They Better Behave: When Did We Start Talking This Way?

Sunday, September 20, 2026, President Donald Trump was discussing what comes next in the war between the United States and Iran. According to Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst, who relayed the call on air, Trump described three possibilities: “wiping Iran out,” allowing the country to deteriorate economically, or making a deal.

Then came the sentence I cannot get out of my head:

“My question is, if and when do I blow the entire nation up? They better behave.”

I have been sitting with those words.

Not because Iran is innocent. It isn't. The Iranian government has supported armed groups across the Middle East, threatened American interests and allies, and participated in a conflict that has already taken far too many lives. Nor do I believe the United States forfeits its right to defend itself simply because war is terrible.

I served in the United States Navy. I don't believe national defense is immoral. I don't believe every use of military force is unjustified. And I certainly don't believe pretending your enemies aren't dangerous makes them less dangerous.

But maybe that's precisely why those words bother me so much.

“The entire nation.”

A nation isn't its government.

A nation is children sleeping in apartments. Mothers making dinner. Old men drinking tea. Nurses changing shifts. Students worrying about exams. Shopkeepers opening their doors in the morning. Families arguing, laughing, praying, grieving and trying to make it to tomorrow.

Iran's government is one thing.

The Iranian people are another.

What Have We Become Accustomed To?

And when the president of the United States publicly wonders when he should “blow the entire nation up,” followed by “they better behave,” I find myself asking a question that has less to do with Donald Trump than it does with the rest of us.

American presidents have threatened military force before. American presidents of both parties have used it. Our history contains wars and military decisions that deserve scrutiny regardless of which party occupied the White House.

And this isn't the first time we've heard language like this from Donald Trump. In 2017, standing before the United Nations, he warned that if the United States were forced to defend itself or its allies, it would have “no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.” He added that he hoped it would not be necessary. Nearly a decade later, perhaps the question isn't only why a president would speak this way. Maybe it's also why hearing it again doesn't shock us the way it once did.

There are also legitimate questions before this president right now. How should the United States respond to attacks? How do we protect American troops and allies? What actually deters an adversary? At what point does restraint invite more violence rather than prevent it?

Those aren't trivial questions, and pretending otherwise wouldn't make this an honest essay.

But there is a difference between saying the United States will defend itself, destroy a military installation, retaliate against an attack, prevent an enemy from acquiring a particular capability, or even defeat an enemy government—and talking about blowing up an entire nation.

That distinction shouldn't require partisanship.

It requires imagination.

Imagine somebody saying it about us.

When do I blow America up?

They better behave.

Would we hear strategic ambiguity? Would we hear deterrence? Would we shrug and say, That's just how he talks?

Or would we hear a threat against our children?

Because somewhere in Iran tonight, somebody's child is going to bed. That child didn't close the Strait of Hormuz. She didn't launch a missile. He didn't finance a proxy militia. They didn't design their government's military strategy.

They're simply people who happened to be born there instead of here.

And that is where this stopped being only a political question for me.

I Keep Thinking About Something Jesus Said

I was raised Catholic. I've spent plenty of my life being an imperfect Christian, and I don't pretend that quoting Jesus automatically settles complicated questions of war, national defense or foreign policy.

But some of his words are remarkably difficult to escape.

“Love your enemies.”

That line is printed in red in a red-letter Bible. So is this one: “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Same speaker. Same red letters. I notice how readily I agree with it — and how easily I move past what it actually asks of me.

That's easy enough to admire when the enemy is theoretical.

It's considerably harder when the enemy really is your enemy.

What does love your enemies mean when the other country threatens yours? What does it mean when Americans have been killed? What does it mean when innocent people on your side are in danger?

Surely it cannot mean doing nothing.

But surely it cannot mean ceasing to recognize the humanity of the people on the other side.

Maybe that's what I'm trying to understand.

Christianity does not ask me to pretend evil isn't evil. Jesus never seemed particularly confused about injustice. But he did demand something much more difficult than simply identifying the bad guys.

He asked us to love people we had every reason not to love.

And if those words mean anything, shouldn't they matter most when loving someone is hardest?

“They Better Behave”

Those three words may trouble me almost as much as everything preceding them.

Because nations aren't children. Presidents aren't fathers disciplining them. And possessing extraordinary military power doesn't make another country's civilian population ours to punish.

There is something dangerously easy about collapsing millions of individual human beings into a single word:

Them.

Once they're them, we don't have to picture their faces. Once they're them, their children become statistics. Once they're them, destruction becomes strategy and death becomes collateral damage.

But Christianity makes that comfortable distance extraordinarily difficult to maintain.

Love your enemies.

Not love what they do. Not surrender to them. Not pretend there is no difference between aggressor and victim, justice and injustice, good and evil.

Love them.

That is a far more demanding instruction.

And Here's the Part That Makes Me Uncomfortable

This isn't only about Donald Trump.

Trump said the words. He owns them.

But the rest of us decide what becomes normal.

Every time something extraordinary happens in American politics, we make a tiny decision. We can stop and examine it, or we can absorb it into the background noise of another news cycle.

Another threat. Another outrage. Another sentence we'd once have found astonishing.

Until eventually astonishing things aren't astonishing anymore.

That's what frightens me.

Not simply that an American president could say, “When do I blow the entire nation up?” But that tomorrow we'll probably be talking about something else.

I Don't Want to Become Numb to This

I don't want my politics to determine whose humanity I can see.

Iranian civilians are not abstractions because their government is hostile to mine. Israeli civilians aren't abstractions. Palestinian civilians aren't abstractions. American soldiers aren't abstractions. Saudi civilians aren't abstractions.

Nobody's child becomes less human because the adults governing their countries have failed to find another way.

And the cost is not hypothetical. A United Nations fact-finding mission reported this month that American strikes hit a residential home on July 30 and a wedding celebration on September 1, killing and injuring families—according to what the mission called credible reports, and despite the United States insisting its military was not targeting civilians.

There may come moments when military force is necessary. Reasonable people can disagree fiercely about when those moments arrive, what force is justified, what constitutes a legitimate military target, and what risks a president should accept to protect his country.

But surely we can preserve one boundary:

We should never become casual about human destruction.

Especially when the person speaking commands the most powerful military on Earth.

There is another possibility, too. Trump indicated that he might meet Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian at the United Nations. I hope they talk.

I hope everybody talks.

Not because Iran deserves indulgence. Not because America should surrender its interests. Not because diplomacy magically transforms dangerous governments into benevolent ones.

But because diplomacy exists precisely for the moment when powerful people are contemplating what happens if diplomacy fails.

And because another sentence from Jesus keeps intruding on my thoughts:

“Blessed are the peacemakers.”

Not the peace-wishers.

The peace-makers.

Making peace implies that there wasn't peace before. It assumes conflict. It assumes disagreement. Perhaps it even assumes enemies.

That's what makes peacemaking necessary.

Maybe that sounds hopelessly old-fashioned.

So be it.

I was raised believing that American strength wasn't measured only by our ability to destroy something. It was also measured by knowing when not to.

And tonight I keep returning to those words:

“Blow the entire nation up.”

Millions of human beings compressed into a phrase.

Tomorrow the news cycle will move on.

I don't want to.

Because before we argue about whether America should escalate this war, there is a more fundamental question I need answered:

When Did We Start Talking About Entire Nations of Human Beings This Way?

And perhaps the harder question isn't about Donald Trump at all.

It's about me. It's about Christians. It's about Americans. It's about what repeated exposure to the language of destruction can quietly do to the human heart.

Because if love your enemies means anything, it has to mean something when we actually have enemies.

If blessed are the peacemakers means anything, it has to mean something when peace is hardest to make.

And if every human being bears the image of God, that image cannot disappear at a national border.

So maybe the question I need to understand isn't whether America is powerful enough to destroy an enemy.

I already know the answer to that.

The question is whether we are still strong enough to see the people who live there.

What happens to us when we stop noticing?

I don't know.

◆

James Preston McKenzie is a veteran Naval Journalist and former television reporter who writes at the intersection of faith, military ethics, and public policy. Raised Catholic, he makes no claim to being particularly good at it—only to still be trying, still asking questions, and still paying attention to the red letters.

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They Better Behave

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