On: Has Trump lost control of the Iran war?

The headline asks, “Has Trump lost control of the Iran war?” This question wears the uniform of a genuine inquiry, like asking if a driver has lost control of his car. But the resemblance is misleading. A car, a machine, can be controlled. Its movements are predictable, governed by levers and pedals. We understand what “control” means in that context.

But “war”? What is this “war” that one might control or lose control of? Is it a thing, like a car, that moves according to a single will? We speak of “trading missile strikes” as if they were commodities, exchanged in a market. But these are not goods; they are acts, with consequences that ripple out in ways no single person can fully grasp, let alone direct.

“Control” here is a word lifted from its ordinary use. It suggests a mechanism, a clear cause and effect. But the actions of nations, the responses, the fears, the historical grievances - these are not gears in a machine. They are more like a tangled thicket, where cutting one branch only causes others to spring up unexpectedly. To ask if he has “lost control” implies he once had it, in the way a driver has control of a car. But was it ever truly “had” in that sense? Or is it merely a grammatical illusion, making us search for a lost object that never existed as we imagine it? The question itself is the problem, not the answer.