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Chapter 1: What military operation did President Trump announce regarding Iran?
We gave Times employees a preview of Crossplay from New York Times Games. And here's what they had to say. I can finally play with other people. I'm pretty competitive. It's fun to beat friends and coworkers. I have a J for 10 points. I'm guessing tanga is not a word. Let's see. Tanga is a word. Oh. As an English as a second language speaker, I like to learn new words.
Crossplay, the first two-player word game from New York Times Games. Download it for free today. This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm Michelle Cottle. I cover national politics for New York Times Opinion. This week, I am back with the usual suspects, columnists Jamel Bouie and David French.
Guys, welcome, welcome. Hello, hello. Michelle, Jamel, great to see y'all. So this week, we are at the start of a conflict with Iran that is rapidly spreading across the Gulf region. This is a war with no clear rationale, apparently no long-term plan, and a rising death toll. So we're going to dive into the chaos and what anyone can do to make sense of it.
And then we're going to take a quick dip back into the pool of the Texas primaries. Now, the usual caveat, we are taping this on a Thursday morning, so it's pretty much a lock. that the world is going to look very different by the time you hear it. So let's jump in and get started. Guys, people were anticipating some kind of attack on Iran for weeks.
As of this taping, we're six days into Operation Epic Fury, as the Defense Department has named it. Given all the buildup, is it playing out as you expected? David, you want to take this one first? I honestly didn't know what to expect. We had been told nothing. The president is in front of the State of the Union, all of America. He has an opportunity to explain.
He has an opportunity then to declare that he's going to go to Congress. We then would have an opportunity to learn what would be the war aims, for example. Why would we be doing this? What's the objective? Is it attainable? What's it based on? None of this happened.
And so what's happening is you and I and Jamel, we're watching a buildup and the people who pay very close attention to the news are watching this buildup in the Middle East. So we know something is coming. But buildups in the Middle East are not unusual, Michelle. I mean, controversy and turmoil in the Middle East is not unusual.
So from the standpoint of, is this something that's going to lead to the kind of war that we're watching right now? No, I... I did not fully expect that in any way. And so what we've had here is one of the strangest sensations of my entire life, which is we're living in a war that was sprung on us by our own government.
I mean, we've been in wars before that were sprung on us by opposing governments, but this is one that was sprung on us by our own government and not as a very short, limited operation, but this is indefinite duration.
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Chapter 2: What are the implications of a 'forever war' in the context of this conflict?
I think, sitting around. I can't remember if it was Sunday night or Monday morning when my sister, who lives in Texas, just texted me. She's like, so we're in a ward now? I was like, yep, yep. Welcome to the show. Like, they had no idea this was coming, really. And they, too... You know, they're in Texas. The Austin shooting made them very nervous. You know, where will this go?
Jamel, what about you? What's your introduction to all of this been like? What has you scratching your head or wringing your hands? Yeah, I feel compelled to say that most Americans learned of this Saturday when they woke up in the morning, right? Like, you know, I woke up, my kids woke me up at seven. I went to go look at what was going on. And it's like, oh, we've started a war in Iran.
And to me, I feel like it's been brushed off, just like, oh, what a quirky thing the president's doing. But I think it gets to the core of the absolute contempt for democratic accountability and just explanation that the administration has, that if you look in the past to when American presidents have announced conflicts, and it's from the Oval Office, prime time, right?
It's talking directly to the American people, or in the case before television, it's FDR on the radio at a time when people are tuned in, talking directly to the American people, saying... This is the conflict. This is why we're doing it. These are the war aims. An open, public thing because going to war is supposed to be an open and public and democratic decision.
The reason why the Constitution gives... Congress, the authorities declare war and not the president, is precisely because giving – putting that authority into a single person, it makes it opaque, makes it subject to their whims and impulses. And war is such a – It is one of the most consequential decisions the state makes.
And so that in a self-governing country, that's supposed to be something that the public and its representatives discuss amongst themselves. And there's a conversation to have about how the United States has, over the last 50, 60 years, kind of moved away from formal declarations of war. And the executive branch has adopted a lot of prerogative about the use of military force.
But even setting that aside, it is really striking that rather than look, you know, figuratively, I suppose, rather than look the American public square in the eye and say we're doing this because of X, Y, and Z, he goes under cover of darkness at Mar-a-Lago. Not the White House, not the Oval Office, not some place that belongs to the American public, but to a real private resort. Right.
in the dead of night and announces this conflict that has already claimed the lives of American soldiers. And that to me is such an abdication of the president's responsibility to the public. And it's such a reflection of this president's, again, contempt for the idea that he's answerable to the public. The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties.
that often happens in war, but we're doing this not for now, we're doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.
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Chapter 3: How does the lack of clear objectives affect the military operation in Iran?
As a very key point, especially with this administration, because a key piece of common wisdom about Trump was that until this past year, he was pretty wary of foreign entanglements. That is no longer true, whether you're talking about the ouster of Venezuela's president or now this war.
So I want your thoughts, aside from the execution so far, on what Trump has been projecting as a leader this past week, David, and how you see that landing with the American people, as Jamel was talking about, who were basically kept in the dark until it was sprung on them. Yeah, and one thing just to amplify on Jamel's, I think, excellent explanation of why we have this system.
I think we can easily overdo this argument that says, well, he's just standing in the line of recent presidents who've expanded war powers. We don't have a comparable situation where a president has taken us into this kind of conflict without Congress in a long time. I mean, Bush, he had a congressional authorization for Iraq and UN Security Council resolutions.
He had a congressional authorization for Afghanistan. H.W. Bush had a congressional authorization and UN Security Council authorizations and Desert Storm. So We're now seeing what it looks like when a divisive president in a divided time fights a war without trying to rally public support.
And it falls on the American people just in an almost perfectly partisan way with 80% or so of Republicans supporting this because they're going to support whatever Trump does. overwhelming opposition from Democrats. It looks like independents are against this as well. This is already majority disapproval from day one by most polls, majority disapproval.
And some of the defenders of the administration might say, well, so what? He's got to get this done. This just has to be done. I'm like, hold on a second. Do you not understand how democracies fight wars? Let's just suppose, let's just grant the argument for the moment that this had to be done at this time.
Still, you have diminished and minimized your chances of a successful operation by not doing this the right way. Democracies that go to war with public support are very strong. Democracies that go to war without public support, the war effort is very fragile. But again, to circle back to some of the earlier comments, we don't yet know what success looks like.
We have heard three, four, five different articulations for the purpose. And this matters. I mean, if you're going to go for a regime change war, that's one kind of strategy. If you're going to go to destroy a nuclear program, that's another kind. If you're going to diminish a ballistic missile capacity, that's something else.
And so there is no situation, I think, where we should say, well, the technicality of congressional approval wasn't followed, but now that doesn't matter. Now let's unite. That's just not the way this works. And look, when I say I'm very critical of Trump, I am not in any way saying that I want the mission of the United States military to fail. What I'm saying is he has set us up.
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Chapter 4: What are the potential risks to American civilians and service members?
But the way that. the administration understands the world as not like a complex system where you move one thing and a hundred things happen in response, but as like equivalent to almost like a board game as to like risk where we have lots of guys and they have fewer guys, we big, they small. And if we roll the dice and move our guys there, we win, right?
A very kind of flattened, barely two-dimensional vision of how the world works in a sense that other people, other states, other leaders are, the term is non-playable characters, they're NPCs. They simply react to us, the protagonists of reality.
To me, just observing how they're talking and behaving, this fits this vision of the world, which is, you know, for lack of a better term, insanely dangerous. Well... what's the one thing that everybody knows about the game of risk? It lasts fricking forever. You can play that game for days and get nowhere. So that's not soothing, Jamal. David, give us your reaction to that.
So, yeah, I think if you're going to really boil down what is the goal here, I think just to be perfectly blunt, they're trying to pound the Iranian regime to such a degree, hit it to such a degree, damage it to such a degree that it makes it vulnerable to falling, that it makes it very difficult to reconstitute nuclear weapons.
And then if an uprising occurs and there's a democracy that breaks out, great. If not, well, then Iran is very, very, very damaged. And I think that one of the problems, let's just take that even on their own terms, that starts to sound a lot like the strategy that Israel took with Hamas before October 7th.
So if you go back and you look at Israel's military approach to Hamas before October 7th, it was these periodic strikes that were designed to degrade Hamas, sort of constantly be degrading Hamas. And in the absence of any sort of permanent peace or any sort of permanent agreement or actual forced regime change, that's what you end up doing when you take this approach.
You just end up hitting them, and then they reconstitute, and then you have to decide, do you hit them again? And for a long time, people thought in Israel that was a sustainable strategy with Hamas until October 7th. And so... I think the best way to say it is the administration's just hitting them as hard as it can and seeing what happens.
And I do want to say, look, none of my arguments against the administration are defenses of this Iranian regime, which is loathsome, evil. And look, if I were in the Senate and you came to me with an attainable goal about how you could
destroy their nuclear program, or you came to me with an attainable goal about what you believed you could do to say their ballistic missile program, which is incredibly threatening. You know, there are circumstances where I would absolutely approve of, if I were a senator, the use of force against Iran. Not in this circumstance, not like this.
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Chapter 5: How does the current conflict compare to past U.S. military interventions?
So if the Republicans in Congress can't be counted on to make any kind of demands on an out-of-control president, then it's time for a little electoral punishment. I'm sorry. So before we wrap, speaking of, I just want to take us back The primary season has begun. Texas started us off with a bang.
There were a couple of other states like North Carolina, Arkansas, but Texas primaries, especially the Senate, we talked a lot about. It was kind of a litmus test for each party or kind of a canary in the coal mine for where they're going. We have some answers at this point. James Tallarico won the Democratic nomination outright, beating Jasmine Crockett.
While the Republicans are headed to a runoff between John Cornyn and the state's Attorney General, Ken Paxton, Trump is expected to now jump in and do an endorsement. What are your top takeaways from this? I mean, I was there. I looked into it. I followed a little bit Paxton and cornered on the trail.
I saw how their supporters were sorting themselves, you know, kind of like the old school Republican, last of a dying breed, Paxton strapping himself to Trump as hard as he could, but wildly scandal ridden. And then on the other side, you had a kind of equal split with Tallarico being kind of a more unifying figure, lower key with his style and Crockett just being the ultimate bomb thrower.
So from how this all shook out, give me your top takeaways, but, you know, keep it tight. My top takeaway is just the astounding Democratic turnout in the primary, considerably more than the previous Senate primaries, and a real sign that Texas Democrats were at least energized and excited.
And you can't make predictions about general election turnout based on primary turnout, but it is noteworthy that having a competitive primary between two young and exciting candidates really got Democratic voters excited. ready to go out and vote and participate.
And I think that's a lesson to Democratic parties across the country, that people are looking for fresh faces and they want to be inspired and excited by their candidates. Not only can that produce, like, real energy, but you can carry the energy over into November. Like you, anytime you get participation levels up, I feel like the country is doing what it's supposed to do. Yeah. David?
So a couple of things. I mean, what Jamel said about turnout, I mean, that really surprised me to see that. And because I've always been the one that says, ah, Democrats, this is Lucy with the football for you guys. You're always thinking we're going to turn Texas blue. Do you dump an enormous amount of money into a race that was never going to be that competitive?
I mean, the closest was Beto against Ted Cruz in a wave year. Could Tallarico do it? it's quite possible. I mean, it's quite possible. Those turnout numbers were something that were surprising to me. But I will tell you, my main takeaway was on the Republican side that Paxton did not get that plurality. It's like a one-point gap, right? I know.
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