War Criminal? Yes.

I almost said that I no longer believe him, but the truth is that I have never believed him. Donald Trump makes pathological liars look as if they are the heirs of George Washington, confessing in chorus that they have cut down the cherry tree. He said the other day that other countries were lining up to help with the blockade, the multilateral effort he hallucinated for the Strait of Hormuz. As far as I can tell, everyone took a pass. Maybe American Samoa will show up sometime in May.

What this means is that even his most energetic promises are likely to come to nothing at all. That certainly applies to genocide in Iran. He has already promised to carpet bomb the country, pulverizing the Iranians “back to the Stone Ages (sic).” You gotta love the fact that he has the same gift for English as someone who is just learning English. Maybe it’s just the way mobsters talk when they are planning gang war against rival crime families.

I don’t really think it will come to that. They don’t call him the TACO President for nothing. He stands at the very center of empty braggadocio, performative rage, and crazy-pants self-aggrandizement. But even if he only does some of what he says, he will immediately attain the status of an American War Criminal.

I say that on the basis of plain-sense definitions. With Hegseth drooling in happy expectation, Trump has promised to bomb every last bridge in Iran. In the rules of war crimes, there are bridges and there are bridges. If a bridge exists to accommodate normal daily traffic, it is, by definition, part of the civilian infrastructure. I have seen a military vehicle cross the 21st Street bridge in Tulsa, but it was unmistakably a guest on a civilian trafficway. Destroying that bridge would be a verifiable war crime. Even if you could construe it as a dual-use facility, its destruction would cause disproportionate suffering to civilians and its loss to the military would be significantly less serious. Our legal system, like every other, is accustomed to such distinctions. It is always dealing with partial shares and percentages.

But the real tie breaker is the question of intent. Drumpf loves the categorical language of apocalypse. He imagines himself as an avenging angel (no healing Jesus here), who would “obliterate” Iran for its sins against the West. He imagines a scenario in which “a whole civilization will die.” This is not the strategic elimination of a missile launcher, but the wholesale slaughter of millions of civilians, along with their personal domiciles and places of work. Not to mention sites of historical importance and public institutions that serve the cause of human beings.

Nothing, or course, will come of this. Trump is unlikely to pull the trigger, and he will never be hauled before a court in The Hague. I just never imagined that we would live in a country that others considered a pariah state, headed by a monstrous, international criminal. It feels like something more than a blemish. Our so-called President has brought us to the point from which no country can easily recover.