America is on a war of choice footing. The consequences are just beginning.

In the 14 months since President Donald Trump took office for his second term, the United States has bombed seven countries: Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Nigeria, Venezuela and, for 12 days in June 2025, and 11 days and counting in 2026, Iran. The Senate refused to even symbolically inhibit the president’s authority to continue and extend the war in Iran by voting down a resolution to invoke the 1973 War Powers Act, largely along party lines. 

These reckless “wars-of-choice” — meaning instigated without the presence of imminent threat by a president who portrayed himself as an isolationist, vowed “no wars,” and still actively campaigns for a Nobel Peace Prize — are bad in both the short and long term. Wars of choice traditionally don’t go well. Witness the $2.5 trillion spent (as opposed to the $100 billion to $200 billion early government estimate) and the deaths of some 4,500 U.S. military service members and another 31,000 wounded in the 2003-2011 war-of-choice against Iraq. In every New England state, most residents believe Trump definitely or probably should have asked for congressional approval before attacking Iran, including 66% of Rhode Islanders, according to a recent University of New Hampshire poll.

With mid-term elections fast approaching, now is the time for the American people — only 27% of whom approve of the bombing according to a Reuters poll — to loudly say no to the war. Gas prices are rising 20 to 30 cents per gallon across the country for an electorate already burdened by the government’s lack of concern for affordability issue. The stock market is “volatile” at best and likely to remain so. Disrupted supply chains already affecting oil deliveries are likely to broaden and impact markets already impacted by tariffs like electronics, pharmaceuticals and fertilizer. Most importantly, more Americans will die. Seven service members have already been killed, six of them in an attack on an operations center in Kuwait that had no defenses and was miles from the main Army base. A Pentagon spokesperson said Tuesday that approximately 140 troops have been wounded, including eight listed as “severely injured” and now “receiving the highest level of medical care.”

Defense (Congress has not changed the name) Secretary Pete Hegseth callously referred to these casualties as “the cost of war” and suggested that highlighting their deaths is a “distraction” to make President Trump look bad. But Americans must ask themselves how acceptable is a war of choice with either no one discernible goal or a rotating series of goals depending on who is talking and what day it is? 

Perhaps the most plausible explanation for the war was given by Rhode Island Democratic U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse who suggested the goal of the war is to distract: “I pray there is a plan beyond ‘Wagging the Dog’ over the Trump/Epstein files saga and a bungled economy.”  

One of the ostensible goals on the Trump administration’s merry-go-round suggests that starting a war with Iran offers the Iranian people an opportunity to rid themselves of the unquestionably oppressive, brutal regime it has lived under for many years. But beyond “good luck with that” rhetoric, nothing has been done to aid them in that quest. The ruthless Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is well trained and positioned to quash uprisings. 

Of the possibility of regime change, Rhode Island’s Sen. Jack Reed told CNN: “I don’t think it’s remotely possible.” And if regime change was part of the supposed plan, then perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to also kill two or three others in the Iranian line of succession.Though President Trump had insisted he must be involved in selecting Iran’s next leader, the Iranians went ahead and selected the Ayatollah’s hard-line son as his successor, showing their defiance. Looks like there won’t be an “Apprentice”-like audition.

Meanwhile, thousands of Iranians attended the funerals for the 175 students and staff members killed when airstrikes destroyed a girls’ school. Independent analysis suggests that U.S. forces are responsible. If that is true, Reed and other Democratic national security leaders said in a joint statement Sunday, the bombing of the school would be “one of the worst cases of civilian casualties in decades of American military action in the Middle East.”

Over 1,000 Iranian civilians lost their lives in just over a week. Multiply those numbers by the average number of relatives, friends and sympathizers of each, and that likely roughly equates to the number of new jihadists created by those deaths who will be looking for revenge. When asked during an interview for Time magazine if Americans should be worried about an attack on American soil as a result of the US military attack on Iran, Trump’s response was “I guess.”  That potential wasn’t factored into pre-attack decision-making?

While the U.S. was once known as a “benevolent hegemon,” Harvard Professor Stephen Walt said the country is now a “predatory hegemon,” seeking dominance and capitulation to its power worldwide. French and German leaders have described the chaotic global environment created by the Trump administration — from tariffs to human rights violations (even against American citizens) and bombings that have become more or less standard operating procedure in lieu of diplomacy or even measured military responses — as one of “no rules.” Unpredictability and consequent chaos can be an effective foreign policy strategy for a short time, but played out too long and too strongly, it simply makes the U.S. seen as untrustworthy and led by an administration in over their heads, or crazy. The U.S. is perilously close to that. 

Americans should be calling their representatives in Congress now, daily, and loudly. The 1973 War Powers Act is in many ways toothless as it gives the president 60-90 days for troop withdrawal. Where Congress has teeth is in funding. It is highly likely that the Administration will soon ask for a supplemental funding bill to pay for Trump’s war. Congress can and must say no. Constituents who are seeing their cost of living expenses in areas like food, housing, health care and energy must tell their representatives that is where they want their tax dollars spent, not on wars of choice, and that they will remember whether their voices were heeded in the voting booths.

The Iran War is already costing American taxpayers an estimated $1 billion per day and over $5 billion in less than a week, with estimates ranging from $40 billion to $100 billion for the still-unknown duration. 

And don’t forget, Donald Trump has already said Cuba is next.