America Does Not Go Abroad in Search of Monsters to Destroy — 2025 Remix
By Chris Abraham
A Republic, If You Can Drone It

Original 2005 article: America Does Not Go Abroad in Search of Monsters to Destroy

John Quincy Adams said we don’t go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. But he didn’t live in the age of drone feeds, weaponized hashtags, and TED Talk warfare.

In 2025, we still claim the moral high ground. We just occupy it from 30,000 feet—with a payload.

We’re told Iran is the monster. Again. Still. Always. “Death to America,” they chant—and we act like it’s not ritual theater while our own pundits casually invoke “Death to Iran.” But America doesn’t destroy monsters. We cultivate them. We poke them, fund their enemies, kill a general, sanction insulin, then act shocked when they grow fangs.

Monsters justify budgets. They animate elections. And when poll numbers drop, bombing an old enemy feels less like war and more like revenge sex with your ex.

In June 2025, Trump bombed Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. It wasn’t an invasion. But it was a strike. Justified? Maybe. Legal? Barely. Anti-war? Not even close.

For a movement that ran on “no more endless wars,” this was a betrayal. MAGA chose Trump to stop global adventurism. Instead, he rejoined it—one precision-guided exception at a time.

We weren’t attacked. We struck first. That’s not defense—it’s doctrine. And it breaks the promise Adams made on our behalf two centuries ago.

We no longer fight wars. We manage optics. Airstrikes come with infographics, moral justifications, and hashtags. “Feminist drones” and “climate justice strikes” sound absurd, but they’re the rhetorical camouflage of the modern empire.

What if 80% of the terrorism we blame on Iran is actually CIA, MI6, or Mossad operations gone sideways? We don’t know. But it feels true. And in the fog of war, feeling beats fact.

We’ve seen too many misattributions, too many Gulf of Tonkins, too many toddlers in rubble trotted out as narrative tools. Empathy’s been weaponized. And we’ve grown numb.

We don’t plant flags anymore—we plant frameworks. We export democracy like software, and punish countries that won’t install the update. USAID, NGOs, culture, finance: this is the new occupation force. Sanctions replace boots. And AirPods replace helmets.

Trump was supposed to end this cycle. He was the anti-war sledgehammer. The outsider. But even he couldn’t resist the old impulse to drop bombs for political gravity.

And once the wrecking ball starts decorating the empire it was meant to dismantle, it’s not wrecking anymore. It’s renovating.

We’re not defending freedom. We’re defending narrative control. The monsters we claim to destroy are often ones we created—or provoked until their response justified our next strike.

The republic isn’t dead. It’s just disguised. And it still goes abroad searching for monsters—because it needs them more than ever.