They stood at a memorial and sold a war. Soft power, if soft power is a candle that gets drafted into a midterm briefing.<\/p>\n
The Hill, The Guardian, and Bloomberg reporting Friday is not subtle: at the Pentagon\u2019s ceremony marking the 25th anniversary<\/strong> of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tied the ongoing U.S.\u2013Israel war on Iran to the post-9\/11 \u201cwar on terror.\u201d Memorials are supposed to hold the dead. This one held a pitch deck.<\/p>\n Trump told the room the conflict is \u201ca war on sick, horrible terror,\u201d then saluted \u201cthe service members working right now to ensure the world\u2019s number one sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will never ever have a nuclear weapon.\u201d Hegseth, speaking first, said warriors have fought \u201can Islamic theocracy that has wished us death for nearly half a century, that cheered on 9\/11,\u201d and that the U.S. is \u201cstill sending terrorists where they belong \u2014 to hell \u2014 and tankers to the bottom of the ocean, where they belong.\u201d Soft power is not a eulogy with a kill list. Soft power is a pause long enough to name the dead without renaming the war.<\/p>\n The calendar is the tell. The war, launched with Israel in February and already past the six-month mark, was supposed to be brief. Trump said earlier this week he sees it lasting until the November midterms \u2014 and that it \u201cends right after the election,\u201d while accusing Tehran of trying to install \u201ca nice, weak group of people\u201d who would \u201cleave them alone and let them have their nuclear weapon.\u201d A Wall Street Journal report Thursday said Iran has resumed ballistic-missile production, contradicting administration claims that those capabilities were destroyed. Soft power is not a victory presser with a factory still humming.<\/p>\n Same news cycle, the invoice ran the other direction. Associated Press analysis carried Friday notes the U.S. has loosened Iran\u2019s grip on Hormuz and crushed Iranian oil exports from about 1.85 million<\/strong> barrels a day last spring to roughly 255,000<\/strong> in August, while non-Iranian flows climbed. The price of that \u201cprogress\u201d: more than $37.5 billion<\/strong> for U.S. taxpayers, 18<\/strong> U.S. service members dead, Brent back above $100<\/strong>, diesel at a record, and no exit strategy. Mona Yacoubian at CSIS put it without cardigan polish: Washington is \u201cnot winning,\u201d Iran shows \u201cno sign of backing down,\u201d and the war is \u201clikely to be protracted with no clear victor.\u201d Soft power is not two-thirds of prewar tanker flows. Soft power is a theory of victory that is not \u201cwait until after the midterms.\u201d<\/p>\n Deb will reply-all that we are not doing \u201cmemorial math\u201d at dinner. Buck will text \u201cjust end it already.\u201d I love them. I also love a republic that can hang balloons in Dallas and light candles at the Pentagon while treating grief like a co-sponsor for a forever war. I am a Gen X exile in an expensive cardigan who got walked out of the You Know Who Post for caring too loudly. Soft power is not a 9\/11 stage used to sell six more months of Hormuz. Soft power is remembering the dead without drafting their memory into November.<\/p>\n Sources:<\/strong> The Hill \/ Guardian \/ Bloomberg, Sept. 11, 2026 (Pentagon 25th-anniversary remarks; Trump Iran nuclear line; Hegseth \u201ccheered on 9\/11\u201d \/ tankers-to-ocean line; war tied to midterms); Wall Street Journal (missile production resumed); AP via WTOP, Sept. 11, 2026 (Hormuz flows; Iran exports 1.85M\u2192255k; >$37.5B \/ 18 dead; Brent >$100; Yacoubian \u201cnot winning\u201d). Light the candle. Then ask who benefits when a memorial becomes a midterm briefing.<\/p>\n \u2014 Theo Ashford-Lindstr\u00f6m, measuring freedom in minutes a eulogy is allowed to stay a eulogy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 9\/11 candles, Hormuz invoices, and a midterm exit fantasy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/theo-911-iran-memorial-0911.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=127"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions\/129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}