Trump must avoid stumbling into Iran war
The United States has plenty of problems here at home to resolve.
President Trump is a big fan of deals, especially his own. While they don’t always pan out, when it comes to foreign policy, working for a deal is often wiser than stumbling, or rushing, toward war.
Americans have had quite enough of war, which is one reason many voters are more apt to fear that Trump lacks the finesse to avoid it while trying to achieve big signature wins.
And while it’s apparent that President Trump is prone to hyperbolic rhetoric, when it comes to actually taking action, he seems to be the moderating voice in his own administration.
In recent days, Americans have learned that Trump made explicit to his own advisors and to the Pentagon that he doesn’t want war with Iran and in fact wants to talk with the country’s leaders.
We’ve also learned that there’s no actual plan in place for armed hostilities, just some broad contingencies of the type the Pentagon routinely drafts and shelves.
So it’s appropriate to signal to the president that his instinct against military action is sound, even as he is signaling that his advisors are off base pushing so hard to escalate in Venezuela, Iran, and elsewhere.
Trump says he wants good, fair deals with regimes from Tehran to Pyongyang. He should be held to that goal.
Trump may be overly optimistic about what might be accomplished in a timely fashion, but the proper reaction to that is stronger diplomacy, not score settling and panic.
Ben Rhodes and other Obama staffers seem bent on trying to portray Trump as someone actively dragging us toward war — even to the point of comparing his policies to the march toward the Iraq War.
Of course, President Trump has given critics no shortage of opportunities to criticize his foreign policy choices and statements. That he chose the intervention-minded John Bolton as his national security advisor alone is an ongoing cause for concern.
Likewise, his recent bluster on Twitter that “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!” only serves to heighten concern about a possible conflict.
But on the other hand, it seems President Trump does not want to emulate George W. Bush, whose failures he lambasted all the way to the GOP nomination.
And President Trump has also explicitly said he’s interested in working out a “fair deal” with Iran.
The president would do well to recall a tweet he put out in 2013 while criticizing President Obama: “Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properlynot skilled!”
We do know this administration is choppier and less seasoned than many in living memory. But we ought to rally around a policy of solid deals over sloppy wars.
The United States has plenty of problems here at home to resolve, and decades of perpetual war and foreign meddling have only served to drain public resources and undermine American national security.
President Trump wasn’t elected to force the United States into ever more expanding conflicts. If the president is as keen on dealmaking over war-making as he claims to be, this is the time to prove it.
The United States has plenty of problems here at home to resolve, and decades of perpetual war and foreign meddling have only served to drain public resources and undermine American national security.