The Department of War and the curious case of Joe Kent
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, March 25, 2026
DEAR READERS: I know you so well by now that I can read your minds. Until February 28 when we launched a surprise attack to re-obliterate Iran, you’d been thinking, “What’s a Department of War without a war?”
Happily, our Commander-in-Chief (Corporal Bonespurs) has once again answered the call to duty. And the United States Congress, controlled by a litter of lapdogs begging for treats or at least a pat on the head, has once again admitted it is no longer a co-equal branch of government — never mind what the Constitution says. That pesky thing.
As with all things MAGA, the Mideast situation is so fluid that I really need a daily column to stay on top of developments. This war could be over by the time you read this. But rest assured, there’s bound to be more. The Commander-in-Chief has made this abundantly clear. Sometimes, in fact, when he wakes up in the middle of the night to shuffle into the bathroom before calling White House room service for a glass of warm milk, it must occur to him that he might as well launch a few more bombers at sunup “just for fun,” as he put it last week. He’s already made it clear that Cuba is ripe for the taking, with Greenland and Canada just asking for it, too.
War, my friends, is not just for fun. Ask your grandpa, dad, Uncle Mike or Aunt Judy how much fun they had in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. If you made it back alive, in mostly one piece, PTSD might linger like a malevolent migraine. And if Uncle Sam sent you on a covert adventure along the scenic Ho Chi Minh Trail, exposure to Agent Orange is the world’s worst souvenir.
THEN THERE’S the financial toll: The first six days of this new war cost us at least $11.3 billion just for munitions — missiles, bombs and bullets — according to Pentagon estimates. Worried lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle report they’ve been told the best estimate is $2 billion per day, overall, for the duration. Thus, the cost of the war to date (this column was written on March 24) is at least $50 billion, based on authoritative sources.
Further, the President has said the Pentagon will need another $200 billion just to replenish its stockpile of munitions. “It’s a small price to pay to make sure we stay tippy top,” he told reporters. Pete Hegseth, our chest-thumping Secretary of War, always pretending to be Patton, added, “It takes money to kill bad guys.”
It would take a lot less money to help the average good-guy American, including those who live on Grays Harbor, which the President carried three times. The $80 million in federal funding for the Aberdeen-Hoquiam Flood Protection Project — illegally canceled by the Trump Administration — represents 4% of one day’s outlay for the war against Iran.
Thanks to relentless pressure by three Democrats, Congresswoman Emily Randall, her predecessor, Derek Kilmer, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, and our nonpartisan county commissioner, Vickie Raines, the Federal Emergency Management Agency last week announced it would revive the grant program. Barring a countermove by the administration, this represents a huge step forward for the Harbor.
Eighty million bucks is chump change in the bigger picture of misplaced priorities by the President and his congressional allies. Besides the war-toll you’re paying at the pump, millions of Americans are watching their healthcare premiums soar, along with the cost of life-sustaining pharmaceuticals. Millions more have no healthcare at all.
Imagine how many lives could be saved if one of the key goals of this administration was to truly Make America Healthier. And please don’t waste your time sending me emails saying that’s what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing. RFK Sr. must be spinning in his grave as junior and his retinue of hand-picked crackpots dismantle the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Secretary Kennedy has fired thousands of researchers and cancelled billions of dollars for scientific research, all the while tapdancing around his baldfaced lies that he isn’t promoting scientifically discredited ideas about vaccines.
PRESIDENT TRUMP’S meeting with Japan’s new Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, was another of the week’s highlights. Sitting right next to the President, she tactfully resisted a cringe when he told a reporter we didn’t give our allies in Asia and Europe advance notice about the attack on Iran because we “wanted surprise,” and “Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Okay? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor? Okay? Right?”
Imagine the MAGA outcry had Obama or Biden said something so outrageously inappropriate at a White House photo-op with a visiting head of state.
At least Trump didn’t say, “Well, the Japs did it first!” But if he had, his base still would have loved it.
FINALLY, THERE’S the curious case of Joe Kent, whose consolation prize for losing two MAGA bids for Congress in Southwest Washington’s 3rd District was a Trump appointment to oversee the National Counterterrorism Center.
Kent’s right-wing rhetoric, smacking of anti-Semitism, undermined his credibility during the 2022 and 2024 campaigns and clouded his confirmation hearings. While we are obliged to sincerely thank him for his service as a Special Forces combat veteran of multiple deployments, his resignation last week as director of counterterrorism ups the ante in the war of dueling conspiracy theories; they’re like landmines. Truth is usually the first casualty of any war.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” Kent wrote in his letter to Trump, charging that “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation.” Trump in fact had said our earlier attacks had “obliterated” Iran’s capacity to manufacture weapons of mass destruction.
What Kent said next portrays the President as a pawn in a more nefarious game, led astray by his pal, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Jerusalem’s bellicose right-wingers and a cabal of media allies:
“Early in this administration,” Kent wrote, “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran.”
Fascinating stuff, reminiscent of Charles Lindbergh and the original America Firsters, who warned in 1939-1940 that Jewish influence in the media and motion picture industry was helping Roosevelt propel America into World War II.
Although Kent granted him a measure of absolution — saying the President was merely misled — Trump brushed it all off as good riddance, saying, “I always thought he was weak on security; very weak on security.”
MAGA nation, predictably, now wants Kent drawn and quartered as a secret-spilling traitor. Yet, like Kristi Noem and Kash Patel, he seems to be just another ventriloquist’s dummy who passed the pivotal initial litmus test: Unconditional loyalty to Donald J. Trump.
And we’re still supposed to salute a Commander-in-Chief who appointed a “very weak on security” lieutenant to direct counterterrorism.
I don’t feel safer. How about you?
John C. Hughes was chief historian for the Office of the Secretary of State for 17 years after retiring as editor and publisher of The Daily World in 2008.
