We’ve long known that Donald Trump drives his critics crazy, and he’s now doing it to some critics who used to be friends. The isolationist right is convinced that President Trump is waging the Iran War in behalf of Israel, which would make him the handmaiden of a foreign power.
That should be a familiar-sounding charge since Democrats and the media spent most of Trump’s first term making the same accusation, except the foreign puppeteer was Russia rather than Israel. Now, “Russia, Russia, Russia,” as Trump puts it, has become “Israel, Israel, Israel.”
All of this is misbegotten, first, because we have never had a president who is so thoroughly his own man as Donald Trump. Good luck trying to control him, as so many advisors have learned over the years. There are few things he’s done as president where you’ve thought, “Oh, that’s so unlike him.”
That includes firing FBI director James Comey in his first term, one of the counts against him during the Russia frenzy, and launching the war against Iran today.
Going back 50 years, no one would have been shocked to learn that a nationalistic American president had bombed Iran. Trump is just such a figure, and sure enough, has bombed Iran twice now.
Trump has made bellicose statements about Iran since 1980, and nothing we’ve heard now suggests anything other than that he genuinely relishes killing Iran’s leaders and destroying its weapons.
Temperamentally, Trump loves exercising power, always wants to do it on his own authority and seeks to preserve his options. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that as commander in chief of the world’s most proficient military, he’s been drawn to using and threatening force.
Israel didn’t talk Trump into conducting his Venezuela raid, or menacing Denmark over Greenland, or looking to Cuba as his next potential target.
One argument, based on a distortion of remarks made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is that Israel forced Trump’s hand; it was going to attack Iran no matter what, and we knew U.S. personnel would be hit by Iran in response and would be particularly vulnerable if we didn’t hit Iran as well.
Check and mate, Bibi Netanyahu.
The idea, though, that Trump was too sheepish to stay Netanyahu’s hand if the Israeli prime minister was about to launch a military operation that Trump opposed and was going to jeopardize American lives is preposterous.
Trump has been happy to say “no” to Netanyahu before. He pressured the Israeli leader into turning back planes at the end of the 12 Day War last June.
By alleging that Israel forced the U.S. into war, the isolationists think they are making a harsh criticism of the Jewish state, but they are really damning Trump. What worse offense can a president of the United States commit than subjugating his own nation to a foreign power? It’s a treasonous act that deserves impeachment and removal.
This is exactly why the Russian obsessives so delighted in believing that Trump was a tool of the Kremlin.
Most of the right-wing dissenters blanch at following their own logic. An alternative tack — seen in intelligence official Joe Kent’s resignation letter — is to argue that Trump was fooled. Kent said there was “a misinformation campaign” that created an echo chamber “to deceive” the president.
This argument is still a stinging condemnation. It paints Trump as an easily manipulated naif, and on a consequential matter of war and peace. In reality, there was no broad-ranging media drumbeat for war and no wave of popular support. This, again, emphasizes how the decision was Trump’s, and his alone.
The Russian hoax was, in part, driven by the left’s shock at Trump’s victory in 2016. Likewise, the isolationists are having trouble processing the fact that the president whom they invested so much in launched a major Middle Eastern war. But Trump was not owned by this faction of the right, any more than he is owned by Israel.
Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review.