Originally posted April 10th, 2026
At American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson thinks that President Trump’s wording may have been a bit “sloppy.” Trump promised, “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Some might cringe before calling his wording something else.
Trump warned that if the Iranian regime did not cease blocking the international Strait of Hormuz, he would hit its dual military=civilian infrastructure. Etc.
What Trump obviously meant was that the murderous civilization/culture of radical Iranian theocratic Islam would cease to exist and wouldn’t come back once power plants and transportation systems crucial to the regime’s survival were cut off.
How do we know that? According to VDH, unlike previous wars, writes VDH, the US has never targeted dual-use infrastructure—not in bombing ISIS, not in removing the Venezuelan thug Nicolás Maduro, not in the 2025 bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, and not in the present war—with the exception of a key bridge central to the regime’s efforts to reposition missile assets to avoid air strikes.
What Trump obviously meant was that the murderous civilization/culture of radical Iranian theocratic Islam would cease to exist and wouldn’t come back once power plants and transportation systems crucial to the regime’s survival were cut off.
War Crimes?
By all means, let the investigation into war crimes begin, challenges VDH. “Help is on the way” was aimed at the Iranian people.
The purpose of the five-week war has been 1) to selectively target the regime’s command and control and military assets and 2) to diminish its threats abroad, while weakening and humiliating the mullahcracy at home—so that soon the Iranian people might at last be able to overthrow the odious theocracy.
Trump’s crotocs recpgmozed their political advantage, tagging Trump as a Strangelovian madman, no different from the Nazi criminals in the docket at Nuremberg.
Some less unhinged accuse Trump of being unpresidential. Whom? Donald Trump?
Do his critics no longer buy into the argument of “dual use”? The juice powering an evil enemy is its roads, bridges, fuel, and electricity. To disable them supposedly shortens the war and the killing.
Examples in Recent History
• In World War II, we leveled a dozen Japanese cities because the Tokyo junta had outsourced the assembly of weapons to urban neighborhood workshops.
• The US joined the British in leveling Dresden by targeting German transportation.
Will the left, wonders VDH, now remove the iconic names of Democratic Presidents Roosevelt and Truman from our buildings and monuments?
• Truman ordered every bridge and hydroelectric plant in North Korea to be incinerated during the Korean War.
• Under Lyndon Johnson/Richard Nixon, their administrations annihilated most of its civilian infrastructure in efforts to force the communists to negotiate.
• In the 42-day bombing campaign in the First Gulf War, it targeted power stations, roads, bridges, and dual-use government buildings.
Should we go back, asks VDH, and Trotskyize its strategic architects—George H. W. Bush and Gen. Colin Powell?
Perhaps Sen. Mark Kelley, among Trump’s fiercest critics, should be post facto investigated by the International Criminal Court, given the fact that, in 1991, he was a pilot in an air force that frequently hit bridges and other dual-use targets.
• Bill Clinton’s gambit wrecked all the bridges on the Danube and often left more than a million civilians without power.
• VDH wonders if we will indict Barack Obama for ordering more than 500 targeted predator assassination hits on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border without Congressional authorization, strikes that ended up killing four American citizens?
• Perhaps we can reinvestigate Samantha Power, Hillary Clinton, and Susan Rice, the architects of the 2011 “unlawful” and Congressionally “unauthorized” seven-month bombing of a mostly inert Libya.
• While we are at it, let’s reexamine Obama, who snubbed the 60–90 War Powers Act window, which required him to obtain congressional authority to continue that mindless devastation.
Not Just Incoherent, Crazed
The left-wing and paleo right fury has far exceeded any legitimate critique of strategy and tactics, accuses Mr. Hanson.
It has now become not just incoherent but crazed, since it appears that many despise Trump more than they do the murderous Iranian regime.
