Over the weekend, the U.S. bombed three nuclear facilities in Iran. "The strikes were a spectacular military success" President Donald Trump said Saturday night. "Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated." Officials later had to walk back Trump's victory lap, admitting it was as yet unclear how much of Iran's stockpile may still remain.
But regardless of how it shakes out, the whole affair conflicts with the anti-war posture Trump rode into office on, especially for Vice President J.D. Vance.
"We are not at war with Iran. We are at war with Iran's nuclear program," Vance told both NBC's Kristen Welker and ABC's Jonathan Karl. To anybody who lived through the interminable war on terror—fought not just against a country or a terrorist group but against the concept of terror itself—Vance's explanation feels like a distinction without a difference.
