Among the many foreign policy experts, former diplomatic and military leaders, intelligence officers, members of Congress and the Senate, editorial writers, and columnists weighed in on Donald Trump’s killing of Iran’s top general, Qasem Soleimani, most noted a complete lack of strategy. But what they miss is that Trump has only ever had one strategy: doing whatever benefits him and his own political and financial self-interests.

No, Trump’s act of war did not “absolutely make America safer” — the lie that Secretary of State (now apparently Secretary of War) Mike Pompeo repeated on all the Sunday shows. Because of Trump’s newest attack, the Middle East is clearly more unsafe, further destabilized, increasingly volatile, and ever more dangerous for American troops in the region, their families at home, American troops, European populations, and the massive numbers of innocent Middle Eastern civilians who are continually displaced by endless regional conflicts — conflicts rarely mentioned in American news. The dangerous action put the whole world on edge as we watched in fear of further downward spirals of violence and its destructive consequences.

And, frighteningly, there’s nothing to suggest that the whole cycle won’t repeat itself.

The Trump strategy was politically demonstrable — and morally monstrous — as a deliberate, and initially successful, attempt to distract the media away from his impeachment trial in the Senate, his vulnerability to increasing evidence of his abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and as a new part of his re-election campaign. And Trump’s white evangelical loyalists, many of whom gathered in Miami on Friday to praise the president and launch “Evangelicals for Trump,” were all too happy to tag in as surrogates and beat the drum of war in obedience.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE