US war games drive home our toxic relationship

IT has been so easy to dismiss Donald Trump with his delusional rhetoric as Comical Doolally.

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But with widespread death and destruction in the Middle East ongoing and fears that the blows being traded could escalate to apocalyptic proportions, this is no laughing matter.

Even less so, last week's social media montage of Hollywood film figures declaring justice had been done "the American Way", as more bombs rained down on Iran, killing men, women and terrified children.

Hollywood superstar Ben Stiller, whose movie Tropic Thunder was among those featured in the montage, demanded the video be removed.

"Hey White House," he posted on X. "We never gave you permission and have no interest in being part of your propaganda machine. War is not a movie."

As reprehensible, testosterone-fuelled displays of childishness go, the montage was right up there, reviling the rest of the world.

It followed the burials of some 160 girls, bombed at school in Iran, and the deaths of six American servicemen.

It followed the juvenile, gung-ho, trigger happy jingoism of Pete Hegseth, head of the White House Department of War.