Joe Kent delivers a speech during a rally in support of defendants being prosecuted in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, in Washington, in September, 2021.Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
Occam’s razor is a philosophical principle that holds when faced with more than one explanation the simplest one is favoured because it’s most likely true. If an apple hits you on the head while you’re sitting under an apple tree, the cause is probably gravity – not fruit-tossing demons armed with apple guns, hiding behind a grassy knoll.
And if you start a war without regard for obvious consequences, and then those consequences come to pass, that should come as no surprise. In the war with Iran, it should be taken as evidence that U.S. President Donald Trump made (another) bad decision – not proof that a nefarious entity is secretly pulling Mr. Trump’s puppet strings.
This week, the administration experienced its first resignation over the war in the Middle East. Joe Kent, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in an open letter that he “cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran” because getting into another war in the Middle East is a “trap” that will harm “the wealth and prosperity of our nation.”
So far, so reasonable. Those words were widely reported, and widely embraced on the left and center-left.
But Mr. Kent is a MAGA stalwart, and a supporter of the President. His letter isn’t so much a criticism of the man in the White House as a claim to have unmasked the shadowy foe who is manipulating an innocent and virtuous Mr. Trump.
Top U.S. counterterrorism official Joe Kent resigns over war with Iran
The letter paints the President as the latest victim of this ancient conspiracy. Who are the conspirators? Israel. And the Jews. And the media, which they control. Of course.
If you think Mr. Trump’s pro-war MAGA is unhinged, meet anti-war MAGA.
Anti-war MAGA is deeply scarred by the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the years of war that followed – and well they should be. But many of them now blame Israel for that war. They claim that by some magic, Israel and its ethnic co-conspirators suckered then president George W Bush, vice-president Dick Cheney and secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld into invading Iraq.
The inconvenient truth is that the Israeli government of the day did not share, and certainly did not create, the Bush administration’s obsession with Iraq.
Mr. Kent’s letter says that he “lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel.” She was a U.S. Navy cryptographer, killed by an ISIS suicide bomber in northern Syria in 2019. It’s difficult to see how Israel is responsible – but if you believe an Israeli-Jewish-media conspiracy authored the invasion of Iraq, then all else follows.
In an interview with anti-war MAGA stalwart Tucker Carlson, Mr. Kent implied that this vast conspiracy was also responsible for last year’s assassination of Charlie Kirk. He claimed that he and others had been ordered to cease further investigations into the matter, presumably because that risked exposing the truth.
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As of Thursday afternoon, the interview on YouTube had 1.5 million views, and the top comment was: “We desperately need a separation of synagogue and state.” It had been liked 18,000 times.
There are many reasons to criticize Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies, from Gaza to Lebanon to the West Bank. This isn’t that.
Mr. Trump’s decision to launch a war on Iran, at this time and in this manner, without clear legal justification or a strategic objective, was a bad decision. But if Mr. Trump had not decided, the attack would not have happened.
Last year, he joined an ongoing Israeli offensive against Iran – he had FOMO about missing out on military success – and dropped a few bombs. He immediately demanded a ceasefire, and got it. Mr. Netanyahu wanted to continue the offensive, but had no choice but to follow Mr. Trump.
Humans love conspiracy theories. They allow people to evade obvious but unpleasant realities.
After the First World War, many Germans were persuaded that the war had been lost because of a “stab in the back.” Under the Nazis, the myth was official history.
Germany sued for peace in 1918 because its leaders had made a series of catastrophic decisions, starting with going to war against a group of allies with bigger economies, larger populations and control of the seas. Germany lost the war because, after four years, the mostly likely outcome had come to pass. It was militarily and economically broken, by its own choices.
But the myth that many Germans came to prefer was that they had been on the edge of victory – until stabbed in the back by socialists, democrats and, above all, the Jews.
Unlike the other animals, humans have a limitless capacity for self-deception. Sometimes, we really want to believe what we really want to believe.