“We shouldn’t try to change horses midstream.” Sound familiar? It seems like virtually every president needs to start their own “pet war,” often on quite dubious grounds, presumably to make them look tough and keep the electorate a little nervous about “changing horses.”
Looking through history, we can find many examples of this. Let’s give a pass to those gentlemen whose beliefs were forged during and in the wake of World War II, and who perhaps had an honest, if arguably paranoid fear that the “commies” were coming for us. So, let’s begin our review with Ronald Reagan, who in 1983 proved his mettle against that powerful evil-doer, Grenada, then intentionally and with little justification provoked Libya into a dust-up. Then we have George Bush The Elder; fresh from being raked over the coals over his “read my lips” promise about new taxes, he managed to distract us by going to war in Panama (seriously?), then by intervening in a Middle Eastern territorial dispute between Iraq and Kuwait. Why there and why then? Why not Kashmir or any number of similar ongoing disputes? Then Mr. Clinton found reasons to go adventuring in both Haiti and Kosovo. Of course, who can forget George Bush The Younger, who managed to arrest his tanking poll numbers by invading Iraq to ferret out those “weapons of mass destruction” — or not. Perhaps the only reason Mr. Obama didn’t start any major wars was that he was fortunate enough to inherit two that he passed on to the next guy.
Which brings us to the “next guy” — Donald Trump, who, despite his claims to be an isolationist, finds himself in need of a fresh war of his very own. Apparently pulling out of the previously settled nuclear deal with Iran wasn’t enough to get things going in time for the next election, so he did something he knew Iran couldn’t ignore. Here we go again. Are we going to fall for it yet another time? Are we going to re-elect this guy because we’re in the middle of a brand new war of his own making, afraid to change horses? The only difference is that this time, we only have half of a horse. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions as to which half.
— Lou Nathanson
Anchorage
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