The Teenage Bully Boy Who Got the War Toys
Here he goes again. The phony “cease fire” is expiring Wednesday. So the Donald is back on the keyboard promising to obliterate what remains of Iran if the mullahs (or whoever) don’t raise the white flag of surrender forthwith.
Yet in the unhinged outpouring of crude bellicosity below we get the sum and substance of why the War Capital of the World on the Potomac has metastasized into a Trumpian clown show of bombast, misanthropy and farce.
We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY! They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy and, if they don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years. IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!”
Self-evidently, the Donald is an incompetent teenage bully-boy who never grew up. And, yes, it’s possible – albeit remotely so – that such an unsuited aspirant as Donald J. Trump could be mistakenly elected President fair and square by American democracy – even twice.
But what such a freakishly accidental man-boy should not have is the unilateral, open-ended capacity to play video games with a $1 trillion War Machine; and one that is capable of inflicting monumental violence and death anywhere along the length and breadth of the planet upon the whim of the POTUS.
What we mean is this: A proper $300 billion DOD “defense” budget (as opposed to the current $1 trillion “war” budget and the even more absurd $1.5 trillion proposed Trump DOD budget)) would provide for an invincible nuclear deterrent and Fortress America shield of protection for America’s coast lines and airspace. But it would not endow the POTUS – neither a competent one like Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and George Bush Sr. nor a narcissistic madman like Trump – with the capacity to rain missiles and bombs from the sky against the bridges, power plants, apartment buildings, hospitals and elementary schools of any foreign country that posed no threat to America’s Homeland Security.
That’s because, for example, he would have not have $85 billion per year worth of 11 carrier battle groups, whose only function is to wage unnecessary wars of invasion, occupation and kinetic intimidation. Nor would he have –
- 800 foreign bases from which to launch cruise missiles, bombers, drones and other weapons of offensive attack.
- upwards of 500,000 Marine and Army expeditionary forces designed to put US boots on foreign soil.
- massive networks of airlift, sealift and logistics infrastructure needed to project conventional military power abroad.
Nor would they have the remit to act upon such an utterly false narrative as the alleged “47-Year Iranian War On America”. The latter retains credibility and resilience in the halls of government only because the nation’s War Machine and related the institutions of Empire (e.g. USAID, Agency for Global Media, NED etc.) fund the the think tanks, consultants and research operations who’s budget depends upon the existence of alleged mortal enemies and conjured threats to national security. So they find these aplenty.
Stated differently, if the peaceful Republic that America was intended to be had but a $300 billion defense budget and a proper War Powers Act, the clown show that the Donald has conducted since February 28th would not have been remotely possible. Not even conceivable.
That is, a proper War Powers Act would give the President unilateral powers to launch military actions only to counter direct or tightly defined “imminent” attacks on the US territory. Full stop.
In all other cases, he would need a Congressionally approved “Declaration of War”. Just as the founders intended.
In this context, we recall well the debates of 53 years ago when the War Powers Act was passed in 1973. As a young staffer on Capitol Hill in the employ of a deeply knowledgeable and thoughtful constitutionalist and Chairman of the GOP Conference in the US House, Congressman John Anderson of Illinois, we were assigned to do the heavy duty research in support of the legislation on which he was a leading advocate and sponsor.
Congressman Anderson had no use for even Nixon’s level of imperial presidency when it came to national security policy, and most especially Tricky Dick’s four-year (1969-1973) secret bombing war on Cambodia. At length, the latter led to the genocidal horror of the Khmer Rouge.
So when it comes to the Donald’s present day hijinks – such as kidnapping a foreign president or assassinating uncooperative foreign rulers – Congressman Anderson and his like-minded bipartisan colleagues of the immediate post-Vietnam era would surely be rolling in their graves.
As it happens, however, they didn’t go nearly far enough. The 60-day period for presidential military action without Congressional approval was far too long; it should be 10 days or less. And most especially, it should not include what we’d call the “empire exception”.
That latter flows from the statutory language essentially providing that the president may not use military force abroad without a declaration of war or specific statutory authorization…. except that he may do so under the 60-day clocks in the event of a –
….a national emergency created by an attack on the United States, its territories, or its armed forces.”
Needless to say, the bolded words are the very handmaid of Empire. A peaceful Republic would have neither bases nor territories abroad and therefore no American personnel or facilities in harms’ way. Yet time and time again (e.g.the phony Gulf of Tonkin incident), it is been the alleged imminent threats to outposts of the American Empire that has been the excuse for unilateral presidential war-making.
In the case of the Donald’s February 28th launch of war against Iran there is no doubt that it was the “empire exception” which enabled an utterly unfit man-boy to launch the massive attacks on Iran that began on that date.
After all, it would have been physically impossible for Iran to actually attack the home “territory” of the USA 10,000 miles from Tehran. That’s because it had no blue water Navy, no long-range bombers and ballistic missiles with a range of no more than 2,000 kilometers. That is, an inability to strike targets at even the Strait of Gibraltar, to say nothing of Washington DC.
In any event, the worthy efforts of the congressional mice more than a half-century ago to bell the Presidential cat were clearly deficient. So America is now saddled with a madman possessing carte blanche authority over a $1 trillion per year Empire-spanning War Machine.
And yet and yet. The table below assembles Grok 4’s best estimates of they global mayhem caused by Presidential war-makers without a true Declaration of War since the last one enacted by Congress on the heels of Pearl Harbor.
To wit, upwards of 20 million persons – mostly civilians – have been killed in pursuits of Washington’s undeclared wars and interventions since WWII. Yet we would dare say that none of these interventions would have happened had Congress been required to declare war in each of these instances – and also to abruptly and sharply raise taxes to fund an expeditionary military force on top of the aforementioned $300 billion peacetime Fortress America “defense” budget.
After all, would it have made any difference at all to America’s homeland security in the year 2026 had South Korea gone “red” in 1950? And perhaps eventually have been incorporated as a Shanghai like province, territory or economic vassal of China?
The same is true of Vietnam: Notwithstanding 5.5 million deaths, including 59,300 US servicemen, Vietnam went communist anyway and became a China-like mercantilist exporter. Last year it was American 5th largest supplier of imported goods, providing nearly $200 billion of low priced Walmart products to American consumers.
Then, of course, the utter pointlessness of the various Persian Gulf and middle eastern interventions in recent decades is self-evident. The 1991 Gulf War turned on a spat over directional drilling of oil wells in along the Kuwait/Iraq border. Yet that is utterly irrelevant in today’s 105 million per day global petroleum market, and would have been no skin of America’s back either way it might have turned out on its own steam.
Likewise, the second Gulf war was a consequence of the foolishness of the first Gulf War–compounded by Washington’s 1980s recruiting, training and financing of the Mujahedin in Afghanistan. The latter American “ally” against the nearly dead-as-a-door nail Soviet Empire in the 1980s subsequently became Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. The latter, of course, turned violently against the hand which had foolishly fed it when Washington put 500,0000 American boots on the ground in the “sacred” lands of Arabia during 1991 in order to aid the gluttonous Emir of Kuwait in his no-count battle over oil claims with Saddam Hussein.
Beyond that there was no even remote benefit to America’s Homeland security from turning Khadaffy’s harmless Libyan dictatorship into a barbaric no man’s land now ruled by brutal warlords; or from getting rid of the pluralistic Assad family rulers in Syria for today’s recycled head-chopper in a suit.
In short, only in the War Capital of the World could the “47-year Iranian War on America” canard have gained any traction – even among knowledge-challenged loud-mouths like Donald Trump. But then again, a nation with 20 million dead victims from its own unjustified wars of invasion and occupation should hardly be trumpeting Trump’s claim that he is ridding the world of a murderous regime.
Likewise, the Donald’s claim that he is doing the world a favor by preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is just damn nonsense that has been propagated by the war machine and its auxiliaries on the banks of the Potomac. In this case, moreover, even the 17-intelligence agencies of the Deep State itself have attested repeatedly since its NIE of 2007 that Iran abandoned any effort to weaponize a nuclear bomb 23 years ago.
Moreover, this assessment isn’t merely a historical left-over. To the contrary, the no weaponization conclusion had been carried through right into the Donald’s own second administration by DNI Tulsi Gabbard. The latter attested in March 2025 that Iran had still not restarted its weaponization program, even as it had produced 400 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium as a self-evident bargaining chip for anticipated efforts to revive the JCPOA that the Donald foolishly shit-canned in May 2018.
In short, Iran didn’t have a nuke on Feb. 28, didn’t have an active weaponization program and wasn’t remotely close to being within weeks or months, or even years, of getting one. To the contrary, the Donald’s utterly unhinged, bombastic insistence that “Iran can’t have a nuke” is based on a tissue of lies that has marinated on the banks of the Potomac for decades. It is the product of Bibi Netanyahu and his necon fifth column, which have assiduously promoted it, amplified it and used it to suppress the contrary truth that even the intelligence agencies have signed up to time and again.
In that context, the Donald’s endlessly repeated claim that had he not cancelled the Obama nuclear deal, the middle east and Israel would be a nuclear wasteland already warrants an especially detailed and strenuous debunking. It amounts to a presidentially proclaimed causus belli that is a complete, total and transparent lie.
In fact, the very opposite was true. Iran was in full compliance with the JCPOA deal when Trump cancelled it in May 2018 and had already destroyed 98% of its enriched uranium stockpile and dismantled a considerable share of its enrichment capacity.
And that’s not based on our say so. The IAEA repeatedly verified Iran’s compliance with the multiplicity of JCPOA requirements and milestones through quarterly reports up to and including the one finalized in late May 2018 just before Trump’s May 8, 2018 withdrawal announcement.
Here is a brief summary of what the JCPOA required and what had actually been done.
- Reduced enriched uranium stockpile by about 98% — Capped at no more than 300 kg of UF6 enriched up to 3.67% U-235 (or equivalent in other forms) for 15 years. Excess was shipped out, diluted, or down-blended under IAEA oversight.
- Limited uranium enrichment level — JCPOA restricted enrichment to a maximum of 3.67%U-235 for 15 years (far, far below weapons-grade levels). IAEA confirmed no enrichment above this threshold.
- Capped operating centrifuges at Natanz — Limited to no more than 5,060 first-generation IR-1 centrifuges in 30 cascades for 10 years. The excess centrifuges numbering over 13,000 were dismantled and stored under continuous IAEA monitoring.
- Converted Fordow facility — Repurposed the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant into a nuclear physics, technology and science center for stable isotope production, including no uranium enrichment or nuclear material for 15 years.
- Modified Arak heavy water reactor (IR-40) — Removed and rendered inoperable the original calandria (core) and redesigned and rebuilt the reactor (with international assistance) to a lower-power configuration that could not produce weapons-grade plutonium. Full compliance happened when the original core was filed with cement.
- Limited heavy water stockpile — Capped at 130 metric tons for 15 years; excess was exported or otherwise removed; IAEA verified stocks remained below the limit (e.g., ~120 tons in mid-2018).
- Halted reprocessing activities — Iran committed not to engage in spent fuel reprocessing or related R&D for 15 years. In compliance, here were no such activities at the Tehran Research Reactor, MIX facility, or elsewhere, as verified by IAEA.
- Restricted centrifuge types and production — Used only old and slow IR-1 centrifuges for enrichment. This included no advanced models for production-scale work for 10 years and limited R&D on advanced centrifuges (IR-4, IR-6, etc.).
- Accepted enhanced IAEA monitoring and verification — Provisionally applied the Additional Protocol to its safeguards agreement and allowed JCPOA-specific transparency measures, including continuous monitoring of centrifuge production/storage, uranium mines/mills, and other facilities and granted IAEA access for verification of all commitments.
- No new enrichment or heavy water facilities — Committed not to build any new uranium enrichment facilities or additional heavy water reactors for 15 years, with all enrichment activities confined to Natanz. This was confirmed by the IAEA through May 2018, as well.
In short, the Donald’s whole case against both the JCPOA and his justification for his insane attack of February 28 is based on pure rubbish and a demonization of the Iranian regime that does not remotely accord with reality.
And yet, here we are conducting a savage war against a nation that is no threat to the Homeland Security of America and because why? Well, because Bibi Netanyahu finally found a sucker in the Oval Office who believes his utterly risible Big Lie.
Needless to say, the fetid waters of the Potomac are now wreaking havoc on the entire global economy. Even as the Trump commanded gunboats play pirate in the Gulf of Oman and the Donald blathers about knocking out power plants and bridges yet again, the voice of the IRGC, which Bibi &Donald combo has put in charge in Tehran by killing nearly everyone else, is leaving little room for doubt: That is, if this war restarts in earnest after Wednesday, Bab al-Mandeb, Saudi Aramco’s Yanbu export hub, the UAE’s Fujairah terminal, and the entire Red Sea route will all enter the battlefield.
That is to say, restart the kinetic phase of this idiotic war and you will indeed gut roughly a third of global oil flows in a single afternoon. Yanbu is now Riyadh’s main bypass artery, pumping millions of barrels a day around the closed Strait of Hormuz. Fujairah is the UAE’s emergency valve on the open Indian Ocean. Bab el-Mandeb is the choke point those tankers must cross.
Shut them all down and the world loses 30+% of its daily supply in a heartbeat—and at a time when 600 million barrels of the normal global stocks are have already been liquidated.
So if the Donald goes back to dropping bombs after Wednesday, as he is now loudly threatening, he will not only detonate an economic Demolition Derby in a global economy already teetering on the edge; he will also detonate $6 gasoline in America and a near certainty that the folks in the gasoline lines will be loudly demanding a “yea” vote on impeachment in both houses during the next Congress.
At least, there’s that.
David Stockman was a two-term Congressman from Michigan. He was also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. He’s the author of three books, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America, TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… And How to Bring It Back, and the recently released Great Money Bubble: Protect Yourself From The Coming Inflation Storm. He also is founder of David Stockman’s Contra Corner and David Stockman’s Bubble Finance Trader.
