Conservative columnist trashes Trump for sucking Americans into another war based on ignorance and arrogance

Conservative Washington Post columnist Max Boot unleashed on President Donald Trump for possibly starting another war based on ignorance and arrogance.

Boot previously supported the Iraq war but has since denounced the lies that motivated the Bush administration to invade. As the United States moves to attack Iran, he's noticing some similarities that make things far worse.

Over the weekend, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appeared on the political talk shows to spin the decision to kill Maj. Gen. Qasem Suleimani. He made it clear that the decision ignored all possible blowback Americans and allies may face as a result. Pompeo also lied that Iraqis were "dancing in the streets" after Suleimani was "no more." In fact, there were massive protests in the streets with people chanting "death to America."

"If we have learned anything from the past 17 years, it is that killing a bad guy doesn’t necessarily make the situation any better," wrote Boot. "Saddam Hussein was as bad as a guy can get, but his ouster and execution only unleashed chaos. That’s why I regret my support for the Iraq War; Pompeo clearly does not. He and Trump (who supported the Iraq invasion before he opposed it) seem to have learned nothing from that fiasco. They are sucking the United States into another Middle East conflict with a surfeit of arrogance and a deficit of strategy."

Boot posed that Iran may be deterred by Suleimani's death, but he doubts it, as the fallout grows more negative. Iraq has now voted to expel American troops after nearly two decades of occupation, something Iran has long wanted. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zari tweeted in March that the leading source of instability in the Middle East is the United States.

"Trump seems determined to unify the whole region against the United States, because he just threatened to attack Iranian cultural sites and to blackmail Iraq into paying for a U.S. air base built after an invasion that Iraqis did not ask for," Boot continued.

Out of the loop, Pompeo told reporters that the United States would abide by all norms and follow international laws, which conflicts with what Trump has said and then doubled down on.

“They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way,” said Pompeo.

As Boot explained, it actually does work that way, because the United States is a country that operates under the rule of law, nationally and internationally. Iran, by contrast, is a rogue state.

He called it "laughable" that Pompeo would say that “We have developed a strategy to attempt to convince the Iranian regime to behave like a normal nation.”

"Normal nations don’t threaten to blackmail other countries or destroy their cultural sites," wrote Boot.

Boot walked through the slow march to war with Iran that Trump began in 2018 when Trump broke the nuclear treaty. What followed has been predictable, he wrote.

"It is for such reasons that previous administrations refused to kill Suleimani. Did Trump realize what would happen? Did he hear from opponents of the decision and carefully weigh all of the ramifications? The questions are rhetorical; we all know the disturbing answers," he said.

Read his full column at The Washington Post.