Following in LBJ's Footsteps?
On 12 May 2026, I was on “Judging Freedom” talking with the Judge about the growing realization in the American body politic that not only is the Iran war lost, but the defeat will have disastrous consequences for the US and countries all over the world. Of course, the Judge and virtually all of his regular guests have been saying that for a long time, but many refused to believe that the war was a lost cause. That is no longer the case, as the essay in The Atlantic by the prominent neoconservative Robert Kagan illustrates.
It seems to me, as I noted to the Judge, that the war appears to be having serious negative effects on President Trump. He often looks worn down and sometimes even disoriented. And his comments — especially his Truth Social posts — sound like the ravings of a desperate man, not someone who is in control of the events around him. He surely knows he has no war-winning strategy in Iran and that his presidency is likely to be badly damaged, if not ruined, by this war, which he foolishly started against the advice of his principal advisors.
As I remarked to the Judge, it reminds me of what happened to President Johnson during the Vietnam war. He was sworn in on 20 January 1965 (sixty years to the day before Trump was sworn in for his second term) after winning a landslide victory in the presidential election on 3 November 1964. Johnson was on top of the political world, but then in March 1965, he sent the first US combat troops into South Vietnam and launched the famous “Rolling Thunder” bombing campaign against North Vietnam. In effect, he started a losing war that destroyed his presidency and made his life a living nightmare. It looks like President Trump is heading into a similar situation.
With regards to the warning about Trump “following in LBJ’s footsteps” hit me less like political commentary and more like a diagnosis.
As a physician, I know there is a moment when aggressive intervention stops being treatment and becomes denial. You can keep cutting, shocking, escalating, and prescribing but if the underlying diagnosis is wrong, the damage only compounds.
That is what America keeps doing with war.
Vietnam was not simply a military failure. It was a psychological collapse disguised as strategy. LBJ could not admit that more bombing would not produce victory, because admitting that meant confronting the unbearable truth: power has limits.
Now we are watching the same pathology with Iran.
Washington speaks in abstractions: deterrence, credibility, escalation dominance, regime pressure. But Iran is not an abstraction. It is a country, a civilization, a people, a history and for many of us, it is personal. The American war machine always begins by flattening human beings into targets. Then it acts surprised when the targets refuse to behave like pieces on a chessboard.
What strikes me most is not that this war may damage Trump politically. Presidents come and go. What matters is the deeper disease: the imperial ego that mistakes destruction for control and humiliation for strategy.
The hardest thing for powerful men to say is: I was wrong.
So instead, they escalate.
LBJ lost himself in Vietnam. Trump may be losing himself in Iran. But the real tragedy is not presidential legacy. It is the lives consumed while leaders protect their pride.
Patriotism is not cheering another doomed campaign. Patriotism is telling the truth before more bodies are buried.
And the truth is simple: wars built on arrogance do not become wise just because powerful men are too embarrassed to stop.
The conflict with Iran has become one of America’s most punishing geopolitical crises in decades. Billions vanished into military escalation while oil markets convulsed, inflation surged, and global shipping routes fell into chaos. Washington’s allies grew uneasy as public frustration deepened at home. Analysts warn the prolonged confrontation risks economic slowdown, political instability, and lasting damage to U.S. influence, exposing the vulnerability of American power in a region it spent decades trying to control.