There has been much commentary on the dark side of President Trump’s character and the lack of leadership at other high levels of government. These events and the American president's statements should not go unchallenged. His efforts to dehumanize an opponent and trivialize bombing campaigns as they are part of a video game are unfathomable and inconsistent with most of American history. We must never forget that America is killing people, many innocent civilians, with apparently little remorse.
The war in Iran has brought back a memory from when my son was born nearly 20 years ago. A friend of my wife’s, an anthropologist and college professor, sent us a baby gift. It was a CD of music titled “Lullabies from the Axis of Evil.” The term “Axis of Evil” was first used in President George W. Bush’s 2002 State of the Union speech. He was referring to three countries that make up the axis: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Putting aside, for the moment, our complicated relationship with those three countries, the lullabies CD reminds us that, despite our geopolitical differences, these countries are home to human beings. They work, love, eat, drink, and practice religion as we do – and they sing lullabies to their babies.
One of the horrible aspects of the wars in the Middle East is the dehumanization of the victims. In a recent interview with the New York Times, scholar Marc Lynch described this as one of the consequences of the Israeli war in Gaza. “I think the fundamental problem is that we just have an extremely difficult time seeing these people as real human beings, and I think we just do not see them as people with families and lives and complicated motivations,” Lynch said.
Writing in The Fulcrum, David Nevins echoed this thought, criticizing President Trump, who said some weeks ago he might continue bombing Iran “just for fun.” “It reveals an appalling disregard for the human facts of war. A commander-in-chief speaking casually regarding striking a strategic oil hub “for fun” signals something deeper than excess language: a trivialization of war itself,” Nevins said.
It is incumbent on every American, indeed every citizen of the world, to decry this kind of attitude and language. And this is not just a moral argument to save innocent victims’ lives; it’s an argument to save ourselves. Research on the impact on societies committing attacks on others suggests that violence becomes normalized in public discourse, we become less reactive to atrocities, and media coverage loses its shock value.
Yet there are still dim lights in a dark world that give one reason to hope. I recently met Micah Hendler, the founder and musical director for the Jerusalem Youth Chorus, a musical group comprised of Israeli and Palestinian teenagers, spreading beautiful music and a message of reconciliation throughout the world. “Music is more permeable than spoken language in terms of being accessible across boundaries,” Hendler said in an interview. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that music is a universal language. I think that’s an oversimplification, but that being said, it is much easier to bridge even between drastically different musical styles than it is between, say, Cantonese and Wolof (the language spoken in parts of Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania). There’s not very much you can do if you don’t understand a spoken language,” he said.
Micah’s efforts and those of his youth chorus are reminders that bonds can be forged in unusual places, and there is more that unites us than divides us … like singing lullabies to our babies. One of the lullabies from the Axis of Evil is an Iranian song, “Sad Sol,” which translates to “You, My Destiny.” One lyric goes like this: “You’re my destiny / You’re my guiding light / You’re my soul and my treasure / Sleep, my child." I can picture an Iranian mother singing that lullaby to her daughter the night before an American bomb took the little girl’s life.
This argument should not be construed as a defense of Iran, and all the evil it has unleashed on its own people and the world. Yet, let us hope that when America looks back on this war, we cower from the atrocities that we as a nation inflicted on others, and pledge to return to the values we once embraced.
Bradford Fitch is the former CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation, a former congressional staffer, and author of “The Citizen’s Handbook for Influencing Elected Officials."
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.