My tradition on this blog is to take a break (mostly!) from current events sometime in mid- August. Instead, I pre-schedule daily posts based on things I read during the previous year about three of my preoccupations: economics, editing/writing, and academia. With the posts pre-scheduled, I can then relax more deeply when floating on my back in a Minnesota lake, staring up at the sky.

__________________

Economists often use the term “happiness” synonymously with the term “utility,” which in turn is the basis for a basic economic model that people seek as best they can (given the cognitive constraints they face) to maximize their own utility. The connection goes back to the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who in one of the less-famous works of 1776 (overshadowed by the Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations), described the foundations of this theory of utilitarianism in “A Fragment on Government.” (Those of you who have read Bentham will be unsurprised that his “fragment” runs for several dozen pages.) Bentham begins with a “fundamental axiom” and then explains:

It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong … An act’s tendency to promote happiness is what we call its utility; its divergence from this is what we call harmfulness . So it is with actions that are among the objects of the Law: the only way to make a man see clearly the property of them that every man is in search of—i.e. the only way to give him satisfaction—is to point out to him their utility or harmfulness.

Of course, Bentham was not the first to give “happiness” a central role. John Locke in his 1690 An Essay on Human Understanding had made the term central decades earlier. Both “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence and Bentham’s utilitarian axiom of happiness were drawing heavily on Locke, who wrote:

Nature, I confess, has put into man a desire of happiness and an aversion to misery: these indeed are innate practical principles which (as practical principles ought) DO continue constantly to operate and influence all our actions without ceasing … As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness; so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty.

But when Locke was writing, the centrality of happiness was a relatively new idea. Phil Withington tracks it down linguistically in “The Invention of `Happiness,'” an essay published in the 2017 book Suffering and Happiness in England 1550-1850: Narratives and Representations, edited by Michael J. Braddick and Joanna Innes (a reprint of the chapter in working paper form is available here). Withington starts off with a vivid example. Thomas More’s Utopia was published in Latin in 1516. For a century, translations of the work into English did not include the word “happiness.” But then they did. Withington writes:

The word ‘happiness’ is absent from the first English version of Thomas More’s Utopia, which was translated into English from the Latin in 1551 and again in 1556 by Ralph Robinson. ‘Happiness’ remains absent from the next four editions of Robinson’s translation, which was republished regularly to 1639. But when Gilbert Burnet translated Utopia anew from the Latin, in 1684, he used ‘happiness’ no less than nineteen times. What follows looks to explain and contextualize this striking semantic development.

In short, the modern idea of happiness in the English language seems to have been invented in the mid-16th century, latched on to translators like Burnet and writers like by Locke the later decades of the 17th century, and then passed forward to modern economics by way of Jeremy Bentham, Thomas Jefferson, and doubtless an array of others. In modern times, there are self-help books about finding happiness and serious research and policy based on survey data on reported levels of happiness.

But what came before happiness? Translations of Latin works (like More’s Utopia) often used “felicitas (denoting worldly contentment) or beatitude (denoting spiritual fulfillment and redemption).” Other writers uses felicity or blissfulness. But the use of “happiness” was rare. Withington does a deep dive into historical writings from the 15th ot the 17th century and finds:

But taking the story back reveals … that ‘happiness’ has not always been as conceptually stable as contemporary commentators, or indeed historians, assume – that, indeed, it was only in the sixteenth century that the word began to acquire the meanings with which we associate it today. … Happiness’ derived from the Old Norse noun ‘hap’, meaning luck or fortune, was probably in use by the mid-fifteenth century. Before the 1550s the semantics of ‘happiness’ were largely informed by this provenance: the addition of the English suffix ‘ness’ to the adjective ‘happy’ made for a word that indicated the quality and state of hap (i.e. fortune) or the circumstances and phenomena that exemplified such a condition. … But as well as signifying hap, between the 1470s and the 1550s ‘happiness’ was increasingly used to do new semantic work, accumulating connotations that it had not previously possessed … [T]wo other concepts to migrate to ‘happiness’ by the 1550s offer more concrete evidence that the word became an important conduit of classical and patristic ideas into vernacular and spoken English. These were the Greek notion of eudaimonia and the Latin sense of summum bonum: on the one hand, the realization and fulfillment of perfect and ‘natural’ selfhood; on the other hand, the overarching ideal – or ‘sovereign good’ – upon which the good life, the good person, and the good afterlife is based. … The cord between happiness and hap was broken.

By the 1560s, writers were distinguishing between “‘heavenly life, and true happiness’ (Christian ‘blessedness’) and the ‘civil’ happiness (‘felicity’) that was achievable on earth.” Moreover, “happiness” was in some cases explicitly used to refer to the overall good of a society or countrie, and in other cases to refer to the feelings of individuals. The multipurpose meaning of “happiness” has been an issue ever since it became such a broad catch-all term. For example, Locke carefullly warns in 1690 “that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness.” So who decides what happiness is imaginary or real?

Daniel Kahneman (Nobel ’02) was one of the founders of behavioral economics and also one of the early movers in using happiness survey data in economic research. However, later in life he emphasized the complexities of happiness: for example, one might consider happiness in anticipation of an event, happiness when an event occurs, or happiness in remembering an event. For a given individual, these categories of happiness may be quite different. Kahneman said to one interviewer:

I gradually became convinced that people don’t want to be happy … They want to be satisfied with their life. … People don’t want to be happy the way I’ve defined the term – what I experience here and now. In my view, it’s much more important for them to be satisfied, to experience life satisfaction, from the perspective of ‘What I remember,’ of the story they tell about their lives.

In my own mind, Kahneman’s formulation helps to explain why someone might, say, take classes in something where they are a novice (say, dancing or cooking), or serve a hot meal to a large family every day or enter an intense graduate program or work crazy hours at a start-up or train to run a marathon. In the business and stress of the moment, it might be hard to describe those experiences as always and continually “happy.” But they make complete sense if they are part of a narrative you like to tell yourself about your life.

I would not suggest revising the Declaration of Independence to refer to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of satisfaction,” nor rewriting Bentham to say that “it is the greatest satisfaction of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.” But thinking about what people truly want from their lives is at the center of economics and the social sciences. From that perspective, “happiness” can be a useful catch-all term and short-hand as long as one remembers that it is a stand-in for a considerably deeper and historically mutable concept.

The post When Happiness Was Invented first appeared on Conversable Economist.

Does the White House Report Science: A New Golden Age Signal Twilight for Us Global Scientific Leadership?

A new White House report argues that eight decades of science policy that helped make the United States the world’s scientific leader is too bureaucratic, too focused on institutions rather than individual researchers, and too slow to translate discoveries into economic and technological advantages.

Supporters see it as a needed modernization of American science policy. Others argue that it places insufficient emphasis on the universities, laboratories and federal agencies that enable and sustain U.S. scientific leadership.

Research affects health, prosperity, quality of life and national security. The technologies that shape modern life, from GPS navigation and weather forecasting to cancer therapies and cellular communications, all rely on scientific discovery.

The debate raises a broader question: What created American scientific leadership in the first place, and what will be required to sustain it?

Us Didn’t Become a Scientific Leader by Accident

During World War II, Vannevar Bush, who coordinated much of the nation’s wartime research effort, led federal programs that created new technologies such as radar and mass-produced penicillin. In 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt asked Bush to develop a blueprint for how science could contribute to national health, economic prosperity and job creation after the war.

Bush’s 1945 report, Science: The Endless Frontier, established a framework in which government, universities and industry played complementary roles. The federal government would invest in research and scientific talent. Universities would perform research while educating future scientists and engineers. Industry would transform discoveries into products and services.

The model worked.

The postwar research system laid the foundation for innovations ranging from microelectronics and biotechnology to the internet. Its success can be measured not only in discoveries but also in outcomes: scientific leadership, a highly skilled workforce, innovation clusters of new firms centered on universities that discover new knowledge via research, jobs and long-term economic growth.

The United States did not become a scientific superpower by chance. It built institutions that repeatedly generated both new knowledge and new talent.

Why Rethink the System Now?

The Trump administration’s July 2026 report, Science: A New Golden Age, argues that American science policy requires significant reform.

Having spent much of my career at the intersection of scientific research, research management and science policy, I believe that the report raises several important issues that deserve attention. Administrative burden on researchers is real. Technology transfer could be improved. Artificial intelligence is transforming research and innovation. China’s rise as a scientific and technological competitor presents a genuine strategic challenge.

At the same time, the report arrives after a series of Trump administration policy actions that have already begun reshaping universities, federal agencies and federal research funding. The debate is therefore not simply about a future vision. It is also about how current policy changes may reshape the American research enterprise for decades to come.

What the New Vision Misses

The report places heavy emphasis on innovation, commercialization and technology deployment. What receives less attention is how the capacity for future innovation is created and sustained.

Long-term innovation emerges not from isolated projects but from ecosystems in which universities, government laboratories, federal agencies and industry play distinct but mutually reinforcing roles. Many of today’s technologies exist because these institutions invested for decades in ideas that initially had no obvious commercial value.

Moreover, universities and federal agencies do far more than conduct research.

Universities educate the next generation of scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs. They maintain specialized infrastructure, generate new knowledge and support scientific communities that accelerate discovery. Their unique contribution is that they simultaneously create knowledge and develop the workforce that puts knowledge to use.

Federal mission agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, National Institute of Standards and Technology, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Geological Survey, play different but equally important roles. They conduct and support science that informs decisions affecting public health, environmental protection, energy security, economic development and public safety. Many of these activities generate public benefits that market forces alone are unlikely to adequately provide.

Scientific Capacity Takes Decades To Build

Scientific leadership depends on people, institutions, infrastructure and knowledge. These assets accumulate slowly over decades but can be weakened surprisingly quickly.

The current debate is not merely theoretical. Funding reductions, workforce losses and disruptions affecting universities and federal agencies are already reshaping parts of the American research enterprise.

Advocates of these changes argue that resources should be redirected toward faster innovation and greater efficiency. Critics worry that weakening institutions responsible for discovery, workforce development and mission-oriented science will reduce the nation’s long-term capacity to innovate.

Innovation is essential, but it ultimately depends on a continuing supply of new ideas, talented people and organizations capable of sustaining long-term research. Discovery and innovation are not competing priorities. They depend on each other.

America’s Competitors Understand This Balance

Perhaps the strongest endorsement of the postwar American model is the adoption of its core features by international competitors.

China has invested heavily in research universities, scientific workforce development, research infrastructure and technology clusters that connect universities, government laboratories and industry. In several areas of science and technology, China is now rivaling or surpassing the United States.

Scientific competition increasingly involves competition among research ecosystems rather than competition over individual technologies.

A nation that underinvests in scientific capacity while its competitors expand theirs risks losing advantages that took generations to build.

What a Genuine New Golden Age Would Require

A true golden age of American science would not simply preserve the status quo. Administrative burden could be reduced. Technology transfer can be improved. New institutional models deserve experimentation.

If the goal is to sustain U.S. scientific leadership, though, efforts to modernize the research system should strengthen rather than weaken the institutions that produced that leadership. The White House report does not establish federal policy on its own, but it signals how the administration views the relative importance of innovation, technology deployment, universities, federal agencies and industry within the research ecosystem.

Universities remain essential for discovery, workforce development and scientific infrastructure. Federal agencies continue to generate science that directly benefits society through better public decisions. Industry remains indispensable for transforming discoveries into products and services. The challenge is not choosing among these institutions, but ensuring that they remain mutually reinforcing parts of a larger innovation ecosystem.

A genuine new golden age will require innovation, while also sustaining the institutions that generate innovation in the first place.

This article was originally published by The Conversation on August 7, 2026.

“FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS NOT JUST IMPORTANT TO DEMOCRACY, IT IS DEMOCRACY.” – Walter Cronkite. CLICK HERE to donate in support of our free and independent voice.

The post White House Plan for a ‘Golden Age’ of Science Ignores the Structures That Made the US a Scientific Superpower appeared first on DCReport.org.

Smithsonian Exhibit Honors a Woman From the Civil Rights Era. How Long Will It Survive?

The Trump administration has been busy scrubbing from public sites the identities and accomplishments of Black, Brown, Asian, indigenous, and female Americans while whitewashing our history of enslavement.

That makes it surprising that a new exhibit in our nation’s capital honors a woman who was crucial to the 1963 Civil Rights demonstration in Washington, where the reverend Martin Luther King, standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, delivered his stirring “I have a dream” speech.

The woman being honored is Dorothy Height.

Height sat close to Dr. King during that peaceful protest 63 years ago. However, she did not speak. Indeed, only men spoke that day.

How long will this exhibit honoring a Black woman survive? Will it remain up through the end of the year, as announced on Aug. 10 by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum?

Height’s significance within the male-dominated civil rights movement was so crucial that she became known among supporters as the “godmother” of the movement.

That Height sat silently illuminates a long-running conflict within the Civil Rights movement that was apparent in a 19th Century dispute between two famous Rochesterians, the suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony and the abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass.

In 1869, Douglass supported the proposed 15^th Amendment, which extended voting rights to Black men. Anthony (and her colleague Elizabeth Cady Stanton) opposed the amendment as written because it excluded women.

Like the little-known Bayard Rustin, Height was one of the handful of march organizers. There was palpable fear back then that the event would turn into a bloody mess because of threats of violence from segregationists, who operated openly and with the support of some of the most powerful senators and representatives.

But the protest came off pretty much without a hitch because of the diligence of Height, Rustin, and a few others. (Rustin’s central role was kept largely in the closet because he was gay.)

We’ll let you know if the exhibit gets taken down early.  If you are in or visit Washington, it would be smart to see it, especially if you bring children and young adults along.

We hope DCReport readers and those who watch our YouTube videos will alert us if they become aware of efforts to close or change this worthwhile exhibit about an unsung hero of American hopes and dreams.

“FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS NOT JUST IMPORTANT TO DEMOCRACY, IT IS DEMOCRACY.” – Walter Cronkite. CLICK HERE to donate in support of our free and independent voice.

The post Will Trump Allow This? appeared first on DCReport.org.

Tracy and I were sitting on the couch last night just after the clock struck midnight marveling that we had been married for five years and together for a total of eleven. The words “time flies” flew out of one of our mouths, I’m not sure whose, it doesn’t matter. The better phrase for the passage of time at this point in our lives is probably “time disappears,” because we so quickly lose track of it.

I told Tracy that driving back from the store the other day, it occurred to me how happy I am with the regularity of our lives. Each day that passes is pretty much like the the one before it. We get up, we make coffee, we feed the animals — the cats and dog inside, the squirrels and birds outside — we have some yogurt and I have toast, and we sit down to peruse the news of what happened since we went to bed the night before. Occasionally, one of us will call across the room to the other, asking whether we had seen a story about a court victory or loss, or a photograph of some version of excess or another, or maybe a YouTube video of a cat that has begun nursing a baby possum rescued from a roadside.

Once a week or so, we’ll go to the diner for lunch, and then each and every day, we take a nap, arising in time for me to start complaining that I haven’t come up with a topic for a column, with Tracy inevitably reminding me that I had written something down that she told me to make a note of earlier, and wasn’t that enough for a column?

The inside animals get their evening feeding from Tracy, and she sits down to make notes for her own column, or finishes collecting photos and writing about them on Substack, and I start writing about the subject I had been reminded to “write down” earlier. When we’re both finished, we either cook a quick dinner we had planned previously or heat up soup from “Spoonful” down Harford Street a few blocks from us. Surrounded by our animals, Ruby lying on a pillow on the chair next to me and Tuli on Tracy’s lap, sometimes joined by his brother, Uno, we watch one of our shows or a movie and go to bed and wake up, and the whole thing starts all over again.

We’ve been playing this song nearly note for note even longer than we’ve been married. In fact, one of the notes just few by me, a furry ball thrown by Tracy for Ruby; Little showed up on my desk for her late afternoon crispies; dusk falls and sparrows flit through the branches of the big bush outside my window looking for a place to perch for the night. We know the music, and each other, by heart.

Running across the top of my oversize monitor, I can see the pages I’ve got open for tomorrow’s column on the Iran-Iraq war which started in 1980, asking the question, isn’t there anybody at the Pentagon or in the White House who studied how many missiles those two countries expended in eight years of fighting that killed several hundred thousand of each other’s soldiers?

See? It all begins again. And just think! Next year comes another anniversary to look forward to. Will wonders never cease?

Give a gift subscription

Leave a comment

Share

New executive orders revive Trump’s effort to limit birthright citizenship despite a recent Supreme Court ruling affirming constitutional protections.

Outside of Trump World, there’s a glaring line between the “try, try again” thinking of those passionate about an outcome and the bone-headed, stubborn hatred for immigrants reflected in Donald Trump’s issuance of new executive orders restricting Birthright Citizenship.

Inside the insular White House, there seems to be only one rule – to embody Trump’s oft-changing whims, never mind law, practicalities, expense, regulations or complications for the many who will be affected. Just make it happen.

For most of us, the line comes with law, even if there are arguments about morality, decency or empathy. But the two executive orders handed down Thursday to limit “birth tourism,” as if that is understandable or appropriate, come mere weeks after the Supreme Court told Trump that the Constitution does guarantee that with exceptions for diplomats, birth on U.S. soil guarantees automatic citizenship.

In issuing his executive orders to expand those exceptions, Trump even used the very same, rejected arguments as justification, and threw in made-up numbers as well to characterize births in the U.S. as an underhanded invasion by undocumented migrants. Trump insists that the birthright provision only was meant historically to deal with the status of post-Civil War slaves, a finding that failed at the Supreme Court.

What makes Trump think that him repeating the same, only louder and accompanied by a pan of the Supreme Court justices, will have a different outcome?

Murky Executive Orders

If Trump wants to change the Constitution, there is a process, unwieldy yes, but one that requires two-thirds of the states to sign on, not just a swipe of a Sharpie in Trump’s gilded Oval Office. Even the concurrence by Justice Brett Kavanaugh laid out a way for Congress to pass federal law exemptions, but Trump shunned that too.

He simply wants to be the one to decide this and all other matters of law, science, climate, health care and sexual mores and choices. That, too, is reflected in the glare of the bright light of stubbornness. Just yesterday, by coincidence, a judge told Trump he had to stop his ballroom project for exactly the same reason – taking the law into his own hands. He will appeal to the Supreme Court, of course, to allow him to do just that.

Even enforcing these new orders on birthright  is problematic.

The new rules would restrict those who could qualify for birthright citizenship to exclude children of staff working for foreign governments but serving in the United States, and the babies of mothers who lie about their intentions for visiting the country while pregnant. A third category governing the status of those born in U.S. territories, would require congressional action.

The second order directs federal agencies to target “birth tourism operators” who arrange such travel to the US.Such travel already constitutes “visa fraud” and is illegal, again raising questions about the practical implications of the new order beyond its political value.

How is Trump planning to determine who is a “tourist” and who is a “birth tourist” who is lying about the reasons for visiting the U.S.

Presumably, the only effective tool will be to bar all pregnant visitors – whose ranks are in the “hundreds of thousands,” according to Trump, despite studies showing only tiny percentages of births annually to visitors. Trump offered what he said were examples of individuals claiming scores of children.

As The New York Times noted, any renewed effort to prevent new classes of people from having babies in the U.S. granted citizenship would invite fresh rounds of litigation, including challenges on who counts as “alien enemies” and invading armies — categories that lower court judges have already rejected in separate cases involving the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policies. Immigration law bars discrimination in the issuing of immigrant visas, almost certain to rise as a claim here.

What’s the Point?

That Trump wants to limit the guarantee of birthright citizenship is not new, nor is his derision of justices that would rule against him. Trump said he would ask the justices to reconsider the decision, but the deadline for doing so has passed without Trump taking action.

Instead, Trump is following the same track as he did with global tariffs, an issue that the Supreme Court also struck down. Rather than heed the court’s ruling, Trump invented new justifications for tariffs using different sections of law. The new tariffs, in effect now, are being challenged by a new lawsuit from a coalition of state attorneys general.

When prospects looked dimmer for confirmation of his personal lawyer Todd Blanche as attorney general, Trump insisted he would keep Blanche in the job and ditch the confirmation process. As Trump has found he lacks votes in the Senate to adopt his voter restriction legislation, he has stubbornly gone ahead and just summarily limited voting himself by pushing sudden redistricting efforts and threatening to keep the Postal Service from delivering mail ballots in Democratic states.

If neither the legal nor practical concerns are advancing, what is Trump doing besides abusing the power of his office to show us how powerful he sees himself? What lesson is there here besides recognizing an autonomous, authoritarian White House that wants to issue its own laws without oversight or question?

Frequently Asked Questions About Birthright Citizenship

What is birthright citizenship?

Birthright citizenship generally grants U.S. citizenship to people born in the United States under the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Can a president end birthright citizenship by executive order?

The Supreme Court’s June 30, 2026 decision rejected the Trump administration’s effort to exclude children born in the United States based on their parents’ immigration or temporary-resident status.

What did the Supreme Court rule about Trump’s birthright citizenship order?

In Trump v. Barbara, the Court concluded that the Citizenship Clause covers children born in the United States even when their parents are unlawfully or temporarily present.

What is “birth tourism”?

The term generally refers to traveling to another country while pregnant with the intention of giving birth there, sometimes to obtain citizenship rights for the child.

“FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS NOT JUST IMPORTANT TO DEMOCRACY, IT IS DEMOCRACY.” – Walter Cronkite. CLICK HERE to donate in support of our free and independent voice.

The post Trump Challenges Birthright Citizenship Again appeared first on DCReport.org.

The whole running out of ammunition thing is being treated like a problem that can be managed, rather than the complete fuck up that it is. Even when they arrest or kill a mass shooter, police find their houses or cars stuffed with thousands of rounds of ammunition, the great fear being, of course, I can’t run out of ammo.

That fear, apparently, did not exist in the Pentagon run by Secretary Shake-Me-Up-Another-Chocolate-Martini Hegseth.

I’ll briefly visit the bureaucratic squabble that surfaced after last Friday’s quickie-cabinet meeting at Camp David, when Trump hit his national security team with the obvious question, are all these stories I’m reading about us running out missiles correct? Man, would I have loved to have been a fly on the wood-paneling of the room when that one landed like a gigantic pile of shit in the middle of the table. Hegseth blamed his deputy, Stephen Feinberg, for having failed to keep Trump abreast of the true status of our missile stockpiles – as if it isn’t the job of the top guy at the Pentagon, as the president’s chief military adviser, to pick up the phone and tell him, Uhhh, Mr. President, I hate to interrupt you in the middle of your second shot on the 12^th hole, but we’re running out of Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Putting the blame shifting aside – I mean, what else would we expect from this clown car of dufuses – whose finger is pointing at who is hardly the issue.

The point is this: You don’t make a decision to go to war against an enemy – any enemy – without first checking to see how many weapons you have and how much ammunition is in stock to be shot by those weapons at the enemy. As I recall from my time as a Plebe, they tought this on day one of tactics training at West Point. Having enough ammunition was then hammered into us at every turn thereafter: summer training sophomore summer at Camp Buckner, junior year training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, where I road-marched a company of tank trainees out to the firing range to shoot the main guns on M-48 battle tanks, senior year when we studied Military Art and History. Stocking up on ammunition is so basic – it’s like if you hired some guys to cut your lawn, and they showed up without their mowers, would you hire them again?

I could go into the grim details of the failure – we’ve expended nearly 80 percent of our best anti-missile weapon, the THAAD interceptor, more than half of our Patriot anti-missile inventory, and “virtually all” of the Army’s mid-range ATACMS and its newer and longer range Precision Strike Missile, the PrSM. These are the primary ground-to-ground missiles used to destroy enemy targets from a distance great enough that the enemy can’t hit you back.

Well, that essential quality of our missile arsenal is out the window, too, because Iran has plenty of drones that can travel as far as U.S. ground-to-ground missiles and even further. The evidence of how far and how accurate Iran’s drones are is all over the Middle East, where U.S. bases have been emptied of soldiers and equipment because Iranian drone strikes were wiping them out.

What I’d like to know is, did the military leadership miscount the number of missiles we had? Did they lie to each other? Did they tell the White House a gigantic lie?

I mean, you just don’t make these kinds of mistakes! Everything in the military has to be counted, and then counted again, and it has to happen every single day. When I was a lieutenant in the Army, I was weapons officer of an Infantry company. My job as weapons officer was to enter the arms room where all our rifles, pistols, and machine guns were kept, and count the weapons and the ammunition, box by box, and sign a formal weapons report on a special DOD form each day certifying that I had counted all those weapons and all that ammo, and it was present and accounted for, listing specific numbers of each. Every. Single. Day.

The punishment for lying on the weapons report, for falsifying the numbers, was five years in the Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks. That is how seriously the Army took accounting for weapons and ammunition.

I can’t tell you this for sure – I haven’t been in the Army for multiple decades – but it is my strong belief that if counting rifles and pistols and bullets is taken seriously, counting anti-aircraft missiles and anti-missile missiles and ground-to-ground offensive missiles -- each of which costs in the millions of dollars – has to be a very, very serious matter, with multiple people at every level of command signing off not only on the level of missile stockpiles, but their combat readiness.

So, the question arises: what the fuck happened at the Pentagon?

I’ll tell you what I think happened. That military genius Hegseth, who thinks you need to be a man to fight in combat, and not only that, you need to have a high level of testosterone to be what he calls a “warfighter,” told his boss Trump that Iran was weak, that we could hit them with missiles and bombs, and we would decapitate the Iranian leadership, and they would, in Trump’s recent words, fold like an umbrella, and we would have them surrendering their arms in a central square in Tehran within days.

If that sounds familiar, that is because it is what Putin’s generals told him before Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022. Remember? Russia believed that Zelenskyy would flee in fear for his life, the Ukrainian government would surrender, and Russian tanks would be rolling down the broad boulevards of Kiev within five days.

Here is the grim reality. In the war against Iran, we’re Russia. The kindest thing you could say about how this war was handled is that the Pentagon and White House miscalculated in their assessment of Iranian resolve and military strength.

But let’s be unkind. We knew going into the war that Iran had so many Shahed drones, they were selling them to Russia. We knew Iran had huge stockpiles of ballistic missiles, because Iran had fired hundreds and hundreds of them at Israel during previous exchanges between the two countries. We also knew that Iran did not have what you would think of as a normal, rational government. We knew that Iran was ruled by a Muslim theocracy as radical as any on earth. We knew that Iran was the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. We knew that Iran had enough missiles and drones that they supplied not only Hezbollah in Lebanon, but the Houthis in Yemen and other radical Muslim groups in Africa.

We knew all this. Unless I miss my best guess, someone in our government knew exactly how many missiles of every kind we had in our arsenal. Because we have military experts in and out of uniform, we knew exactly how long that stockpile would last in a war that was even moderately protracted by enemy resistance.

But we did it anyway. Trump launched his war on Iran, and we have lost that war by every single military measure there is. Iran now has a vise-like grip on 20 percent of the world’s oil market with its military domination of the Strait of Hormuz. I am positive that there are people in the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon who, if Hegseth had asked them, could have told him that we didn’t have enough missiles and bombs to knock out Iran’s stockpiles of missiles and drones it uses to shoot at ships in the Persian Gulf, and at U.S. bases in the region. But Hegseth probably fired all the generals and civilian defense officials who would have had the guts to stand up and tell him the truth.

The United States military, under the command of Donald Trump and his deputy, Pete Hegseth, has its tail between its legs. We have run out of enough ammunition to fight this war or any war. We have lost the war on Iran. We are, in the immortal words of no less a figure than Richard Nixon, a pitiful helpless giant.

And the whole world knows it.

Give a gift subscription

Leave a comment

Share