WAR IN IRAN
Where did we go wrong? What did we do to deserve this?
Family. Love the family. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. All of us come from a family. Like it or not. For better or worse, richer or poorer, till death do us part.
After I graduated from college with a degree in French-Drama, I headed home to New York to work as an actor. I had a manager. I got a role in a little off-off-Broadway musical, “What’s a Nice Country Like You Doing in a State Like This?”. I decided to live at home to save dough. (spoiler alert…big mistake.)
After the run ended, I tore all the ligaments in my ankle and was laid up in a cast, in my childhood bedroom, career on hold. A former friend of my father (that’s a whole other ball of wax) had bought a little town meeting hall in Jeffersonville, Vermont and one thing led to another. He offered me the building as a theater.
Laid up in bed, entrepreneurial spirit burgeoning, I concocted a summer festival of new American plays. I partnered up with the recently formed Ensemble Studio Theater, a nearby college, and a ski resort and worked out a scheme. I established an LLC. EST would put on a season of summer plays at the “Town Meeting Theatre Workshop”. They would teach at the college and live in dorms, and my girlfriend and I, the Executive Producer, would luxuriate in a donated condo at the resort. In the end it all worked. The EST website actually lists the plays and playwrights whose work was performed at a “Vermont Summer Festival” in 1972-1973. Along the way, things at home with the family were not smooth.
My father, a powerful Wall Street lawyer, had broken off relations with his best friend after a nasty tiff. Probably to spite my father, his former best friend had offered me his abandoned building for theatricals. So now, A far as my father was concerned, I was in cahoots with his enemy while enjoying the benefits of his free food and free rent. My parents whose view of my theatrical aspirations had been made known previously…”You’re no Laurence Olivier”…were not amused by my entrepreneurial aspirations.
One day, during the planning phase of my project, early winter 1973, my mother came into my room. I was lying abed, leg elevated. “I want to talk to you”
I limped into the living room where she sat, downcast, in an antique French blue suede armchair. My mother is now almost 100 and has lost some of her venom and voice. Back then, she was in full throttle. She spoke a dialect which I describe as “Assimilated New York”. Born in Brooklyn, she, nevertheless, spoke as if she was an actress in a 1940’s film. There were no “R’s” at the end of words. “Father” was “Fathuh”. “Party” was “Paahty”. You get the point.
“Your father and I were at a cocktail party the other night and someone asked him what you were doing with your life. He was mortified. He was too embarrassed to tell them anything. What are you doing with your life? Wasting it! Where did we go wrong? What did we do to deserve this?” She actually said those words. And, she meant it. She was disconsolate.
Ya gotta love family. Parents have a way of cutting to the quick of any matter. In the end, my ankle healed, I left home, pulled off the Festival, had eight careers in show business in three years, and went to law school.
Thinking about that exchange brings me to the war in Iran. My question is…Where did we go wrong? What did we do to deserve this?
When the great orange Crookster was first elected we knew we were in trouble. We hoped that despite his clearly apparent tendencies, institutions would hold and that sane people around him would ameliorate his worst impulses. To a certain extent, that happened. Sane people came and went, a 2018 Democratic majority in the US House impeached him for the crazy shit he did and he was held somewhat at bay.
The second time around, we have not been so lucky. As he has aged, his brain has apparently shrunk to the size of a walnut. His worst tendencies…lack of empathy, sense of invulnerability, greed, impulsivity, retribution, corruption, stupidity, etc. are on full display, unchecked, unimpeded by a complicit Republican Congress, Supreme Court, and a cabal of sycophants and nutballs whose ambition and ideology match his.
One thing we have to give him credit for is his love and devotion to family. Who can deny the love he has shown his darling daughter Ivanka…recall those cute pictures of them cuddling close when she was a pubescent blonde teen. And, those beautiful boys…investing in drone companies and looking for US government contracts so as the war eats up our drones, they’re assured of a killing. Boots on the ground? Sadly, Barron’s too tall to fight. But, thank goodness nepotism rides again because who else but Ivanka’s husband, the fabulous, talented, Jared Kushner should negotiate with the Iranians over Nuclear proliferation. He’s an expert in…everything.
Never mind that Trump, spitefully, cast aside the Iran nuclear deal reached under the Obama Administration. At least we were talking to the Iranians. Clearly, brilliant son-in-law Jared and his travel buddy Steve Witkoff, as lead negotiator, were the right people to talk to the Iranians about nuclear matters. Not.
We may never fully know why we went to war with Iran. Sucking up to Netenyahu? Distract from Epstein revelations? It worked in Venezuela so why not Iran? Plan? Feh. Endgame? Dunno. Ever impulsive, Trump’s public statements strongly suggest that his war whimsy buttons were pushed by Israel and pressed in the end by son-in-law Jared and Witkoff. “Less than 48 hours before the U.S. and Israeli coordinated strikes on Iran began on Feb. 28, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Geneva for a third round of Omani-mediated talks aimed at reaching a nuclear agreement.
Despite Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi’s assessment that the United States and Iran made “substantial progress” toward a nuclear deal during the Feb. 26 talks and the agreement to meet again on March 2 for technical talks, Trump said he was “not happy” with the progress or the “way they’re negotiating.” The following day, the United States and Israel illegally attacked Iran, using Tehran’s nuclear program as one justification for the attack.” https://www.armscontrol.org/blog/2026-03-11/us-negotiators-were-ill-prepared-serious-nuclear-negotiations-iran. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/us/politics/trump-war-iran-israel.html
As these articles make clear, US diplomacy was never serious. Kushner and Witkoff were way over their heads. Israel wanted war. And our President, impulsive and always right, followed his gut.
.
Where did we go wrong? What did we do to deserve this? Many of us feared Trump’s lack of impulse control, his inability to make rational decisions, his lust for personal aggrandizement and validation and, sadly, we were right. The world has become a far more dangerous place with Trump in office. Iranians have not risen up to end their regime, rather their nationalism has been solidified by Trump’s war of choice. Global energy prices are skyrocketing. The entire Middle East region is aflame. Iranians, Americans, Israelis, and others are dying.
The real answer to the question is that elections have consequences. Where did we go wrong? Many missteps along the way led to Trump’s election. While there is a trickle out there questioning the 2020 election results, it’s too dim and surely too late. Americans voted Trump into office. Assuming we have mid-term elections and we’re not kept from the polls by a fake national emergency, martial law, armed ICE thugs blocking our way, we have a chance to take back the House and perhaps even the Senate. Special elections are trending towards the Democrats.
If, by the grace of the Great Spirit, something good comes, and some check on the unchecked King and his Court can be put in place, the road to recovery will be long and hard. The World will not easily forgive us our trespasses. Even so, I am always hopeful. Our Republic has survived previous hardships and calamities. We will likely survive this. Perhaps the perfidy and betrayal of basic American values will unite the disparate American clans. Perhaps, new leaders will have a vision for effective government to address the now enhanced challenges of the 21st century. Perhaps, we’ll go right instead of wrong and deserve better than we have chosen in the past.
So, when I’m feeling particularly down. When my head spins and my dreams keep me awake, I look back at the question my sainted Mother asked me for wisdom and guidance. I survived my parent’s fears. I overcame their despair. In the end, it worked out OK. I didn’t make a complete mess of the long and winding road of my life and I trust that, as a Nation, we can and will do better.
Keep The faith.
Great article Paul! Love the parallels.
Paul, How did your parents feel when you decided to go to law school? Did they feel vindicated? Parts of the US electorate choose to go on adventures when they vote. Minnesota elected a WWE star for governor and then thought better of it. There have been many elected at the state level who can't be seen as anything but the results of frustration with 'normal'. It seems that large numbers of voters across the US are similarly frustrated with normal, like the son of a successful lawyer might be. And like him, they are likely to see the wisdom in normal and return to it. Thanks for your commentary.