JD Vance once called Trump ‘cultural heroin.’ The Iran War proves he was right.

Ten years ago, then-San Francisco resident JD Vance wrote a column about his upbringing in rural Ohio. It was a stark contrast to the West Coast life he and his wife, Usha, had built through hard work and education. Vance lamented the opioid crisis that had ravaged his home and the economic, social, and moral ails that preceded it. I could relate, I too had gone to college in Ohio and there was a massive change in smalltown America over the years, one that plenty of politicians refused to address. Except one.

It’s been known that Vance wasn’t always the MAGA darling he now is. He was very famously a “Never Trump” guy. I’m not here to bash him for changing his views — his ascent to political relevance was directly tied to his acceptance of President Trump and his MAGA movement. However, Vance now finds himself at a crossroads.

A Marine veteran and an Iraq War veteran like me, he has long been critical of the America’s love of forever wars. Yet now he also has to be a cheerleader for a conflict that he knows could turn into another Middle Eastern quagmire. He knows because he predicted it. In fact, if you look at the entirety of Trump’s second term so far, Vance looks a lot like Nostradamus.

“To every complex problem, he offers a simple solution,” Vance once wrote. That perfectly sums up how Trump has dealt with a myriad of issues. Free trade wasn’t good, so blanket tariffs were the answer with no distinction between ally or foe. Immigration would be solved by yanking people off the streets, Constitution be damned until ICE agents ran face first into the First and Second amendments.........

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