Jacquelyn Martin/AP
In the week since launching Operation Epic Fury, President Donald Trump’s war without an apparent endgame has killed 787 Iranians, a death toll the administration has made clear it is hellbent on expanding. It includes at least 175 Iranians, mostly young children, who were killed at Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school as US strikes targeted a nearby naval base. Trump’s self-made crisis has now killed at least six American service members, including Sgt. First Class Noah L. Tietjens, who had been finishing his final deployment in Kuwait when a retaliatory drone attack killed him. As of Friday, more than 120 people in Lebanon are reported dead as the war expands across the Middle East.
This White House, like many White Houses before it, invites the possibility of death when it declares war. But has an administration ever been so naked in its lust for it? Take Pete Hegseth, who on Wednesday could barely contain his enthusiasm for dead Iranians:
Death and destruction from the sky all day long. We’re playing for keeps. Our warfighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly.
Our rules of engagement are bold, precise and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it. This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.
Later, when asked about the US service members killed, Hegseth’s excitement quickly curdled into petulance. “The press only wants to make the president look bad,” he complained, suggesting that reporting on dead Americans is not only bad publicity but evidence of traitorous behavior.
The comments were shocking, even if they were an extension of long-held American foreign policy, one that has always accepted, even desired, to kill people in far-flung countries. (Similarly, we’ve always sent American troops to fight wars, knowing that some won’t make it back home.) But where Hegseth cheers on mass death, the president himself offers a shruggy nihilism. Consider that in the first three days of war, Trump opted for a leisurely stay at Mar-a-Lago, where he posted two videos of himself briefly talking about the war on Truth Social. From there, Trump went forward with a previously scheduled $1 million-a-head fundraiser because he “had to eat dinner anyway.” Once back in the White House, Trump ignored questions about Iran and, instead, urged reporters to gaze upon some new statues erected in the Rose Garden. On Monday, he finally gave a five-minute briefing on the war that featured updates on his ballroom renovations.
Then, an even more troubling attitude emerged: “I guess.” That’s how Trump responded when Time asked whether Americans should be concerned about the possibility of retaliatory attacks here in the US.
“But I think they’re worried about that all the time,” he continued. “We think about it all the time. We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.”
Unlike Hegseth, who appears drunk on performance as he thirsts for death, Trump’s thoughts here are eerily relaxed. They are notable because they appear to lack even a modicum of critical thinking. No, this is not a man remotely bothered by mass death. He simply does not care. Again, insouciance might not be new when it comes to America’s thirst for war. But carrying it so openly and inelegantly is something else entirely.
