Tea at Trianon: Who Wants This War?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, March 12, 2026

Who Wants This War?

From The Tablet:

Some members of the MAGA opposition are mad because, they say, Trump—and America—is being led to war by Israel. Accordingly, antisemitic agitator Tucker Carlson says that Trump’s Iran campaign is “absolutely disgusting and evil.” Former Fox News siren Megyn Kelly says that the Iran campaign “is clearly Israel’s war. Mark Levin wanted it, it’s his war, Ben Shapiro, Lindsey Graham, Miriam Adelson—that’s obvious. They are the ones who’ve been pushing us into it.”
Others don’t understand why Iran is so important to the 47th president. For instance, podcaster Matt Walsh, who last year said that Iran should be annihilated for plotting to kill Trump, now says support for Trump’s Iran campaign is astroturfed. “I can’t take the gaslighting, guys,” Walsh posted on X. “Conservatives are now running around saying ‘Iran has been waging war on us for 47 years.’ Okay then why didn’t any of you call for an attack on Iran at any point until now?”
The fact is that no one before Trump had the courage to attack. Iran has been waging a war against Americans, U.S. interests, and allies for nearly five decades, and no other American leader would stand up against that. But plenty of people called for it: As the historical record makes plain, conservatives and Republicans have been saying for 47 years that we should wage war on Iran. For instance, shortly after the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, career U.S. diplomat George Kennan told a Senate committee that the United States should declare war on the Islamic Republic. Best known as the father of “containment”—Washington’s Cold War policy to keep the Soviets in check without risking nuclear war—Kennan counseled U.S. policymakers to “hold in readiness” the means of unilateral pressure on Iran, including military pressures. Iranian officials, he said, should be interned and released only in exchange for the Americans held by the revolutionary regime. This action, said Kennan, “would also put us in a position to make our own decisions about such military action that we might wish to take if it became necessary.” (Read more.)