LET THEM EAT HATE

In a New York Times op-ed, Phil Klay, an Iraq War veteran and author of the National Book Award-winning short story collection Redeployment, notes that the Trump administration has never offered a clear justification for the war in Iran. However:

... as I watched a video posted by the White House in which a group of angry, rifle-wielding bowling pins labeled “Iranian Regime Officials” are struck by a Stars and Stripes bowling ball that turns into an airplane, followed by actual combat footage of U.S. airstrikes, I realized how one rationale for this war has remained clear and consistent: the administration’s delight in displays of violence and domination.

STRIKE. 💥🦅 pic.twitter.com/XMzNNtlT63

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 12, 2026

Many top administration officials do seem to regard the brutality as an end in itself:

The bowling video is one of many sizzle reels posted on White House social media accounts celebrating the war by mixing images of death and destruction with footage from video games or sports highlights. The president declared that military officials told him “it’s more fun to sink” ships than to capture them, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth exulted, “We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.” The Trump aide Stephen Miller proclaimed that the Iran war showcased a military “that isn’t fighting with its hands tied behind its back.”

At another news conference, Mr. Hegseth made the macho posturing even clearer: “No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars.”

But this isn't just for their own enjoyment. They're doing it -- and proudly asserting that they're pitiless -- because they think the public will get off on the cruelty.

A portion of the public clearly is enjoying this content: the video above has 126,000 likes on X as I write this. It's all in keeping with the main message of the Republican Party for the past several decades: We are good and our enemies are pure evil. Watch us make those enemies howl in agony.

For the Republican voter base, the war doesn't need a purpose. Owning the enemy is purpose enough. The GOP will never make its voters safer, healthier, more economically secure, or more able to obtain employment, but it will talk about enemies incessantly, and let the base revel in how it's tormenting those enemies. And even when the enemies are overseas, all roads lead back to the ultimate enemy:

Enemy 1) Foreign autocracy Enemy 2) Domestic opposition party

[image or embed]

— Matthew Gertz (@mattgertz.bsky.social) March 22, 2026 at 8:36 AM

(The Truth Social post is here.)

On the campaign trail in 2024, Trump claimed that no foreign regime was a greater enemy than Democrats -- for instance, in a Fox News town hall less than a month before the election:

“I always say, we have two enemies,” Trump said, adding: “We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within, and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries.”

Over several decades, the right-wing media has primed the GOP voter base to hate everyone who's not aligned with the Republican Party, whether it's truly bad actors like the Iranian regime or a high school teacher driving a used hybrid with a COEXIST bumper sticker. So this Bloomberg report comes as no surprise:

Donald Trump’s decision to wage war on Iran was partly motivated by pressure from outside allies....

Those privately pressing Trump to strike Iran included Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, media mogul Rupert Murdoch and some conservative commentators, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. The News Corp. founder communicated with Trump several times as he urged the president to take on Tehran, according to one person briefed on their interactions.

We knew about Netanyahu and commentators such as Mark Levin. We didn't know about Murdoch -- but of course he'd be rooting for what a war he assumed would goose Fox's ratings, give Trump a boost in the polls, and rally voters around Republican candidates in the midterms, all while distracting voters from their own concerns, particularly the economy. It's not achieving most of those aims, but that's always been the Fox/GOP formula: reminding the rubes that the right will give them satisfying enemies to hate, and will show those enemies squealing whenever possible.

(Please note that the top administration cheerleaders for the war, Trump and Hegseth, are former Fox commentators, along with Miller, who got into politics as a regular talk radio caller while he was still in high school.)

Klay writes:

Our greatest wartime leaders thought we should wage war only when it was absolutely necessary, that we should articulate the clear moral and political objectives that we use to guide our strategy and that we should treat the shedding of blood with the seriousness it deserves.

Power does not grow out of the barrel of a gun, cruelty is not the same as strength, and a politics built on such ideas promises ruin, delusion about the limits of our power and a betrayal of the promise of our founding.

Yeah, but it gives 40 percent of the electorate a lot of distracting dopamine hits, and that's worked out great for the GOP and the Murdoch press so far.