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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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Top Administration Officials Are Now Openly Admitting That America Is Israel's Bitch.

Rubio: "The president made the very wise decision—we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties."

This wasn't clipped and quoted from a fringe groyper. This was posted by an official White House account.

I can't believe this shit. The United States has abdicated strategic initiative to Israel. The American armed forces in the Middle East have been reduced to reacting to and mitigating damage from Israel's operations in the theater. The straightforward interpretation of the above quote is that Israel started a war that killed American troops.

I was watching Tucker Carlson lay out this exact theory and thought, “well that’s an interesting idea. Too bad we’ll never know for sure.” And then the first thing I see when I tab over to Twitter is Marco Rubio making the exact same thought.

From the recent Merz photo call:

The first question Trump's asked about the Middle East is if Israel forced his hand. "No, I might have forced their hand," he responds.

Referring to Iran, Trump says: "We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion they were going to attack first."

"I didn't want that to happen," the US president says. "So, if anything, I might have forced Israel's hand."

So we have two theories:

  • Israel maneuvered America into war with Iran
  • America maneuvered Israel into war with Iran

I'm sure all those visits by Netanyahu to the oval Office were Netanyahu taking Trump's orders for staying on the warpath (despite media reports that the opposite was the case).

Notably Trump qualifies his belief that Iran was going to attack first as his "opinion", because US intelligence has confirmed that they were not going to attack first.

Senator Warner, a top member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and "Gang of Eight" had this to say about Trump's opinion:

Let's also be clear... there was no imminent threat to the US by the Iranians. There was a threat to Israel. If you equate a threat to Israel as equivalent to an imminent threat to the United States then we are in uncharted territory.

Warner is only wrong that we are in uncharted territory, we are in the territory that brought us to Iraq twice and now here, only instead of platitudes and debates and lies about Hussein-9/11-Al Qaeda connections, existing WMDs, babies being ripped from their incubators in Kuwait, Spreading Democracy, they don't even feel the need to lie to us anymore with high ideals or fabricated intelligence.

So I guess "Iran was going to attack first" is the narrative they are going to go with, but they don't even have any fabricated intelligence or false flag or anything. IC says that is false, and Trump just says it was his opinion.

But why don’t you ascribe any agency to Trump, here? You consider it necessary that one must have manipulated the other into war.

It seems the simplest explanation. Trump likes doing things. Bibi says, here's a thing. Trump says, great, let's do it! I can't see either of them needing much prodding to get on board.

The only reason someone would need more than that was if they bought the line that Trump was some Ron Paul-esque paleo isolationist. I don't think many people believe that now.