War

Excited speculation is mounting in Washington tonight as rumors circulate that President Trump may use his State of the Union to announce a state of emergency to secure the funding Congress has denied his border wall with Mexico. But Trump has a historic, monumental opportunity to give the American people a more significant lasting legacy – not a wall, but a permanent end to America’s policy of forever-war. Afghanistan is now the longest war in US history, yet Sen. Mitch McConnell deemed it necessary to move against what he called a ‘precipitous withdrawal’ from Afghanistan and Syria this week. ‘How do you leave precipitously after 17 years?’ asked Sen. Rand Paul. ‘We are no longer fighting anyone who attacked us on 9/11.

Donald Trump is the only peace president the United States has had since the end of the Cold War, and his enemies hate him for it. ‘Peace president’ is a relative term, of course, but as yet there is no Trump war comparable to George H.W. Bush’s Persian Gulf War, Bill Clinton’s war against Yugoslavia, George W. Bush’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and Barack Obama’s gruesome regime-change bungle in Libya. Instead, the most conspicuous foreign-policy achievement of the Trump administration to date is de-escalation on the Korean Peninsula, along with the stamping out of ISIS.