World War Pete: Crusading Toward Iran
Badly needing a distraction, Trump appears to be giving the “War Secretary” his chance to “Kill all Muslims!”
With the furor around the Epstein files undaunted by any of Trump’s efforts at diverting our attention, and with his deadly ICE/CBP operations flailing, Trump is changing tactics from creating a domestic disturbance to sparking a global conflict—again.
A massive wave of U.S. military power is moving into position for a strike on Iran.
Tasted Blood
Iran’s Ayatollah Khamanei believes a strike may be imminent, and is currently threatening to release damaging material about Donald Trump in retaliation:
“The island of corruption is only one example… many other things… will soon come to light.”
While it is possible this show of force could be used as a lever in the Witkoff-Kushner led “negotiations” without launching a strike, or an invasion, this seems increasingly unlikely. The only time Trump has sent this much firepower to one location was Venezuela.
Of course, the buildup in the Caribbean led to the murder of over a hundred on “drug boats” and ultimately to the kidnapping of Maduro, an operation Trump touts as “incredible.”
Trump has tasted blood—and he likes it:
“That night, the entire world saw what the full military might (of) the U.S. military is capable… It was so precise, so incredible.”
“I don’t like to say fear, but, sometimes, you have to have fear because that’s the only thing that really will get the situation taken care of.”
—Trump, Ft. Bragg, 2/13/26
Adding to this dangerous scenario is the aberrant psychopath currently styling himself as the “War Secretary,” Pete Hegseth.
Doug Wilson, Theonomist
On Tuesday, as aircraft flow toward the Middle East, Hegseth had his monthly “prayer session”—this time led by Douglas Wilson, one of the most extreme religious bigots in America, who runs an authoritarian patriarchal cult in Moscow, ID called Christ Church, nicknamed “Mother Kirk.” Hegseth is a member of one of the churches in Doug Wilson’s network, Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC).
Doug Wilson’s views on any given topic are abhorrent to nearly all of modern civilization:
He believes women are possessions, and that rape does not exist. This puts an even brighter light on Pete Hegseth’s own rape accusations.
Wilson told the AP he believes the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote “was a bad idea.”
He has permissive attitudes toward (heterosexual) pedophiles.
Wilson believes homosexuals should be exiled or executed.
“The Bible indicates the punishment for homosexuality is death. The Bible also indicates the punishment for homosexuality is exile. So death is not the minimal punishment for a homosexual. There are other alternatives.'”
He encourages a return to slavery through minimizing its horrors—and praising its “benefits.”
“Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its predominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence. There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world. The credit for this must go to the predominance of Christianity… Slave life was to [the slaves] a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes and good medical care. In spite of the evils contained in the system, we cannot overlook the benefits of slavery for both blacks and whites… Slavery produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the War or since.”
—Southern Slavery As It Was, Doug Wilson/Steve Wilkins
Wilson preaches that empathy is “Satanic.” This is the same idea that Elon Musk constantly pushes, except that in Musk’s version is “suicidal.”
“And Adam sinned… and that sin was the sin of empathy.”
—Doug Wilson
Wilson believes the world—starting in America—should be ruled by a theonomy: government by God.
“I would like to see this nation being a Christian nation, and I would like this world to be a Christian world.”
Putting aside the outrageous violation of the First Amendment Establishment Clause by holding a Christian supremacist “prayer session” in the Pentagon, any of the beliefs above should and would have disqualified someone from even entering the building, much less preaching to the brass under pressure from the Defense Secretary.
But the most relevant belief held by Pete Hegseth and the man he takes religious guidance from, Doug Wilson, is their shared, virulent islamophobia.
“Kill all Muslims!”
Wilson wrote a deeply islamophobic book calling for reverse migration and American theonomy: Empires of Dirt: Secularism, Radical Islam, and the Mere Christendom Alternative.
Recently, Wilson said about Muslim assimilation in the U.S.:
“There’s only so much white sand you can put in the sugar bowl before it isn’t the sugar bowl anymore… It is not xenophobic to object to the immigration policies of those who want to turn the Michigan-Ohio border into something that resembles the India-Pakistan border”
“War Secretary” Pete Hegseth has a number of Christian supremacist tattoos, including the flag of the Crusades, the Jerusalem Cross, and the motto of the Crusades, Deus Vult, which translates to “God Wills It.” He also gave himself a kafir tattoo after swearing an oath to the Constitution—a tattoo which in Arabic means infidel or unbeliever, commonly seen as a white supremacist signal.
Hegseth’s Christian supremacist book is called American Crusade, and in 2015 he reportedly got drunk in a bar and yelled: “Kill all Muslims!”
None of this is subtle. Pete Hegseth has made clear on numerous occasions that he sees the Constitution as a nuisance, and that he takes his real instructions from his interpretation of the Christian God—as Doug Wilson preaches it. Hegseth believes he is on a mission from Jesus Christ, a spiritual war, a holy war, and a new Crusade against two billion Muslims—carrying an American flag.
And now he’s sending the most powerful kinetic force ever built, the U.S. military, toward one of the most powerful Islamic states in the world, Iran.
It Can’t End Well
Generally speaking, in geopolitics, there are two objectives once you send a large attack force towards a target: you want to strengthen your position to avoid a war, or you want to win a war.
But no sane Commander-In-Chief would want Pete Hegseth anywhere near either scenario. Hegseth is not streaming military assets to the Middle East to avoid a war. He feels it’s his destiny to prosecute one. He will be on a trigger finger to initiate hostilities with the slightest encouragement.
And Hegseth also has no idea how to win a war. He is a rapey, out-of-control Fox host—not a military strategist, a sane decision maker, or a leader.
So what is he there for? He’s there because Donald Trump needs something to get away from the Epstein problem for good—something really big this time. He sees his popularity screaming downward. He knows his grip is weakening in his own party. And he feels that the Maduro raid was his only true success. To a psychopath, in this scenario, starting a war with Iran has almost no downside.
I can only imagine Pete Hegseth pitching this to Trump: “So why not roll the dice, sir? If we can take Maduro, the Ayatollah should be no problem. But worst case scenario, a world war is a great distraction!”
The United States is a rogue, fascist clown-state led by men connected to reality only by the thinnest of strands. Without a sudden rash of courage by Republicans, it’s going to take something very dramatic to stop this. Once again, I’m sorry to say: batten down.
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I've got a lesson for Hegseth from scripture, Matthew 26:52. He who lives by the sword dies by the sword.
Frightening development. I expect the attack on Iran will come closely after the Winter Olympics have concluded. I recall that Putin invaded Ukraine shortly after the last winter Olympics. What can we citizens do to prevent such madness? Not much I imagine.