The Failure of Trump’s Strike Against Iran

The Failure of Trump’s Strike Against Iran

Andrew Bacevich on the Middle East, Henry Louis Gates on American Slavery, and Jelani Cobb on Joe McCarthy.

Start Making Sense and Jon Wiener
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

Trump’s strike that killed Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani continues a long, failed history of American actions based on the idea that the US military can shape the Middle East in accord with our wishes. That’s what Andrew Bacevich argues—his new book is The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered its Cold War Victory.

Plus: Henry Louis Gates discovers slave owners—and also slaves—in the family histories of some surprising people—on the PBS series Finding Your Roots. On this season’s premiere, Anjelica Houston learned that one of her ancestors, who died in Maryland in 1811, was a slave owner, and that in his will he acknowledged fathering four slave children. Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University, also talks about his collaboration with historian Eric Foner on the award-winning PBS documentary on Reconstruction.

Also: Joe McCarthy as a predecessor of Donald Trump: The connections and similarities (“McCarthy was willing to assert things that he knew weren’t true, and did it with aplomb”) are traced by Jelani Cobb of The New Yorker and the Columbia University faculty. He’s a contributor to the new McCarthy episode of the PBS series American Experience.

Hold the powerful to account by supporting The Nation

The chaos and cruelty of the Trump administration reaches new lows each week.

Trump’s catastrophic “Liberation Day” has wreaked havoc on the world economy and set up yet another constitutional crisis at home. Plainclothes officers continue to abduct university students off the streets. So-called “enemy aliens” are flown abroad to a mega prison against the orders of the courts. And Signalgate promises to be the first of many incompetence scandals that expose the brutal violence at the core of the American empire.

At a time when elite universities, powerful law firms, and influential media outlets are capitulating to Trump’s intimidation, The Nation is more determined than ever before to hold the powerful to account.

In just the last month, we’ve published reporting on how Trump outsources his mass deportation agenda to other countries, exposed the administration’s appeal to obscure laws to carry out its repressive agenda, and amplified the voices of brave student activists targeted by universities.

We also continue to tell the stories of those who fight back against Trump and Musk, whether on the streets in growing protest movements, in town halls across the country, or in critical state elections—like Wisconsin’s recent state Supreme Court race—that provide a model for resisting Trumpism and prove that Musk can’t buy our democracy.

This is the journalism that matters in 2025. But we can’t do this without you. As a reader-supported publication, we rely on the support of generous donors. Please, help make our essential independent journalism possible with a donation today.

In solidarity,

The Editors

The Nation

Start Making Sense Start Making Sense is The Nation’s podcast, hosted by Jon Wiener and coproduced by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes each Thursday.  


Jon Wiener Jon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.


Ad Policy
x