Bombs have been falling on Iran for fifty-nine days. As of now a ceasefire is holding, just barely, brokered under pressure from Pakistan. But before it came, a girls' primary school in the southern city of Minab was hit on the first day of the war, at least 170 dead, most of them girls aged seven to twelve, killed by a U.S. Tomahawk missile that President Donald Trump initially denied firing. Thirty universities struck since February 28, including Iran's equivalent of MIT. Over 2,000 Iranians killed by American-Israeli strikes. Thirteen U.S. service members confirmed dead. An American F-15E...

Governments that want to send young people to die in distant countries have always faced the same problem: the arithmetic of the transaction is unfavorable. You are asking a twenty-three-year-old to trade his life for a geopolitical objective he cannot see, in a country he cannot find on a map, on behalf of politicians who will not be going themselves. Across history, the most reliable solution to this problem has been God. Tell the soldier he is not serving the state—that cold, bureaucratic, manifestly self-interested entity—but rather serving the Almighty. Make the war a crusade. Make...

Marco Rubio did something unusual on Capitol Hill last Monday. He told the truth. Standing outside a classified Gang of Eight briefing on March 2, the Secretary of State explained to reporters exactly why the United States launched Operation Epic Fury four days earlier: "We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties." That is not a description of the United States defending itself. It is a...

Washington launched an illegal, undeclared war against Iran on the basis that it would be quick. It will not be quick. And the costs—in munitions, in lives, in the economic foundations of an entire region—are only beginning to arrive. Start with the constitutional fact that every cable news anchor has managed to avoid: the United States is at war with Iran, and Congress never voted for it. No declaration. No authorization. Not even the fig leaf of an AUMF. A president decided, an order was given, and American bombs fell on a sovereign nation that had not attacked the United States. Whatever...