Trolled by Iran’s leaders and captured by the hawks around him, the president clumsily took the U.S. to the brink of the Middle East war he’d pledged to avoid. For some supporters, it could be the last straw
has pulled back from a brink with Iran. Or, rather Iran, by striking U.S. bases with missiles last night but taking care to kill no one, has pulled back from the brink with the United States. In a statement this morning, Trump vowed to impose “additional punishing economic sanctions” on Tehran, as if we still had many left in the arsenal, but we appear to be done, for the moment. Now comes the question of why we got here—not for the first time—to begin with.
Voters may be willing to forget about this episode. But they also may not. This was frightening. And it wouldn’t have happened if Trump hadn’t chosen to kill the Iranian general and U.S. adversary Qasem Soleimani last week just after Soleimani arrived in Iraq. It was a reckless action in itself, since we are technically guests of Iraq who are not at war with Iran. But it got even worse in its aftermath, when Trump, in a presidency rife with lows, got out the shovel to plumb a few more.
A cynic might ask: So? Isn’t that just Trump, only more so? No. It felt different this time, like a turning point—bigger than impeachment. It’s true that only the fewest of us are astonished that Trump would make barbarous threats. But a week ago an optimist could still cling to the hope that Trump’s previous forays into brinkmanship were exceptions, that the man, for all his belligerence on Twitter, was still a president whose basic offer to voters was one of peace and wealth.
An enduring mystery—or is it just an irony?—of nationalists is that so many of them lack any understanding of nationalist sentiments in other nations. The same people who react with hair-trigger outrage toward any perceived offense against the United States express disbelief that millions of Iranians would flood the streets to mourn the death of Soleimani.
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