Today’s Handmaidens of War

March 25, 2026

This is not a partisan affair. Experts in military strategy, regional history, and current power dynamics in the Middle East—as well as American politics and geoeconomics—are struggling to make sense of the U.S.–Israel war launched on February 28 and warn that its escalatory spiral is spinning out of control.

But just like when the bloom was off the rose in late 2003, when the insurgencies and sectarian violence started emerging in Iraq and it was becoming clear that the Bush administration had no plan for “what’s next,” the cheerleaders and shills are rushing to battle stations today to do everything to maintain some sort of rationalization for the disaster unfolding right before our eyes.

This time, these messaging force-multipliers, tied directly or otherwise to the political and military machinery behind this war, shouldn’t get off so easily. Too many of them were around for the last big war when they lied and cajoled the American public into thinking we simply needed more “stomach” for the fight in Iraq. Many were called out. But apparently not enough.

Mixed in with the familiar figures are new voices lobbying for a big Mideast war. We have influencers paid in dark money from our “partners” in the Israeli government. They are mixed in with ideological diehards pervasive in conservative normie media and the fever swamps of X, Fox News, and talk radio. Then there are the national security “experts” who for professional reasons—establishment status or, more insidiously, ties to the defense industry or the think tanks funded by it—are rolled out onto major media to legitimize a cockeyed strategy pulling the country further into endless war.

Full piece in The American Conservative