Epic fail as Trump rushes for the exit |
Fractured internally and debased internationally, it is hard to imagine that the US will again wield the unique mix of strategic threat, intellectual prestige and democratic purpose it commanded at its zenith last century.
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Expressly elected on a pledge to end wars, not start them, Donald Trump simply flipped, adding an illegal - and ill-conceived - full-scale bombardment of Iran to America's litany of failed foreign entanglements.
And like Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, the Iran war has demonstrated once more the physical limits of American military might - particularly in asymmetric campaigns when the "simple" objective of regime change turns out to be complex and unachievable.
That this was not a new mistake only makes it worse.
Despite some 13,000 strikes over 40 days, Trump is nowhere, unable to credibly claim victory, nor find a viable off-ramp.
His weaponry depleted for use in other theatres, Trump is left scrambling for miscellaneous gains such as an after-the-fact ceasefire demand that Iran release six Americans currently held.
Trump's naivete drove Iran to choke-off a globally crucial trade corridor - something Benjamin Netanyahu had breezily dismissed as impossible.
This is a colossal fail by an American president who has not only misspent his country's latent strategic potential but degraded its global function from reliable backstop to bringer of mayhem.
Even Foreign Minister Penny Wong says so, using uncommonly direct language to decry a "much more unpredictable United States".
Wong could have added intemperate, unprincipled, unprofessional. Trump's public conduct has been so adolescent that even circumspect international relations experts are describing the 80-year-old president as "unhinged".
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