Time to redraw the famous Herblock cartoon with Stalin accusing Finland of attacking the USSR. This time with Trump as Stalin and Denmark's premier. I can think of all sorts of apt lines for Trump, none I'd want my children to see.
Don't you all remember that catchy campaign slogan "One conquest after another"? He is sick and out of control and his enablers are selling out the country by letting him continue. The repetitive, juvenile threats are so tiresome. Could someone tell him that as POTUS he cannot be a "businessman first"? Considering his abysmal performance as a "businessman" he's the last person we should want to be in control based on that background.
Years ago I had a deranged neighbor across the street threaten to kill several of his neighbors (fortunately I was not one of his targets, but it was still quite disturbing). He was arrested and charged with making criminal threats -- a felony. He had a prior arrest record and "freedom of speech” did not work as a defense; he eventually pled guilty in exchange for a reduced sentence of a year in jail.
Anyway, just an example of what can happen to ordinary people who issue criminal threats. It clearly doesn't apply to someone in a position of great power like Trump, who can issue written threats to annihilate entire civilizations without consequence, even though he actually has the means to back it up. Then again he has never been held accountable for any of his crimes ever, which will go down in history as the greatest legal system failure that this country has ever seen.
Will Saletan is one of the main reasons I became a Bulwark+ member. Always succinct and drills right to the problem. Excellent and chilling analysis, even if it makes me extremely depressed.
I know that what follows will send many into an apoplectic rage, but in view of all the hysteria surrounding Tump’s conduct of the war in Iran, a little history is in order.
On February 3, 1945, a combined British/American assault on Berlin killed 25,000 civilians. Ten days later, a similar combined assault created a firestorm that reduced Dresden, a beautiful, medieval city packed with refugees and of virtually no military value, to a burned-out cinder, with civilian dead reliably estimated today anywhere from 35,000 to 50,000. To this day, considerable effort is made to justify the attack, but there is no denying that Americans had initiated a policy of “terror bombing,” as noted at the time by the St. Louis Post Dispatch: “Allied air bosses have made the long-awaited decision to adopt deliberate terror bombing of the great German population centers as a ruthless expedient to hasten Hitler’s doom.” In the Pacific, there were never any qualms about targeting civilians as there were in Europe. Franklin Roosevelt himself approved fire raids on Japanese cities as part of war planning in December 1940. As General George C. Marshall noted in November 1941, “Flying Fortresses will be dispatched immediately to set the paper cities of Japan on fire. There won’t be any hesitation about bombing civilians—it will be all out.” Franklin Roosevelt relentlessly pushed his commanders to bomb Japanese cities with incendiaries. His son and adviser Elliot Roosevelt pressed for bombing Japan “until we have destroyed about half the Japanese civilian population.”
Determined to give Roosevelt what he wanted, the Army Air Force established an “Incendiary Subcommittee” under the Committee of Operations Analysts to analyze the complex problems associated with the use of firebombs against population centers, including the density of incendiaries needed to create a firestorm in a Japanese city and the appropriate percentage of delayed-action, high-explosive and anti-personnel bombs that should be included to ensure maximum casualties among firefighters and other first responders. At Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, a Japanese village was “faithfully reproduced” and then burned to the ground by bombers dropping incendiaries to measure the effort required to raze Japanese population centers. An optimum result of incendiary raids on six Japanese cities was calculated at 584,000 deaths. On the night of March 9-10, 1945, Roosevelt’s efforts came to fruition as 334 B-29s burned out 15.8 square miles of central Tokyo, the most densely populated city on earth, with 2,000 tons of incendiary ordnance, killing some 125,000 people by means of fire and suffocation in a raid engineered as “official policy” to kill in this manner as many as possible. Captain Shigenori Kubota provided a vivid description of Roosevelt’s handiwork:
"The entire river surface was black as far as the eye could see, black with burned corpses, logs and who knows what else, but uniformly black from the immense heat that had seared its way through the area…The bodies were all nude, the clothes had been burned away, and there was a dreadful sameness about them, no telling men from women or even children. All that remained were pieces of charred meat. Bodies and parts of bodies were carbonized and absolutely black…
On some broad streets, as far as one could see, there was an even row of bodies where men, women and children, trapped by the flames, had futilely tried to escape them by laying down in the center of the paving. There were heaps of bodies in school yards, in parks, in public shelters, in vacant lots, and huddled under railroad viaducts."
“CITY’S HEART GONE,” headlined the New York Times on March 11, 1945. “NOT A BUILDING IS LEFT INTACT IN 15 SQUARE MILES PHOTOS SHOW.” This fire raid was just one of many in Japan, which continued until the Army Air Force ran out of incendiaries. This ferocious aerial assault was undertaken as official policy with the full support of the American people. Journalist Henry Wolfe, writing in Harper’s, endorsed this wholesale slaughter in the following terms: “It seems brutal to be talking about burning homes. But we are engaged in a life-and-death struggle for national survival, and we are therefore justified in taking any action that will save the lives of American soldiers and sailors. We must strike hard and with everything we have at the spot where it will do the most damage to the enemy.”
By 1945, Allied strategic bombing had taken the lives of some 650,000 German, 64,000 Italian and 400,000 Japanese civilians, while leaving 7.5 million German and 10 million Japanese homeless. America’s allies suffered terribly as well. More than 70,000 French civilians died under Allied bombing. These figures are particularly impressive when one considers the fact that Americans killed and missing in combat during World War II totaled approximately 400,000. In other words, American military personnel and their allies killed, by bombing alone, at least two civilians for every member of this country’s armed forces who died. However offensive, outrageous, dangerous or heretical you find this, there is no avoiding the fact that Franklin Roosevelt’s official policy of targeting civilians was a gross violation of standards this country explicitly recognized in Article 6(b) of the Nuremberg Charter, which described the “wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity” as “violations of the laws or customs of war” and listed such actions under the heading “WAR CRIMES.”
In Korea, American tactics were consistent with those used during World War II, with artillery and airpower lavishly employed. By late August 1950, B-29s were dropping 800 tons of ordnance a day on North Korea, mostly pure napalm. Between June and late October, they had dropped more than 850,000 gallons. P’yongyang, the North Korean capital, was deliberately reduced to a cinder by firebombing in this manner three times. The dams near P’yongyang, which supplied the water for irrigation systems producing three quarters of the country’s rice crop, were targeted and destroyed. The flash flooding that resulted “scooped clean 27 miles of valley below.…Flood conditions extended as far downstream as P’yongyang, causing considerable damage to the capital city.” Bomb tonnage dropped in Korea exceeded by more than 130,000 tons the total bomb tonnage dropped in the Pacific theater during World War II. By the summer of 1952, Korea was a wasteland. “There was nothing left to bomb,” said Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk And by war’s end, some 20% of North Korea’s pre-war civilian population had been killed.
Say what you want about Trump’s threats, but let’s be honest here. If he decided to carpet bomb Teheran with B-52s and kill 100,000 Iranians in a single night, the worst that could be said is that he behaved exactly as Roosevelt and Truman—those paragons of American statesmanship and virtue—had behaved.
last reply, sorry. so last night early on I began reading about ajax under Truman. some , say well he knew very little about it, then I got distracted and read about the beginnings of Shell or Dutch Shell. Their involvement at one point. So, that led me to Kermit Roosevelt Jr.
as far as Dresden, what a horror. Yes , a superpower or a growing country does things with no mercy, and some greed and turn into powermongers. Still in my mind , I'm still irritated with Great Britain, the cane sugar, Africa ( and French and German and Dutch too , and more like Mr. Rhodes ) And yet, I hold some bitterness also for Italy. Yes, today at this point the U S , the political, the spy agencies bankers etc. what greed and very little accountability.
sorry, I'm so scattered, very tired tonight. just last night I was reading about teddy's great grandson , they called him Kim, was reading about his Dad, and then how got into OSS
work, Kermit Roosevelt Jr. . Churchill is also distracting my brain, Winston fought to keep him in military. but I think it was bitter Lindemann, or roosevelt/churchill both
Dresden should never be forgotten, wish more would read about it. that old excuse we had leftover bombs , yeah right, also Ludlow mine in Colorado, why we do not mix military soldiers with private citizens, that was long before Kent State or Riots,twice in California or in Missouri. I first learned of Dresden long ago and keep learning.
This is what happens when an ignorant idiot is voted into the highest office in the land. Trump has no idea why we rebuilt Germany. Has no idea what happened to Germany after WWI. He is just dumb as a rock but dangerous
Trump has four basic drives: Revenge, bloodlust, avarice, and domination ("winning"). Coupled with proud ignorance, and a life experience that has taught him he is immune to lasting consequences. A 12-year old with unlimited power.
He followed through on Jan 6th. He followed through on empowering Project 2025 and DOGE. He followed through on stealing classified documents. He's following through on federalizing elections even though he's losing. He often leads with his mouth. Many times he follows through. So there's a pattern. TACO is wrong. Its not "always." Its only some times.
Its also important to point out that the words of a President of the United States are often performative, which makes them different form the words of an unelected citizen. Presidential rhetoric are permissive not just persuasice. Presidential words are signals. They can be actionable orders.
Trump’s pissed at NATO because it won’t feed him Greenland. He has no idea what a league of allies for joint defense means at all. To him, friends are to shovel him money.
The U.S. helped rebuild Germany after the depredations of their madman. Hopefully someone can do the same for us somehow- help us relearn morality and human decency.
Notice that those who believe the war is justified have said over and over that we have been at war with Iran for 47 years. Everyone says the same thing and gives the same number of years. Where do you suppose they got that number 47 years?
Iran is not defined by a regime which only exists because in 1953 the CIA overturned a democratically elected government and installed a Shah (their yes man, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi). A puppet who imposed a monarchical autocracy on the Iranian people. It was an egregious act by the US that led to the rise of religious fundamentalism and ultimately to the Islamic revolution of 1979.
1979 was 47 years ago. So the pro war group is saying we’ve been at war with Iran since they rose up and over through the Shaw who we had installed in 1953. How dare they determine what they wanted instead of allowing the US installed leader to continue ??
Once again, US foreign policy incubated a revolution that made the world a more dangerous place.
So why did the US install him? Because the democratically elected government that ousted the Shah in 1951 nationalised Iranian oil for the benefit of the people.
The people of Iran are proud, with deep cultural ties and a history that reaches back thousands of years. They are NOT defined by the monsters for whom the US created a permissive environment to create an Islamic terrorist state. This was the work of the U.S. and British governments, NOT the people of Iran. Once we define a nation by the actions of its leaders, we create the same permissive environment for genocide, just as we did in Gaza and are now witnessing in Lebanon.
The geopolitical fractures we see today are not an accident; they are the result of a declining power attempting to prove its relevance.
WE the U.S., in 1953 overturned a democratically elected leader in Iran, and installed the Shah because the democratically elected leader had nationalized the oil, giving it to the people of Iran, and that was something we could not tolerate
As bad as the Iranian government may be, we have a far worse one here in the United States! Plus trump is doing the bidding of Bibi, and likely Putin. I hope if he lives out his term, he and his disgusting supine cabinet are ALL sent to the Hague and convicted of War Crimes! They all are also responsible for the demise of our country, unless they are stopped! And surely the 2nd branch - Congress - is NOT going to stop him and them!
Why does no one talk about the fact that only the US has used Article 5 or 2 (I’m not remembering which number it is) which activates NATO countries to come to the aid of any country in the treaty. It was after 9/11.
And as we keep saying this is a war of choice and we are the aggressor on a sovereign country.
God damn it, it’s supposed to be the department of DEFENSE not the department of war
We are living under the rule of people acting out their adolescent comic book fantasy that bluster, bombs, and bullying are the secret weapons that all the wimps preceding them were not brave or smart enough to employ. MAD magazine's "What, me worry?" kid.
Time to redraw the famous Herblock cartoon with Stalin accusing Finland of attacking the USSR. This time with Trump as Stalin and Denmark's premier. I can think of all sorts of apt lines for Trump, none I'd want my children to see.
Will, I'm so thoroughly disgusted by trumpy, way back in 2015. but your writing somewhow
soothes me. such a non business man. a brander, a taker.
Don't you all remember that catchy campaign slogan "One conquest after another"? He is sick and out of control and his enablers are selling out the country by letting him continue. The repetitive, juvenile threats are so tiresome. Could someone tell him that as POTUS he cannot be a "businessman first"? Considering his abysmal performance as a "businessman" he's the last person we should want to be in control based on that background.
“Next Conquest?”
How about ya conquer world hunger next!? or your STDs? not another country, you’ll undoubtably screw it up.
Years ago I had a deranged neighbor across the street threaten to kill several of his neighbors (fortunately I was not one of his targets, but it was still quite disturbing). He was arrested and charged with making criminal threats -- a felony. He had a prior arrest record and "freedom of speech” did not work as a defense; he eventually pled guilty in exchange for a reduced sentence of a year in jail.
Anyway, just an example of what can happen to ordinary people who issue criminal threats. It clearly doesn't apply to someone in a position of great power like Trump, who can issue written threats to annihilate entire civilizations without consequence, even though he actually has the means to back it up. Then again he has never been held accountable for any of his crimes ever, which will go down in history as the greatest legal system failure that this country has ever seen.
my thoughts 24 hours after he said it, to me, making a terroristic threat.
Will Saletan is one of the main reasons I became a Bulwark+ member. Always succinct and drills right to the problem. Excellent and chilling analysis, even if it makes me extremely depressed.
Thanks! And sorry for all the depressing news
So, back to Greenland. 🙄
I know that what follows will send many into an apoplectic rage, but in view of all the hysteria surrounding Tump’s conduct of the war in Iran, a little history is in order.
On February 3, 1945, a combined British/American assault on Berlin killed 25,000 civilians. Ten days later, a similar combined assault created a firestorm that reduced Dresden, a beautiful, medieval city packed with refugees and of virtually no military value, to a burned-out cinder, with civilian dead reliably estimated today anywhere from 35,000 to 50,000. To this day, considerable effort is made to justify the attack, but there is no denying that Americans had initiated a policy of “terror bombing,” as noted at the time by the St. Louis Post Dispatch: “Allied air bosses have made the long-awaited decision to adopt deliberate terror bombing of the great German population centers as a ruthless expedient to hasten Hitler’s doom.” In the Pacific, there were never any qualms about targeting civilians as there were in Europe. Franklin Roosevelt himself approved fire raids on Japanese cities as part of war planning in December 1940. As General George C. Marshall noted in November 1941, “Flying Fortresses will be dispatched immediately to set the paper cities of Japan on fire. There won’t be any hesitation about bombing civilians—it will be all out.” Franklin Roosevelt relentlessly pushed his commanders to bomb Japanese cities with incendiaries. His son and adviser Elliot Roosevelt pressed for bombing Japan “until we have destroyed about half the Japanese civilian population.”
Determined to give Roosevelt what he wanted, the Army Air Force established an “Incendiary Subcommittee” under the Committee of Operations Analysts to analyze the complex problems associated with the use of firebombs against population centers, including the density of incendiaries needed to create a firestorm in a Japanese city and the appropriate percentage of delayed-action, high-explosive and anti-personnel bombs that should be included to ensure maximum casualties among firefighters and other first responders. At Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, a Japanese village was “faithfully reproduced” and then burned to the ground by bombers dropping incendiaries to measure the effort required to raze Japanese population centers. An optimum result of incendiary raids on six Japanese cities was calculated at 584,000 deaths. On the night of March 9-10, 1945, Roosevelt’s efforts came to fruition as 334 B-29s burned out 15.8 square miles of central Tokyo, the most densely populated city on earth, with 2,000 tons of incendiary ordnance, killing some 125,000 people by means of fire and suffocation in a raid engineered as “official policy” to kill in this manner as many as possible. Captain Shigenori Kubota provided a vivid description of Roosevelt’s handiwork:
"The entire river surface was black as far as the eye could see, black with burned corpses, logs and who knows what else, but uniformly black from the immense heat that had seared its way through the area…The bodies were all nude, the clothes had been burned away, and there was a dreadful sameness about them, no telling men from women or even children. All that remained were pieces of charred meat. Bodies and parts of bodies were carbonized and absolutely black…
On some broad streets, as far as one could see, there was an even row of bodies where men, women and children, trapped by the flames, had futilely tried to escape them by laying down in the center of the paving. There were heaps of bodies in school yards, in parks, in public shelters, in vacant lots, and huddled under railroad viaducts."
“CITY’S HEART GONE,” headlined the New York Times on March 11, 1945. “NOT A BUILDING IS LEFT INTACT IN 15 SQUARE MILES PHOTOS SHOW.” This fire raid was just one of many in Japan, which continued until the Army Air Force ran out of incendiaries. This ferocious aerial assault was undertaken as official policy with the full support of the American people. Journalist Henry Wolfe, writing in Harper’s, endorsed this wholesale slaughter in the following terms: “It seems brutal to be talking about burning homes. But we are engaged in a life-and-death struggle for national survival, and we are therefore justified in taking any action that will save the lives of American soldiers and sailors. We must strike hard and with everything we have at the spot where it will do the most damage to the enemy.”
By 1945, Allied strategic bombing had taken the lives of some 650,000 German, 64,000 Italian and 400,000 Japanese civilians, while leaving 7.5 million German and 10 million Japanese homeless. America’s allies suffered terribly as well. More than 70,000 French civilians died under Allied bombing. These figures are particularly impressive when one considers the fact that Americans killed and missing in combat during World War II totaled approximately 400,000. In other words, American military personnel and their allies killed, by bombing alone, at least two civilians for every member of this country’s armed forces who died. However offensive, outrageous, dangerous or heretical you find this, there is no avoiding the fact that Franklin Roosevelt’s official policy of targeting civilians was a gross violation of standards this country explicitly recognized in Article 6(b) of the Nuremberg Charter, which described the “wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity” as “violations of the laws or customs of war” and listed such actions under the heading “WAR CRIMES.”
In Korea, American tactics were consistent with those used during World War II, with artillery and airpower lavishly employed. By late August 1950, B-29s were dropping 800 tons of ordnance a day on North Korea, mostly pure napalm. Between June and late October, they had dropped more than 850,000 gallons. P’yongyang, the North Korean capital, was deliberately reduced to a cinder by firebombing in this manner three times. The dams near P’yongyang, which supplied the water for irrigation systems producing three quarters of the country’s rice crop, were targeted and destroyed. The flash flooding that resulted “scooped clean 27 miles of valley below.…Flood conditions extended as far downstream as P’yongyang, causing considerable damage to the capital city.” Bomb tonnage dropped in Korea exceeded by more than 130,000 tons the total bomb tonnage dropped in the Pacific theater during World War II. By the summer of 1952, Korea was a wasteland. “There was nothing left to bomb,” said Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk And by war’s end, some 20% of North Korea’s pre-war civilian population had been killed.
Say what you want about Trump’s threats, but let’s be honest here. If he decided to carpet bomb Teheran with B-52s and kill 100,000 Iranians in a single night, the worst that could be said is that he behaved exactly as Roosevelt and Truman—those paragons of American statesmanship and virtue—had behaved.
last reply, sorry. so last night early on I began reading about ajax under Truman. some , say well he knew very little about it, then I got distracted and read about the beginnings of Shell or Dutch Shell. Their involvement at one point. So, that led me to Kermit Roosevelt Jr.
as far as Dresden, what a horror. Yes , a superpower or a growing country does things with no mercy, and some greed and turn into powermongers. Still in my mind , I'm still irritated with Great Britain, the cane sugar, Africa ( and French and German and Dutch too , and more like Mr. Rhodes ) And yet, I hold some bitterness also for Italy. Yes, today at this point the U S , the political, the spy agencies bankers etc. what greed and very little accountability.
sorry, I'm so scattered, very tired tonight. just last night I was reading about teddy's great grandson , they called him Kim, was reading about his Dad, and then how got into OSS
work, Kermit Roosevelt Jr. . Churchill is also distracting my brain, Winston fought to keep him in military. but I think it was bitter Lindemann, or roosevelt/churchill both
I had the wrong guy. Frederick Lindemann. some say it was one idea he had
they always find a patsy though.
Desmond Morton ? under Churchill ( taking the blame or accurate ? )
Dresden should never be forgotten, wish more would read about it. that old excuse we had leftover bombs , yeah right, also Ludlow mine in Colorado, why we do not mix military soldiers with private citizens, that was long before Kent State or Riots,twice in California or in Missouri. I first learned of Dresden long ago and keep learning.
This is what happens when an ignorant idiot is voted into the highest office in the land. Trump has no idea why we rebuilt Germany. Has no idea what happened to Germany after WWI. He is just dumb as a rock but dangerous
Trump has four basic drives: Revenge, bloodlust, avarice, and domination ("winning"). Coupled with proud ignorance, and a life experience that has taught him he is immune to lasting consequences. A 12-year old with unlimited power.
Its not only his mouth.
He has also followed through.
He followed through on Jan 6th. He followed through on empowering Project 2025 and DOGE. He followed through on stealing classified documents. He's following through on federalizing elections even though he's losing. He often leads with his mouth. Many times he follows through. So there's a pattern. TACO is wrong. Its not "always." Its only some times.
Its also important to point out that the words of a President of the United States are often performative, which makes them different form the words of an unelected citizen. Presidential rhetoric are permissive not just persuasice. Presidential words are signals. They can be actionable orders.
Well done, Will, as usual.
Trump’s pissed at NATO because it won’t feed him Greenland. He has no idea what a league of allies for joint defense means at all. To him, friends are to shovel him money.
The U.S. helped rebuild Germany after the depredations of their madman. Hopefully someone can do the same for us somehow- help us relearn morality and human decency.
GO WILL! Thank you.
Notice that those who believe the war is justified have said over and over that we have been at war with Iran for 47 years. Everyone says the same thing and gives the same number of years. Where do you suppose they got that number 47 years?
Iran is not defined by a regime which only exists because in 1953 the CIA overturned a democratically elected government and installed a Shah (their yes man, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi). A puppet who imposed a monarchical autocracy on the Iranian people. It was an egregious act by the US that led to the rise of religious fundamentalism and ultimately to the Islamic revolution of 1979.
1979 was 47 years ago. So the pro war group is saying we’ve been at war with Iran since they rose up and over through the Shaw who we had installed in 1953. How dare they determine what they wanted instead of allowing the US installed leader to continue ??
Once again, US foreign policy incubated a revolution that made the world a more dangerous place.
So why did the US install him? Because the democratically elected government that ousted the Shah in 1951 nationalised Iranian oil for the benefit of the people.
The people of Iran are proud, with deep cultural ties and a history that reaches back thousands of years. They are NOT defined by the monsters for whom the US created a permissive environment to create an Islamic terrorist state. This was the work of the U.S. and British governments, NOT the people of Iran. Once we define a nation by the actions of its leaders, we create the same permissive environment for genocide, just as we did in Gaza and are now witnessing in Lebanon.
The geopolitical fractures we see today are not an accident; they are the result of a declining power attempting to prove its relevance.
WE the U.S., in 1953 overturned a democratically elected leader in Iran, and installed the Shah because the democratically elected leader had nationalized the oil, giving it to the people of Iran, and that was something we could not tolerate
As bad as the Iranian government may be, we have a far worse one here in the United States! Plus trump is doing the bidding of Bibi, and likely Putin. I hope if he lives out his term, he and his disgusting supine cabinet are ALL sent to the Hague and convicted of War Crimes! They all are also responsible for the demise of our country, unless they are stopped! And surely the 2nd branch - Congress - is NOT going to stop him and them!
Congress is the 1st branch. Though it is acting like a subservient non-branch.
My bad. Sorry
np. Trump has made all of us a bit ragged.
Why does no one talk about the fact that only the US has used Article 5 or 2 (I’m not remembering which number it is) which activates NATO countries to come to the aid of any country in the treaty. It was after 9/11.
And as we keep saying this is a war of choice and we are the aggressor on a sovereign country.
God damn it, it’s supposed to be the department of DEFENSE not the department of war
What is wrong with these idiot people??????
We are living under the rule of people acting out their adolescent comic book fantasy that bluster, bombs, and bullying are the secret weapons that all the wimps preceding them were not brave or smart enough to employ. MAD magazine's "What, me worry?" kid.