Anyone Out There Have The Guts to Tell Trump's Gut That War is A Political Loser?

January 10, 2020

By Joe Rothstein

Did President Trump purposely trigger a near-war emergency to divert attention from his impeachment? Whether he did, or didn’t, we know that using war as a political weapon is a thought that’s crossed his mind. In 2012 he was all over the media predicting Barack Obama would start a war with Iran to help him win reelection.

If Trump didn’t order the death of Qassem Soleimani in an effort to rally political support for himself, the other likely scenario is that he did it impulsively. That’s also a plausible explanation. For many decisions Trump has made during the past three years, he has turned to his “gut” for guidance. “I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me,” Trump has said. Why not for this one?

His gut may have remembered the 1997 movie, “Wag The Dog,” where a U.S. president in political trouble fabricates a fake war in Albania to bail himself out.

With Trump, you never know. But we do know this. Anyone who thinks war is good politics hasn’t been paying attention to recent U.S. history.

Recent, as near-term as the day after the Soleimani killing when the Selective Service web site crashed because so many young men and their families immediately saw the possibility of being drafted into the military. It’s not good politics to scare the wits out of millions of people who think they might be going to Iran as cannon fodder.

This isn’t 1941, when Pearl Harbor was attacked and every American mentally enlisted in a fight to protect our endangered homeland. It’s not even 2001, when the twin towers came down and Americans united to punish those who attacked us.

This is 2020. Seventeen years after U.S. leaders lied us into the invasion of Iraq. Sixteen years after George W. Bush barely survived reelection as the public began to realize the full consequences of that war. Twelve years since Barack Obama defeated Hillary Clinton, with Clinton’s vote to invade Iraq a major campaign issue. And now, 2020, a year when Joe Biden’s vote to invade Iraq is an impediment to his support in the coming election.

Let’s go back further. Way back to 1952, when then General Dwight D. Eisenhower promised to go to Korea and stop that war, and was elected President. And 1964, when Barry Goldwater lost his bid for the White House, with voters concerned he would be too quick to pull the nuclear trigger. And 1968, when Lyndon Johnson was so unpopular because of the Vietnam war that he had to scrap his bid for reelection. And later that year when Richard Nixon won a close election, promising that he had a secret plan to end that war.

President Bill Clinton was so concerned about the politics of war that he confined U.S. intervention in the Balkans to bombings. No boots on the ground, he said. When Clinton might have had a wag the dog moment during his impeachment, he limited it to a few harmless missiles fired into Afghanistan and Sudan.

Except in times of genuine national emergency, “rally around the flag” has been political poison for those who send our warriors into battle. Truman left office wildly unpopular, mostly due to the war in Korea. For LBJ and George W. Bush, any positive vibes sent their way quickly dissipated when Americans realized that Vietnam and Iraq were disastrous policy decisions.

The only reason we haven’t seen massive anti-war demonstrations in the U.S. in recent years is that those doing the fighting volunteered to do it. But the line between passive acceptance of our Middle East war policy and violent street hostility is a thin one, as the crash of the Selective Service web site showed.

We don’t draft people into military service any more. But when men reach the age of 18 they are required to register. Their names go into database files. If Congress thinks national security requires it, they can be ordered to serve. The possibility is always there, and those who register for a potential draft know it.

For Trump to believe that Barack Obama would start a war with Iran to help himself politically is an insight into dangerous thinking. If that would help Obama, why wouldn’t it help Trump, now that he’s in the same position, with the same buttons to push?

As with so many things, Trump has it all wrong. Steering us into hostilities would do more than crash a web site. It would crash his already shaky poll numbers.

Someone needs to explain this to his his gut.

(Joe Rothstein’s latest political thriller, “The Salvation Project,” is now available through all online book sellers and most book stores).