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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.

Echoes of the Gulf War here, everyone was stunned when Saddam offered to let in inspectors to check for WMDs. Putin offered to mediate. But the Israelis couldn't have that, they were going 'oh well there's no way to be sure, inspectors can be deceived' and the war started anyway. The troops were being moved in, the decision had been made, all this diplomacy was just to tighten the noose, to establish the face-saving rhetoric, not for the ostensive purpose.

In this case, the US had already moved an enormous amount of striking power into the region, those F-22s, the AWACs planes, the carriers and tankers. There was clearly a strike planned. The Israelis just didn't want Trump to chicken out at the last minute, they make each stage on the path to war seem like the path of least resistance.

The Israelis were nudging and pushing and cajoling the US into this situation from start to finish. Netanyahu was constantly flying to Washington to do this cajoling... I bet the Israelis were encouraging the US to go in with maximalist objectives for the diplomacy, providing 'intelligence' that the Iranians were lying or planning a pre-emptive strike. Then they create a deadline, make it seem impossible to back out.

Attacking Iran makes little sense as a strategic objective for the US otherwise.

The US is on the other side of the world! What does MENA matter to America, now that America is energy-independent? Why were there all these troops in the Middle East in the first place? Why not make a deal with Iran to pull them away from the Russia-Chinese camp? All these Gulf allies do deals with China anyway, they are not exactly loyal or capable allies.

If you're worried about Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, why would you assassinate the man who made a fatwa against producing, deploying, using nuclear weapons? That's stupid. It's possible that this is all part of the plan, they want Iran to try nuclearizing and then that will 'justify' a massive disarming strike or ground invasion, possibly nuclear-armed, blow the conflict completely out of proportion. Or perhaps it's a risk they've considered and approved. Israel can run rings around this administration, that much is clear.

One also wonders what leverage Israel has on Trump. Trump feels free to scorn his other billionaire donors like Musk or the entire business lobby with his tariffs, suggesting that it's not just Adelson money at play here. Perhaps it's just natural affinity, he was after all Grand Marshal of the Salute to Israel in NY. Or maybe the Kushner connections. Or maybe something else, who can say?

Isreal knows its on its last presidential legs with the US as the main pro-isreal populace ages out and will be replaced by zoomers who instrinctively hate their guts, it's now or never. That's why we see the renewed vigor with the Iran shenanigans.