Don’t mention the war
By 
The Party of Endless War os trying to deny its status through the sheer power of intelligence-insulting euphemism:
When President Trump gave reporters a brief update this week on the accelerating bombing campaign against Iran, he said, “We’re doing very well on the war front.”
That complicated matters for Republicans on Capitol Hill, who have spent the days since the U.S.-Israeli attacks began engaging in semantic gymnastics to describe the widening conflict as a “major combat operation,” a “mission,” “hostilities” or really just anything other than “war.”
“They declared war on us,” Speaker Mike Johnson said of Iran as he repeated the administration’s justification for the offensive. Still, he quickly added, there was, in fact, no war.
“We’re not at war right now,” he said on Wednesday. “We’re four days into a very specific, clear mission — an operation.”
The verbal gyrations reflect the tricky politics of an unpopular war, especially for a party that has long condemned “forever wars” on foreign soil. They also underscore the legal and constitutional questions raised by Mr. Trump’s decision to begin an offensive against Iran without congressional approval.
Under the Constitution, only Congress can declare war. But most Republicans on Capitol Hill have taken the position that it is up to the president alone — not, heaven forbid, the legislative branch — whether to commit U.S. forces to a military mission whose objectives, scope and duration remain a big question mark.
Oh, and let us not forget the magic of tautology:
“It’s not a war,” Representative Randy Fine, Republican of Florida, snapped as he made his way to the House floor on Wednesday, employing some tautological reasoning. “The way you are officially at war is Congress declares war, and we haven’t declared war.”
As the Senate prepared to vote on whether Mr. Trump needed to win approval from Congress for the mission, many Republicans employed an exceedingly narrow definition of what would constitute war. They argued that so far, at least, what was happening in the Middle East was not it.
“Listen,” said Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, “if I’m going to commit ground troops into combat, that constitutes war in the constitutional sense and will require some sort of authorization.”
Wherever a particularly transparent fraud is being perpetrated on the American public, Josh Hawley will be there. His starting position is not as indefensible on its face as “the United States has not been at war since 1945 because Congress has chosen to delegate its powers,” but as soon as Trump sends in troops he will change.
I think this is my very “favorite” evasion, though:
This is some next-level swiftboating
[image or embed]— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) Feb 28, 2026 at 4:56 PM
“Iran has been an imminent threat for 47 years” was the compromise.