For any Americans who were paying attention, no less than twelve weeks ago Donald Trump said he would reopen Hormuz as his main objective against Iran. Now he proclaims a blockade of the strait he swore to open; welcome to chaos and confusion in the Trump White House.
Bryan Anthony Reo
We are opening Hormuz by blockading Hormuz, get it? Understand?
What we have are clowns, and when a clown enters the palace he doesn’t become a king, the kingdom becomes a circus
Ever-Shifting War Aims
I remember about twelve weeks ago when the main war aim against Iran was to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. I also remember President Trump declared victory several times (I’ve actually lost count of how many times this war has ended in victory only to continue), then said the war was mostly over, then said Iran was beginning for a ceasefire, then told them to grant him a ceasefire or else he would destroy them in one day (presumably with nuclear weapons), then proclaimed Iran is not to be trusted with acquiring nuclear weapons and most never be allowed to acquire them, then explicitly threatened Iran with nuclear weapons and said he can end their civilization forever, then demanded American allies help re-open the Strait of Hormuz, then insisted “we don’t need those worthless allies anyway, buy your own oil!” after no allies materialized and no satellites mustered to do his bidding.
Every day the war with Iran has shifting aims depending on the mood of Donald Trump when he woke up that morning and depending on the particular poison his sycophants and advisers whispered in his ears at the breakfast table that morning.
Is There Any Clear Objective?
Seneca once remarked, “Ignoranti quem portum petat nullus suus ventus est” (Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, (Letter 71), which in English is “If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.” I do not expect that President Trump knows the quote in Latin, and I doubt he would be able to discern the meaning even in English.
His handling of the campaign of aggression against Iran reveals that he has no grasp of geopolitics and he has no skill for statecraft.
Trump not only orchestrated an unnecessary war of aggression but he orchestrated it without proper planning, without putting proper logistics in place, without allocation sufficient and appropriate forces, and without the will to see it through to a conclusion favorable for his administration.
Trump started an unnecessary fight and didn’t allocate the resources necessary to win; the worst of both worlds. If the United States were a ship and Trump were the helmsman, we would have sailed straight at the rocks and run aground on a shoal, all while proclaiming his own genius and denouncing his erstwhile supporters turned critics as “morons” and “fools,” insisting “they have low IQs.”
An Unnecessary Unwinnable War
The only thing worse than starting an unnecessary war is starting an unnecessary war that is not winnable or that has no viable path to a plausible and reasonable end-goal objective; this is exactly where Donald Trump has taken the nation.
At the rate things are going, the war might end with Trump in a bunker, hunched over a table, staring at a map, insisting that forces that don’t exist are somehow going to turn the situation around. He is apparently building a state-of-the-art Führer bunker under the ballroom he and his minions have clamored for and insisted must be built.
Bizarre Religious Rhetoric Against Iran
Despite claiming that the Iranians are religious zealots, numerous American military commanders have insisted that a war in Iran is necessary to “bring about the final end of the war via the battle of Armageddon” and “pave the way for Christ to return.”
In fact, as a sincere believing Christian, I would consider an individual who uses religious rhetoric to advocate for a general global (or even limited regional) war to be categorically unqualified to hold military office or political office. If it is just rhetoric being used as propaganda, then they are insincere and are not to be trusted. If they sincerely believe in trying to bring about the end of the world, then they are a lunatic and not to be trusted. I don’t want to plunge the world into war and cause a catastrophe that will spell hundreds of millions or billions of deaths with untold suffering and misery.
Some lunatics are willing to prostitute their faith for propaganda points to rally support for what has always been an unpopular move into Central Asia for the clear benefit of the Israeli Zionist regime, whose popularity among Americans has evaporated over recent years (and is essentially non-existent among younger Americans).
American Leadership is Overwhelmingly Mediocre
But this is our reality in 2026: we have leaders who are exceedingly average and overwhelmingly mediocre in their skills at statecraft, diplomacy, geopolitics, and military strategy, who are secular worldly men ruled by base appetites, chronic adulterers on their second, third, or perhaps fourth marriage, undisciplined men who are drunk more often than sober, who pick up women in drunk encounters in hotel bars (i.e., Sec Def Hegseth), and who lack the merit to lead a platoon or a company, to say nothing of a corps or a theater command or the entire armed forces as a whole.
Yet we are told that these men are upright, virtuous, honorable, brave, disciplined, courageous, intelligent, savvy, fair, and just. You couldn’t make this up if you tried. If you tried to write the script for an absurd TV drama, you would be hard-pressed to come up with 2026 USA.
If the USA had one senior diplomat who was even just half of what Mr. Lavrov is, we would be hours away from a lasting, enduring ceasefire with Iran, days away from a peace treaty, and the war in Ukraine would be winding down and coming to an end in a peace process that could be wrapped up in a few weeks.
But we don’t have that.
What we have are clowns, and when a clown enters the palace, he doesn’t become a king; the kingdom becomes a circus.
If I were writing a soap opera filled with absurd cliches, I would be hard-pressed to be more outrageous and absurd than the modern real life United States.
I once told a friend, “America is a bad joke that will hit you for not laughing and call it the punchline.”
The Punchline is Tragically Real; There is No Joke Here
I do ponder on what exactly it is that is being called a triumph and what is being celebrated, with the Arch of Triumph that President Trump proposes to blight the Washington DC landscape with, in a location that will block the sightlines between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.
Growing up, I was always taught that a triumph, a trophy, a celebration, or a monument is to commemorate an exceptional achievement, something truly spectacular and worthy of that level of recognition. I am still scratching my head trying to figure out what exactly Donald Trump has that he can claim as a “triumph” worthy of such an architectural feat.
I cannot articulate a single accomplishment on the part of Donald Trump that falls into the category of monumental significance worthy of a triumphal arch being commissioned in his honor. If there is a joke in all of this, I don’t understand it; I don’t get it, and if the punchline is just him gratifying his own ego, well, that makes sense, but it is sadly all too real, and it isn’t funny.
This seems to be the world we now live in: a man campaigns for re-election on an expressly American First, Make America Great Again platform, swears off military escalations in the Islamic World, denounces the Iraq War as a blunder by his predecessor, and then immediately after re-election embarks on a bombing campaign of Iran in 2025 and a full war in 2026 for the sake of Israel First. This would be a joke if it were a TV show, but this is real life, and real people are dying every day because of this absurdity. Some of us remember the promises that man made when campaigning for re-election. The triumphal arch belongs in Tel Aviv, not Washington, DC. Israel won the 2024 US presidential election; the American people and the world lost.
As I already quoted Seneca, I might as well end with a quote from Cicero, whose words aimed at Mark Antony might aptly be applied in the modern era — “As Helen was to the Trojans, so has that man been to this republic, the cause of war, the cause of pestilence, the cause of destruction.”
Bryan Anthony Reo is a licensed attorney based in Ohio and an analyst of military history, geopolitics, and international relations
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