{"id":15145,"date":"2026-03-03T14:57:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T06:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=15145"},"modified":"2026-03-03T14:57:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T06:57:29","slug":"trump-who-campaigned-against-endless-wars-enters-iran-with-no-end-date","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=15145","title":{"rendered":"Trump, who campaigned against ‘endless’ wars, enters Iran with no end date"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To win the White House in 2016, Donald Trump first had to get by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the son and brother of two past presidents inextricably linked with U.S. wars in the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attacking the Bush family dynasty \u2014 and its legacy \u2014 became a feature of Trump\u2019s campaign. And that meant doubling down on criticism of the Iraq War that President George W. Bush had led the United States into under the premise of finding weapons of mass destruction that never materialized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake,\u201d Trump responded, when asked at a Republican presidential debate in February 2016 if he still believed, as he said he did in 2008, that Bush should have been impeached for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe can make mistakes,\u201d Trump added. \u201cBut that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The moment was one of many in Trump\u2019s long history of denouncing forever wars and promising, as president himself, to keep the U.S. out of the sorts of foreign entanglements that could lead to them. But one year into his second term, Trump has ordered military action in multiple countries, including the January strike on Venezuela to capture Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. And now with the war in Iran, Trump has plunged America into its most significant conflict since the post-9\/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan \u2014 without any congressional approval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPresident Trump\u2019s courageous decision to launch Operation Epic Fury is grounded in a truth that presidents for nearly 50 years have been talking about, but no president had the courage to confront: Iran poses a direct and imminent threat to the United States of America and our troops in the Middle East,\u201d White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an emailed statement. \u201cThe rogue Iranian Regime under the evil hand of the Ayatollah has killed and maimed thousands of American citizens and soldiers over the years \u2014 and that ends with President Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s successful 2024 campaign to return to power was predicated in large part on how he hadn\u2019t started any wars in his first term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy entire adult lifetime has been shaped by presidents who threw America into unwise wars and failed to win them,\u201d Trump\u2019s future vice president, JD Vance, wrote for The Wall Street Journal in a January 2023 guest column endorsing Trump\u2019s 2024 bid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn Mr. Trump\u2019s four years in office, he started no wars despite enormous pressure from his own party and even members of his own administration,\u201d added Vance, an Iraq War veteran. \u201cNot starting wars is perhaps a low bar, but that\u2019s a reflection of the hawkishness of Mr. Trump\u2019s predecessors and the foreign-policy establishment they slavishly followed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a briefing Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth rejected suggestions that Iran could become Trump\u2019s Iraq, pledging that it would not spiral into an \u201cendless\u201d war. But Trump himself indicated the U.S. could be engaged for longer than he bargained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRight from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks,\u201d Trump said at a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House. \u201cBut we have capability to go far longer than that. \u2026 Somebody said today, they said, \u2018Oh, well, the president wants to do it really quickly, after that, he\u2019ll get bored.\u2019 I don\u2019t get bored. There\u2019s nothing boring about this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump also listed four objectives for Operation Epic Fury: degrading Iran\u2019s missile capabilities, destroying Iran\u2019s navy, ensuring Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon and containing its proxy forces by ensuring Iran cannot \u201ccontinue to arm, fund, and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The beginning of war with Iran comes just weeks after the military operation in Venezuela that ousted Maduro. And Trump said Sunday that he is separately contemplating \u201ca friendly takeover\u201d of Cuba, suggesting that the U.S. could be heavily involved in three foreign entanglements simultaneously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Trump has pledged for years to keep the U.S. out of new wars, he has taken a hard line with Iran, whether by discarding the nuclear treaty negotiated by his predecessor, President Barack Obama, killing Iranian military official Qassem Soleimani in an airstrike or bombing Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During his 2016, 2020 and 2024 runs for the White House, Trump said that Iran cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. Since taking office, Trump has stated \u201cno fewer than 33 times that Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon,\u201d a White House official said. That concern that was the basis for launching \u201cmajor combat operations\u201d against the country, Trump told NBC News on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s skepticism of foreign intervention \u2014 and of fighting wars in the Middle East in particular \u2014 dates to before his time in elected politics. In addition to describing Bush\u2019s invasion of Iraq as an impeachable offense, Trump had also repeatedly suggested that Obama would use military aggression for political gain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran,\u201d Trump posted on social media in November 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He made a similar prediction in October 2012, weeks before Obama was re-elected: \u201cNow that Obama\u2019s poll numbers are in tailspin \u2014 watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s 2016 campaign for president stitched together a new \u201cAmerica First\u201d Republican coalition that rejected the neoconservative, interventionist foreign policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs a candidate for president, I pledged a new approach,\u201d Trump would say in his 2019 State of the Union address. \u201cGreat nations do not fight endless wars.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jeb Bush, the brother of the president who had launched the Iraq War, made a convenient foil as Trump romped through the primaries during that campaign. Even so, as is often the case with Trump, he had to explain his own shift in thinking on Iraq. When asked by Howard Stern in a 2002 interview if he would support an invasion of Iraq, Trump responded affirmatively. After the audio of the interview resurfaced in 2016, Trump said that he had changed his mind by the time the war began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think that people knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction,\u201d Trump said during a February 2016 appearance on NBC News\u2019 \u201cMeet the Press.\u201d \u201cI think they wanted to go in there, I think they thought it would\u2019ve been easier, they didn\u2019t prosecute the war well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s first term in office was not without occasional military strikes. But as Vance, a Trump critic turned ally, would note years later, there were no new wars on his watch. It was a point of pride Trump and his backers emphasized often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDoes the USA want to be the Policeman of the Middle East, getting NOTHING but spending precious lives and trillions of dollars protecting others who, in almost all cases, do not appreciate what we are doing? Do we want to be there forever?\u201d Trump wrote on social media in December 2018 after announcing he would pull U.S. troops from Syria and declaring victory over ISIS in a conflict that had begun under Obama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump added: \u201cTime for others to finally fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Days later, during a surprise visit to U.S. troops in Iraq, Trump explained his thinking further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile American might can defeat terrorist armies on the battlefield, each nation of the world must decide for itself what kind of future it wants to build for its people, and what kind of sacrifices they are willing to make for their children,\u201d he said. \u201cAmerica shouldn\u2019t be doing the fighting for every nation on Earth [while] not being reimbursed, in many cases, at all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following year, as he was preparing to accelerate the Syria withdrawal amid Turkey\u2019s escalating military operations there, Trump reupped his philosophy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTurkey has been planning to attack the Kurds for a long time. They have been fighting forever,\u201d he posted on social media. \u201cWe have no soldiers or Military anywhere near the attack area. I am trying to end the ENDLESS WARS.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in November 2020, after Trump lost his re-election bid to Joe Biden, acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller issued an update on plans to draw down troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith the blessings of Providence in the coming year, we will finish this generational war, and bring our men and women home,\u201d Miller said. \u201cWe will protect our children from the heavy burden and toll of perpetual war.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, though, Trump is openly acknowledging that ground troops might be necessary in Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground \u2014 like every president says, \u2018There will be no boots on the ground.\u2019 I don\u2019t say it,\u201d Trump told the New York Post in an interview Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far, six U.S. service members have been killed during the Iran operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a far cry from the anti-war posturing from the 2024 campaign that put Trump back in office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That race began with Vance, then a senator, framing his supportive Wall Street Journal column around the idea that Trump would not \u201crecklessly\u201d send Americans to fight in foreign wars. It ended with a messaging blitz aimed particularly at the young male voters who helped carry Trump and Vance to victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In late October 2024, Trump\u2019s team amplified commentary from journalist Peter Hamby, who on CNN had shared that young men he spoke with on college campuses \u201care worried about global conflict, because they are of draft age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in a series of social media posts days before Election Day, longtime Trump adviser Stephen Miller repeatedly warned that a win for the Democratic candidate, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, would lead to young men being \u201cdrafted to fight\u201d in a \u201c3rd World War.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you vote for Kamala, Liz Cheney becomes defense secretary,\u201d Miller wrote, referring to the anti-Trump Republican and former House member from Wyoming known for her hawkish foreign policy views. \u201cWe invade a dozen countries. Boys in Michigan are drafted to fight boys in the Middle East. Millions die.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To win the White House in 2016, Donald Trump first had to get by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the son and brother of two past presidents inextricably linked with U.S. wars in the Middle East. Attacking the Bush family dynasty \u2014 and its legacy \u2014 became a feature of Trump\u2019s campaign. And that meant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":15146,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3995,1724,43],"class_list":["post-15145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-campaigned","tag-trump","tag-who"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump, who campaigned against 'endless' wars, enters Iran with no end date - LISTEN WORLD<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=15145\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump, who campaigned against 'endless' wars, enters Iran with no end date - LISTEN WORLD\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"To win the White House in 2016, Donald Trump first had to get by former Florida Gov. 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