Vance, Rubio, and Wiles: Iran War? What Iran War? Don’t Look at Me!

That lengthy New York Times ticktock about the run-up to the war was interesting—but it also just gave the above troika a chance to walk away from a responsibility they totally share.

Hours before the announcement of a two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran, The New York Times published a story titled, “How Trump Took the U.S. to War With Iran.” The piece, written by longtime Trump chroniclers Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, described in unusually precise detail the private meetings between Trump, Israeli leaders, and his own advisers in the run-up to the war. According to the piece, almost all of the president’s top advisers, including Vice President JD Vance, privately had misgivings about the war.

I call bullshit. The war has failed to achieve most of its goals, from installing a new regime in Iran to permanently ensuring that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapons program. Trump was left basically begging Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. And polls suggest the conflict is the latest anchor on Trump’s already plunging poll numbers. So of course his aides want to distance themselves from the war in America’s most influential news outlet. But they want to do so anonymously to preserve deniability and avoid annoying the president or his base.

But we can’t let Vance, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and other senior Trump administration officials off so easily. They have at every turn aided, abetted, and enabled a dictatorial president who constantly ignores national and international laws and casually decides to (try to) overthrow the leaders of other countries. They want the spoils of serving in the Trump administration, from prestigious posts now to potentially even bigger and more lucrative jobs in the future, including the presidency in the cases of Rubio and Vance. So they also need to own and accept the costs of serving with Trump. And right now, that includes being the architects of a stupid, unnecessary war.

The Times article is long, in part because it is trying to explain a very important and complicated decision. But it’s also long........

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