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President Trump is pondering swift military action in Iran. There were similar expectations that the war in Iraq would be quick and triumphant.
By Elisabeth Bumiller
Reporting from Washington
June 18, 2025
A little more than 22 years ago, Washington was on edge as a president stood on the precipice of ordering an invasion of Baghdad. The expectation was that it would be a quick, triumphant “mission accomplished.”
By the time the United States withdrew nearly nine years and more than 4,000 American and 100,000 Iraqi deaths later, the war had become a historic lesson of
miscalculation and unintended consequences.
The specter of Iraq now hangs over a deeply divided, anxious Washington. President Trump, who campaigned against America’s “forever wars,” is pondering a
swift deployment of American military might in Iran. This time there are not some 200,000 American troops massed in the Middle East, or antiwar demonstrations around the world. But the sense of dread and the unknown feels in
many ways the same.
“So much of this is the same story told again,” said Vali R. Nasr, an Iranian
American who is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “Once upon a time we didn’t know better, and we bought
all the happy talk about Iraq. But every single assumption proved wrong.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/us/politics/trump-iran-iraq.html
This is a time when Trump *ought* to chicken out but probably won't, because he surrounds himself with the worst and the stupidest.
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