insane do, they do the insane. Not expected is that recognized people do not recognize the insanity of the action. Put in simple. Iranians are not eager to have a nuclear bomb. Why would they when knowing Israel cannot be attacked with a weapon that will release radioactivity in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, and they will be labelled as international killers. An attempt to nuke anyone will be retaliated by a devastation that will erase their ancestral Persian land and its inhabitants from the Earth. It is obvious to their educated minds. Why isn’t it obvious to the rest of the world?
The only reason that the Islamic Republic might pursue a nuclear weapon is for the same reason the U.S. and the Soviet Union rattled against one another, for deterrence. Only Iran stands in the way of genocidal Israel’s constant attacks on humanity. If Iran stalls Israel’s belligerent efforts, assuredly, Israel, who has shown contempt for the entire human race, and would even use the atomic bomb against the United States, will drop “Big Boy” on the Islamic Republic, but only if the Mullahs do not have a reprisal weapon.
Unlike media portrayals, history shows that Iran has never been and is not now a threat to any nation. Iran has not attacked another nation and has built only defensive positions. Compared to the United States and Israel, who have started several wars and slaughtered millions of innocents throughout the globe, Iran is a cherub.
Israel did not attack Iran to prevent Iran from developing a bomb it could never use and whose progress in attainment was at a time when Iran was years away from having something workable, tested, and mated to a workable and tested delivery system. Israel attacked Iran because it knew it had the military power to subdue Iran and could get away with the nefarious deed by reciting the usual, “we were ready to be attacked by anti-Semites and had to defend ourselves.” Now, Israel can carry on with the genocide of the Palestinians, seize the oilfields of the Gaza coast, take over the Haram al-Sharif, push the Palestinians out of the West Bank and all the way to Amman while it takes the East Bank of the Jordan River, move its checkerboard boundaries to the Litany River in Lebanon, and close to Damascus in Syria, and seize all the remaining aquifers in the Levant.
Summarizing the previous paragraphs — Iran cannot use atomic weapons for an offensive purpose and might need them as a defensive measure to deter a nuclear attack by Israel. Israel has no defensive need for atomic weapons and has developed them for offensive tactics.
Not realizing that Israel has attacked a sovereign nation that has not posed a threat to its people and has continued on its merciless onslaught against the civilized world emphasizes the ignorance that pervades us. No call for a Security Council meeting to defend a nation’s sovereignty. Instead we have an American president gloating over his deception, telling ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl, “I think it’s been excellent.” We gave them a chance and they didn’t take it. They got hit hard, very hard. They got hit about as hard as you’re going to get hit. And there’s more to come, a lot more.”
What chance did Trump give Iran; the same chance he took away from the Islamic Republic when he terminated United States participation in the JCPOA, a treaty that already prevented Iran from enriching Uranium and would be renegotiated, but could not after Trump had unilaterally terminated it. Trump’s termination of the JCPOA initiated the havoc, another mindless scheme from an unstable derelict.
Added to the distress is media interpretation of the attack, with nobody, from what I have read, attributing the purpose to Israel knowing it had the military power to subdue Iran, could get away with the nefarious deed, and then accelerate its war against civilization.
As an example, New York Times columnist, Bret Stephens, headlines an article with “Israel Had the Courage to Do What Needed to Be Done,” and continues with “All the other options have run their course.” His closing paragraph,
But for those who worry about a future in which one of the world’s most awful regimes takes advantage of international irresolution to gain possession of the most dangerous weapons, Israel’s strike is a display of clarity and courage for which we may all one day be grateful.
Reworded for clarity and reality,
Now we must worry about a future in which the world’s most awful regime, Israel, takes advantage of international ignorance to maintain unique possession of the most dangerous weapons. Israel’s strike is a display of scheming madness for which we should all be fearful and will one day regret.
Not knowing where this madness will lead, except to know the madness will not be calmed and will lead into more madness, I will calm myself by closing Word and playing a game of online scrabble.
No comments:
Post a Comment