The Empire That Outsourced War

We don’t need a draft to go to war with Iran. We’ve already replaced the need for bodies with systems. What we haven’t replaced is the lie that this isn’t our war.

Marco Rubio said the quiet part out loud.

In an interview with Tucker Carlson, the senator blurted, “We’re at war with Iran,” before catching himself — “I mean, Israel is.” But there was no need for the correction.

If we’re supplying the bombs, flying the drones, jamming the counterattacks, defending it at the UN, and manufacturing the moral justification for mass death, then we’re not watching the war — we’re waging it.

That’s what makes this moment so disturbing.

There is no war declaration, no congressional vote, no draft. And yet, the bombs fall. And yet, 224 people are dead in Tehran. And yet, the president of the United States threatens to annihilate a civilian capital — not in a backroom meeting, not in coded policy speak, but publicly, on social media, in language that reads more like vengeance than strategy.

This is what the post-draft American war machine looks like.

Since 1973, the U.S. military has been redesigning itself not to prevent war, but to prevent dissent. The goal was never peace. It was insulation.

The draft was too visible. Too democratic. Too accountable. So it was replaced — with automation, with proxy militaries, with drones, with security partnerships, with defense contractors, with television analysts, and now, with algorithms that sell the public whatever narrative the war needs.

It’s why we’ve spent hundreds of billions on drone technology. Why we’ve transformed the military into a system of remote-controlled death and offshore violence. And why we’ve built an entire media infrastructure to frame it all as safety, stability, and deterrence.

We learned from Vietnam that Americans don’t want to die for empire. So we gave them an empire that doesn’t require their bodies — just their passive consent.

And when that doesn’t work, we’ll lie. Within hours of the Tehran strike, legacy media outlets were breathlessly reporting that Iran was “less than a week away” from developing nuclear weapons. No sources. No intelligence. Just urgency. Just panic. Just the right kind of fear to manufacture consent.

The machinery is so well-oiled now that it runs without friction. Israel bombs a city and kills hundreds. Iran retaliates — 24 Israelis die. Western media pounces. “See? Look what they did. Look how barbaric they are. Look how dangerous.” No mention of the 224 corpses still being pulled from under Tehran’s rubble. No mention of proportionality, of provocation, of reality. The numbers don’t matter. Only the narrative does.

A single American ally, armed with American weapons, funded by American taxpayers, shielded by American diplomacy, and cheered on by American senators — and yet, the official line remains: this is not our war.

But it is. It always has been.

Iran has never bowed to American primacy. Not since 1979. That has made it the perfect villain for a country that needs enemies to justify its military budget, its forward bases, and its special relationship with the only state in the region that kills with more impunity than we do.

This is the trick of empire in the 21st century: to kill without showing up. To flatten cities without sending troops. To start wars without ever declaring them. We outsource the violence, automate the targeting, subcontract the public messaging, and pretend that our hands are clean. The only thing left to draft is the storyline.

And it’s working. You can hear it in the punditry. You can feel it in the polling. You can see it in the White House press briefings where every Israeli missile is a justified response and every Iranian one is an act of terror. We have weaponized not just the tools of war but the frameworks for understanding it. To resist this logic is to be accused of sympathizing with the enemy. To ask why we bombed Tehran is to be told we’re defending democracy. To question whether democracy can be defended with the language of genocide is to be branded unserious.

There’s a meme going around that captures the madness of this moment better than any op-ed: “I just walked to my neighbor’s apartment, knocked down the door, threw him down the stairs, raided his fridge, strangled his toddler, and pissed on his rug. I think he’s mad. Please, pray for me.” That’s the level of self-delusion we’re dealing with — and broadcasting globally.

What makes it worse is how familiar this all feels. The talking points about nuclear weapons. The threats about rogue regimes. The calls for regime change. The insistence that we had no choice. The faith that this war, finally, will be a clean one. No more Vietnam syndrome. No Iraq hangover. Just surgical strikes and decisive messaging.

But the difference is, this time, there’s no one left to believe it. Not really. Not fully. People are scared, yes. But they are also numb. They are watching war in real-time and asking themselves what it would even mean to stop it. The sense of powerlessness is total. And that might be the most dangerous feature of the new war machine — not just that it kills efficiently, but that it kills without a face.