June 20, AD2025: MAGA Debates Starting the Third post 9/11 US Middle East War, Four Years After Leaving Afghanistan.

Dear Reader,

The United States formally ended its military presence in Afghanistan on August 30, 2021, bringing to a close two decades of war, mission drift, and political denial. The withdrawal had been set in motion under President Donald Trump with the February 2020 US.–Taliban agreement, a document that acknowledged, however reluctantly, the limits of American endurance and the futility of building nations in our image. The original May 1, 2021, exit date was delayed by President Joe Biden, who reset the timeline to September 11—a symbolic gesture poorly matched to strategic realities.

Events on the ground quickly outpaced Washington’s calendar. The Taliban, patient and organized, filled the vacuum left by a disintegrating Afghan state, one propped up by two decades of borrowed time and borrowed money. As the US scrambled to evacuate, scenes of chaos unfolded at Hamid Karzai International Airport, culminating in a suicide bombing on August 26 that killed 13 American service members and dozens of Afghans.

The last US military aircraft lifted off just before midnight on August 30, ending a campaign that began as a crusade and ended in a quagmire of nation-building. America left behind equipment, allies, and illusions—chief among them, the notion that democracy can be exported at gunpoint to societies that never asked for it. A generation of veterans went to war and many feel ambivalence, and others disgust, and few pride. This is not a lack of love for their comrades, but rather resentment of the mission and the region that they feel was ungrateful for their efforts. No more wars in the Middle East was a major part of Make America Great Again. But US President Donald John Trump declared that America First means whatever he wants it to mean.

Now US Senate Minority Leader, Charles Ellis Schumer, Democrat from New York, is supporting the potential for the US to join the State of Israel in the war it started against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Many very-online alternative personalities on the right are panicking over what they once thought unthinkable: the neocons are back, and they’re riding the Trump train.

Or are they?

Here’s what everyone keeps missing: there’s MAGA, there’s America First, and there’s the old three-legged stool GOP—Evangelicals, Libertarians, and Neocons hawks. And of those three factions, America First is the weakest.

MAGA is best understood not as a coherent ideology but as an angry, low-engagement faction from whom Donald Trump is their avatar. Many do not come from families or communities that were traditionally concerned with politics. While there are religious MAGA types, most of the movement fits what scholars have begun calling the post-Christian right, a term that describes more than just MAGA. But, the MAGA voters have little interest in policy details or constitutional principle. They don’t respond to appeals to virtue, restraint, or what used to be called “compassionate conservatism.” Their loyalty is personal and visceral. They support Trump because they believe he punishes the right enemies. They think the 2020 election was actually stolen rather than merely an irregular election that was run sloppily by some states.

Trump has been president twice and now controls one of the two major parties because MAGA voters will defend whatever he decides—whether it is bombing Iran or choosing not to. They show up when he is on the ballot, vanish when he is not, and largely outsource their worldview to his instincts. They subverted and took over the Republican Party.

What remains to be seen is how large each GOP faction really is. But MAGA is certainly the most unified faction. By contrast, what I call the Old GOP—including Evangelicals, anti-tax Libertarians, and Neoconservatives—is less cohesive, though still potent; the Reagan coalition was always somewhat contradictory in the 1980s. These groups together formed the core activist and donor base of the Republican Party before 2015. CPAC was theirs, Heritage was theirs, you get the picture; when you said the GOP you meant these folks. They were polite normie conservatives who did not countenance anything that looked like overt racism.

Among them, Evangelicals are the most numerous, Libertarians the best connected through finance and Silicon Valley, and Neocons the least relevant—except when it comes to Israel.

Evangelicals—understood here as a political category—prioritize Israel, sexual ethics, and resistance to non-Christian cultural influence, especially Islam. But many have compromised their ethics when it comes to Trump, believing the hour is late and it is their last chance to save America and fight evil. So they call him a “baby Christian” and or say that Trump is a Persian King Cyrus-like figure who does God’s will despite not Cyrus/Trump following the true God. Many view Iran through a theological lens, some believe war against Iran fulfills prophecy, more believe it aligns with the biblical mandate to bless Israel and to be part of God cursing Israel’s enemies. They believe, quite literally in many cases, that Islam is overrunning Europe.

Libertarians don’t object so long as they get tax and regulatory cuts. Neocons, for their part, are indifferent to religion but enthusiastic about regime change and American dominance of the Middle East. Only the America First faction objects in principle to further war in the Middle East. They view Trump as a useful vehicle but subordinate him to their non-interventionist priorities. It’s a small but ideologically serious group.

Think of these factions not as enemies, rather more as holding different first priorities.

Say you had to choose between these priorities:

a) Securing the border, reducing immigration, and no more wars

→ America First

b) Advancing "traditional" Christian values in law and public education

→ Evangelicals

c) Cutting taxes, government social benefits, and business regulations

→ Libertarians

d) Rebuilding U.S. global military leadership through driving Russia out of Ukraine and stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons

→ Neocons

e) Fighting "Woke"

→ MAGA (retribution-focused)

You’ll notice these are not necessarily contradictory, yet they are distinct. One voter might view advancing Christian values as the best way to fight “woke,” while another wants to fight “woke” without grounding it in religion at all. That is the key: “Woke” means everything and nothing. Only MAGA treats it as a standalone priority. The other factions oppose “woke” too, but with concrete ideas—curriculum standards, tax policy, religious liberty. MAGA just wants someone punished.

There is no MAGA civil war. But there is a real and hard divide between America First and the neoconservatives. America First sees the neocons not just as wrong, but as reckless, unaccountable, and borderline disloyal—responsible for wasting national resources on wars that served no clear American interest. They loathe the neocons.

But America First is not strong enough to stop the next war in the Middle East. Not on their own. That’s because when the time comes, MAGA and Evangelicals will back the neocons; MAGA if Trump chooses war, and the Evangelicals because their share the desire to crush Iran. And only the Libertarians might stand with America First.

Even there, it’s complicated. Parts of the Libertarian wing—figures like Vice President James David Vance (born James Donald Bowman, formerly James David Hamel)—share Evangelical suspicions toward Islam. For Vance, anti-Islam and pro-business instincts appear to be his only enduring principles. That alignment with Evangelical politics—absent their theology—makes him a bridge between factions, but not a break from MAGA.

What’s really happening is that America First threw in with Trump thinking he was a vehicle for restraint—only to discover that both he and his MAGA base are far more bellicose than they appear. Whatever they may say about "endless wars," the moment Trump signals force, they fall in line. America First hates woke, but does not want right-wing speech codes instead of left-wing ones. American First wants the border secured but they do not want to violate the law or make illegal immigrants into sympathetic figure due to cruelty. And they not want to ruin the economy over it or lose the US advantage in brilliant foreign student recruitment. And America First does not think that what makes Silicon Valley or Wall Street happy equals what is best for American workers. America First is what people think MAGA is without analysis of how the most pro-Trump voters actually behave and think. Right-wing journalist, Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson is America First, but not MAGA, people think he is MAGA. Whereas US Senator Rafael Edward Cruz, Republican from Texas, whom Carlson exposed in a heated interview where they disagreed over whether the US should potentially join Israel’s war, is an Evangelical politician, and US Defense Secretary Peter Brian Hegseth is MAGA, and US Secretary of State Marco Antonio Rubio is a neocon. MAGA and America First are also losing patience with the tech bro libertarians, but, only America First truly despises the neocons and “forever war.”

The factions are real. What remains to be seen is which one has the numbers and who ends up in looking for the exit.