A Republican president enters a faraway war, despite questions about the intelligence underpinning the attack. America has been here before.
President Trump’s rise was, in part, the response of US voters to political leaders embroiling the military in unpopular foreign conflicts, especially the lengthy deployment to Iraq launched by a Republican predecessor, George W Bush, based on flimsy accounts of weapons of mass destruction.
“My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier,” Trump concluded in his inaugural address. “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end — and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”
