I’ve been just staggered this week to hear some people—in a few cases, the exact same people—repeating the lines we heard so often in 2002 and 2003: how the situation was intolerable, how the country in question posed a direct threat to the United States, how action was morally and strategically imperative, and how easy it would all be.

Here was freshly minted Republican Senator Lindsey Graham in 2003: “It’s long past time for Saddam Hussein to be replaced. President Bush used the only reasonable option available to him and our nation.”

And here was an older and no wiser Graham, having descended into the age of the lean and slippered pantaloon, earlier this week: “It’s time to close the chapter on the ayatollah and his henchmen. Let’s close it soon and start a new chapter in the Mideast: one of tolerance, hope, and peace.”

You could sense the fever rising midweek, when it felt like Donald Trump just might pull the trigger and unleash his—actually, our—B-2 bombers on Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility. In 2002–03, as the editor of The American Prospect, I watched slack-jawed while the propaganda machinery of official Washington (and Beltway outlets including The New Republic, where dissenters were few) geared up for a war that was cooked up on specious grounds and during which, alas, Iraqis did not lay rose petals at our soldiers’ feet. Because once George W. Bush made up his mind, the Washington foreign policy establishment decided collectively that when a president wants to launch a war, there’s nothing to be gained by opposing him.

On Wednesday, I smelled the same sulfurous odor in the air. I simply couldn’t believe that just 22 years after we waltzed into Iraq, we were going to do … not the same thing, but something eerily similar with potentially similar consequences.

With so many major decisions coming down—with implications for the role of religion in public life, efforts to restrict gender-affirming care, gerrymandering—not to mention the serious threat to our Constitution, there’s a lot to unpack. 

Join us on July 2 to analyze and discuss the end-of-session Supreme Court rulings and their legal and political ramifications.

Then, on Thursday afternoon, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the world that the boss wanted two weeks. If the boss were a deliberative, rational, mature man, we could welcome this as reassuring news. But as the boss is Donald Trump, it means nothing. Two weeks to the day from Leavitt’s announcement, as fate would have it, will bring the Fourth of July—a good day for a peace deal but an even better day to go bombs away! Imagine Trump, after that bust of a military parade, having strafed Iran during the day and sitting back and watching all those fireworks displays at night. Strength!

Trump 2.0 has ranged from being a disaster to a comedy, a tragedy to a farce. But the one development that I’ve watched with quiet curiosity—the one matter on which, if asked, I’d have told a pollster I actually approved—was that Trump was seriously negotiating with Iran. I did not, of course, approve of his abandoning the Obama-era nuclear deal during his first term, but it was interesting that he was now pursuing diplomacy. It was very interesting that he appeared to be willing to get crossways with Benjamin Netanyahu. Until early this month, when Ayatollah Khamenei refused the latest U.S. offer, it really looked like we were on track for a deal (the sticking point was whether a proposed international consortium for civilian uranium enrichment be based within or outside Iran).

That was June 4. As everyone now knows, talks were scheduled for the following Sunday, but that preceding Thursday night, Israel started bombing, and Trump woke up Friday, turned on Fox, saw them slavering over Bibi’s macho dice rolling, and the talks were dead. They might be back on now. However we feel about Trump, that would be a very good thing.

So: What is Trump going to do? Given the apparent truism that Trump talks to different people, agrees with the last person he talked to, reads nothing, and makes an instinctual decision at the last second, it’s worth running down the people he’s talking to and what they’re probably telling him:

One last point. The Guardian reported Wednesday that some in the U.S. military aren’t sure that our conventional bunker-buster bombs could really do the job at Fordo and that only a tactical nuke could do it but that Trump isn’t considering such a possibility. To which a Fox News White House correspondent rejoined: “I was just told by a top official here that none of that report is true, that none of the options are off the table, and the U.S. military is very confident that bunker busters could get the job done at Fordo.”

No options are “off the table” is standard lingo in such situations. Still, even before I read about this, I had been wondering. The United States reportedly possesses nuclear warheads as small as eight kilotons (and as large as 300 kilotons). The bomb we dropped on Hiroshima was 15 KT. Can’t you just hear someone saying to Trump: “Mr. President, it’s really just a teeny little bomb—enough to do the job without question, but not enough for the world to get into a big tizzy about”?

Of course you can. And this is the point: Trump, no principled pacifist, is literally capable of anything, from peacemaking to nuking. His “opposition” to the Iraq War, somewhat ginned up after the fact, had far less to do with principle than with some tortured combination of risk aversion and his commitment to macho stagecraft (meaning that if you’re going to do something, do it big—take their oil, level their cities, etc.). 

Those two impulses exist in tension within him. But no one should think for a second that any of it amounts to principle. One or the other will win, based on his mood that day. And so I may be sitting here a month from now, slack-jawed once again as the Washington foreign policy establishment decides collectively that when a president wants to launch a war, there’s nothing to be gained by opposing him.

Last week’s quiz: If you remember what 33 and 45 mean … then you might do well on this quiz on classic record labels.

1. This label, founded in 1947 by Ahmet Ertegun, was known mostly for R&B and soul stars like Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles; by the rock era, it also picked up Led Zeppelin and Yes.

A. A&M 
B. Tamla
C. Chess
D. Atlantic

Answer: D, Atlantic. I own a copy of this great, massive book on the label’s history. Worth browsing through, for sure. Atlantic started life as an independent label but became so huge that it’s hard to think of it as such.

2. After his early hits on the regional, Memphis-based Sun Records, Elvis Presley went big-time by signing with what label?

A. RCA Victor

B. CBS

C. Reprise

D. Capitol

Answer: A, RCA Victor. That’s the label with the famous brand image of the dog listening to the old-timey phonograph. Extra credit: That dog has a name. What is it? Answer below the new quiz.

3. What’s the most famous classical music label of the great era of vinyl?

A. Charybdis
B. Hyperion
C. Deutsche Grammophon
D. Chandos

Answer: C, Deutsche Grammophon. Everything was on D-G. Remember the ubiquitous logo?

4. What’s the name of the famous jazz label whose artists included Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, and Ornette Coleman?

A. Verve

B. Blue Note

C. Vanguard

D. Prestige

Answer: B, Blue Note. Still going strong.

5. Who thought of the name Apple for The Beatles’ label?

A. John

B. Paul

C. Clive Epstein (Brian’s brother)

D. Yoko Ono

Answer: B, Paul. The story goes that he went to Paris in 1968 and bought a Magritte painting of an apple, and that it was that canvas that served as the inspiration for the name.

6. Match the mega-selling 1980s artist to their label.

Answer: Bruce = Columbia; U2 = Island; Prince = Warner; Whitney = Arista, a Clive Davis label. 

This week’s quiz: The little guys.… As I wrote last week, let’s continue with record labels, but this time, the small, independent ones in the glory days of the album and single.

1. What’s the classic indie blues and R&B label whose famous Chicago address is 2120 South Michigan Avenue?

A. South Side 

B. Marshall 

C. Chess 

D. Checkers

2. This storied label, started in 1945 in Los Angeles by Art Rupe and specializing in R&B, rock and roll, and gospel, was home to such luminaries as Little Richard, Lloyd Price, and Guitar Slim. 

A. King

B. Specialty

C. Roulette

D. Parkway

3. During the year (1963) that Capitol was telling EMI that The Beatles wouldn’t do anything in the United States, other labels released some of the group’s material. On what label was Introducing … The Beatles released?

A. Vee-Jay

B. Tollie

C. Swan

D. Liverpool

4. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones formed their own labels, unsurprisingly. But a third rock band that created its own label in the late 1960s is a bit surprising—the band was quite popular and had some good songs but was certainly not Beatles/Stones-level important. Who was the band?

A. Blood, Sweat & Tears

B. King Crimson

C. Steppenwolf

D. Rare Earth

5. What was the name of the seminal punk label that was the home base of Nick Lowe, Ian Dury, and Elvis Costello?

A. Bollocks

B. Wanker

C. Geordie Git

D. Stiff

6. What was the legendary hip-hop label founded by Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons in 1984?

A. B-Boy

B. Cypress Hill

C. Def Jam

D. Ruthless

The RCA Victor dog’s name, listening to “His Master’s Voice,” was Nipper. Anyway. I remember staring at these labels when I was a lad as the 45 spun around the turntable. I especially liked the Kama Sutra label, which in the 1960s featured a Buddha with a striking red flame design against a yellow background, and in the 1970s switched to a drawing of Eve handing Adam an apple. Answers next week. Feedback to [email protected]. 

—Michael Tomasky, editor 

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