The one word Trump refuses to say — and why it matters

President Donald Trump refuses to refer to his Iran war as a “war,” a conservative commentator claims — but this only works to the disadvantage of the American people.

“While President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have at times referred to the operation as a ‘war,’ GOP lawmakers have been fastidious about calling it anything else,” wrote Joe Perticone of the conservative publication The Bulwark. “‘Boots on the ground’ is the other phrase they mincingly dance around, since at that point it becomes pretty much impossible to insist this is an ‘excursion,’ as Trump likes to say, clearly confusing that word for ‘incursion.’ But it’s getting harder for them.”

Perticone listed examples. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) dismissed the idea of troops on the ground, even though intelligence experts are saying that may prove necessary. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) similarly downplayed the notion that this is a war which will require troop deployment.

“That would—I’m not gonna speculate on that, but that is not the direction that I think we’re going,” she argued. The one exception is Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), “who has openly bragged about his role in coaching the Israelis to better convince Trump of the military campaign’s necessity.”

Perticone ultimately concluded, “While almost no Republican on Capitol Hill wants to talk about it, American troops invading Iran is not an impossibility. Beyond that, the operation’s hefty price tag will also need to be addressed by the House and Senate. When that happens, the funding request could very well signal that the U.S. military intends to expand its role.”

Perticone is not alone among conservatives in denouncing the Iran war. The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last argued earlier in March that “the American military is now telling the New York Times that, far from collapsing, the Iranian regime is adapting to the Israeli–American onslaught and finding our weaknesses.”

He then asked “how is it possible that the people in charge of running America’s war—by which I mean the commander-in-chief and his secretary of defense—could have misunderestimated Iran so completely?”

Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist who advised President George W. Bush (who also led a prolonged and unpopular Middle Eastern war), said the same thing.

“Trust is a rare commodity in our wretched times,” Schmidt, a Republican strategist and former adviser to President George W. Bush, said in a Wednesday Substack post. “These are the days of corruption, self-dealing, incompetence and faithlessness to the Constitution.”

Schmidt also referred to Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth as “tiny men and women” who do not know what they are doing in Iran.

“We deserve to know,” Schmidt wrote. “There is no plan. There is no strategy. There is only incoherence. There is only incompetence.”