OUR DAILY THREAD: The Empire Has No Close
Forever war after all
THE SET-UP: We’re one week into 2026 and Trump has already bombed Somalia four times. The first three targeted a “small ISIS affiliate” in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region and the fourth targeted al-Shabaab in the south. As the indefatigable Dave DeCamp of Antiwar.com noted, it portends a continuation of Trump’s record-breaking pace of airstrikes on the war-ravaged nation over the course of 2025:
According to Antiwar.com’s count, the US launched at least 128 airstrikes in Somalia in 2025, more than double the previous annual record of 63, which President Trump set in his first term in 2019. According to New America, an organization that tracks the air war, the airstrikes launched in 2025 are more than were conducted in Somalia during the administrations of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush combined.
He also bombed the Houthis in Yemen over one hundred times and hit seventy ISIS positions in Syria. He “obliterated” Iran’s underground nuclear bunker, attacked an ISIS site in Iraq and he celebrated Christmas with an airstrike inside Nigeria. He launched 35 airstrikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean and, as we all know, he followed that barrage of unconstitutional executions with the airstrikes that accompanied the snatching Nicholas Maduro and his wife.
Obviously, Trump is fully committed to justifying his rebranding of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. Both he and the lethality-obsessed Christian hypocrite he’s got running the Pentagon made it clear that nomenclature would be destiny. They were not satisfied with the weak language of “defense.” They told us they intended to go on the offense. Here’s what the alcoholic FOX News infotainer said at the renaming ceremony last September:
So at your direction, Mr. President, the War Department is going to fight decisively, not endless conflicts. It's going to fight to win, not, not to lose. We're going to go on offense, not just on defense, maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct. We're going to raise up warriors, not just defenders.
It was easy to dismiss it as buffoonish bluster. Hegseth’s over-the-top persona is at best cartoonish. Add to that Trump’s penchant for rebranding, and one could put the Department of War in the same circular file as the Trump Kennedy Center and the Gulf Of America. More perniciously, though, is Trump’s attempt to brand himself as a champion of peace. The constant talk of his supposed claim to a Nobel Peace Prize reinforced a narrative he used to great effect during the 2016 campaign when he demolished Jeb Bush’s much-hyped candidacy. Back then, he attacked the “stupid foreign wars” that made Jeb’s brother one of the most unpopular presidents in US history. He hung the Iraq War around Jeb’s neck. Today many of Trump’s devoted supporters still hang their red hats on Trump’s apparent antiwar stance and his mantra of “America First.”
Whether or not he believed it when he said it, it’s obvious now that Trump currently has no qualms about using kinetic force whenever and wherever he sees fit. However, the real issue is not his shifting stance, but the Presidency and the empire he inherited when took the oath of office. The first time he had people around him who constrained his impulses. Much to Trump’s chagrin, “Mad Dog” Mattis wasn’t rabid nor did he roll over. And General Milley was unwilling to obey his unlawful order to shoot protesters on the street.
Ultimately, Trump was a novice. He was unprepared to win and when he did he didn’t really understand the extent of the power at his disposal. He wasn’t able to exploit the Imperial Presidency, nor did he have the roster of sycophants and sociopaths he has today. That point was driven home when he announced his intention to pillage Venezuela’s oil:
Under the Trump administration, we are reasserting American power in a very powerful way in our home region. And our home region is very different than it was just a short while ago. The future will be, and we did this in my first term. We had great dominance in my first term, and we have, uh, far greater dominance right now.
The future will be determined by the ability to protect commerce and territory and resources that are core to national security. These are core to nati- -- our national security. Just like tariffs are, they made our country rich and they’ve made our national security strong, stronger than ever before.
But these are the iron laws that have always determined global power. And, uh, we’re gonna keep it that way. We will secure our borders, we’ll stop the terrorists, we will crash the cartels and we will defend our citizens against all threats, foreign and domestic. Other presidents may have lacked the courage or whatever to defend America, but I will never allow terrorists and criminals to operate with impunity against the United States.
The United States under Trump is dropping the platitudes and the pretenses. It is not going to pretend anymore. Yes, the United States is an empire and it is going to use its military might to punish its foes and to enrich itself. The US is admitting that it doesn’t recognize national sovereignty when it conflicts with the Imperial President’s whims and appetites. And going forward, there are no limits on what the United States can do or will do to protect its “national interests,” which is defined by the Imperial President on an ad hoc basis.
Like the change from “Defense” to “War,” it may be that the United States is finally coming clean after decades of trying to have it both ways … pretending that it is not an empire while lording over a globe-spanning network of approximately 800 military bases, installations and deployments. So, too, has it intervened scores of times since the start of the Cold War … deposing and decapitating regimes, absconding with resources through intermediaries and propping-up a rogue’s gallery of dictators. And while Trump’s move on Venezuela’s oil seems new, the only thing “new” about it is the brutal honesty of Trump’s stated intentions.
The real issue is that We, The People have been comforted by the lie that the United States is a “force for good” and a champion of human rights and democracy. The recent histories of Indonesia, Vietnam, El Salvador, Chile, Guatemala, Iran, Iraq, the Congo and Haiti, among others, tell a different tale. Still, the lie was a tacit admission that the truth was unacceptable. The covert actions, the secrecy and the cover-ups acknowledged the fact that America was doing something inherently unacceptable to the American people and the people of the world at large. But it also kept us from seeking accountability for our empire’s excesses.
The people who used and expanded the Imperial Presidency never paid for their crimes, nor did we demand a return to the constitutional limits that would’ve contained Trump’s insatiable appetites. Maybe if we didn’t just “move-on” from the Iraq War and instead demanded that George W. Bush and the Neoconservatives who marched the nation into a war of choice be held accountable … perhaps Trump wouldn’t have won the White House in the first place. - jp
The Year of the Trillion-Dollar US Military Budget Begins
https://inkstickmedia.com/the-year-of-the-trillion-dollar-us-military-budget-begins/
Trump Proposes Massive Increase in 2027 Defense Spending to $1.5T, Citing ‘Dangerous Times’
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2026/01/07/trump-proposes-massive-increase-2027-defense-spending-15t-citing-dangerous-times.html
Trump blocks defense company payouts until arms production speeds up
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/trump-says-he-wont-permit-dividends-buybacks-defense-companies-till-they-fix-2026-01-07/
Trump warns of further US air strikes in Nigeria
https://www.trtworld.com/article/4c3aee1d1e1d
Two weeks on, questions linger over targeting and impact of US airstrikes in Nigeria
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/08/questions-targeting-impact-us-airstrikes-in-nigeria
Venezuela After the U.S. Operation: Strategic Implications for China and United States
https://www.hstoday.us/subject-matter-areas/counterterrorism/venezuela-after-the-u-s-operation-strategic-implications-for-china-and-united-states/
China finds risks, opportunities as Trump pushes for ‘spheres of influence’
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/8/china-finds-risks-opportunities-as-trump-pushes-for-spheres-of-influence
Canada’s armed forces are planning for threats from America
https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2026/01/07/canadas-armed-forces-are-planning-for-threats-from-america
The US military is feeling invincible, and that’s dangerous https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-venezuela-dangerous/