[POST] Trump's endless war
The onset of Neo-con nativism
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The Bush Neo-cons dreamt of civilizational warfare that preserved the West and transformed the Rest. Trump’s MAGA movement sees the same civilizational conflict but wants to wage its culture wars overwhelmingly at home. MAGA is thus a natural —if narrowed — offspring of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), which cast too wide a net and soon exhausted an American public that wanted nation-building at home — something promised by Obama, then Trump, then Biden, and now Trump again.
So, while Donald Trump decries endless civilizational wars abroad led by Neo-cons, he energetically and enthusiastically demands endless culture wars at-home led by nativists.
Examples abound.
The current administration is happy to play global cop — just within our borders and against Blue States deemed deserving of regime change.
This administration is likewise happy to engage in extrajudicial renditions — just with migrants.
In both Bush and Trump’s administrations, comprehensive and permanent regime change was pursued at all cost — just this time it’s the US having its governing system gutted and replaced at the hands of civil-war contractors making money hand-over-fist.
Good-bye Haliburton, hello Palantir.
In both administrations, the offered rationales contain a kernel of truth wrapped heavily with lies, exaggerations, and false accusations. Enemies are demonized as existential threats capable only of unspeakable horrors.
Bush lied, thousands died; now Trump lies and millions are slated to die.
Both ruined US foreign aid — on purpose.
Both told the International Criminal Court — an international institution we helped create — to go to hell.
Bush’s “big bang strategy” sought to bust up a calcified Middle East — whatever unleashed suffering be damned. Trump’s version sought to bust up a calcified Federal bureaucracy — whatever unleashed suffering be damned.
Both promised a serious attempt at nation-building (Bush in Iraq, Trump in America) but mostly sowed chaos in their botched efforts. Bush disbanded the Baathist government and had nothing to replace it, Trump disbands the so-called Deep State (aka, Enduring Bureaucracy) and offers nothing to replace it — thus the rehiring has already begun.
Iraq had the disastrous reign of Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA); Trump 2.0 had Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Both destroyed the old order with little-to-no sense of what would come next. Both unleashed and silently accepted a certain amount of “looting” by opportunistic elements.
Both administrations, in their incompetence and crudity, triggered insurgencies that forced additional interventions — Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and ISIS for Bush, now California and Harvard for Trump.
As with Darth Cheney, the same one-percent doctrine applies under Trump: if there is just that one percent chance or one-out-of-one-hundred people possibility, then it is a matter of attack, attack, attack —- the Constitution be damned. So, yeah, America now eschews overseas military interventions because we’re too busy working the contours of our own civil strife and federal-state conflicts.
Both administrations had their black sites and dumping grounds, and both successfully dared the Supreme Court to stop their often unconstitutional activities.
Both claimed to be saving democracy and Western civilization and both did plenty to damage the former while discrediting the latter.
By speaking in us-them terms, both cast the struggle as one against existential enemies, thus normalizing exclusionary and extremist rhetoric within the US political system.
Both blew off the criticisms of our allies, and pressured them to go down similarly aggressive paths.
Both “imperialized” and “unilateralized” American politics and policy, with Bush doing it to US foreign policy and Trump doing it to US federal policy vis-a-vis US states and local government.
Both relied on strong executive leadership and the use of fear to mobilize support for their agendas.
Both sought to empower the office of the president in ways that portend and enable downstream authoritarianism by decidedly weakening and sidelining the other two branches of government.
Bush sought police-state capabilities with his Total Information Awareness program that started with surveilling potential terrorists but had ambitions to surveil all US citizens. Trump now seeks the same, this time around with illegal migrants as the Trojan Horse targets.
By modeling such aggressive behavior on behalf of the US Government, both approaches contributed to ongoing conflicts and divisions across the globe through a copycatting dynamic that they then labeled as “proof” of our increasingly dangerous world. Now, for example, every great power feels emboldened to target and kill “high-value targets” of their choosing — no matter their location.
Both administrations caused most of the world to despise America and — more importantly — to judge us as having lost our way and thus no longer serving as a model for the way ahead.
By basing their rule primarily on fear and loathing, both presidencies leave deep scars across the US political landscape, disillusioning entire generations.
Trump will soon have his birthday military parade in Washington — a domestic show of force designed to frighten and cow his domestic opponents. As a political device, it will be about as successful as Bush having declared “mission accomplished” aboard a US carrier.
Alex Garland’s movie Civil War looks less fantastic by the minute.
