Image by Mathias Reding.

Make it make sense: a president pining for a Nobel Peace Prize now commands a lustily rebranded “Department of War,” primed to “go on offense.” A man who condemns “stupid wars” sicks the U.S. military on drug cartels and America’s streets, cheered on by a tasteless meme (“Chipocalypse Now”) trumpeting invasion.

Do these contradictions stem from Trump’s psychological need to be admired as both a king of peace and a master of war? From the tension between isolationism and militarism in today’s conservatism?

Such tired speculation obscures a stark reality. The United States already is at war, in Trump’s mind and in fact. The battlefield expands almost daily. The country must quickly realize this, lest it fully plunge into a new abyss of endless war driven by the whims, to start, of one man.

Trump’s current penchant for military aggression has odd roots in his professed disdain for the “stupid wars” of recent decades. His “peace” persona is skin deep. Trump supported the Iraq War before it began, turning against it only when it bogged down.

One gets little sense that he grew to question dodgy interventions based on judicious assessments of what conflicts are, for reasons of principle or national interest, worthy of military sacrifice. “Stupid wars” are for him simply ones that America can’t decisively win. And winning is the ultimate measure of strength, or virtue, or sound policy.

Trump’s fondness for this view has long been clear. Recall his claim that Senator John McCain, for the sin of being captured, was “not a war hero.” Or his disparaging the U.S. dead in a French World War Two cemetery as “losers” and “suckers” because “there was nothing in it for them.” Even winners can be losers, when the victory is not a life-sparing blowout. True to form, Trump praises the “Department of War” moniker for sending “a message of victory.”

Military victory, most simply, means overwhelming one’s foe, with minimal loss of American life. So Trump punches down, attacking those with little capacity or will to fight back. Hapless, alleged drug smugglers on the high seas are no match for U.S. missiles. Neither is the Venezuelan army, should President Maduro be baited into a response that triggers a full-bore U.S. assault. Nor can undocumented immigrants — vulnerable, frightened, often poor — physically resist ICE agents with big guns. Americans outraged at the assault on their communities and neighbors are stymied as well. The homeland, for Trump, is a soft target, with a near-guarantee of zero losses. Winning indeed.

Demonizing his adversaries is integral to Trump’s will to dominate and claims to extreme executive powers. Dehumanizing epithets — terrorists, alien invaders, criminals, murderers, thugs — mark the enemy as unworthy of even moral or legal defense. Why defend monsters? Why quibble over the separation of powers when dealing with their menace?

Despite Trump’s martial rhetoric, his predations might not yet feel like war, given the irregular mobilization of military assets, the domestic setting of much of the aggression, and the absence of two sides shooting at each other. But boundaries into war have already been crossed.

The implications are frightful. Invoking the Enemy Aliens Act, the administration voided the due process rights of alleged Venezuelan gang members (some plainly had no gang affiliation) and rendered them for de facto torture in El Salvador. A U.S. citizen could land in this special hell, with no means of redress.

The White House has labelled Maduro a “terrorist” and Venezuelan gangs his agents. On this basis, the Pentagon executed alleged mid-level drug traffickers. Otherwise, they would be subject to fair-minded prosecution and appropriate, non-lethal sentences if found guilty. Even military lawyers favorable to robust “war on terror” powers are shocked.

Most ominous may be Trump’s gleeful threat to show Chicagoans what “offense” means.  Federal agents and soldiers are massing for what is described as anti-migrant and anti-crime operations. Whatever unfolds, the goal appears in part to subdue the opposition of state and local leaders, who deny that there is any “emergency” to address. Vigorous protest, even non-violent, could be met with violent force. Trump may even be spoiling for this fight.

Though federal judges have rejected some of Trump’s most extreme measures, the effect of their opinions remains to be seen. A recent ruling struck down Trump’s invocation of the Enemies Alien Act to go after Venezuelan gangs. No “invasion or predatory incursion,” it found, had taken place. Whether this ruling will survive the Supreme Court, and whether the administration will obey it in the meantime, is unclear. So too, a California judge found that the conduct of National Guard and U.S. Marines in Los Angeles was unconstitutional because it bled into civilian law enforcement. As yet, there is no indication that the ruling will constrain military operations in Chicago.

In the face of legal defeats, the White House never accepts that it perhaps went too far and pledges respect for constitutional limits set by conscientious judges. It always replies by blasting the judges as “activists,” “radicals,” and “Marxists,” who enable the very evil Trump opposes. Judges defying Trump’s agenda receive literal death threats.

All the legal wrangling may be beside the point. Trump has badly blurred the lines between regular and emergency powers, local and federal law enforcement, civilian and military operations, peacetime and war. As a result, neither judges, lawyers, politicians, police, soldiers, nor everyday people have a secure sense of who may lawfully do what, and how they can be held to account if they do not. This tempts the legal and moral chaos, and commission of war crimes, that are part of any war.

Trump does not merely invoke the language of war, and harvest War on Terror-era powers, to enable his agenda. Part of his agenda is to win the ability to wage open-ended war against anyone branded an enemy. A MAGA successor would likely claim the same right.

This peril issues urgent tasks.

Above all, we must take Trump both literally and seriously in his boasts of waging wars against foreign and domestic “enemies.” Pundits must cease their dismal musing over whether Trump is a dove, a hawk, or some strange blend. Congress must reassert its Constitutional prerogative to alone take the nation into war. It may also need to legislate anew limits to the domestic use of the military.

The Democrats must be a genuine opposition party, following the defiant lead Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. With searing clarity, they have named the danger of federal incursions, while calling Trump as a reckless bully. At the same time, Democrats must work to convince their Republican colleagues — even just a handful — that Trump’s conduct risks everyone’s liberty.

The Supreme Court must reconsider its reckless stance of deference to executive power. This deference removes constraints on a president eager to abuse his authority in the ultimate exercise of power: the deprivation of the liberty and lives of others.

Sluggish to this point, “the resistance” must quickly intensify and broaden its message. It should think of itself, in part, as an antiwar movement, appealing to Americans’ weariness with war, distaste for chaos, and desire for rule-bound stability.

Americans, for the most part, have rightly rejected the last endless war. They must reject the next one too, before it’s too late.

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