MAGA in Wonderland

Governing by improvisation is dangerous. War by improv is much worse. In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Alice meets the Cheshire Cat and asks him which way she should go. The cat then asks her for her destination and Alice tells him she has none. The Cheshire Cat then tells her that she can take any path and end up nowhere in particular.

The message from the Cheshire Cat is that you must define your objective for success before taking action. Our president has recently reversed his “America First” campaign rhetoric of “No new wars” and has justified starting them by telling us that they are not wars. In the case of Iran, he is calling it an “excursion.”

By definition, “An excursion is a short, often leisurely, trip or outing taken for pleasure, education, or a specific purpose, usually with the intention of returning promptly.” Calling a military campaign that is costing taxpayers over a billion dollars a day and thousands of lives an excursion, tests the limits of the intelligence of the American public.

The bombing of Iran is certainly not a leisurely trip, it is not for pleasure or education, and it lacks specific purpose. When questioned about its specific purpose, the president’s answers are vague and shifting. He proclaimed Iran’s nuclear threat “obliterated” back in June of last year (Operation Midnight Hammer), but now claims this “excursion” is to eliminate their nuclear threat. He then shifts the reason to be a defensive measure against “47 years of Iranian aggression.” He then shifts the reasoning to be one of regime change where he hopes the Iranian people will rise and overthrow their government.

The advantage to this war by improv with no expressed end game, is that the president can stop at any time, pull a George Bush, and claim “mission accomplished.” Since no one knows what the mission is, any ending can be declared a victory. Without a defined objective or destination, no one can question the path he takes.

Perhaps Trump is taking direction from a hookah-smoking caterpillar and that magic mushroom pizza is making him feel taller. Whatever his excuse, if he doesn’t end this war quickly, Iran may be his Waterloo.

I leave you with a quote from Octavia Butler’s novel, Parable of the Sower, “That's all anybody can do right now. Live. Hold out. Survive. I don't know whether good times are coming back again. But I know that won't matter if we don't survive these times."