If you enjoy glossy self-congratulation with your morning coffee, then Bret Stephens’s latest ode to the “historic courage” of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu is a must-read. In Stephens’s world, there’s something noble — nay, heroic — about a war that just so happened to result in the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader, stoke regional fury, and trigger an open-ended U.S.–Israel military campaign. If you squint just right, there’s even jubilation on the streets of Iran — or at least that’s what the Wall Street Journal told him to believe.
Stephens trots out the old interventionist playbook: villains defeated, freedom advanced, dictators trembling. Never mind that this war was launched without congressional authorization and in tension with international legal norms. Critics like the American Civil Liberties Union have called it unconstitutional; scholars like Kenneth Roth have labeled it illegal aggression. But dismiss such concerns — after all, the smoke of bombs makes for dramatic prose.
In Stephens’s tell-all, the critics are petulant at best — “betrayals,” “MAGA principles,” procedural quibbles — while Trump and Netanyahu emerge as actors doing the free world a favor. Never mind the irony of a president who once railed against endless foreign entanglements now presiding over what has become exactly that. Never mind that media outlets from The Washington Post to CNN warn that this impulsive move could destabilize the region and spark global backlash.
Let’s be blunt: if the free world’s favor involves decapitating a sovereign state’s leadership, igniting missile exchanges across the Gulf, and closing critical maritime chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz, then someone should tell the free world — because one of us is terribly confused. Stephens’s cheery assurance that this will somehow strengthen diplomacy and restrain Iran’s proxies overlooks the fact that wars have a remarkable way of expanding themselves, not concluding.
And while our valiant columnists cheer, the costs pile up: civilian casualties, regional blowback, global energy price shocks, and the very war fatigue that critics warned about. Polling shows U.S. public support is already low. Behind the chest-thumping lies a strategic vacuum: a war launched with little clarity, scant international backing, and no credible plan for peace once the bombs stop.
In Stephens’s narrative, Trump and Netanyahu did the right thing — a “courageous and historic favor” to freedom. But perhaps the real favor would be asking hard questions about legality, motive, and long-term consequences instead of polishing the medals before the battle is even over.
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