Reporters should be asking Trump officials some essential questions, and calling attention to the lack of answers.

The fact is that there is almost no more important job for the news media than to demand answers to these sorts of questions before a president takes the country to war.

There is also some context specific to Trump: He’s erratic, deranged, and impulsive. There can be no assumption that this is a reasoned decision. Journalists should make that clear as well.

And did no one learn the lessons from the cowardly, cheerleading mainstream-media coverage of the run-up to the Iraq War? I’m really agog at how understated the coverage is.

As I wrote last June, I believe journalists have a particular obligation to inform the public about the dangers and horrors of war. They are a repository of certain truths about war: That it is horrible; that it is easier to get into a war than get out of it; that war is often entered into under false pretenses; that when it comes to war, governments lie.

This time though our intentions are pure and war is going to work!

  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzOP
    1·
    16 hours ago

    I think that is what Trump, Steven Miller and Netanyahu want to be honest.

    Everything just gets so much more violent and well you know nice and starkly simple after that which would make all three of their jobs so much easier, narratively speaking.

    He sent a carrier there, totally exhausted hoping some totally overworked and undertrained servicemember will blunder, create a catastrophic opening and a carrier or other big carrier will be hit bad killing US servicemembers in a spectacular way that makes for good Memes.

    Cue Patriotism!

    At the point we can finally all shut the libs up, stop talking, cancel elections and go to WAR!!!

    • Gates9@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      16 hours ago

      I hear what you’re saying and typically I would agree with you, but I don’t think it’s gonna work that way. I think the shock of losing a carrier or a carrier and a few jets and not accomplishing anything will create a blowback of a larger magnitude than these fuckwits are calculating, and faster too. This is existential for Iran and they’ve been planning for it for decades, this isn’t 2001, this isn’t Iraq or Lybia, yadda yadda yadda, you know where I’m going with this.

      This is a “Hail Mary” and the quarterback has blinders and can’t stay awake for more than a few hours.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002