Two disturbing passages from President Trump’s speech on Iran:

1) “We don’t have to be there. We don’t need their oil. We don’t need anything they have. But we’re there to help our allies.”

If we don’t need to be there— if this war is not necessary for our self-defense— then the war is wrong. If we’re there to help our allies— and in context Trump seems to be talking about allies who need the region’s oil— why is he saying that NATO should take up the obligation of opening the Strait of Hormuz.

2) “We’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.”

At best this sort of bluster is unbecoming for the leader of a great nation. At worst it is a threat to commit a war crime. There is no military advantage gained by reducing a country’s population to living in “Stone Age” conditions.

The only reason to fight a just war, St. Augustine taught, is to secure a just and lasting peace. We are not (or should not be) at war with the people of Iran, but with the country’s radical Islamist government. Ideally we should be working toward a postwar friendship with Iran’s people. The gratuitous insult to those people— the suggest that they “belong” in the Stone Age— is not likely to advance that goal.