President Donald Trump got straight to the point. "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will," he wrote in a Tuesday morning social media post directed at Iran. Despite unfounded speculation that Trump was planning a nuclear attack, the post likely referred to Trump's earlier threat to blow up all the bridges and power plants in Iran.
For years, bureaucrats and the chattering class in Washington have tried to justify innocent people's suffering from war and sanctions. America's enemies hide among civilians and weaponize civilian infrastructure, they argued. Military strategy and sanctions policy were designed to leave civilians alone, they claimed. Wars and sieges would actually liberate people suffering under evil regimes, they asserted. Trump keeps making their job harder by speaking frankly about what his goals actually are.
