Damn With Faint Praise

In a peculiar op-ed at The Wall Street Journal, Gerard Baker decides Trump is no big deal, he just did what any president would have done:

No country, let alone a superpower, can approach national security with a rigid dogma about the use of force, and for all the binary nature of the contentions we have had on the subject in the past few decades, I suspect no American president ever has.

. . . Seen in this light President Trump’s decision to order a U.S. military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities isn’t a “win” for the interventionists against the noninterventionists in the president’s coalition, a decisive departure in Trumpian foreign policy. It looks instead like a classic and—as far as we can tell—effective piece of operational expediency born of tactical opportunism to advance legitimate strategic objectives.

As far as I can see, the sort of any-president Mr Baker has in mind must be Josiah Bartlet, the one played by Martin Sheen in The West Wing. The problem Trump appears to have solved as a real president is the one created by Jimmy Carter and tolerated in one way or another by all of his real successors. Rick Moran at PJ Media has a much clearer assessment:

While the CIA was telling presidents that the Iranians had stopped trying to build a bomb in 2003 after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, work continued on a bomb until the window to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon closed.

Trump's decision to strike Iran's nuclear facilities was more than 40 years in the making and represents a generational failure of leadership of historic proportions. Each president in turn—beginning with George H. W. Bush, through Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, the first Trump administration, and Joe Biden—acknowledged the Iranian threat of a nuclear weapon but refused to act on it.

He mentions "generational failure", and the only equivalent failure I can think of is the inability of Presidents Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan to resolve or even effectively compromise on the slavery question until it degenerated into a shooting war with Lincoln's election.

The solution seems to have required a new approach from a new political party, which led to the rise of the Republicans, who held their first national convention only in 1856, when they nominated John C Fremont. Fremont came in second in a three-way contest among James Buchanan, the Democrat, and Millard Fillmore, a former Whig who had succeeded to the presidency as vice president in 1850 but lost to the Democrat Pierce in 1852 and had since become a Know-Nothing.

The upshot of this political stalemate was that by the time of Lincoln's election in 1860, the Democrats entered a political wilderness, and the Whigs and Know-Nothings faded from the picture, with the anti-slavery factions of both absorbed into the Republicans. Lincoln became a highly controversial figure who was nevertheless able to to take advantage of a new anti-slavery political alignment.

Lincoln had the old problem forced on him in a new way, but it's worth noting that unlike his predecessors, he was able to recognize the new alignment and act on it. Yes, an idealized President Bartlet would do the same -- in fact, let's face it, Bartlet would be far less narcissistic, obnoxious, crass, and generally in-your-face, which is why The Wall Street Journal seems to think it necessary to point out that of course, the Iran move had nothing to do with Trump, Bartlet would do what any American president would do, except that given the opportunities, none actually did.

I think Iran's Military Central Command was much more insightful when it addressed him as "Gambler Trump". As things appear to be turning out, first, unlike 2003, Iran actually appears to have had a nuclear program that was close to building a bomb. Then, second, unlike Jimmy Carter's 1980 Operation Eagle Claw, there was no ignominious desert disaster:

Eight helicopters were sent to the first staging area called Desert One, but only five arrived in operational condition. One had encountered hydraulic problems, another was caught in a sand storm, and the third showed signs of a cracked rotor blade. During the operational planning, it was decided that the mission would be aborted if fewer than six helicopters remained operational upon arrival at the Desert One site, despite only four being absolutely necessary. In a move that is still discussed in military circles, the field commanders advised President Carter to abort the mission, which he did.

As the US forces prepared to withdraw from Desert One, one of the remaining helicopters crashed into a transport aircraft that contained both servicemen and jet fuel. The resulting fire destroyed both aircraft and killed eight servicemen.

Considering the complexity of the B-2 raid, it's remarkable that nothing like that occurred -- recognizing in addition that Trump appears to have purged and replaced much of the Pentagon leadership that was tasked with its planning and exrecution. President Bartlet would certainly have done a better job overall without creating such unnecessary turmoil, but doggone it, Trump was lucky.

And it's better to be lucky than good. But I have an increasing feeling that Trump is also good -- like Lincoln good, not Bartlet good.

Why Did Trump Go To Bedminster Friday Night?

I've been intriged by Trump's Bedminster, NJ golf facility ever since it surfaced in the "wiretap" kerfuffle during the 2016 transition, which I discussed here in a 2024 post (the full links are at that post).

The original story, which appears to have been assiduously scrubbed, was that National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers met with Trump after the election to inform him that Trump Tower wasn't secure, and as a consequence, Trump moved his transition headquarters to his Bedminster, NJ golf club. The record does reflect that a meeting between Trump and Rogers did take place in mid November, 2016. . . . And Trump did in fact move his transition headquarters from Trump Tower to Bedminster on November 16. . . . There was no mention in any of the reports about what Rogers discussed with Trump in the meeting, nor why the move to Bedminster took place. Exactly what kind of surveillance was involved, on whom, and who ordered it has never been clear[.]

Not much, in fact, is ever said about Bedminster. A few weeks ago, Sean Spicer, who was part of the first Trump administration, remarked on Mark Halperin's Morning Meeting 2WAY program that even in his position, he was never high enough in the administration to rate his own room at Bedminster when Trump chose to move there; he presumably lodged off site. And that's about it. All I can surmise is that Trump, who must have highly capable corporate security staff at his disposal as well as the Secret Service, feels more confident in the electronic measures in place at Bedminster than in any other facility, including the White House.

Which brings us to the runup to the B-2 bombing raid on Fordow this past weekend:

On Friday afternoon, a day after suggesting the attack could be delayed, Trump gave Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth the green-light to launch the B-2 bombers.

The public, of course, knew nothing about this. Apparently after giving Hegseth the approval, Trump flew to Morristown, NJ, en route to Bedminster, where he gave an impromptu press conference:

President Trump is again questioned about Gabbard’s statements from March where she repeated an Intelligence Community assessment that Iran was not currently building a nuclear weapon. President Trump accepts the misleading question and responds by saying, “she’s wrong.”

President Trump’s admonishment of the manufactured statement is then amplified by the Israel-First group, which includes Laura Loomer and Mark Levin, both ‘influencers’ hoping to see Tulsi Gabbard removed, and replaced with a more pro-Israel, pro-war intelligence head. Watching this unfold is quite remarkable.

In hindsight, this was yet another diversion designed to further the impression that there was ongoing debate within the administration over bombing Fordow, when Trump had already approved the mission.

On Saturday afternoon, while still at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump was told the bombers were about to reach the point of no return — the moment they would go into full radio silence.

Shortly after, Trump boarded Air Force One and flew back to Washington to be in the Situation Room as the first bombs hit their targets.

Sitting in the Situation Room, the president saw that the media was still reporting he was undecided, a U.S. official said. That's when Trump grew confident the operation would be successful.

When I heard that Trump was going to Bedminster Friday afternoon, I immediately thought something was up, just based on the little I'd heard about why he goes there. In addition,

The Pentagon Pizza Report, a social media account that claimed to have accurately predicted Israel’s initial June 12 military strikes on Iran, posted that local pizza traffic near the Pentagon was "HIGH" within an hour of the U.S. launching attacks against Iranian nuclear sites Saturday night.

Less than an hour before the announcement, the account said "HIGH activity is being reported at the closest Papa Johns to the Pentagon."

Account administrators added Freddie's Beach Bar, a restaurant and bar near the Pentagon that has also been previously used as an indicator of impending military action, was reporting abnormally low activity levels for a Saturday night.

"Classic indicator for potential overtime at the Pentagon," the account wrote.

But food service at Bedminster would have been in-house, and even the internal phone lines would have been highly secure. I believe the Saturday Situation Room meeting at the White House was scheduled Friday, but that would take place after operational security was no longer important. It appears that Trump wanted his approvals leading up to the actual strike to come from Bedminster:

Rubio signaled on Sunday that Trump didn’t give his final go-ahead for the bombing campaign until the very last minutes before it was carried out.

“There are multiple points along the way in which the President has decisions to make about ‘go’ or ‘no-go,’” he said in a Fox News interview Sunday morning. “And it really comes right up to 10 minutes before the bombs are actually dropped.”

What this suggests to me is that at least for the time being, Trump's purge of the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies has been successful, at least insofar as operational security was maintained, with absolutely no leaks. But it sounds to me that Trump trusts the security at the White House only as far as it goes, and he still prefers Bedminster if he wants absolute secrecy.

I've never bought the conventional wisdom that Trump is bombastic, ego-driven, always playing to the grandstands. But he's willing to let that impression work for him if it serves his purpose. Trump may be lucky, but he's also good, and the better he gets, the better luck he seems to have.

So Did Trump Get It Right?

Michael Scherer outlines the basic issue in Trump's Iran attack in this piece at The Atlantic:

Precisely what convinced Trump that Iran was close to making a weapon remains mysterious. For years, including when Trump was last in office, the U.S. intelligence community has publicly stated that Iran is not trying to build a nuclear weapon. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard reiterated that bottom-line conclusion during congressional testimony in March.

But Trump dismissed her statement and the information behind it. “She’s wrong,” Trump told reporters on Friday, days after he had already made the decision to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran had gathered “a tremendous amount of material,” he continued, apparently referring to the enriched uranium necessary to create a bomb. Earlier in the week, Trump had said that he thought Iran was “very close to having” weapons.

The U.S. intelligence community had also said that Iran was enriching uranium that could potentially be used in a weapon, and was stockpiling highly enriched uranium far in excess of what would be needed for a civilian energy program.

But crucially, U.S. intelligence agencies had long ago determined that Iran’s supreme leader had suspended the weapons program in 2003. Enriching nuclear material is just one component of a weapon. A nuclear warhead has to be fitted onto a ballistic missile capable of surviving reentry into Earth’s atmosphere and landing on its target—not a trivial feat of engineering.

One of the chief reasons to doubt that Iran was enriching uranium in order to build nuclear weapons was the disastrous failure of the US intelligence apparatus in the runup to the Iraq war in 2003:

The case for invading Iraq in March 2003 was built on three basic premises: that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD); that it was developing more of them; and that it was failing to comply with its disarmament obligations under a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions. All of these premises were based on scraps of unreliable information. None of them was true.

In looking at current developments, I can't help wondering what a Trump-style president might have done in the wake of these revelations. Instead, Dubya appointed a commission. It's hard to pinpoint just what reforms were undertaken, especially considering that Dubya's dad had been CIA director himself and was a senior member of the intelligence-political establishment.

In any case, it was a consensus group of that intelligence-political establishment that released a letter on October 19, 2020 claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation". This claim turned out to be as trustworthy as the same establishment's claim that Saddam Hussein was building WMDs, and the letter was signed by individuals who had been members of that same group, still with that unwarranted prestige.

At the start of his current term, Trump announced:

In the closing weeks of the 2020 Presidential campaign, at least 51 former intelligence officials coordinated with the Biden campaign to issue a letter discrediting the reporting that President Joseph R. Biden’s son had abandoned his laptop at a computer repair business. Signatories of the letter falsely suggested that the news story was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

. . . The signatories willfully weaponized the gravitas of the Intelligence Community to manipulate the political process and undermine our democratic institutions. This fabrication of the imprimatur of the Intelligence Community to suppress information essential to the American people during a Presidential election is an egregious breach of trust reminiscent of a third world country. And now the faith of Americans in all other patriotic intelligence professionals who are sworn to protect the Nation has been imperiled.

. . . Effective immediately, the Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, shall revoke any current or active clearances held by the following individuals: [the order lists the 49 living signatories of the 2023 letter, plus John Bolton].

There's no indication that Dubya took any equivalent action in 2003, but it seems likely had he done so, the country would have been better off. Following Trump's January 20 order, he continued a "purge" of all the intelligence agencies:

Last week, President Donald Trump fired the head of the National Security Agency (NSA) and U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM). Though Trump campaigned on downsizing the federal government, the removal of four-star Gen. Timothy Haugh was one few could have seen coming.

. . . The purge went deeper than just the NSA and USCYBERCOM. Trump also fired at least six members of the National Security Council, which advises the president on national security and foreign policy. On Monday afternoon, the official NSC page on WhiteHouse.gov had a “404 Page Not Found” error message.

. . . These firings spotlighted Laura Loomer’s influence in the White House, and the president has acknowledged that she has almost unprecedented access to him. Not even tech billionaire Elon Musk, named to head the “Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE, has Trump’s ear like Loomer.

. . . It appears that Trump took her suggestion of the officials’ disloyalty to heart without seeking additional insight on the matter.

According to Sundance at Conservative Treehouse, the surviving members of the intelligence-political establishment (the IC) are trying to fight back:

For the sake of urgency I’m going to talk in direct and bold terms about the targeting of Tulsi Gabbard. The IC system is attempting to remove her as a disruptive influence by using Iran as a wedge to get her out, but the issue they have with Director Gabbard has nothing to do with Iran.

CTH approaches this after being very concerned about Tulsi Gabbard’s ability. Not because of intent, but rather we doubted her understanding of the scope of the IC opposition aligned against an effective Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Gabbard started out with these weaknesses, but she learned quickly – grasped the opposition– and has become a transformative force within the Intelligence Community. Director Gabbard’s recent efforts within the Intelligence Community Inspector General office is another feather in her cap of competence. Gabbard is now a threat.

. . . If President Trump allows the Brutus crew in his orbit to isolate, ridicule and marginalize Tulsi Gabbard, he will be putting a significant part of his administration at risk. This is the Six Ways from Sunday crowd.

The proof of the pudding is going to be who turns out to have been right in the question of how accurate the intelligence estimates on Iran were. Trump and his inner circle have purged the organs of state security and replaced them with what they feel are trustworthy people, and Trump is making a big gamble that this was the right move. My guess continues to be that Trump is good, but more important, he's lucky. It's better to be lucky than good.

The Continuing Problem Of Jericho

In a 2000 article at Catholic Herald arguing for the immorality of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Edward Feser cites Gaudium et Spes 80:

Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.

But the Almighty approved of Joshua taking this same action after the walls of Jericho came down (Joshua 6:20-27):

20 As the horns blew, the people began to shout. When they heard the sound of the horn, they raised a tremendous shout. The wall collapsed, and the people attacked the city straight ahead and took it.

21 They observed the ban by putting to the sword all living creaturese in the city: men and women, young and old, as well as oxen, sheep and donkeys.

. . . 24 The city itself they burned with all that was in it; but the silver, gold, and articles of bronze and iron they placed in the treasury of the house of the LORD.

25 Because Rahab the prostitute had hidden the messengers whom Joshua had sent to reconnoiter Jericho, Joshua let her live, along with her father’s house and all her family, who dwell in the midst of Israel to this day.

26 On that occasion Joshua imposed the oath: Cursed before the LORD be the man who attempts to rebuild this city, Jericho. At the cost of his firstborn will he lay its foundation, and at the cost of his youngest son will he set up its gates.

27 Thus the LORD was with Joshua so that his fame spread throughout the land.

The city was burned with everything in it; all the living creatures, men, women, infants, and animals, were put to the sword; the land itself was cursed. Sounds a lot like a nuclear attack to me. Under certain circumstances, God not only approves of it, he orders it to be done. But in the case of the cities of the plain, God does it directly Himself (Genesis 19: 1-29):

23 The sun had risen over the earth when Lot arrived in Zoar,

24 and the LORD rained down sulfur upon Sodom and Gomorrah, fire from the LORD out of heaven.

25 He overthrew those cities and the whole Plain, together with the inhabitants of the cities and the produce of the soil.

26 But Lot’s wife looked back, and she was turned into a pillar of salt.

27 The next morning Abraham hurried to the place where he had stood before the LORD.

28 As he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and the whole region of the Plain, he saw smoke over the land rising like the smoke from a kiln.

29 When God destroyed the cities of the Plain, he remembered Abraham and sent Lot away from the upheaval that occurred when God overthrew the cities where Lot had been living.

At one point, I posed the question to Feser in a comment on one of his posts about the immorality of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks asking how he reconciled his view (which had in fact changed recently as of 2020) with the destruction of Jericho, but he didn't answer. In fact, going over some of his posts on this subject, visitors have asked him to explain why he's changed his view, and I have yet to find an answer to those comments, either.

Certainly a good Thomist is going to say that, first, God is perfect. His instructions are perfect, and His own actions are perfect. Scripture is inerrant; neither the stories in Genesis nor Joshua are incorrect. The only way I can reconcile this is with the moral of Job, as outlined in Catholic Answers:

There is a happy ending, and the moral is quite clear, even if Job does not grasp it. But he does realize now that there is no reason why God should have to account to anyone for what he does. Man cannot grasp the mysterious ways of divine providence. In permitting the innocent to suffer and even die and in not punishing the evildoer during his lifetime, God has his reasons, even if man cannot grasp them.

The bottom line is that, contra Just-war hardliners, things aren't that cut and dried. CCC 2309 on one hand lists "rigorous conditions for moral legitimacy", but at the same time, it provides for "evaluation of these conditions" within the "prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good". Would nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki be less grave than the evil to be eliminated, to wit, the millions that would be killed, including innocent civilians, in a land invasion of Japan?

The just-war hardliners propose some sort of negotiation that might have averted both -- but wouldn't that necesssarily involve other compromises like, for instance, allowing Japan to retain some territories it had conquered in China, South Asia, Manchuria, or Korea? It needs to be recognized that any such compromise would allow Japan to continue genocidal policies comparable to those Hitler had imposed in Europe. This is the same fantasy that the Operation Valkyrie conspirators against Hitler entertained -- that eliminating Hitler would allow a negotiated end to the war that might let Germany keep Poland, say, while withdrawing from Russia and France.

But as it applies to Trump -- so far, Trump hasn't ordered a thing. One comment on social media sticks with me: "Trump is giving a lesson in how to actually use our power without resorting to war". Certainly what he's doing now lies well within the province of prudential judgment, including projecting the idea that he might in fact behave irrationally.

Let's Acknowledge That Trump Is A Smart Guy

I ran into an interesting take on Trump at the G7:

A G7 assembly with a final day invitation list that brought Australia, Mexico, Ukraine, South Korea, South Africa, India, the United Nations and the World Bank into it. Why? Because President Trump, that’s why.

U.S. President Donald Trump smartly exited the G7 assembly a day early, he departed just before the crowd of interests arrived. If we drop the pretending we all know why Canada invited them and these nations came running – Tariff$!

He was supposed to have sideline meetings with Ukraine's Zelensky and Mexico's Sheinbaum. We know he was able to avoid meeting Zelensky by leaving early; whether he met with Sheinbaum is uncertain, but he would have had little to say to her in any case -- the Mexicans who are leaving the US voluntarily far outnumber those formally deported, and this will diminish remittances to folks back in Mexico no matter what.

This all says to me that Trump is playing a bigger game than the news cycle recognizes. He left the G7 ostensibly to follow pressing developments in Israel and Iran, but we shouldn't be too sure of that. He may not have been thinking about Iran at all when he left the G7. When he said, “The Wall Street Journal has No Idea what my thoughts are concerning Iran!” I think he meant more than he was explicitly saying.

Consider that over the past several days, his remarks on Iran have been all over the landscape. On Tuesday, he posted UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER, which gave Edward Feser the vapors:

When a country tells an enemy’s government and citizens that it will settle for nothing less than their surrender with no conditions at all – thereby putting themselves entirely at their foes’ mercy – they are obviously bound to fight more tenaciously and brutally, which will tempt the threatening country to similarly brutal methods of warfare in response.

. . . As they routinely do, Trump’s defenders may suggest that his words should not be taken at face value, but interpreted as mere “trash talk” or perhaps as exercises in “thinking out loud” rather than as final policy decisions. But this helps their case not at all. War is, needless to say, an enterprise of enormous gravity, calling for maximum prudence and moral seriousness. Even speaking about the possibility must be done with great caution. (Think of the chaos that could follow upon trying quickly to evacuate a city of nearly ten million people, even if there were no actual plan to bomb it.) A president who is instead prone to woolly thinking and flippant speech about matters of war is a president whose judgment about them cannot be trusted. (And as I have argued elsewhere, he has already in other ways proven himself to have unsound judgment about such things.)

Yet by yesterday, he extended Iran's deadline for negotiations, which he'd earlier strongly implied had expired after 60 days when Israel attacked Iran on June 13, by another two weeks (or maybe not):

“Based on the fact that there is a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place in the near future, I will make my decision of whether or not to go within the next two weeks,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday, reading a statement from the president to reporters.

Reuters has finally figured out that Trump's strategy is to keep everyone guessing:

President Donald Trump kept the world guessing about whether the United States will join Israel's bombardment of Iranian nuclear sites as the Israel-Iran conflict entered its seventh day on Thursday. Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump declined to say if he had made any decision on whether to join Israel's campaign. "I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do," he said.

Trump in later remarks said Iranian officials wanted to come to Washington for a meeting and that "we may do that." But he added, "It's a little late" for such talks.

. . . Asked if he thought the Iranian government could fall as a result of the Israeli campaign, Trump said: "Sure, anything could happen."

Referring to the destruction or dismantling of Iran's Fordow nuclear enrichment center, Trump said: "We're the only ones that have the capability to do it. But that doesn't mean I'm going to do it - at all."

This reminds me again of Henry Kissinger's negotiating strategy with the Soviets: warn them that Nixon is unstable and could fly off the handle at any time, and Kissinger is the only one who can control him -- but if the Soviets do something Nixon thinks is extreme, it could set Nixon off even beyond Kissinger's ability to reason with him. This appears to have succeeded.

I'm not sure who Edward Feser thinks has sound enough judgment to negotiate with the Iranians, unlike Trump. Biden? He might not necessarily remember Khamenei's name. Obama? He sent pallets of cash to Iran that financed their nuclear program. The only alternative that comes to mind is Mitt Romney, whose demeanor would be calm, stable, and deliberative, but I have a feeling the ayatollahs would interpret that as namby-pamby.

I saw a comment on YouTube that wondered why everyone is focused on the deeply dug nuclear facility at Fordow. Why would Israel or the US be going to such trouble to telegraph their intentions, letting the Iranians focus on the idea of a bomber strike there with bunker busters? Doesn't this sound like strategic deception? They must actually be planning something else.

In any case, there are several lessons to be learned from Truman's strategy that led to Japan's surrender in 1945. The Potsdam Declaration of July 26, 1945, issued two days after the successful testing of the atomic bomb, renewed a call for Japan's "unconditional surrender", but it mentioned the term only once, and contrary to prior statements, it made no mention of the emperor's status.

The short-lived interim Secretary of State Joseph Grew had advocated for retaining the emperor as a constitutional monarch. He hoped that preserving Hirohito's central role could facilitate an orderly capitulation of all Japanese troops in the Pacific theatre. Without it, securing a surrender could be difficult. Navy Secretary James Forrestal and other officials shared the view.  Allied intentions on issues of utmost importance to the Japanese, including whether Hirohito was to be regarded as one of those who had "misled the people of Japan" or even a war criminal, or alternatively, whether the Emperor might become part of a "peacefully inclined and responsible government" were thus left unstated.

The Japanese were fully aware of the apparent movement in the Allied terms reflected in the declaration, and some in the government interpreted this as meaning a military surrender without the removal of the emperor. However, it was the atomic bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki that drove both the emperor and a cabinet majority to the view that, provided the Allies agreed to retain the emperor, Japan would surrender.

Thus a careful carrot-and-stick approach, including the actual detonation of atomic bombs, tempered by the tacit application of a few actual conditions to the term "unconditional surrender", brought an end to the war, something hard line just war theorists like Edward Feser apparently don't acknowledge.

It seems to me that Trump is acting very much in the spirit of both Truman and Nixon-Kissinger, allowing hmself a great deal of leeway to deal with circumstances as they arise, while on the other hand leaving the level of his actual cooperation with Israel unstated and uncertain from both a domestic and foreign policy point of view.

Bishop Strickland On Israel And Just War Doctrine

In the YouTube embedded above, Bp Joseph Strickland uses just war doctrine, as partly outlined in CCC 2309, to, question the moralty of Israel's attacks on Iran. He cites it at 2:10:

"The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration." That's from the Catechsm of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2309.

But then he departs from the Catechism and never quite comes back to it:

A preemptive war, a war launched not in defense but in anticipation, is not a just war. As Pope St John Paul II said before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, "War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity," from his address to the dioplomatic corps, January 13, 2003. And Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger, with clarity warned that the concept of a preemptive war does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. . . . A nation does not have the moral right to wage war simply because it suspercts it might be attacked.

I've been looking carefully at the arguments pro and con for both Israel's right to attack Iran starting on June 13 and the justification for any US direct military assistance in that and potential succeeding attacks, although we must acknowledge that the overall strategy behind the attacks, which were timed to begin immediately after the expiration of Trump's 60-day deadline for negotiations to conclude, was clearly worked out in collaboration with Trump from the start.

For now, Bp Strickland's attempt to use just war doctrine against Israel leaves me unconvinced. His unstated assumption is that the Israel-Iran conflict began on June 13 with Israeli aerial attacks on Iranian air defenses and nuclear facilities. However, the conflict between Israel and Iran has been an ongoing proxy war for decades, something Wikipedia acknowledges with an entry on Iran-Israel Proxy Conflict.

While this conflict has existed since the Iranian mullahs seized power, its current phase dates to October 7, 2023:

In the weeks since the Hamas massacre on October 7, pundits have debated whether or not Iran helped Hamas develop the plan for the terrorist assault and if Iran had foreknowledge of the attack. Citing a Hamas source, the Wall Street Journal reported that Iran helped plot the attack and that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp gave it the go-ahead at a meeting in Beirut. Another Journal report claims that in the weeks leading up to the assault, hundreds of Hamas and other Islamist militants received specialized training in Iran. . . . Ultimately, the details of Iran’s role in the plot itself will emerge. But this much is already clear: Iran has funded, armed, trained, and provided intelligence to Hamas for decades. Though Hamas has multiple income streams, funding from Iran has been especially important for the group’s military and terrorist structures.

In other words, the June 13 attack isn't something that emerged de novo between parties that had previously been at peace like, say, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. As of May 2024,

Senior Iranian military officials are developing concepts for destroying Israel without having to defeat the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Iran recognizes the technological superiority of the IDF and the risk that an overt war could draw in the United States, which Iranian leaders desire to avoid. . . . Their thinking proceeds from the theory that destabilizing Israel would cause Jewish citizens to flee Israel and end the long-term viability of a Jewish state in Israel.

So I'm not entirely on board with the idea that the June 13 attacks created an entirely new, preemptive state of war. Instead, Israel since its founding millennia ago has been in a defensive posture vis-a-vis its surrounding states, something current Israeli leadership continually cites.

But there's another problem with the Biblical context of the Almighty's purpose for Israel. In Numbers 13, God tells Moses to send spies into the Promised Land to evaluate its suitability. They return and report that it certainly is suitable, but they'll have to fight the current inhabitants, and they're not sure if they want to do that. The upshot is that Moses hesitates. In Numbers 14, God condemns Israel to wander in the wilderness for 40 years, one year for each day the spies spent in Canaan, for its unwillingness to follow God's plan.

So then we eventually come to the Siege of Jericho, which is definitely not part of a defensive war on Israel's side -- Israel instead is belatedly trusting God's instructions. Jericho amounts to a major conundrum for supporters of just war doctrine, especially for those who argue that the atomic bombs used against Japan weren't justifiable -- except that the destruction of Jericho was an event comparable to a nuclear blast:

Following God's law, the Israelites killed every man and woman, the young and the old, as well as the oxen, sheep, and donkeys. Only Rahab [a Canaanite prostitute who hid two Israeli spies], her parents, brothers and all "those who belonged to her" were spared. They were incorporated into Israel. Joshua then cursed anybody who rebuilt the foundations and gates, with the deaths of their firstborn and youngest child respectively. This was eventually fulfilled by Hiel the Bethelite under King Ahab's reign.

I asked the web, "How does the Siege of Jericho conform with just war doctrine?" and couldn't find a single specific link that gave me a satisfactory answer. However, "AI" replied,

The question of how the siege of Jericho conforms with Just War Doctrine is complex and often debated. Just War Theory is a framework that outlines ethical and moral principles for judging the justification of going to war (jus ad bellum) and the methods used in war (jus in bello).

. . . The conquest of Jericho is often described as a "holy war". This suggests a divine mandate rather than a war fought for typical "just" causes like self-defense or correcting a grave injustice.

. . . God's plan for conquering Jericho involved unconventional actions, such as marching around the city and the collapse of the walls through divine intervention, rather than conventional military tactics.

. . . Some interpretations might argue that the divine command to conquer Jericho establishes a unique context where standard Just War principles may not apply in the same way.

. . . The destruction of Jericho was also seen as a way to prevent the Israelites from being corrupted by the "outsiders" and their practices. This could be seen as a form of preventative action, which is a consideration in Just War Theory.

Not too bad for AI, is it? But didn't Bp Strickland just say that no preemptive war is just? I went back to searching the web and found an essay that discusses the problem in relation to Aquinas (who, however, never directly addressed just war in relation to Jericho):

Ruling out anticipatory defense in various modes confounds morality and practicality, entailing a cure worse than the disease. Instead, prudence as St. Thomas Aquinas envisaged it—the cardinal virtue of right reason about right things to be done—ought to determine whether or not to use force sooner rather than later in accordance with the other criteria for jus ad bellum Aquinas stipulates: rightful authority, just cause, and right intention. Aquinas maintains a wise silence on the question of precisely whether or when force should be used sooner rather than later. So should we.

. . . Aquinas’s formulation of just war theory grounded in the cardinal virtue of prudence should loom large in any calculation of when, how, for what purposes, and to what effect the United States should wage war.

Whether the United States resorts to force sooner rather than later should be a prudential judgment, not a categorical one.

And this brings us back to CCC 2309, a part that Bp Strickland doesn't cite:

The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

I read the whole meaning of CCC 2309 to say that although all four conditions for legitimate defense must be met, there is nevertheless room for evaluation on the part of civil and military authority.

So far, I'm leaning toward a position that it's by no means clear that the current phase of the Iran-Israel conflict is any sort of discrete, anticipatory attack on Israel's part. The justification and the proper tactics lie within the prudential judgment of US and Israeli leadership. Every current indication is that these issues are under thorough debate within US leadership in particular, and President Trump appears to be carefully weighing arguments from all sides.

Fewer Illegals, Lower Murder Rate, Higher Wages?

I was intrigued by a recent observation that this year, the US may have its lowest murder rate ever.

Answering this question starts with identifying the previous record low rate. The current record low occurred in 2014 when the FBI reported a murder rate of 4.45 per 100,000. That’s slightly lower than the murder rates reported in 2013 (4.53), 1963 (4.58) and 1962 (4.59). Prior to that the FBI didn’t really release national murder estimates with sufficient participation to rely on.

. . . It’s still early in 2025, but murder is down an enormous amount so far. The [Real-Time Crime Index] has it down more than 20 percent through February, fatal shootings are down 14 percent in the Gun Violence Archive, the Major Cities Chiefs Association has homicide down more than 20 percent in the first quarter, and I recently found a greater than 20 percent decline in the 30 cities with the most murders in 2023.

. . . If this decline continues through the Fall then we should seriously start having a discussion about the probability of a record breaking year. Until then, it’s sufficient to be aware of and measuring the possibility of a new record low.

The piece doean't speculate over any cause, it just reports the decline. But this took me back to a question that had been on my mind since I saw an episode of the true crime series See No Evil that aired this past June 3. In the episode, Gabriel Perez, 20, is shot to death at 5:30 AM while sitting on a curb with his skateboard outside a McDonald's in Fargo, ND. The shots were fired from a vehicle that sped away.

The driver was later identified as Miguel J Cooley, who suspected Perez was having an affair with his wife. Perez had been cruising around Fargo all night on his skateboard, which apparently was his sole mode of transportation, and had in fact hooked up with Cooley's wife via phone text not long before. She had agreed to meet Perez outside the McDonald's, which is why Perez was there, but Cooley had discovered the texts on his wife's phone and met Perez outside the McDonald's instead and shot him.

While the show portrayed the detectives solving the crime, it left many questions unanswered, not least of which was how Mexicans wound up in Fargo, ND, about 100 miles from the Canadian border. Perez's family described him as a "goofy" sort of guy with a sense of humor, but gave little explanation of why he spent his nights roving around Fargo on his skateboard and how he might have earned a living.

The episode was equally silent about Cooley, who lived with his wife in Moorhead, MN. They had a car, which was more than Perez had, but again, we're told nothing of their nationality, occupation, or how they all managed to be up to all sorts of mischief so early in the morning.

Because the first link above is seemingly so reluctant to speculate on why the US murder rate has been plunging so drastically, I'm forced to make my own associations: I suspect that people who otherwise might be in places like Fargo, ND, spending the early hours of the morning on skateboards arranging trysts outside McDonald's and getting blown away by jealous husbands are instead leaving the country in significant numbers.

A atatement from the White House yesterday reported another positive trend:

In President Donald J. Trump’s first five months in office, real wages for hourly workers have seen their largest increase under any administration in nearly 60 years — and we’re just getting started with pro-growth, pro-prosperity policies that finally put America First.

Blue-collar workers have seen real wages grow almost two percent in the first five months of President Trump’s second term — a stark contrast from the negative wage growth seen during the first five months of the Biden Administration.

“The only other time it has been this high … was during President Trump’s first term,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said in an interview with the New York Post.

From Stephen Kruiser at PJ Media:

The only semblance of an argument that the Democrats have ever had about illegal immigration is that the illegals are here doing the jobs that Americans won't do. Because of the historical lack of will to undertake the task of mass deportations, it was an argument that was difficult to disprove.

. . . The notion that illegal immigrants became a significant part of the labor pool in the United States because Americans just decided to stop working is absurd. American workers were replaced with cheaper options, plain and simple. Employers got addicted to their off-the-books, substandard-pay laborers. It never had anything to do with concern for illegal immigrants or the lack of available American workers.

. . . A restaurant just up the street from me was hit with a big ICE raid a couple of months ago and lost so many workers that it had to shut down for several days. It's been up and running just fine since then, though. It even got a new paint job. Given the fact that the place was under ICE scrutiny, I can't imagine that the owners went out and hired a bunch of illegals in order to reopen.

Via the Washington Examiner:

Another 2024 top pollster has recorded an approval rating high for President Donald Trump, the latest in a trend showing that liberal attacks are bouncing off a political Golden Dome surrounding him.

InsiderAdvantage, rated the second-best national pollster in 2024, put its mid-June approval rating at a sky-high 54% and its disapproval down to 44%.

This is consistent with Rasmussen.

UPDATE:

The far-left Wall Street Journal estimates that America’s immigrant population has declined by 773,000 since President Trump assumed office in January 2025. The far-left Washington Post puts the estimate of foreign-born workers leaving the workforce at around an even million.