Strongman Trump’s ‘Forever Wars’ All Come Back to Jeffrey Epstein

Once, we had wars of choice. Today, we have wars of distraction.

Call the catastrophically misguided war in Iran and the blink-and-you-missed-it war with Venezuela the Epstein Wars.

Read more MAGA Candidate Keeps Quiet as Party Breaks With Trump

They were wars conjured up not by generals or seasoned foreign policy advisors but by a frightened old man and his public relations team to distract from a scandal he fears will be his undoing.

Their massive human, economic, and geopolitical costs being undertaken to serve the narrow self-interests of not a nation but that man, the president of the United States.

The facts of what has unfolded to date in these wars make this clear. Trump and his team could not coherently express a rationale for entering into either “military operation.” They offered many possibilities, and spouted many blatant lies, but shifted between them carelessly as if they did not matter.

Because they did not matter.

The leaders of Venezuela were corrupt, criminal even. But they were not terrorists. They are not terrorists. They pose no direct threat to the people or territory of the United States.

Iran was nowhere near acquiring a nuclear weapon. It had no ability to deliver such a weapon. There was no imminent threat and indeed, to the degree to which Iran had moved closer to gaining the ability to manufacture a weapon, it was in large part due to actions taken by the president during his first term, when he tore up the effective, successful nuclear agreement struck during the Obama administration.

The operation in Venezuela began with the murder on the high seas of occupants of small craft the U.S. alleged were trafficking in drugs. We attacked them with no evidence of these alleged crimes. We administered the death penalty to the occupants of the boats without due process. (In some cases, we did so consistent with orders that were in violation of international law and the military code of justice.) When we snatched the leader of Venezuela on a thin legal pretext, we then allowed his regime to remain in place if they would direct some of their oil revenues to us… or to interests identified by the president as beneficiaries. It is still unclear who is making the money produced by these sales, but the nature of the U.S. operation is crystal clear. It too was a crime. It was foreign policy as the mafia would conduct it—a shakedown, an extortion racket.

The attacks on Iran were undertaken under false pretenses, contrary to the Constitution and the letter of the War Powers Act. Civilians and civilian targets were victims in clear violation of international law.

In other words, the president chose to unleash a series of illegal wars to distract from the possible crimes that might be revealed as part of the Epstein investigation. Clearly, he is petrified what the facts of that case will reveal. He has devoted the full resources of the Department of Justice to bury the truth about Epstein. He had the Deputy Attorney General cut a deal with Epstein’s sex-trafficking co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell and ignore the law passed by Congress demanding all files be turned over to congressional investigators. He apparently ordered the serial obstruction of justice, and then he appeared to reward that dutiful DoJ number two, Todd Blanche, with the nomination to be top dog at the agency.

Why go to that trouble if there was nothing to hide? Why take the risk? What could be so grave that it warranted such behavior?

Read more Cost of Living Crisis Forces Both Parents to Work at Record Levels

The president’s behavior has only stimulated interest in the case. Allegations against him made under oath suggested he had committed terrible crimes. The public and members of his own party were turning against him, angered that he did not release the full truth about the Epstein case—as he once had promised to do.

Clearly, trying to bury the case was not working. So he had to try something else…anything else. Indeed, the first of the “Epstein Wars” may well have been the ones he launched against American cities, sending in troops to combat illusory threats, killing U.S. citizens in the process. Spending millions. Depleting the resources that should be used for our defense. Achieving nothing but mayhem and more serial violations of the law.

The Second Epstein War was Venezuela. Epstein War III is this war that Trump is now desperately trying to wind down in Iran. That once, like the invasion of our cities, had backfired. He had sent the global economy into a tailspin, drove up inflation, weakened our alliances, spent tens of billions of dollars, produced devastation that led to the deaths of more than a dozen U.S. troops (we are not sure how many) plus thousands of Iranians and Lebanese citizens, most of them innocent victims.

None of the objectives the U.S. alleged were the reasons for the war were achieved. If there was regime change, it was to replace a bad regime with a worse, more hardline one. Iran’s nuclear capability was not “obliterated” as promised. Neither were Iran’s missile or drone capabilities, nor the effectiveness of its proxy network throughout the Middle East. Rather than weakening Iran, it has emerged with more leverage over the Strait of Hormuz and thereby the global economy. Our alliances are weaker. Iran’s are stronger.

And now, the U.S. seems to be suing for peace, desperate to get out of the war, proposing to pay off Iran in exchange for just talking with us. Indeed, in France this week, Trump actually said that perhaps it was not even worth negotiating about the fate of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpiles; in his view, now that they have promised not to seek nuclear weapons, “the rest of it is irrelevant.” Except, you see, Iran first promised never to seek nuclear weapons in 1966. It repeated that promise in writing in the 2015 accord Trump tore up. Indeed, no one has done more to open the door to and motivate Iranian progress toward the ability to produce such a weapon than Trump. Perhaps someday he will be made a hero of the Iranian Revolution for his efforts.

All this begs the question: If the war was actually important for national security reasons, why accept such a humiliating defeat? Why give up and walk away? Why reward Iran in the process with cash and a stronger position in order to help make it go away?

The only conclusion one can draw is that none of the usual reasons we decide whether to fight or withdraw mattered this time. The war was useful if it distracted from Jeffrey Epstein, and not useful when it became a problem rivaling the Epstein problem.

Trump wants to turn the page. Indications, however, are that his goals remain the same. His next moves may well be the next Epstein War. Cuba has been suggested by the president as a likely next target. Greenland remains a possibility. Even Panama could end up on the president’s hit list. None of these conflicts are in the U.S. interest. All are in service of Trump’s PR agenda and, from time to time, if it can be arranged, his ever-present search for grift.

This man who literally wraps himself in the flag and who, along with his aides, regularly touts their love of the military, views the entire massive U.S. defense apparatus as a prop, a personal plaything, an entity that exists not to defend the country, but rather to defend the president himself.