Last week, we posed a question. This week, we have an answer: "Senator Tom Cotton," Republican of Arkansas, is in fact not a natural human organism, but a hybrid experiment in which the brain of German general Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff has been grafted onto the frame of a pugnacious giraffe.

In a new interview with the Atlantic's incredulous Jeffrey Goldberg, the Senate's leading—nay, only—proponent of der totale krieg mit dem Iranians advanced his rational Clausewitzian theories on why war is the ultimate expression of human logic, and America is the ultimate expression of war-based civilization.

Having already attempted an end-run around presidential treaty-making power and described a Persian ass-whuppin' as kids' play, the artist formerly known as General der Infanterie Ludendorff explained to Goldberg this weekend that war is awesome, fun, easy, and popular. Also, he has talked to top Israeli men who have told him the same thing. Also, Hussein Obabbler is too much of a Kenyan weakling to be compared to Neville Chamberlain, much less any red-blooded American standard-bearer. Which is why we lost Iraq after winning it so convincingly.

Here is a list of Strangelovian points that seem to make up "Cotton's" major theory of kriegskunst:

1. What, war has bad consequences? This is Sparta, bitches:

Jeffrey Goldberg: You've argued that an attack on a group of Iranian nuclear sites would not lead to all-out war. It seems to me that an American attack on Iran's nuclear sites would lead to an indirect response—or a somewhat direct response...

Senator Tom Cotton: Well, Operation Desert Fox [against Iraqi facilities] in 1998 lasted a number of days. [Former Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister] Ehud Barak just said that he thought it would just take one night.

Goldberg: But I'm talking about the second-order consequences.

Cotton: I've consulted with various senior members of the Israeli government over the years... and the assessment I've heard from them is that while that is a risk, it is a risk they can manage...

Goldberg: OK, that's the Israeli side. What about the response in the Gulf, whether against Gulf allies or against American facilities in Bahrain or Central Command itself in Qatar? These things don't worry you?

Cotton: ... Not only do we have the ability to substantially degrade their nuclear facilities, but we have the capability, along with our Gulf allies, who have increased their military spending by over 50 percent, to largely protect them from any kind of retaliatory air or naval strikes.

[Author's note: Generals and defense secretaries of all political stripes disagree with "Cotton."]

2. We patriots love war! Like Iraq, which we won until traitor Obungle lost it!

Goldberg: Why do you think your general outlook is so disparaged, even in parts of the Republican Party? I don't mean the Rand Paul wing, even. I mean, I hear from Republicans who are wary of going down a path that would lead to another Middle East war. Or let me put this another way: Do you believe that the country is tired of these sorts of wars and of this kind of engagement?

Cotton: I think that Americans—and this is not true just now, but over the years—are not fundamentally opposed to war. They're fundamentally opposed to losing wars. And that's one reason why President Bush lost support for the Iraq War in the period of 2004 to 2006.

Goldberg: Do we have to win wars quickly to make them popular?

Cotton: I don't think we have to win quickly necessarily, but we have to win. By the time the 2008 election arrived, we had finally won the Iraq War, or we were on the road to winning it. We won starting in the summer of 2007 going into late 2011. Had President Obama, for instance, accepted our commanders' recommendations to keep a small residual force in Iraq, I think the country would have supported that decision.

[Author's note: The agreement to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq by 2011 was settled in 2008 by President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki.]

3. The U.S. never fucks up the world unless Obombo is involved!

Cotton: ...I mean, I think [Obama] believes fundamentally that American strength and leadership in the world has been as much a source of instability and disorder as it has been stability and order.

Goldberg: What are you implying? That he believes that America can be a force for bad as well as good in the world?

Cotton: Yes, that, if America was less of a leader in the world, then the world would probably be a better and more stable place.

[Author's note: See also: Iraq et al.]

4. You can't trust a dirty Iranian, ever. Axis of evil!

Goldberg: Let's say it's June 30, and you've won. You and the Republicans and some of the Democrats have managed to kill this deal. What happens on July 1? Does Iran say, 'Screw you all. You can keep sanctions in place but we're going to continue to spin and we're going to move toward breakout.' And so you have a situation in which Iran might have a nuke in six months as opposed to 12 years? How is that a better situation?

Cotton: If they accept the terms of the deal they could be in the same position regardless in one year. They could just cheat on the deal anyway. There is a long and ignominious history of rogue regimes like Iran accepting these deals and immediately starting to cheat, as happened in North Korea, as happened in Iraq.

[Author's note: If you believe this, then we are terribly late in bombing Iran and North Korea.]

5. Don't call Obimbo a "Chamberlain." Chamberlain wasn't a pussy!

Cotton: ... If you let these problems fester, then they continue to grow. That's the lesson time and time and time again. Obviously that's the lesson of the 1930s, but if you don't want to go to that example, then just look at what happened in the Balkans in the early 1990s.

Goldberg: Wait, is this the 1930s to you?

Cotton: It's unfair to Neville Chamberlain to compare him to Barack Obama, because Neville Chamberlain's general staff was telling him he couldn't confront Hitler and even fight to a draw—certainly not defeat the German military—until probably 1941 or 1942. He was operating from a position of weakness.

[Author's note: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

6. In summary: Chamberlain! Hitler! Nukes!

Goldberg: And so your feeling is, deal with the problem now, before it gets worse?

Cotton: In security matters, this is almost always the case.

Goldberg: And if that means dealing with it militarily, then deal with it militarily?

Cotton: The world probably wishes that Great Britain had rebuilt its defenses and stopped Germany from reoccupying the Rhineland in 1936. Churchill said when Chamberlain came back from Munich, 'You had a choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will therefore be at war.' And when President Obama likes to say, 'It's this deal or war,' I would dispute that and say, 'It's this deal or a better deal through stronger sanctions and further confrontation with [Iran's] ambitions and aggression in the region.' And if it is military action, I would say it's more like Operation Desert Fox or the tanker war of the 1980s than it is World War II. In the end, I think if we choose to go down the path of this deal, it is likely that we could be facing nuclear war.

[Author's note: idk fuck it]