In a 2007 video, General Wesley Clark describes the moment, in the early days of our operations in Afghanistan, where he learned of a Department of Defense agenda flagging seven middle eastern countries for destruction. Beginning with Iraq, it would proceed to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. This plan, idiomatic of the Washington establishment, is exactly what MAGA was supposed to counter, yet today we see President Trump overseeing its finale and selling it whole-heartedly to his base.
The Trump administration strategists and their cooperating media outlets understand it takes careful messaging to convince voters to give up on the issues they care about. Like the George W. Bush administration, they have stressed the existence of WMDs, and like that administration, the Israeli government is a co-conspirator. But a third aspect of Trump’s war propaganda is especially surprising. He portrays these operations in Iran as a way of maintaining U.S. dominance throughout the world and uphoplding the global order.
To many Trump voters, this goal should be confusing. Weren’t the aims of MAGA to retreat from international organizations? To clean our hands of it? Wasn’t the trade-off that foreign interventions prevented us from improving our own domestic condition? The MAGA promise included an economic transition from financialization to productivity, a reduction of debts and a renaissance for industry. Does Trump honestly believe he can play globalist and nationalist at the same time?
In hindsight, we see the Iran war is no last minute emergency action for which all MAGA priorities must be put on hold. In 2018, Trump took the U.S. out of the JCPOA and heaped more sanctions on Iran. In 2020, he murdered Qasem Soleimani. In 2025, he renamed the Department of Defense the “Department of War.” All of these acts delineate a progression toward our current militant spirit, showing us we are still firmly in the grips of the plot exposed by General Clark.
We find ourselves following Trump, as if intoxicated, back to the crusading America of 2003. This is perhaps understandable. Voters tire of the convoluted issues of debt and industrial policy. War is simple and one can only lash out at Democrats for so long before a new enemy is required.
As many have now suspected, Trump never intended to restructure our economic system. This would mean actively balancing our books and disrupting the pathways by which capital is invested by our largest financial managers. Not only has Trump not done this, but he has consistently perpetuated the financial mechanisms that have discouraged capital investment, savings and industrial capacity for the last two generations.
Many sober economists have warned that returning America to its industrial heyday can’t realistically happen without causing a recession. Trump has always known this, and like Bush, he expects a war will remind everyone that the system, as frustrating and corrupt as it is, exists to keep us safe from terror.
So instead of factories in the Midwest, it will be bases in the Gulf. Instead of social services, we’ll ensure the defense of Israel. Instead of a citizenry represented fairly in Congress, we will contribute to the destruction of societies abroad that are daring enough to stand for their independence.
Travis Laughlin lives in Concord.