Trump Is Marching The U.S. Toward A New War

This chart shows the results of the newest Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between March 25th and 27th of a random national sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,330 registered voters), with a margin of error of 3.4 points for all adults and 2.8 points for registered voters.

It shows that most voters think Donald Trump is likely to start a new war. I think it is more than likely -- it is a probability. His latest firings and hirings are a clear indication of this.

Why would he start a new war? Two reasons. First, he is a fool who thinks a war could be easily won -- ignoring the lessons from our ventures into Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria (and Vietnam). Second, he thinks a war would unify the public behind him, and save his deeply troubled presidency.

I'm not the only one who believes Trump is preparing for war. The following is part of an op-ed by Katrina vanden Heuvel in The Chicago Tribune:

With the appointment of John Bolton as national security adviser, President Donald Trump has put the finishing touches on his war Cabinet, with bellicose Mike Pompeo heading the State Department and Gina Haspel, who ran a torture site under President George W. Bush, heading the CIA. With Bolton's appointment, Trump has broken another campaign promise — and it is surely his most dangerous betrayal yet. The candidate who promised to get us out of stupid wars is now loading up for war. With Congress having surrendered its national security responsibilities, the United States, already mired in endless wars across the broad Middle East, seems on the verge of even greater military catastrophe.

Bolton, who will be the last one in the room to whisper in Trump's ear and the first one in the morning (along with "Fox & Friends") to frame the news, proudly made his name as a warmonger, never seeing a war that he wouldn't promote (nor one that he would fight in). Under Bush, he cooked intelligence to fit the case for the Iraq War. He still defends what was the greatest foreign policy debacle since Vietnam. He has advocated "preventive war" — a euphemism for an illegal war of aggression — against both Iran and North Korea. He has also urged ramping up the pressure on Russia in Ukraine and China in the South China Sea. He believes U.S. military might entitles the United States to dictate terms in every corner of the world. . . .

Bolton wants to tear up the Iran deal, despite the fact that this historic, multilateral deal is working, and is strongly supported by U.S. allies, to be followed by an Israeli or U.S. attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. He has consistently dismissed negotiations with North Korea as a waste of time. He already has outlined how Trump's meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un can serve as "diplomatic shock and awe" to set the stage for attacking that country.

It's a far cry from the foreign policy Trump claimed to support during the campaign. He claimed — dishonestly — that he opposed the Iraq invasion from the beginning. He scorned "nonsense" wars without victory. He charged that "the people opposing us are the same people — and think of this — who've wasted $6 trillion on wars in the Middle East — we could have rebuilt our country twice — that have produced only more terrorism, more death and more suffering. Imagine if that money had been spent at home."

Upon taking office, he abandoned these populist postures. Trump sent more troops to both Afghanistan, sustaining the United States' longest war into its 17th year, and Syria, with the Pentagon announcing that they would stay even after the Islamic State was defeated. He doubled down on U.S. support in Saudi Arabia's criminal assault on Yemen, while increasing the pace of drone bombings.

And now he has brought the most extreme and unreconstructed of hawks into the White House. New and more dangerous wars of aggression seem virtually inescapable. . . .

With this appointment and the consolidation of the war Cabinet, Trump's presidency has taken a foreboding turn — from madcap farce and unending melodrama toward grim tragedy.