Donald Trump leads U.S. into war with Iran. Where is the peacemaker now? | Opinion
Donald Trump told us he was a different kind of Republican president.
Not a warmonger like those other guys. Not one to blunder about the Middle East in search of monsters to destroy. Not one to risk American lives and resources unnecessarily.
Not like George W. Bush. Or George H.W. Bush. Or even — in a smaller way — Ronald Reagan.
He told us in 2016, when he ran for president against the heavily favored (but badly outmatched) Jeb Bush in the Republican primaries.
“Obviously the war in Iraq was a big fat mistake, alright?” Trump said at a South Carolina debate that effectively ended Jeb’s political career. “George Bush made a mistake, we can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty.”
He told us again during his second inaugural speech, just a few months ago.
“My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That’s what I want to be: a peacemaker and a unifier,” he said.
And, Trump added: “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.”
By Trump’s own standard, then, he now stands as a failure.
He is not a peacemaker. He is not a unifier.
Instead, on Saturday, Trump ordered America into war against Iran. God help us all.
An unnecessary war
Trump on Saturday night said the attack was necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb.
Don’t believe it.
If Iran made progress toward a weapon in recent years, that is in large part this president’s fault. During his first term, Trump tore up the 2015 Obama-era agreement in which the United States eased sanctions on Tehran and the Islamic regime agreed to limit uranium enrichment and stockpiles of nuclear fuel.
“This was a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” Trump said.
It was an imperfect agreement. But it was better than going to war. And Trump didn’t offer an alternative. There was no Plan B, administration officials acknowledged at the time. It was destruction for destruction’s sake.
So Iranians, unsurprisingly, resumed their uranium enrichment program. That raised the likelihood of a confrontation.
Even then, the American intelligence agencies had — as recently as a few months ago — assessed that Iran had not made critical moves toward building an actual bomb. Tehran, after all, was allowed under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium for other purposes.
The intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003,” Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, told Congress in March.
What changed? Not much, it appears, except Trump’s gut feelings. “My intelligence community is wrong,” he said Friday. He offered no evidence.
No Congressional authorization.
In critical aspects, though, it is true that Trump is not like other Republican presidents who led America to war in the Middle East.
He’s worse.
Both Presidents Bush went to war with the authorization of Congress, and with the widespread support of the American people. Trump has neither.
There was no Congressional authorization for this attack, even though the U.S. Constitution gives the legislative branch — not the president — the legal power to declare war. Trump might argue the post-9/11 authorization for military force gives him the legal right to order the attack, but it is impossible to imagine that Congress in 2001 intended to approve a blank check for new wars a quarter-century later.
As for popular support, well: An Economist/YouGov poll released on the eve of Saturday’s attack found that 60% of Americans — including, incidentally, 53% of Republicans — said the U.S. military should not get involved in Israel’s war on Iran.
That may change: Americans often rally ‘round the flag when war breaks out. But it suggests Trump didn’t bother to build a democratic foundation for his attack decision. That’s not really his style, and in any case he has spent the last six months seemingly determined to alienate the half of the country that did not vote for him.
But he may regret not getting more buy-in if there is blowback from Saturday night’s bombing raid.
Iran, after all, has a long history as a state supporter of terror. (The mullahs are not the good guys here, but neither was Saddam Hussein.) American forces and American civilians are more in danger of being attacked now than they were before the president’s decision.
If that happens — God forbid — Trump will have to own the result.
The president, though, is hoping that bluster and threats will forestall such tragedies.
“There will be either peace,” he said Saturday night, “or there will be tragedy for Iran, far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days.”
Maybe. But if the 21st century has taught us anything, it is that a whole range of ugly outcomes is possible when America chooses to go to war. The genie does not always go back into the bottle.
Trump promised to lead differently. Instead, he is giving us more of the same.
This story was originally published June 21, 2025 at 10:35 PM.