Trump Declares War on Iran While He Takes a Dump on the Constitution
By Julie A. Ryan
I’m all for regime change—in the United States.
Trump’s declaration of war on Iran, a country that posed no immediate threat to the U.S., is simply idiotic. There is no logical or beneficial reason for America to attack Iran right now.
While most of America was sleeping, Trump announced: “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.” Trump also flippantly said that American lives will be lost in the war with Iran. Trump’s impulses and his administration’s actions are so disgustingly harmful to the American people and our allies around the world that I am currently having extreme thoughts. But extreme actions require extreme reactions.
In the most extreme abuse of executive power, Trump took a dump on the Constitution in the middle of the night and declared war on Iran without giving Congress a chance to convene and discuss whether the situation was indeed an imminent threat. Trump skirted addressing the War Powers Act that requires Congress to declare war. The president doesn’t legally have the power to engage our country in war, but he did. Trump didn’t meet with Congress because he knew there was no supporting evidence of the need for war with Iran. Trump’s reasons for war keep changing: a desire for regime change in Iran; even though they were in negotiations, Iran is a nuclear threat (because Trump destroyed the nuclear deal with Iran during his first term); a desire for access to cheaper oil. I think the true reason Trump declared war on Iran is that he is impulsively compensating for small body parts by starting a big war, and he ran out of other distractions from the missing documents in the Epstein Files regarding the teenage girl Trump is accused of raping.
If America’s “stupid war” (of which Trump was once against) with Iran is actually about regime change, it is a process that should be addressed carefully and would take years to achieve dismantling existing institutions of political and religious power. A hasty attempt at regime change is likely to result in an even worse regime in Iran as extremists have been waiting in the wings for their shot at power. The only realistic way to accomplish long-term regime change is to have troops on the ground to eradicate the radical groups holding any kind of power. This guarantees Americans will die, which Trump is fine with because he is a draft dodger incapable of empathy for the parents who will lose their American sons and daughters in his impulsive war.
The U.S. Congress, Supreme Court, MAGA supporters, and far-right religious zealots have created this scenario where Trump has the unbridled power to send America into war. It’s illegal for him to declare war alone, but his Operation Epic Fury is fueled by the epically stupid power his political and religious enablers have given him. It is going to take a Republican uprising to drain the energy of the destructive Trump war train because he will not suddenly grow a conscience and stop on his own. Trump is a narcissist obsessed with his own image and will not stop creating shiny objects to distract from the truth about him buried in the Epstein Files. Trump is willing to sacrifice the lives of Americans in an unnecessary war to protect his reputation among his followers and avoid personal accountability.
We Americans have failed ourselves and will probably continue to fail ourselves because many of us suffer from cognitive dissonance. The revolutionary spirit some of us possess simply isn’t enough to overthrow Trump and the political and religious institutions that support him. If there is any country in the world that has the power to liberate us and change the autocratic Trump regime, please intervene in our country’s matters so those of us who understand international relations and long-term consequences can eventually free ourselves from this autocratic tyranny. To any brave country that chooses to accept the mission, your objective will be to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Trump regime, “a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.”
© 2026 by Julie A. Ryan. All rights reserved.
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WHEN LIFE WAS STILL . . . 