armed and dangerous

       It’s not the first time, nor the second, third or fourth. In our lifetime, since the end of World War II, America’s new attack on Iran is something we have seen before: a bellicose flexing of our power and an inclination to bully other nations that we don’t like—sometimes, even, with good reason.

      America wasn’t always that way. For 150 years of so, with a few exceptions—the Spanish-American War and the Mexican-American War prime among them—we avoided militarily interfering with other countries. We weren’t a superpower then, of course; we didn’t have the capacity to strike far beyond our borders or perhaps that sense of unrestrained impunity that went with it.

      That has not been the case for the last 75 years. We definitely have flexed and are continuing to.

      And we’re not talking here about covert interventions, like how the U.S. destabilized the government of Chilean President Salvador Allende in the 1970s or how it orchestrated the overthrow of the government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh in the 1950s (which led to the brutal reign of the Shah of Iran which led to the similarly brutal reign of the ayatollahs, which led … well, right to where we are now).

      What we’re talking about is direct military involvement, and the list is long and all of it has happened while we’ve been watching.

      Here are in chronological order all the countries we’ve directly bombed, invaded or carried out sustained military strikes against since 1946:

·     Korea, 1950–1953

·     Guatemala, 1954

·     Lebanon, 1958

·     Cuba, 1961

·     Laos, 1964–1973

·     Vietnam, 1965–1973

·     Dominican Republic, 1965

·     Cambodia, 1969–1973

·     Grenada, 1983

·     Panama, 1989

·     Kuwait, 1991

·     Iraq, 1991

·     Somalia, 1993

·     Afghanistan, 2001-2021

·     Iraq, 2003

·     Iran, 2025

·     And now Iran, 2026

      And you might want to add Venezuela, 2026, as well.

The list does not include the varied airstrikes we have periodically undertaken, against places like Libya, Pakistan, Yemen and Sudan; and the bombings and drone attacks that have been launched under the auspices of NATO missions, such as in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzogovina.

      The list does include, however, a series of catchy names, made to awe or at least to convince, like Operation Blue Bat (Lebanon, 1958), Operation Power Pack (Dominican Republic, 1965), Desert Storm, of course, and now, the over-the-top Operation Epic Fury (note to Pentagon: that is pretty damn close to Operation Urgent Fury, which is what we named our attack on the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada in 1983, purportedly to rescue American medical students. You might want to mention this to your naming team.)

      Some of the military actions undoubtedly were part of Cold War chess games. But the Cold War has been over for more than 35 years. The attacks continue. The list gets longer. Under this presidency, it’s likely to get longer still.