‘Newsweek’: Has the U.S. become the bad guy?

It’s pretty scary when China’s leader, Xi Jinping, is the one warning the world last week that “to maintain the authority of international rule of law, we cannot use it when it suits us and abandon it when it doesn’t.” Yet, sadly, the United States plainly needs a reminder that reverting to the law of the jungle is a diplomatic but also a moral disaster, ‘Newsweek’ stresses.

As we rampage lawlessly across the world, we should stop to consider: Have we become the bad guys? It sure sounds like it. Just consider the kinds of things President Donald Trump has said in connection with his war on Iran. Trump started the year by setting the stage, declaring that, “I don’t need international law.” He has spent the rest of the year to date proving that, whether he needs it or not, he doesn’t care about it.

The attack on Iran had no legal or moral foundation. We were lied to about the danger from Iran. And the lies have kept coming in a virtual “dim sum menu” of excuses for this inexplicable excursion. Meanwhile, Trump has threatened to bring Iran back to the Stone Ages, to permanently destroy its civilization and destroy the civilian infrastructure the country’s women and children need to survive. More importantly, rhetoric aside, Trump's war has killed over 3,800 people, including hundreds of children.

Perhaps self-styled Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth summed up the Trump administration attitude toward law and morality best when he boasted that we are winning "decisively, devastatingly and without mercy.” Around the time of the strike that killed 170 teachers and students at a girls’ elementary school in Iran, Hegseth said: “This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they're down, which is exactly how it should be.”

America’s mercy used to be its moral authority in the world. It was why people preferred to do business with us, rather than unstable authoritarians. And when did we forget that only bullies hit people when they are down? Yet today the bullies represent America: a shouting, threatening, murdering gang of lawless adolescents.

Is their lawlessness making us any safer?

And this is turning us into the bad guys. It has always been the bad guys who have had no respect for law and life. Consider how Nazi Germany fought its war, with Hitler saying about his unprovoked attack on Poland: “Our strength is in our quickness and our brutality.” Victory, he said meant to “kill without pity or mercy.” Sound familiar, Mr. Hegseth?

Trump and Hegseth thought brutality and cruelty would mean a swift victory over Iran. It hasn’t. The biggest thing it may have killed is the chance for an Iranian uprising. What person watches their neighbors being slaughtered and then turns to help the murderers?

The United States should have learned from its own lesson in Iraq. After the 9/11 attacks the world supported us in our pursuit of al-Qaida (banned in Russia). When we chose to attack Iraq instead, our standing in the world dropped substantially. Israel failed to learn this lesson after its October 7 attacks, and it has become a pariah.

Now we are joining them. Being bad may be a good diversion from other problems, and it may feed some demagogic egos, but it won’t make us safer, and it must never make us prouder.

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