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President Donald Trump’s unprovoked assault on Iran is the latest phase of a rampage in which the administration is making war and militarism central features of life in the United States. While the Pentagon’s violence has been unavoidable for many people around the world, it has largely been hidden from the view of most of the U.S. population. Not anymore.

The U.S. and Israel opened this war by launching attacks across Iran on the morning of February 28. As of March 3, at least 787 Iranians have been killed, including well over 100 people — mostly girls — at a school in Minab. Iran is now following through on the retaliation that it promised, and has launched missiles toward at least seven countries. At least six U.S. troops have been killed, and with Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing to continue bombing, the war is escalating and expanding.

While brazen, aggressive U.S. military action in the 21st century did not begin with Donald Trump — the current president is simply bringing the unvarnished reality of U.S. militarism into the spotlight. By doing so, he has exposed the deeply unpopular and undemocratic nature of U.S. foreign policy. In this moment, antiwar organizers must seize upon this new awareness and outrage to build movements against escalating U.S. militarism.

Trump’s predecessors were more selective in exposing the public to the machinations of the war machine. For example, former President George W. Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11, and his catastrophic, “shock and awe” occupation of Iraq, were undertaken with extraordinary publicity, such as the speech that he gave under a “Mission Accomplished” banner a mere six weeks after the invasion of Iraq began. But these highly publicized attacks were also conducted alongside covert wars in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Bush established a surveillance and policing architecture that targeted Muslims — both in the U.S. and around the world — but many of its operations were kept invisible to most Americans. Former President Barack Obama escalated and expanded the “war on terror” through drone strikes while attempting to conceal them from the U.S. public. During his presidency, Joe Biden maintained this approach.

Trump is bringing the brutality of U.S. militarism out into the open in the form of a spectacle — combining his expertise in shaping media narratives with his penchant for coercion through violence. But while Trump takes credit for creating the military capabilities that he is putting on display — contrasting himself with his “weak” predecessors — the United States’ capacity for the kinds of violence we are seeing both in our streets and on our screens was built up over decades by previous administrations and Congress’s implementation of vast “war on terror” policies.

As Trump Bombs Iran, We Need to Reckon With the American War Machine

In Trump’s meandering press conference following the U.S. attack on........

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