The shattered promises and strategic chaos of Operation Epic Fury
Edwin Starr’s iconic anthem famously asks, “War… what is it good for?” and answers with a resounding “Absolutely nothing!” It’s a sentiment that resonates deeply, a rhythmic rejection of the scars violence leaves on our social fabric. But history often complicates our protest songs. War was, in fact, good for something: it was seemingly the only thing capable of toppling the Nazi regime and crushing the spread of fascism. In that dark chapter of the 1940s, it was chosen as a necessary evil. Without it, the world as we know it – one with even a semblance of freedom – would simply not exist.
But now that the bombs have started falling in Operation Epic Fury, we have to grapple with the other side of that coin: what is war not good for?
The View Through Rose-Colored Glasses
In the wake of the massive strikes launched on February 28, there is a carefully curated sense of momentum. With recent reports of the CIA training Iranian Kurdish forces to take on the Islamic Republic, it’s easy to put on rose-colored glasses. We see the headlines about the death of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and we want to believe that declaring war will make Iran a democracy. We want to believe that this military intervention will finally give the country back to the people, restoring the freedoms taken away 47 years ago when the regime first solidified its iron grip.
This optimistic haze isn’t just limited to the headlines; President Donald Trump appears to be wearing the rosiest glasses of all. He seems to be riding a high from the Venezuela plan – which went according to plan in terms of toppling a dictator – but he is ignoring the fact that the people of Venezuela didn’t actually gain their freedoms. Instead, they got “new management” that happens to be more compliant with U.S. interests.
This top-down approach is already stumbling. Trump recently admitted that his team had “chosen a few people” within the current Iranian regime to take over, only to follow up that they are all now dead, likely caught in the very bombings meant to pave their way. He spoke of a “second group” and even a “third wave” of potential leaders, and that perhaps they won’t even know them, but this revolving door of hand-picked successors doesn’t equal liberation. If the goal is just to find a “tractable” official who will say yes to Washington, then the “hour of freedom” promised to the Iranian people is nothing more than a replacement of management at the top. The rose-colored glasses aren’t looking so rosy anymore.
The Constitutional Crossroads
While the administration pushes this “rosy” narrative, a reality check is coming from the Capitol. Today, March 4, Congress is set to vote on a bipartisan War Powers Resolution. This isn’t just a procedural hurdle; it’s a direct challenge to the legality of a “war of impulse.”
The very language used to describe the conflict is in a state of chaos. During a heated exchange at Monday’s briefing, a reporter asked, “If we are bombing a sovereign nation’s capital and its Supreme Leader is dead, how is this not a war?” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth leaned into the microphone and flatly answered, “War is hell and always will be.” There is a bitter irony in his title alone; just last September, the administration made a show of rebranding the Department of Defense back to the “Department of War,” claiming the old name reflected a history of victory rather than “tepid legality.” And, moments later, Speaker Mike Johnson was seen on the Capitol steps correcting a journalist, insisting the strikes were merely a “defensive operation.”
President Trump himself seems to have missed the memo on the “operation” label. When asked on Tuesday about the mounting civilian casualties, he told reporters, “That often happens in war,” and later doubled down by saying, “We’re winning the war, and we’re winning it big.” This isn’t just a debate over vocabulary; it’s a deliberate, clumsy attempt by the administration to avoid the legal triggers of the War Powers Act while the President simultaneously broadcasts the scale of the violence to his base.
The justification for the war has been a moving target. Secretary Marco Rubio and Speaker Johnson claim a “double preemption” – striking because they “knew” Israel was about to act. Vice President JD Vance, meanwhile, told Fox News that the mission is about a “change in mindset” regarding nuclear weapons. There is a profound irony in using a nuclear “imminent threat” as the excuse for war in 2026, considering it was Trump who unilaterally dismantled the JCPOA – the very agreement designed to prevent this exact scenario – back in 2018. The administration is now trying to solve with bombs a problem Trump 1.0 arguably invited with a pen.
But the most baffling explanation came from President Trump himself, who told reporters on Tuesday, “If anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand,” directly contradicting Rubio’s claim that Israel was the one leading the way. When the President says he “had a feeling” while his Vice President talks about “mindsets” and his Speaker talks about “defensive operations,” it becomes clear: there is no singular, coherent casus belli. This lack of a unified message suggests the “imminent threat” was less of a strategic reality and more of a convenient label for a policy driven by whim. There were supposed to be no wars in Trump 2.0 – he ran on that, he promised that.
The administration has yet to produce a single piece of evidence that Iran was planning an attack on U.S. interests – whether on domestic soil, at embassies abroad, or against naval vessels at sea. Instead, the war itself has exported the violence thousands of miles away from the bombings. The very next day, it arrived in Austin, Texas, where the FBI is investigating a mass shooting at a Sixth Street bar as a potential act of terrorism. The gunman, Ndiaga Diagne – a naturalized citizen originally from Senegal – opened fire while wearing a “Property of Allah” hoodie over an Iranian flag T-shirt. Investigators later found that Diagne had expressed pro-regime sentiment online, and had photos of Iranian regime leaders in his home.
The ‘rose-colored glasses’ of a clean, five-week victory have been ground into the dirt and stained with the blood of the innocent. The reality is a regional wildfire that cannot be contained by headlines. 787 Iranians are reported dead, including the 165 schoolgirls and staff killed in a single missile strike on a girls’ school in Minab – an event so devastating that thousands filled the streets in mourning this week. The toll continues to climb: 12 dead in Israel, 52 in Lebanon, and six American service members lost in these first few days. War – what is it good for? So far, only the proliferation of grief. The glasses haven’t just fallen off; they have been shattered.
This myopia for the “messy” side of war extends far beyond the immediate casualty lists. On Tuesday, U.N. relief chief Tom Fletcher warned of a “daunting” humanitarian fallout, noting that strikes are hitting homes, hospitals, and schools with terrifying frequency. The U.N. is now bracing for a regional catastrophe, predicting that the instability in Tehran could trigger large-scale movements of refugees into Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is the human cost that isn’t captured in a “surgical strike” headline, yet it is the very reality we are now forced to navigate.
The Kurdish Strategy: Hope vs. History
As the air campaign falters in its promise of a quick victory, the administration is shifting its focus to the ground. One of the most curious aspects of this operation is the openness of the strategy. For years, Trump has mocked his predecessors for “telegraphing” military moves, yet now he is openly announcing the CIA’s plan to have Iranian Kurdish forces enter from the West and Northwest to take over territory. Perhaps that’s not accidental.
The choice of the Kurds also isn’t accidental. The Iranian Kurds have been treated horribly by the Islamic Republic for decades, facing systemic marginalization and violent crackdowns – most recently during the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests sparked by the death of Jina (Mahsa) Amini. Specifically, the Peshmerga (“those who face death”) are a highly organized, veteran paramilitary force. They are willing to take this gamble because, for them, the fall of the Islamic Republic isn’t just a political goal – it is a matter of survival for their culture, their language, and their very right to exist without the shadow of state-sanctioned execution.
However, we’ve worn these glasses before, and they have fallen off and shattered. History warns us of a tragic cycle of betrayal. Not to the U.S., but the Kurds. We saw it in 1975, we saw it in 1991, and we saw it as recently as January 2026, when the Syrian Kurds were essentially pushed aside to integrate with the Syrian government. The ‘betrayal’ is the pattern, and it suggests ‘great plans’ are often built on the assumption that convenient allies are disposable once the tactical objective is met.
In the 1970s, specifically with the 1975 Algiers Accord, the U.S. and the Shah of Iran used the Kurds as leverage against Saddam Hussein, only to abruptly cut off all aid and leave them to be crushed once a diplomatic deal was reached. Henry Kissinger famously dismissed the moral obligation afterward, noting that “covert action should not be confused with missionary work.”
We saw it again in 1991, when the first President George Bush encouraged the Iraqi people to “take matters into their own hands.” The Kurds and Shiites rose up, believing the U.S. had their back, only to be abandoned as Saddam’s helicopter gunships decimated the uprising. While we eventually set up a No-Fly Zone, the initial silence cost tens of thousands of lives. These aren’t just footnotes; they are the reasons why ‘great plans’ can lead to nightmares rather than a dream.
This brings us to the ultimate contradiction: Even if the bombs do their job and the Peshmerga’s military objective succeeds, how does the U.S. build the “democracy” Trump promised? This is where USAID would traditionally step in. Historically, USAID has been the primary vehicle for “soft power” – rebuilding civil society, training judicial officials, and fostering the democratic institutions necessary to prevent a power vacuum.
But we are operating in a different landscape now. With the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) dismantling USAID in the recent cuts chaos, the very tools needed to turn a military victory into a stable democracy have been largely discarded. Without the infrastructure to support governance and human rights on the ground, the U.S. is essentially knocking down a house with no blueprint or materials to rebuild it. We are left with the “nothing” of war, without the “something” of a sustainable future.
The Chaos Behind the Scenes
If the plan is as solid as the administration claims, the lack of preparation suggests otherwise. While the gears of war were turning, FBI Director Kash Patel was in Milan for the Winter Olympics, where he was seen partying and spraying beer with the gold-medal men’s hockey team. Immediately following this, he fired an elite team of Iran experts (the CI-12 unit) – reportedly because they had worked on the Mar-a-Lago probe. When you purge the people who actually understand the nuances of the regime and replace them with “loyalists,” you lose the intellectual map needed for a post-war reality.
The most chilling sign of this chaos isn’t found in a press briefing, but on the State Department’s own emergency hotline. When Americans call for help, they aren’t met with a rescue plan; they are met with a recording that flatly instructs them not to depend on the U.S. government for assisted departure or evacuation. There are no evacuation points. There are no government planes. Despite weeks of amassing military hardware for the attack, the Trump administration launched Operation Epic Fury without a single flight manifest for the hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens now stranded as regional airspaces go dark.
Freedom
We all want the Iranian people to breathe the air of freedom. We want to believe that this latest strategy is the one that finally works. But as we move forward, we must balance our hope with the sobering lessons of history.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to take off the rose-colored glasses because the dream became the reality. We all want the dream to be real. But when the glasses shatter, we are forced to see the world not as we wished it to be, but as we have made it. Hopefully the bleeding doesn’t continue as we pick up the fragmented pieces.
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Iranian people are some of the strongest people in the world #freeiran #iranrevolution #womenrights
A whole World War Three is about to happen but people are worried about who got what filler injected
