Residents look on and take pictures as flames and smoke rise from an oil storage facility struck as attacks hit the city during the U.S.–Israeli military campaign in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, March 7, 2026. (Credit: Alireza Sotakbar/ISNA via AP)
America has become the imperialist nation which it used to fight.
Over the summer of 2024, I wrote a series entitled “The Child of Two Shadows” which were five articles that traced the roots of modern issues to the activities of the United States in the 1990s as they related to world events. The fourth installment was subtitled: “Mission Accomplished” and covered the War on Terror launched in the wake of September 11th. Dick Cheney was one of the principal architects of the war efforts, and especially of the campaign of falsehoods which led America into Iraq, which destabilized an entire region and led to an estimated one million deaths, the majority of which were Iraqi civilians.
Dick Cheney was not a good man. He was not the kind of leader America should have ever felt comfortable elevating. And unfortunately, the Republican party decided to follow a man with amoral naked ambition with someone who prized loyalty over competence. That led to the woefully unqualified Pete Hegseth to become Secretary of Defense, and set the stage for America’s modern imperial ambitions in places such as Venezuela and Iran.
The Department of Defense’s inaugural DUI hire, Pete Hegseth, is right about one thing: America has lost its warrior spirit. Unfortunately for the current pretender to the office of Secretary of Defense, Hegseth is wrong about everything else. He represents the antithesis of what American military power should be about and speaks to the dangerous trend of America using its might for its own edification instead of as the guardian of liberty it once tried to be.
America the Peacekeeper
The United States is the world’s sole remaining superpower. In the wake of World War II, there was a moral imperative to fight for a nation’s right to self-determination. The Nazi occupation of the majority of Europe, the Soviet-dominated sphere of Eastern Europe, and the collapse of the great powers’ global empires were the defining characteristics of the post-war world. The primary lesson of the 20th century was that the imperialism previously practiced by the great world powers didn’t work. Every great European power lost their overseas empires in the wake of both World Wars. The Soviet repression of the other Eastern Bloc nations turned the overwhelming majority of them against the USSR’s successor state, Russia. The right to a nation’s self-determination became a central pillar of the rules-based international order. Unfortunately, the rules were sidestepped by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. There was never an intentional effort from America to support the self-determination of other nations until after the Cold War was already over.
George H.W. Bush is perhaps an unsung hero of foreign policy in the 20th century. While delicately navigating the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union with a mostly hands-off approach, President Bush intervened in other nations’ affairs in responsible ways. That is not to say that the post-Cold War unipolar world order was necessarily the most just, but the so-called Pax Americana has seen one of the most peaceful periods in human history overall. While remarkable, it makes both the conflicts that were allowed to fester much less morally defensible, and it makes America’s current retreat from the responsibilities of its place on the world stage that much more egregious and alarming.
In December 1989, the democratically elected President of Panama, Guillermo Endara, was denied his rightful post by Panama’s military dictator, Manuel Noriega. While Noriega had been an asset to the Central Intelligence Agency before, his actions as the de facto leader of Panama began worrying the United States. Noriega was a complicated figure, to say the least, and his erratic behavior and opposition to democratic forces caught the concern of American leadership. In many ways, preventing Endara from taking office was the straw that broke the camel’s back, especially with the impending handover of the Panama Canal from the United States to the government of Panama.
In George H.W. Bush’s eyes, there was moral authority in the will of the masses. Noriega was actively curtailing democracy and unleashed his paramilitary forces on the protestors. As a result, the United States launched Operation Just Cause. What entailed was an invasion of Panama, the swift ouster of Noriega, and the restoration of Endara’s rightful authority. American troops withdrew in short order, the Panama Canal was handed off to Panama without incident in December 1999 as planned, and Panama today is a powerful economic player in Central America.
Just over a year later, President Bush would authorize the beginning of Operation Desert Storm. This was the cumulative efforts of the world’s largest coalition ever assembled with the express goal of booting Saddam Hussein’s army out of Kuwait, which he had annexed the summer prior. After UN resolutions demanding Iraqi forces leave Kuwait went ignored, the Gulf War began with a month-long air campaign followed by a 100-hour-long ground invasion which resulted in Iraqi forces returning to Iraq. Kuwait was liberated.
In 1992, Bush saw the United States intervene in Somalia during the Somalian Civil War. American forces led a UN task force designed to be peacekeepers, a task which would fall onto the next president as well.
Later in the 1990s, Bill Clinton would step up efforts. The biggest mark against Clinton was a lack of military intervention during the genocide in Darfur. Clinton’s hesitancy to act was a direct result of the Battle of Mogadishu, otherwise known as the Black Hawk Down incident. The deaths of Americans for a failed state were seen as unacceptable to the American people and Clinton withdrew American forces from Somalia following the incident.
As a result of his guilt over not intervening in Darfur, Clinton chose to act when he saw the potential for the ethnic violence being carried out during the breakup of Yugoslavia had the potential to turn into another genocide. Clinton committed American resources, sidestepping the UN to put together NATO bombing missions which stopped the ethnic Serbs from committing genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo in 1995 and 1999 respectively. The 1995 operations lifted the Siege of Sarajevo in early 1996, which had been going on since April 1992.
America took the majority of the 20th century to recognize its role. In that the nation with the greatest military power also has the responsibility to ensure the safety of those who cannot take care of themselves. The warrior mindset that America is lacking is that of its 1990s self. The America willing to put its sons and daughters at risk for the liberty and self-determination of other people. The America that believes in national sovereignty and isn’t enacting imperialist power grabs like it feels
That is the warrior spirit we are so lacking, not only the willpower to do what is hard but the intelligence and integrity to do it right.
The Mistakes of a “Clean” War
America lost its way shortly after Clinton left office in the wake of September 11th. The invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 was completely justified. The Taliban refused to hand Al Qaeda leadership over to stand trial for the murder of 2,977 people and the destruction of two iconic American Landmarks. The initial phase was incredibly successful. The aftermath was not thoroughly thought out. America did not commit the necessary forces to successfully pacify the nation, nor did it provide enough and rebuild the nation. Similarly, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 had ill-defined goals and political operatives making decisions for victories in the public eye instead of practicality.
Trump’s regime today wants simple, clean victories. They want to look tough and win cheap points without doing the work. The Global War on Terror proved that such attitudes only create greater problems. In Iraq, the plan was to cut the head off the snake, and then dissolve the body in a drum of acid in hopes a newer, friendly snake would appear in its place. After Saddam Hussein was deposed and captured in 2003 by Coalition forces, Coalition Provisional Authority chief Paul Bremer ordered the dissolution of the Iraqi Army and the apparatuses of the Ba’athist state as a way to show Iraq was entering a new era. As a direct result, Iraq descended into lawlessness, disorder, and opened the way for lawless killings, sectarian violence, the rise of ISIS, and a conflict which took a million lives for no conceivable reason.
As a direct result of nobody being able to answer why American forces were there, the idea became that the servicemembers were serving for the people next to them. They were failed by political leadership, and it became a cheap justification for a war nobody could understand why it was being fought. Without the sufficient will to win and related willingness to sacrifice in favor of the most optimal outcome, America proved its cowardice.
Russia represents the greatest threat to the stability of the world order. Its barbaric invasion of Ukraine is a signal to every strongman dictator in the world that the established order will allow them to massacre their neighbors and conquer their lands. America has not been wiling to defend Ukraine’s national sovereignty the way it did for Kuwait in 1991. Even with the arguments that it is bad for nuclear powers to end up in a shooting war, that logic was roundly defeated by American aid to the Afghan mujahideen fighters during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Military aid can make all the difference in a fight against a ‘superior’ foe. Ukraine deserves the bare minimum from the United States in the preservation of the current democratic order. In the same way, the people of Iran deserve direct support from the United States against their own oppressors.
So yes, Pete Hegseth is right in that America has forsaken its warrior spirit. He is wrong in that his idiotic methods of firing people who disagree with him, drumming women and LGBT servicemembers, and demanding an end to beards are ways of getting that back. America needs to find the steel gut which led to it being a guardian of the values it claims to protect for a brief shining moment in the 1990s.
During the Cold War, we were dedicated to fighting threats to the American way of life, both at home and abroad. The execution of that idea left much to be desired and should have led to many more prosecutions and convictions than it did. However, America was willing to fight. Willing to sacrifice. Willing to send its sons and daughters into meat grinders to protect the right of self-preservation, as in Korea.
The lesson therein should have been not to forsake war when all other options have failed. But to learn the lessons of wars prosecuted incorrectly which ultimately failed in their goals. Arming Ukraine is a moral imperative. Renewing the military presence in Afghanistan was a moral imperative. Supporting the people of Iran in their struggle against a tyrannical government is a moral imperative. Accomplishing all of these in ways that will bring about the optimal outcome for the people of the nations in question and not just to score an easy political win for America is a moral imperative.
There is no moral imperative to take Greenland. It’s just a betrayal of our closest allies to sate the ego of a spray-tanned madman with no grasp on reality whatsoever. It’s playing out imperialism the way Vladimir Putin is in Russia right now. The same justifications for Russia taking Ukraine are being used to justify America taking Greenland. Similarly, there was absolutely no reason to launch an operation to capture Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela. And America shows its own imperialist nature with the desire to decide who is running Venezuela and making them a vassal state as it does for Vladimir Putin to redraw Russia’s borders around any territory which is rightfully Ukraine’s.
There was actually no reason to start bombing Iran. If Donald Trump truly wanted to support the Iranian people in their struggle for freedom against the Islamic Regime currently oppressing them, then there would have been a concentrated effort to coordinate resistance movements in the country, to arm opposition factions, and to pressure the army into deserting the regime. There would have been efforts to find and support a genuine alternative instead of saying, “We will bomb the regime and then you can topple it. After that, you’re on your own. Good luck!”
If America truly planned to aid the people of Iran in liberating their nation from the regime currently oppressing them, then the United States would have been building relationships with resistance networks. Providing information, logistical support, and supplies to resistance groups is a natural early step in an attempt to overthrow a government. Throughout the 20th century, the CIA’s foreign intervention arms did as such. Politically, America would start putting pressure on military leaders to flip against the political leadership and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The conventional military is not as ideologically motivated as the Revolutionary Guard or the irregular forces like the Basiji, and the support of the military is often the deciding factor in whether a revolution will succeed. In 1979, during the Iranian Revolution which gave the current regime its power, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was only able to come to power when the Imperial Iranian military started deserting the Shah and joining in with the popular protestors.
The current military action in Iran is a hollow attempt by Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth to look cool on the world stage. Capturing Nicholas Maduro was a “clear win” because he was a brutal dictator who ignored democracy. He was captured and not killed. The assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is a move most people would not oppose other than Islamic extremists who get patronage from the Islamic Regime in Iran, or anti-western activists. Even many of the Arab states are not supremely upset by Khamenei’s death because of Iran’s hostility towards their nations.
But it is not Donald Trump’s right to determine how these men stop leading their nations. It is not up to America to decide who should be the next leader of any country. Trump and his own regime will continue assaulting world leaders and destabilizing nations with weaker and weaker justification because every time they have done so in the past has been met with an anemic response.
They will continue pushing the line further and further until it starts a world war.
Imperialism is the Same
Trump’s war in Iran is the exact same as Putin’s war in Ukraine. It is not America’s place to blow up world leaders to appease Donald Trump’s macho fantasies. He does not care about what comes next, just wants to look like a tough guy. In the same way, Vladimir Putin wants to be the man who reunited “Greater Russia” under Moscow’s rule. They are both the same breed of tinpot dictators attempting to secure their self-aggrandizing legacies at the cost of innocents by the tens of thousands, potentially more.
Ukraine is fighting a war against Russia to defend its independence. The ethnic Russian peoples originated in Ukraine. Not having the ancestral homeland under Moscow’s control is a source of great embarrassment for Vladimir Putin. Putin is vain. The fact that Ukraine won its independence from the Romanov Empire during the Russian Revolutions of 1917 and then asserted that independence again after the fall of the USSR in 1991 is a source of even greater embarrassment for Putin.
The insidious part of colonialism in Eastern Europe was how Russia starved Ukraine, and then settled ethnic Russians in Ukrainian territory. Then, it would go onto claim Ukrainian accomplishments, like in the Olympics, as being for the glory of Moscow. Donald Trump is attempting to play out the same logic with Greenland. There is no legal, moral, or pragmatic justification other than “I want it.” It’s an agonizingly common sentiment between both Trump and Putin.
The similarities do not end there either. Putin has Russian security forces openly antagonize his own citizenry, much like Trump is doing with ICE. The historical comparisons with Hitler abound, but Trump is emboldened by the lukewarm response Putin’s own crimes have garnered in recent years. Putin rose to power in Russia by using Russian security forces to launch false flag attacks on his own nation to justify an overwhelming security response in an “internal” affair. Putin’s playbook is to send agitators into a place and have them cause disruption, fear, and destruction. Then he will send in the troops to secure the place and restore order. He famously did it to justify the Second Chechen War in 1999. FSB were caught planting explosives in apartment buildings so the attacks could be blamed on Chechen separatists and justify the invasions.
Donald Trump has “unaffiliated” white supremacists roll into a town, cause a ruckus about illegal immigration, and sends ICE into solve the problem. He wants to incite protests so he can swiftly crush them. It’s page seven of the authoritarian playbook. Right wing agitators have been caught trying to worsen domestic American protests before. False flag attacks can easily work as they force people to respond emotionally, meaning it is not completely inconceivable that Donald Trump orders one such incident to justify an invasion of Canada or Greenland or military action in Mexico to “fight the cartels.”
To Trump, a war with Iran is one the United States would “easily” win and can be used as a springboard to further justify his imperial ambitions for other places in the world. Being able to point to success in Iran is a way for Trump to say “Look at how effective our military is, we can win easily. Which means we should just take Canada or Greenland or Mexico because of how easy it will be. It’s a great deal for us.” It shifts the discussion (and the barrier of risk) for Americans from “is it right that we are doing this” to “is it easy for us to do this” and completely muddles the whole arguments. Trump boils the frog by justifying greater and greater crimes against other nations, and Iran is one step in that process.
Of course, Trump, as with leaders before him, are obsessed with doing things the “easy way” and forgetting that the “easy way” tends to blow up in your face. The United States is to blame for blowing up a school next to a Revolutionary Guard naval base. This was not fog of war, this was not a sad consequence of a justified conflict. Despite the horrific crimes of Iran’s current regime, none of them justified the murder of 175 people, most of them children.
Iran is the victim of American imperialism. Not because we are conducting military intervention, the Iranian people have been begging for support in toppling their authoritarian government for years now. Iranian citizens risked everything to make public pleas to the United States government to continue bombing government facilities to try and continue toppling the regime. Iran is the victim of American imperialism because our haphazard attacks make it that much more difficult for the regime to lose. The slaughter of innocents and the lack of a plan or the willpower to see full liberation through demonstrate that the United States is merely throwing its weight around to appease an ill-tempered manchild behind the Resolute desk. Military action in Iran justifies Trump’s imperial ambitions closer to home in friendlier nations. The use of the military in Venezuela was horrific, despite being a clean, well-executed operation. Now, Trump’s war in Iran has cost American lives and neither he nor the Secretary of Defense care. They say we should prepare to lose more. To sacrifice more Americans in service of the temperamental whims of a petty tyrant. Trump will not stop with Iran. Greenland, Canada, Mexico, and anywhere else Trump sees fit to use the American military as he pleases are next. Much like how Putin did not stop at Chechnya, he took territory in Georgia in 2008, took Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea in 2014, and attempted to take the rest of Ukraine in 2022.
The current military action in Iran is a predecessor for more involved intervention. A ground invasion is now on the table. It will leave millions dead, a beautiful nation with an incredible culture and history devastated, and the situation no better off for anyone involved. Americans will get killed for no justifiable gain. Just as they were in Iraq. Just as they were in Afghanistan. Just as Russians are getting killed for no gain in an unjustified and illegal war in Ukraine. The leader of the free world has become the same villain as the second-rate mafia state with nukes.
Today’s wars will become the end of the world tomorrow.
Ark of the Lost Angels 
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