Buried towards the tail-end of President Donald Trump’s meandering primetime address to the nation on Wednesday was a phrase he’d lifted almost verbatim from one of his own Truth Social posts earlier that day in which he threatened to attack Iran’s civilian infrastructure and bomb the country “back to the Stone Ages.”
Trump trotted out the Paleolithic phraseology as he promised to have U.S. forces “hit” Tehran “extremely hard over the next two to three weeks” and therefore “bring them back to the stone ages where they belong.”
It was a jarring threat coming from an American president that hinted of widespread damage and civilian casualties, accompanied by an explicit vow to target Iran’s power grid — something that would be considered a war crime under U.S. law — if Iran’s leaders don’t agree to allow maritime traffic to begin flowing through the Strait of Hormuz once more.
And Trump appeared to follow through on that threat later in the day on Thursday, when he posted a video of an explosion collapsing what he called “the biggest bridge in Iran” while warning several hours later that the American military hadn’t “even started destroying what’s left” in the country.
The president added: “Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants! New Regime leadership knows what has to be done, and has to be done, FAST!” But Trump’s promise to reduce one of the world’s oldest civilizations to a pre-civilizational state isn’t anything new.
It’s a throwback to an attitude and set of tactics perfected and advocated by one of the most important military officers of the 20th century — the legendary commander of the Strategic Air Command General Curtis LeMay.
LeMay, a cigar-chomping, hyper-aggressive bomber pilot who during World War II had masterminded massive incendiary attacks on Japan — including the March 1945 bombing of Tokyo — rose to prominence in the post-war period by masterminding the Berlin Airlift and organizing the Air Force elements of what became the U.S. nuclear triad into a disciplined, ultra-professional force capable of delivering world-ending explosive power on a moment’s notice.
He was also a passionate advocate of using sustained strategic bombing campaigns to wipe out an enemy’s cities, ports and infrastructure — and demoralize adversaries without the need for boots on the ground.
LeMay explained how his preferred strategy was to be implemented during the Vietnam War in his 1965 autobiography, writing that he wanted to demand that North Vietnam “draw in their horns and stop their aggression, or we’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.”
“And we would shove them back into the Stone Age with Air power or Naval power — not with ground forces,” LeMay added.
The notoriously gruff Air Force officer — who inspired the characters of Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) and Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove — wasn’t kidding.
According to a Joint Staff-authored, declassified report on 1960s-era war plans LeMay had helped to author for a potential conflict with the Soviet Union, the U.S. plan was to use strategic weapons — including thermonuclear ones — to destroy the USSR so completely that it could no longer be a “viable” society and remove it “from the category of a major industrial power.”
It was that sentiment which Trump was channeling when he spoke on Wednesday, and his threat on Thursday — combined with the strike on the massive Iranian bridge — appeared to be part of a deliberate effort to legitimize wholesale attacks on Iran’s populace and infrastructure that date back to his first term.
In July 2018, Trump responded to a series of provocative statements by then-Iranian president Hassan Rouhani by tweeting that Iran would “SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKE OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE” if Rouhani were to “threaten” the U.S. again.
