So President Donald J. Trump, a man who’s always tilting at “cancer-causing” windmills, finally has something to rail against for real. From the beginning, he’s been against Iran and all Muslims and anything he imagined President Barack Obama espoused, whether he actually did (like the Iran nuclear deal) or not (the Muslim Brotherhood).
Now Trump has the fight with Iran he’s been itching for since day one — revenge and counter-revenge over the death of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the architect of so much terror in the Middle East. Look, not too many people there or here are unhappy about the loss of this guy, who like so many bad actors on the Middle East stage was once a would-be ally. (But then, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were once all our guys, weren’t they? As Benjamin Disraeli famously said, “There are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests.”)
The killing of Suleimani, who didn’t become a thorn in our side overnight, raises many questions. Does it outweigh the risks and disadvantages? (The Iranians have retaliated by bombing two of our bases in Iraq.) Why now? To what end? That’s really the most important question: What is our endgame and exit strategy, if any?
The Middle East is a Gordian Knot we have never unraveled. Enemies on one field are allies on another. Recently, our main goals have been to shore up Iraq and Afghanistan, partnering with the Kurds and other allies as well to defeat ISIS, and to keep Al-Qaeda and the Taliban defeated while also not making matters worse in Syria — at least those were our main goals until the Trump Administration decided to make matters worse. We should’ve stayed in the Iran nuclear agreement in the spirit of the old mob idea that you keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Surely, Trump is familiar with that concept.
We should’ve kept Iran in the fold and the focus on Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and ISIS, which were our targets post-9/11 and post-post-9/11. Instead we’ve got Iranians — who had been divided over their leadership — united over their hatred of us, cozying up even more with Russia and China and flirting with a nuclear agreement pullout at a time when Kim Jong-un is rattling his weapons in North Korea. We’ve put the breaks on the ISIS fight in the wake of the new Trump-ed up crisis and threatened Iranian cultural monuments, which is heartbreaking and disgraceful, although our Defense Department has walked that back. And we’ve all but thrown Iraq — which is walking a fine line between us and Iran — into the arms of that nation, its much stronger neighbor.
Why? It’s not like this situation suddenly got worse. Yes, an Iranian missile killed the Iraqi-American contractor, Nawres Hamid, Dec. 27. And his death is a tragedy. But was the death of Jamal Khashoggi, the American-based Saudi journalist, at the hands of his countrymen any less tragic? Oh, but the Saudis are our allies — specifically the business partners of Trump and son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner. So Khashoggi’s brutal murder doesn’t count. In the narcissistic game he plays, Trump is more than happy to pick winners and losers.
Still, the timing of the Suleimani attack is peculiar. Does it have anything to do with the impeachment proceedings? It wouldn’t be the first time Trumpet created a distraction. And why is Vice President Mike Pence trying to link Suleimani to 9/11, playing the old “weapons of mass destruction” card? 9/11 and this situation have nothing in common, any more than Bin Laden had with Suleimani. We pursued Bin Laden, the acknowledged mastermind of 9/11, a long time. It was not a question of if but when we would get him. Our goal was clear to our allies, our enemies and our Congress.
The Suleimani strike happened out of the blue — again, why now? So Trump, who can’t decide if he wants to be an isolationist or an internationalist, can appear tough in an election year as he faces impeachment?
My uncle, only half-kidding, says women are responsible for the world’s ruination. But the current crisis with Iran is a reminder that conflicts and wars always begin when old men need to save face. (Ah the irony of this onetime Trump tweet: “I predict President Obama will at some point attack Iran to save face!”)
You know what they say: Narcissists just project onto others what they themselves are or would like to do. Let’s just pray that this latest destabilizing move doesn’t have an old man once again sending young men and women off to die.