✪ The Left’s Fake Wars & Their Addiction to False Pretexts

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hen President George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the justification was presented as unambiguous. Saddam Hussein, Americans were told, possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat. The claim proved false. By 2004, the United States was forced to concede that no such weapons existed, and the central pretext for war collapsed.

At the time, much of the Left opposed the invasion—and with hindsight, they were right to do so. Yet their opposition often rested on its own certainties that were no less unfounded. Iraq, they insisted, was a war for oil, a crude imperial venture masked as national security. That conspiracy never materialized. American oil companies did not seize Iraqi fields. The war was not waged for petroleum spoils. Both sides, in different ways, acted on narratives that later proved illusory.

The lesson should have been sobering: nations that act—or react—on false pretexts, especially amid moral fervor and public emotion, invite chaos. Yet the modern Left appears to have learned precisely the opposite lesson.

Rather than exercising caution when passions run high, Democrats have become habituated to false pretexts of their own—deploying them not for foreign war, but for a perpetual domestic crusade.

The unrest in Minneapolis following the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good is only the most recent example.

Good was killed during a lawful Federal enforcement operation conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Federal agents were executing arrests under statutory authority. What followed was not a pause for facts or a demand for due process, but an immediate moral verdict: ICE as executioners, federal law enforcement as illegitimate, and civil disorder as a form of civic virtue. That narrative did not survive contact with the evidence.

Video footage and official accounts indicate that Good repeatedly refused lawful commands and used her vehicle to obstruct the operation. An ICE agent stood directly in her path with his weapon drawn, signaling her to stop. Instead, she accelerated. In such circumstances, a moving vehicle is not symbolic dissent; it is a lethal instrument. An officer facing an oncoming car at close range is confronting a deadly threat. That reality is not ideological—it is physical.

Yet the inconvenient details surrounding Good’s life and conduct were largely ignored.

Sympathetic coverage emphasized that she had just dropped off her daughter at school, carefully constructing an image of maternal innocence. Largely absent were other publicly reported facts that complicated the portrait: that Good had previously lost custody of her other children, that she had been involved in organized protest activity, and that she was not an unwitting bystander but an active participant in so-called “ICE Watch” efforts—trained, prepared, and engaged in resistance.

Those details disrupted the moral script. So they were omitted. This pattern is familiar.

In 2014, the shooting of Michael Brown was immediately presented as conclusive proof of systemic racism—an unarmed Black teenager executed by a white police officer. “Hands up, don’t shoot” became a national refrain. Riots followed. Later investigations established that Brown had assaulted the officer and attempted to seize his weapon. The facts contradicted the slogan, but by then the pretext had served its purpose. The damage could not be undone.

In 2020, the death of George Floyd followed the same trajectory. From the outset, the country was offered a simplified morality play. Toxicology reports showing lethal levels of fentanyl were treated as irrelevant or taboo. Evidence that officers upgraded the emergency of the ambulance call was dismissed. None of this erased legitimate questions about restraint or accountability—but it complicated the narrative. Complexity, however, was not allowed because it threatened the moral certainty required to justify nationwide unrest.

Minneapolis today is not an anomaly. It is the continuation of this model.

The sequence is now ritualized: an incident occurs; a moral verdict is issued instantly; facts become secondary; unrest is excused as righteous; and institutions are delegitimized en masse.

The unrest following Renee Good’s death was never primarily about truth or accountability. It was about advancing an ideological war against immigration enforcement itself. The shooting was merely the spark. Its factual contours were irrelevant to the cause it was pressed into serving.

This is how fake wars are waged.

Just as Iraq was sold with certainties that proved false—and opposed with certainties that proved conspiratorial—the modern Left now conducts domestic campaigns built on assumptions that cannot withstand scrutiny. The governing principle is simple: if disorder advances the cause, disorder is justified. Violence is never openly endorsed—but it is reliably excused. Law enforcement is never presumed to be acting lawfully—only maliciously. Federal authority is not debated; it is rejected.

These are not the habits of a loyal opposition. They are the habits of a movement that has normalized internal conflict as a political strategy.

It is within this climate—this steady dehumanization, this reflexive moral absolutism—that figures like Charlie Kirk become targets. His assassination did not occur in isolation. It emerged from years of rhetorical escalation that taught Americans to see political opponents not as fellow citizens, but as enemies.

That is the warning at the heart of For Christ and Country: The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk. It is not a biography. It is an examination of how the Left’s moral relativism—built on false narratives and sustained by perpetual unrest—creates a culture in which truth is expendable, disorder is celebrated, and violence becomes permissible once a target has been declared an enemy.

America once paid dearly for a war launched on false premises overseas. Today, it risks repeating that mistake at home. Minneapolis is not an aberration. It is the template.

And until Americans confront that reality honestly, the fake wars will continue—and so will the damage they leave behind.✪