The U.S. Shouldn't Start Another Unnecessary War

If the president starts an illegal war with Iran, it will be a war of choice that will be terrible for U.S. interests.

The president casually threatened another country with illegal military action on Friday:

“They won’t be enriching. If they enrich, then we’re going to have to do it the other way,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday.

“And I don’t really want to do it the other way but we’re going to have no choice,” he added. “There’s not going to be enrichment.”

Trump sometimes says that he doesn’t want to attack Iran, but he won’t stop making public threats tied to an extreme demand that Iran has already repeatedly rejected. He tries to make it seem as if Iran is forcing him to do something he would rather avoid, but absolutely no one is forcing Trump to make these threats or to follow through on them. If the president starts an illegal war with Iran, it will be a war of choice that will be terrible for U.S. interests.

American presidents love to frame their decisions to use force as something that has been forced on them by circumstances or by the perfidy of the other government. Many interventionist presidents of both parties have insisted that they didn’t want war at the same time that they were going out of their way to pick fights with countries on the other side of the planet. The most trigger-happy presidents have the greatest incentive to feign reluctance in using force.

George W. Bush disgracefully presented the pending invasion of Iraq as something that the Iraqi government had chosen: “Should Saddam Hussein choose confrontation, the American people can know that every measure has been taken to avoid war, and every measure will be taken to win it.” Of course that was a lie, like so many other things Bush said about Iraq. Bush had taken no measures to avoid war because he had no interest in avoiding it. He presented it that way to make it seem as if the U.S. wasn’t the aggressor when it definitely was.

All governments try to shift the blame for conflict to their adversaries, but it is even more ridiculous when ours does this because the U.S. has very rarely fought a war of necessity. When the U.S. has attacked another country in the past, our government’s hand has never been forced. If the U.S. were to attack Iran, it would be because the president wanted to attack.

Don’t let the president or his apologists trick you into believing that he wants to avoid war. If he truly wanted to avoid war, he would stop making obnoxious demands and he wouldn’t be threatening to attack Iran every time he talks about this subject. A president who didn’t want to attack Iran would find a way to compromise on the nuclear issue, and he would stop talking about blowing up their facilities.

Trump isn’t interested in finding that compromise. The president demands the one thing that he must know Iran will never give. The only reason to do that is to create a pretext for a war that he wants to be able to blame on Iran. He wants to imitate George W. Bush and make it seem as if his aggressive policy is somehow Iran’s fault.

Trump says that “we’re going to have no choice” in the case of Iran, but this is nonsense. There is always a choice, and when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program using force is clearly the wrong one. It would not just be counterproductive and imprudent. Like the Iraq war, it would be criminal and wrong.

There is no legitimate reason to use force against Iran over its nuclear program. There are many other choices open to the U.S. if the Iranian government refuses to give in to Trump’s absurd demands. Rosemary Kelanic made a strong case last week that there are options besides a deal or war:

The United States doesn’t need to make a deal-or-war ultimatum. Iranian nuclear latency is a status quo that has been stable for years, albeit uncomfortably so.

The U.S., Israel, and the rest of the region have been living with Iran’s nuclear program for a long time. There is no reason why we can’t all keep living with it as it is for the foreseeable future. There is nothing happening that even permits military action under international law. It certainly doesn’t require it. Trump wants to make us believe that military action could be the only option, but it shouldn’t even be on the table as a possibility.

The U.S. has periodically gone looking for monsters to destroy for decades. Both U.S. and the world have been the worse for it. The U.S. shouldn’t be starting another unnecessary war anywhere, and it has absolutely no right to attack Iran.