It seems not a day goes by where Trump isn't the focal point of national news, nor does his saber-rattling with Middle Eastern nations. But as with most things in life, the more things change the more they stay the same.
With the recent airstrike and killing of Soleimani in response to the attack on the US Embassy, the Biden-to-Romney spectrum of officially approved opinion in America is now begging for war, all at a time when the Afghanistan war reaches nearly 2 decades. It makes many on the anti-war left and right skeptical of a new war based on shaky pretenses, plus the elephant in the room is that of a $23 trillion national debt plunging the US into a Greek-Esque total fiscal demise.
No doubt the Middle East is a complicated and precarious geopolitical quagmire but is war truly the most rational approach to solve these sorts of problems?
This conflict should be asking questions such as: "Why do we have over 800 military bases in over 100 countries?" and "Is war really with the Middle East truly worth the cost?" not trivialities over what Trump ate during the airstrikes.
The main crux of this argument is the USA's own track record of dealing with Iran.
Back in 1953, the CIA overthrew the locally popular democratically elected Mosaddegh in favor of a tightly rules monarch lead by the Shah. This was done in coordination with the United Kingdom to help British oil interests take control over Iranian oil reserves, which were under Mosaddegh were state-owned. Thus, Operation Ajax was designed and successfully removed Mosadegh out of power
Following this coup d'etat, 25 years later marked the Iranian revolution and the eventual hostage situation in 1979. Since this time Iran has become a hotbox of political tensions and a scapegoat for Middle East conflicts between the West as documented by both Scott Horton and Ron Paul.
It would seem like Trump, who ran as the ostensible anti-war candidate in 2016, seems to have fallen victim to the military-industrial complex's desire for perpetual war with the Middle East. For as much as he lambasted Obama and Bush for their futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he simply joined the status-quo to help himself win the hearts of Americans and the Beltway defense lobbyists.
Oddly enough, so-called "conservatives" who preach to the world about "limited government" simply can not pass up a war that has little to do with defending the homeland, but everything to do with regime change. The same conservatives who bleat about "unintended consequences" of farm subsidies or a Green New Deal see zero problems with trying to righteously remake an entire sub-continent.
Similarly, the anti-war left emerged from hiding, attacking Trump for doing an about-face on his campaign promises of putting "America First". But these were the same group of people had precisely nothing to say about Obama destroying Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen.
To close out, one should be reminded of the late Murray Rothbard who one said: "It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute domination over the economy and society".
