The Trump battle cry is America First. Revealingly, it is not Americans First. The former signifies, implicitly if not explicitly, national collectivism; the latter, individualism. To the extent Trump has a political worldview, it is not individualist. We cannot doubt that.
All of this is abundantly clear in his Iran policy, which is not just about Israel and Iran. This is not new. His seeming antiwar stance was an opportunistic political ploy. The Republican and Democratic wars of the 21st century were palpable fiascos, so of course he had to distance himself from them if he was to become the president. If he is good at anything, it is in finding his opponent’s weakness. But what he says bears no necessary relation to what he believes.
Trump did not originally oppose America’s wars. In a 2016 debate against his Republican primary opponents, he said George W. Bush had lied the country into war against Iraq, which is true. But the very next day, when confronted by an old army veteran in South Carolina, he slunk away from the charge, presumably so as not to offend the vet. In 2011, when the U.S.-led NATO assault on Libya was pending, Trump told Howard Stern that since “we” have troops in the neighborhood, they might as well take out Col. Qadaffi. Those are not good credentials for an antiwar candidate. I said from the start that he was not to be trusted.
No one should have expected America First to be linked to the freedom of individuals. Trump could have quoted John F. Kennedy’s famous “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” For Trump, after himself, the nation is the only important unit. His foreign policy is of a piece with his mercurial yet steady protectionism and anti-immigrationism.
So we should not be surprised by his use of Israel to destroy Iran, which he has an obvious distaste for. It was clear in what he was saying for months before the immoral attack. The offer to negotiate over Iran’s civilian nuclear program was a sham since it was always accompanied by the threat of military force. His cancellation of the solid Iranian nuclear deal during his first term was an unmistakable signal of what was to come when he thought the moment was right. As early as 2011 Trump tweeted that “America should not be pressuring Israel to show restraint against Iran.” What more did we need to know?
What about MAGA? We’ll have to see what happens, but I will be surprised by a wholesale jumping from the Good Ship Trump. Where would they go? Many will probably defer to Trump’s claim that the imaginary Iranian bomb is a threat to America. Will MAGA follow Carlson and Bannon, or will they stick with El Presidente? We’ll see.
If you have lingering doubts about Trump’s honor, listen to him:
“Well, considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First,’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along [so wrong], I think I’m the one that decides [what it means]. For those people who say they want peace—you can’t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon. So for all of those wonderful people who don’t want to do anything about Iran having a nuclear weapon—that’s not peace.”
Who did MAGA think would be deciding, Laura Loomer and Marjorie Taylor Greene? (I don’t want them to do the deciding either.)
By the way, no one really thinks Iran has or has even wanted nuclear weapons. That includes American and Israeli intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency. The ayatollah issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons as contrary to Islam long ago. That’s inconvenient for Trump, so he declared that he does not care what his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, thinks.
Yet no one doubts that Israel has such weapons. Unlike Iran, it has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and thus is not subject to international inspections.
Also by the way, the surest method to encourage Iran to build a nuke is to attack the country. Nothing would be more effective than a nuclear weapon to deter a future attack, as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un knows and Col. Qadaffi learned too late.
Finally, you might think someone who threw around the phrase America First would show some respect for constitutional limits on his power. But we’re talking about Trump. He recognizes no limits.
