menu_open Columnists
We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

Easier To Die, Harder To Vote: The Rigged Architecture Of The Warfare State – OpEd

22 0
22.04.2026

Reports of food shortages on naval ships deployed to the Middle East.

Video footage of disabled military veterans—some in wheelchairs, others leaning on canes—being zip-tied and dragged out of the Capitol Rotunda for staging a peaceful, anti-war protest. Sixty-six veterans were arrested while conducting a flag-folding ceremony in recognition of the 13 military servicemembers who have died so far in Trump’s war with Iran.

A growing number of active-duty military service members asking how to end their service, become conscientious objectors, and refuse unlawful orders.

And a president openly threatening to commit war crimes by targeting civilian infrastructure in Iran—and floating preemptive strikes against Cuba.

This is where we are now.

Almost two months into Donald Trump’s disastrous, unauthorized war with Iran, the United States is in freefall.

The economy is struggling. Inflation and fuel prices are rising. America’s standing in the world is eroding by the day.

The war itself is spiraling—threats one day, concessions the next—as the Trump administration scrambles to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway that had remained stable until Trump recklessly pushed us into this disastrous war.

Meanwhile, the so-called “peace deal” being floated appears worse—for the U.S. and the world—than the nuclear agreement Trump tore up during his first term in a fit of ego and arrogance.

At home, the government is unraveling. Corruption is flourishing.

The constitutional guardrails are gone.

Leadership inside the White House is in disarray.

And Congress—rather than acting as a constitutional check—has chosen blind devotion, competing to outdo itself in displays of loyalty: proposing to carve Trump’s face into Mt. Rushmore, rename airports in his honor, create a “Trump Peace Prize,” declare his birthday a federal holiday, mint a $250 bill bearing his likeness, and even fund research into “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

This is not governance.

And at the center of it all is a man who avoided military service during Vietnam through a series of deferments—four as a student, one for a conveniently diagnosed bone spur—now posturing as a wartime commander, strategist and dealmaker.

The reality tells a far different story about the man steering the nation into war.

Trump—fixated on securing his legacy with a ballroom and a triumphal arch—appears increasingly erratic, unfocused, and unfit for the job assigned to him.

As journalists Josh Dawsey and Annie Linskey report, “The president sometimes loses focus, spending time on the details of his plans for the White House ballroom… Advisers said he has multiple meetings a week on the topic and views himself as the general contractor.”

This is a man woefully unprepared to deal with the many........

© Eurasia Review