A nice war as reelection strategy

“Barack Obama will attack Iran in the not too distant future because it will help him in the election.”

So said Donald J. Trump in 2011 as Obama was preparing for re-election, adding that the Democrat would get us into war because he wasn’t a good negotiator.

Of course Obama did not attack Iran and won handily anyway, but Trump somehow retained the idea that a nice war with a detested enemy would help his own campaign. Wars often boost presidential popularity, though a major victory in Kuwait did not help George H.W. Bush, who lost his own re-election bid.

Furthermore, a war might relegate an impeachment trial to the back pages and present the argument that it would be very bad form to put a president on trial midst warfare. Sort of the argument Israel Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu makes about his own indictment.

Thus many of us cynical scribblers are skeptical of Trump’s neo-Orwellian excuse for choosing this moment to assassinate Qassim Suleimani, the evil genius of asymmetric warfare and second most powerful person in Iran.

Trump pleads that he did not order the execution to start a war but to stop a war. He says that his intelligence folk and generals determined that Suleimani was planning “imminent and sinister” attacks on American interests — though their specifics are vague to nonexistent.

But what about Trump’s self-acknowledged superb negotiating skills? Might he not have tried negotiating with Iran as he has with North Korea? Just asking.

It’s surprising as well that Trump is suddenly heeding the warnings of those deep-state denizens of the intelligence community and the generals whose abilities he says are inferior to his own.

He dismissed the findings of the intelligence community when they found Russia interfering in our elections. He dismissed them when they said North Korea would never denuclearize. And of course he dismissed them when they found that Iran was actually adhering to the nuclear deal and advised him not to pull out of it.

It’s also highly suspicious that Trump didn’t inform the top eight leaders of Congress. No Democrats were advised in advance, but buddies such as Republican Lindsey Graham got the word while golfing at Mar-a-Lago. Seems a bit more political than a genuine national emergency.

Remember, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, triggered World War I. Surely Suleimani is a more consequential and beloved figure through much of the Middle East.

No, I’m not suggesting that this will start World War III — nor that the SOB didn’t deserve to die. But there are justifiable fears that Iran will retaliate in unpredictable, devastating ways. It can launch crippling cyber attacks and cause death and chaos in a dozen locations without directly starting a shooting war with the US because of its mastery of asymmetrical proxy warfare — a capability that did not die with Suleimani.

There are good reasons why both the Bush and Obama administrations considered it too provocative to execute the man.

Trump is wagging the dog and risking countless lives for personal political gain — as he does everything else.

Don Rose, the veteran political consultant, writes for the Chicago Daily Observer, where this column was first posted.

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