There is a common thread between the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and Donald Trump’s war with Iran now.
In 2001, Lewis “Scooter” Libby and his boss, Vice President Dick Chaney, we’re desperate for a reason to go to war. Libby publicly claimed as justification that Iraq was only six months away from developing a bomb. Ring any bells?
Iraq told the United States that its nuclear ambitions had been destroyed 10 years earlier. Cheney wasn’t buying it, and he fed Bush information regarding aluminum tubes and enriched yellow cake uranium from Africa.
Like Donald, George was hardly the sharpest tool in the shed.
Bush, pushed by Cheney, who was supported by his henchman Libby, invaded Iraq. That was a disaster. US forces searched every square inch of Iraq, and no weapons of mass destruction were ever found.
More than 4,400 U.S. service members died during the original timeline of the Iraq War (Operation Iraqi Freedom), with an additional 74 deaths occurring afteward during Operation New Dawn. Iraqi deaths are estimated between 200,000 and 600,000.
Fast forward to 2025 when Trump bragged to the world in the summer of that Iran’s nuclear program had been obliterated as a result of his brazen air strikes. He was so excited.
Sometimes Trump will claim that his reason for attacking Iran is its nuclear program and sometimes he won’t mention that. Maybe he forgets to say so. He is 80 after all.
Now, Trump is desperate to cut a deal, and he is ignoring Iran’s nuclear program. He’s desperate for a deal, any deal, that will open the strait. Iran is just as desperate not to give Trump what he wants.
I’ll stick my neck out a bit, and opine that Trump is ignoring Iran’s nuclear aspects because he is aware that Iran does not have a near or midterm nuclear capacity.
He lied to the world as a pretext to war.
Bush and Cheney did the same thing. At least they teed it up with Congress, and citizens which Trump refused to do because he is so much monarch.
An all powerful president, with no restraints, other than his own morals, as he has said to The New York Times.
Shame that there is no one in Trump‘s posse old enough to remember the very sad lesson that Bush learned with Iraq. Not that Trump would have listened to anyone who got in his way.
We now have a needless war without a plan of extraction.
On Saturday, Iran stuck its thumb in Trump’s eye. Then it twisted its thumb. In an announcement, Iran laid out the conditions that must be met for it to reopen the strait. The terms have not materially changed over zix months.
Iran has told Trump that if he wants the strait to reopen, he has to remove troops from the region, release sanctions against Iran, release Iran’s frozen assets, lift the blockade and pay (big) reparations.
Oman and Iran are in the process of cutting a deal that will carve up administrative responsibilities of using the strait and charging administrative fees for that. For decades, the strait was considered an international waterway and transit was free.
The only thing that’s new is removing the blockade that did not exist in March, and paying Iran money for what Iran claims is Trump’s breach of the June memorandum of understanding.
That is about as insulting, as Iran intends, as making the bad guy pay for legal fees to settle a lawsuit.
Alas, poor Donald. He’s up against a country whose theology, ideology and leaders he is incapable of understanding.
Here’s a tangent observation…Valerie Plame a secret CIA operative was outed by Libby in 2003 in order to cast doubt on her ambassador husband’s report that Iraq had not bought yellow cake from Africa. That was not what Chaney needed to hear.
Libby fed her name to a Washington columnist who published it.
As a direct result, many people that Plame was working with died or disappeared when she was summarily removed from her position at the CIA.
George Bush‘s attorney general John Ashcroft appointed a special counsel to investigate the matter and Libby was indicted for five criminal violations and convicted of four. He was sentenced to 30 months imprisonment.
On July 2, 2007, President Bush commuted Libby’s sentence but did not pardon him.
Can you even begin to imagine that happening in the Trump administration?
And there you have it; those who forget the lessons of history — or in Trump’s case never learned them — are doom to repeat them.
Jim Astrachan is lawyer who represents clients in intellectual property law and litigation, mediation, and business, regulatory, and transactional matters. He’s a Life Fellow of the Baltimore City Bar Foundation, the Maryland Bar Foundation, and the American Bar Foundation.