by Jacob G. Hornberger

April 6, 2026

Do American citizens have a moral duty to support President Trump’s war on Iran? Of course not. This is Trump’s war, one that he himself decided to wage through the use of the federal government’s standing army, the Pentagon, and the CIA. At no time did Trump even seek, much less secure, a congressional declaration of war from the elected representatives of the American people in Congress, as required by the U.S. Constitution.

Given such, why do Americans have any moral duty to support Trump’s war, especially if they believe that the war is unjust, illegal under the principles against wars of aggression set forth at Nuremberg, and illegal under our form of constitutional government?

Ever since I was a kid, I have heard Americans ask how it was possible that so many German citizens supported Adolf Hitler and the German side in World War II. Why didn’t they instead rise up and oppose him and the Nazi regime?

Before any MAGA types get all bent out of shape, let me make it clear that I’m not comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. Instead, I am comparing the mindsets of MAGA types who blindly support Trump’s war to the mindsets of Germans who blindly supported the German government during the Second World War.

The German people took the same position that the MAGA types do today. Once their nation was at war, they felt, it was incumbent on the citizenry to support their government and the troops. In their minds, that’s what patriotism was all about. The fact that a German was opposed to the war was considered irrelevant. What mattered was that once the war started, it was incumbent on every German citizen to come to the support of his government and the troops.

That’s the same position held by MAGA types here in the United States today. The fact that this is Trump’s, the Pentagon’s, and the CIA’s war of choice is considered irrelevant. Once they went on the attack against Iran, MAGAs believe, it was incumbent on the American people to set aside any objections they might have had to the war and support the troops and the war effort.

Can you now see why the overwhelming majority of Germans supported Hitler and the Nazi war effort? Like MAGAs today, they believed that this was the moral duty of the citizenry once the war got underway.

In fact, the MAGA types go further and accuse opponents of Trump’s war of cowardice. That’s ironic because many of the MAGAs have never served in the military and steadfastly refuse to join the military to go fight in Iran or elsewhere. Instead, they insist on staying here at home, where they bravely write op-eds or do podcasts from the comfort of their easy chairs, exhorting everyone to support the war effort. As “armchair warriors,” they get their courage vicariously through the troops by employing the pronoun “we” —- as in “We need to be tough. We need to bomb Iran to smithereens.”

What these courageous armchair warriors fail to recognize, however, is that it actually takes no courage whatsoever for citizens to blindly support their government’s wars. That’s because there is no chance whatsoever that the government would ever do anything bad to them. Governments love these kind of citizens.

Not so, however, with opponents of the government’s wars. Governments never hesitate to do bad things to their own citizens who oppose their wars, including criticism, condemnation, criminal prosecution, incarceration, torture, and even execution.

The members of the White Rose discovered this phenomenon. They were a group of German students who, in the midst of World War II, began secretly publishing essays that called on German citizens to oppose their own government, its troops, and its war effort. The essays were published under the title “The White Rose.” See my essay “The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent.” Also, see the movie Sophie Scholl: The Final Days.

Today’s MAGA types would view the White Rose members as courageous and heroic. But these MAGA types are missing the point. The point is that if the MAGA types had been German citizens, they would have viewed the White Rose members in the same way that MAGA types view American opponents of Trump’s war on Iran — as unpatriotic and ungrateful German citizens who were not raised properly by their parents. That’s certainly the way the German judges who sentenced the White Rose members to death viewed them.

As the members of the White Rose showed us, the true patriot judges the rightness and wrongness of his government’s wars. If he concludes that such wars are wrongful and illegal, it is morally incumbent on him to take a firm stand against them. To do otherwise  — that is, to support a war that one believes is moral wrong and illegal — is what moral cowardice is all about.