If Talks with Iran Break Down It Will Be Time to Fish or Cut Bait
Pick one Mr. President.
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Editor’s Note: This column is a more detailed and updated version of a recent Off the Cuff
When you’re the president of the United States it’s a good idea to play the movie through in your head, all the way to end, before you do something of great consequence, like taking your country to war. Except caution is not Donald Trump’s style. He is, as Peter Baker put it in the New York Times, “The most impulsive president of modern times” who “follows his instincts and can completely reverse himself by the day, or sometimes the hour.”
His impulses led him to believe that war with Iran would end quickly, that it would not drag on as his critics alleged.
The war started on February 28. One day later, on March 1, the president said, the war likely would last “four to five weeks.”
On March 5 he said, “The United States military, together with the wonderful Israeli partners, continues to totally demolish the enemy far ahead of schedule and at levels that people have never seen before.”
And two days after that, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that, “We’re winning the war by a lot. We’ve decimated their whole evil empire.”
