Back during the 2000s, it was common for the left-of-center blogosphere to refer to David Brooks as “Bobo,” after his 2000 book Bobos in Paradise. “Bobo” was supposed to be a nickname for “bourgeois bohemian.” But that longer phrase never really caught on, I’m sure not least because Americans have a hard time pronouncing “bourgeois.”
But the nickname did stick to Bobo himself for a long time and was part of his image of trying half-creative ways of making stale conservatives truisms sound not totally senseless. A project which never succeeded very well.
So it was like a blast from the past to me today when I called up the latest weekly wrap-up, (1) which had dropped away over time from my regular weekend fare. That’s why I was so surprised when the first things that Bobo and Ruth said didn’t sound hopelessly superficial. That could be because they’re stepped up their reporting a bit. Or maybe because even the flakiest attempt at legitimate news commentary sounds deeply profound in comparison to Donald Trump’s constant ravings.
Bobo says right at the start, “I try not to make predictions because I'm not a total idiot, but I do think -- it would not surprise me if this war were still going on in January of 2029, when Trump leaves office.” Which made me think that I hadn’t heard anyone vocalizing that, but it strikes me as an entirely plausible possibility. And he enlarged on the thought:
I just don't think he cares. I don't think he cares about the midterms. I don't think he cares about gas prices. I think he cares about legacy.Ruth responds by saying:
And he wants to see himself as a man who remade the Middle East. And he would not be the first U.S. president who had that illusion. And he talks about -- there's scuttlebutt today that the Cabinet is gathering to think maybe we should do a big massive expansion of the war.
I don't think we have the material to do that, like the missiles, all that kind of stuff. So it would not surprise me if this dragged on with this, what we have been seeing the last couple months, the missile, missile, missile exchanges, small exchanges, this, that, talk, non-talk.
And that could go on forever. And MAGA came into office saying we will have no more forever wars. Well, here we are.
He's gotten us into the kind of forever war that he's pledged that he was going to avoid. And it's not even a forever war. It's like a Groundhog Day war, because we're in this same cycle of threats and then retrenchment and threats and retrenchment, and we have an MOU and we don't have it.
I don't actually see how this could continue, even if he wanted it to, through January of 2029. Is that what we have to get to?
I quoted Dan Drezner a couple of days ago writing with dismay, “I am … simply unprepared for a world in which [Bill] Kristol sounds way more radical than Ezra Klein.” And by that, he meant that Kristol seemed to be much further on the center-left of the spectrum than Ezra.
And I’m not prepared for a world in which Bobo and Ruth Marcus sound sensible and realistic!
Bobo even managed to give a good explanation about how the Trumpists actually do have a ground operation that is effective at turning out Republicans to vote and maintains a notably more cohesive party structure than the Democrats.
By the end of their 10-minute segment, I was leaning heavily toward the theory that I had somehow entered a parallel universe. But the sky outside hasn’t turned green on anything. And the physicists say that if there are parallel universes, it’s not possible to cross from into the other. So I’m left to wonder how this startling event happened.
Most foreign policy experts that I take seriously – John Mearsheimer and Robert Pape are two that pop to mind – are saying that there no obvious way that the United States can achieve anything in the immediate future that will look like a win for the US, though many of the Trump cultists will pretend to believe whatever he says about it. But it’s also obvious that staying in the war will also eventually end with the results being a loss and a major mess for the US, the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, and large parts of the rest of the world.
Former Vermont Sen. George Aiken is mainly remembered, at least outside his home state, as recommending that the Johnson Administration should solve the Vietnam with the formula, "declare victory and get out." That would still be the most sensible basic approach for the US in Iran. I hear commentators saying that Trump should just “take the L” [for “loss”] i.e., just pull out of the war.
But there’s another well-known foreign policy maximum that even Lyndon Johnson liked to use: It’s easier to get into a war than to get out of it. (Although I believe LBJ’s version was a bit more colorful.) In the case of the current US-Israel War on Iran, just pulling out won’t satisfy Iran’s demand for release of frozen Iranian funds or for some kind of real peace agreement with both the US and Israel that would include Israel surrendering territory it currently occupies back to Lebanon and Syria. And by blocking the Strait of Iran and having their Houthi allies in Yemen block Saudi Arabia from using the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, Iran can do serious damage to large parts of the world economy. Iran may also insist on specific conditions
And the genuine incompetence of the Trump 2.0 regime’s diplomacy – if it even deserves the name of diplomacy in any normal sense – can’t be overlooked as a major problem. How can they get any kind of meaningful war-termination agreement on which both sides could agree would require diplomatic competence of a kind we have yet to see from Washington in this war.
MS NOW reports:
The Strait of Hormuz remains at a virtual standstill because of President Donald Trump’s foolish war, and now, in what represents a new global energy price nightmare, Houthi militants in Yemen have begun to block a separate corridor [the Bab el-Mandeb Strait] that is critical for global oil shipping. On Thursday, oil surged past $100 a barrel for the first time since May in response to the news that the war with Iran is on the brink of expanding to a new front. And Trump’s promise to bomb the Houthis should they continue is unlikely to improve the situation.
Those Houthi militants, who are allied with and supported by Iran, announced Monday that they would were [sic] enacting a blockade in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait against Saudi Arabia. The Houthis said their blockade is retaliation for airstrikes against a Yemeni airport intended to prevent an Iranian aircraft from landing. (Yemen’s Saudi-backed government claimed credit for the attack.) On Thursday, the Houthis said they had attacked two Saudi oil tankers and successfully warned 10 more to turn back. (Saudi Arabia’s official news agency confirmed at least one tanker was hit.) (2)
Notes:
(1) Brooks and Marcus on the Iran conflict becoming a 'forever war'. PBS Newshour 07/24/2026. <https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/brooks-and-marcus-on-the-iran-conflict-becoming-a-forever-war> (Accessed: 2026-25-07).
(2) Allem, Zeeshan (2026): The Houthis’ commandeering of a Red Sea strait is a huge deal. MS NOW 07/24/2026. <https://www.ms.now/opinion/houthis-red-sea-ship-strait-oil-bab-al-mandab-trump-iran> (Accessed: 2026-25-07).
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