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Wagging the Gulf of Tonkin Dog
President “The” Donald J. Trump has denied reports from Fake News that the U.S. has put together a contingency plan to ship approximately 120,000 troops to the Middle East if Iran attacks U.S. forces or speeds up development of a nuclear weapon. Iran has said it will do the latter if something is not done by the remaining parties in the nuclear agreement to lift sanctions forcing Iran to sell its oil at a smuggler’s discount. I have three observations about the denial, which came in one of those noisy press gaggles in front of Marine One.
First, and least certain, it appeared that he might have been denying that the U.S. military has any plan at all for war with Iran. That’s nonsense. The U.S. military probably has a contingency plan for war with Liechtenstein.
Second, he certainly denied the report that the plan for military action against Iran that did not exist had just been amended. In the next breath, he appeared to confirm the necessity for such a plan:
Would I do that? Absolutely. But we have not planned for that. And if we did that, we’d send a hell of a lot more troops than that.
The most charitable reading of that remark is incompetence in the role of commander in chief. It’s necessary to plan for wars of choice in a number of locations that have heated up with Mr. Trump’s rhetoric.
