Donald Trump gets his war

OTTAWA—John Bolton, the former White House national security adviser who was dumped in September for supposedly being too much of a war lover, was ecstatic. “Congratulations to all involved in eliminating Qassem Soleimani,” he tweeted after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a drone strike in Iraq that killed Iran’s second most important national figure. “Long in the making, this was a decisive blow against Iran's malign Quds Force activities worldwide. Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran,” Bolton went on. Trump claimed after the assassination that regime change was not the objective. But all indications are the president and the individuals who pass as his advisers these days haven’t thought through their ultimate goal, the next steps, or the full risks of this latest escalation in the U.S.-Iran tensions Trump has been inflaming since 2018. One hopes that not too many people were caught off guard by the president’s decision to take the deepening confrontation with Tehran to the brink of outright war. It has been obvious for months that Trump was likely to deploy the patriotic nation-at-war card as the 2020 presidential election loomed with his popularity at historic lows. And of course the killing of Soleimani came 16 days after the House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump. To say the flagrant attack on the Iranian military leader changed the channel for Trump is an understatement. By the weekend, there was little trace of the impeachment issue in the media. And the president has shown no inclination toward the restraint being urged on Washington by Canada and other U.S. allies. In his typical bullying fashion, Trump has reduced American diplomacy to a Twitter screaming match. Responding to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s vow of revenge, Trump tweeted: “Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!” It was pointed out that attacking cultural sites is a war crime of the kind practiced by ISIS, and Iran labelled the U.S. president “a terrorist in a suit.” While Soleimani had a great deal to answer for, the U.S. attack has significantly destabilized the regional situation without providing any of the security benefits Trump claims. Experts responded to all this by saying a wider military conflagration in the Middle East was not inevitable, but none said it was out of the question. In the face of expected Iranian retaliation, Trump may have no choice but to order more military action. Given his volatile and high-handed nature and the immense domestic political stakes, there’s no telling how far the president will go. Under Trump, the U.S. has lost much of its international credibility and Americans have been treated to daily barrages of lies, exaggerations and hypocrisy. So Trump’s assertion that in taking out Soleimani he was acting to prevent war was not likely to carry much weight beyond the president’s political base in the U.S. It’s worth noting, too, that with U.S. lawmakers dealing with Trump's impeachment on charges of the president’s abuse of power, he is again pointedly asserting his ability to act independent of Congressional war-making authority. And the White House has basically glossed over the need to provide evidence of their claim that Soleimani was planning imminent violence against Americans. Within days, the repercussions from the U.S. assassination were multiplying at an alarming rate. Iraq’s parliament set the stage for the expulsion of U.S. and allied troops (including Canadians) from their country, prompting a new series of threats in which Trump said he would, in effect, destroy Iraq economically. Dissension in Iran was subverted by the national rage against the U.S., and the Iranians moved closer Sunday to abandoning the international agreement meant to keep Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. This prompted a further threat from Trump, who was seeing his game plan to force Iran to renegotiate a stronger nuclear control deal fall apart. And years of allied military efforts across the region to fight ISIS were put on hold. Forced now to rely on Trump’s wisdom and judgment to prevent a catastrophic turn of events, the world was clearly on edge. “The moment we all feared is likely upon us,” Democratic Sen. Christopher Murphy, said in Twitter post that spoke for many others. “An unstable President in way over his head, panicking, with all his experienced advisers having quit, and only the sycophantic amateurs remaining. Assassinating foreign leaders, announcing plans to bomb civilians. A nightmare.” Les Whittington is a regular columnist for The Hill Times. The Hill Times