This Is How an Autocrat Goes to War

I never imagined I’d miss being lied to by George W. Bush and his henchmen.

When the Bush administration wanted to go to war with Iraq, it undertook a full-court press to propagandize the American people. Administration officials leaked false information about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which turned out not to exist. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a deceptive presentation at the United Nations. In Congress, many Democrats, succumbing either to relentless public pressure or their own hawkish instincts, joined with Republicans to authorize an invasion.

This mendacious campaign was shameful and despicable, and helped create today’s national atmosphere of corrosive cynicism and nihilistic paranoia. But it was, in retrospect, a tacit acknowledgment that public opinion mattered, that a president couldn’t start a war without convincing Americans it was necessary. It was a manipulation of democratic deliberation rather than a negation of it.

Compare that episode with Donald Trump’s threatened war with Iran. On Wednesday, Axios’s well-sourced reporter Barak Ravid warned, “The Trump administration is closer to a major war in the Middle East than most Americans realize. It could begin very soon.” America has undertaken the largest air power buildup in the region since the Iraq war. Outlets including The New York Times have reported that the military has given Trump the option to strike as soon as this weekend.

Not only has Congress not authorized such a war, but it has barely even debated it. The administration has not bothered to explain, either to Congress or the American people, why it might bomb Iran or what it hopes to achieve. “There haven’t been any briefings about a military strategy,” said the Democratic representative Ro Khanna, who is working with his Republican colleague Thomas Massie to force a vote on an antiwar measure.

Most reporting indicates that the White House is planning for a campaign far more intense and sustained than last year’s bombing of Iran or the abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. But we don’t know if Trump and his team are after regime change, and if they are, what they think comes next. This is how an autocracy goes to war, without even a pretense that the consent of the governed matters.

At the center of the conflict between America and Iran is Iran’s nuclear program, which Trump claims he destroyed eight months ago, at the close of Israel’s 12-day war. Back then, a report from the Defense Intelligence Agency found that America’s bombing campaign set Iran’s program back by less than six months. But to this day, a page on the White House website proclaims, “Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise Are Fake News.” The administration apparently feels no need to justify a potential war to end a program that it claims it already eliminated.

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Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment.

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