Donald Trump and Wars of Choice

President Donald Trump reclaimed the White House last year promising to keep the United States out of conflicts and claiming to be a peacemaker. “Under Trump, we will have no more wars,” he said on the campaign trail in 2024. And Trump has been especially critical of going to war in Iraq. “We should have never been in Iraq,” said Trump during a Republican presidential debate in February 2016. “We have destabilized the Middle East.”

Despite all of this, the U.S. was joined by Saudi Arabia in attacks on Iranian-backed militias in Iraq on Wednesday. “U.S. and Saudi fighter aircraft struck multiple terrorist logistics and weapons sites across eastern Iraq in a strong response to over 30 IRGC-directed aerial drone attacks in the last 72 hours,” U.S. Central Command announced, referring to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the recent flare-up in Trump’s failing war with Iraq’s neighbor, Iran.

Trump’s latest war in the Middle East follows denials last month that he ever campaigned on avoiding forever wars. “I didn’t promise anything,” he told “Meet the Press” on NBC News. On that — if nothing else ever — Trump has been true to his word. An Intercept analysis found, in fact, that America has been embroiled in more than 20 military interventions, armed conflicts, and wars during Trump’s years in the White House.

Today, TomDispatch’s recently retired founding editor, Tom Engelhardt, and I examine the presidential penchant for ruinous wars in the Middle East, why the current narcissist-in-chief couldn’t resist entangling the U.S. in a seemingly endless conflict with Iran, and whether the American people are finally fed up with forever wars.

— Nick Turse, editor of TomDispatch

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