Ted Grimsrud—March 2, 2026
The fog is still way too thick in the very early days of our new war to draw any stable conclusions about it. However, I believe that it is not too soon to see ways already about how the US/Israel attack on Iran underscores many of the problems humane people see with the current American Empire’s way of being in the world. Let me suggest five points.
- We do well to redouble our work against warism. American warism created a society with an enormous military and with constant prowar propaganda so that we live in a kind of tinderbox waiting for a spark that set the fire off. Now that the nation has allowed an apparently quite war-oriented person to become president we have little potential for derailing the momentum toward an enormous disaster. What is needed, if we somehow survive the current crisis, is a concerted effort to empty the tinderbox. I don’t know how that can happen, but it is needed to prevent another similar crisis.
- We do well to assume that the US government regularly lies, especially in relation to international affairs. We have lived with decades-long propaganda campaigns of dishonesty that have facilitated antipathy toward China, Iran, and Russia. They make it easy for our government to pursue destructive policies toward those countries with little resistance from the American people. So, we see an ongoing willingness among the American people to believe numerous mistruths regarding each of these countries as events unfold in the present.
- We do well to recognize that our government has for a long time been ruled by a single war party with surface, largely rhetorical differences on domestic issues. I know a few people who voted for Trump in 2024 due to his promises to be a peace president and out of disgust with the unabashed warism of the Biden/Harris administration. Quite likely, as numerous independent pundits are saying today, this current war will doom the Trump presidency and likely the Republican Party’s chances in national elections in the near future. At least as likely, the Democrats will in turn pursue warist policies when they gain power. Nothing significant will change in US foreign policy as long as this war party remains in power.
- We do well to emphasize that the biggest failure of the Obama and Biden presidencies was to allow our nuclear weapons regime to remain intact. Now we are stuck in a terrifying context where the person with the nuclear weapons launch code seems all too impulsive, amoral, fearful, egotistical, and shameless—and surrounded by incompetent sycophants. We are far removed from the day when Secretary of State Henry Kissinger prevented a desperate and near-crazed Richard Nixon from pursuing nuclear war on Vietnam.
- We do well to acknowledge that our top leaders have for years displayed great stupidity in pursuing numerous self-destructive foreign policies. Just a couple of quick examples are Biden’s aggressive pursuit of a proxy war against Russia. He rejected peace possibilities such as the 2022 accords reached in Istanbul between Russia and Ukraine that would have ended that conflict shortly after it started. Instead, the US made an effort to “bleed Russia” through the war and powerful sanctions. Not only did Russia instead “bleed” the US (note the depleted American weapons stockpiles that are now hindering the American war-making ability against Iran), but the sanctions have also led to much closer ties between China and Russia—precisely the opposite effect American policy makers hoped for. In Iran, just Saturday US/Israel assassinated Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei in hopes that this would lead to a breakdown of Iran’s leadership and a quick fall of its government. Instead, the early impression seems to be that this murder actually will strengthen Iran’s internal unity.
A possible silver lining in the American/Israeli aggression is that it may make clearer to people of good will around the world the character of the American Empire. For example, twice within the past nine months the US interrupted peace negotiations with a seemingly serious Iran ready to make concessions by launching in partnership with Israel vicious air attacks in efforts to end the Iranian government. In recent years, as the US seems to be losing stature in the world and likely will become ever more dependent on collaboration and negotiations with others, the country has proved to be fundamentally untrustworthy.
This country is in deep trouble. At the same time, the way to healing remains as true as ever—all life is precious, human solidarity is life giving and disallows Othering so-called enemies, and our calling is to trust in the reality of love (God) and turn from idols.
These are a couple of resources that I have found helpful in these issues:
I just learned of this Substack. This article gives a wide-ranging and what I think is insightful analysis of the first day after the US/Israel attack.
https://islanderreports.substack.com/p/the-last-entry-iraq-syria-lebanon
For months, I have regularly read the almost daily commentaries from Julian McFarlane, a retired Canadian corporate consultant who now lives in Japan. I think he’s pretty insightful.
Thinking Pacifism 