Trump’s Iran campaign echoes the post-9/11 ‘forever wars’

WASHINGTON, USA – When Donald Trump campaigned for a second term in the White House, he promised to be a “president of peace” who would stop foreign wars, not start them. Now, a quarter-century after the September 11, 2001, attacks that triggered America’s global “war on terror,” he is entangled in an unpopular conflict of his own making that analysts say risks becoming his version of a “forever war. ” With the 9/11 anniversary at hand, Trump’s war against Iran is drawing comparisons in foreign policy circles to the long, divisive conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq that preceded it. It is also prompting questions about whether the US has again failed to learn the lessons of past conflicts or prepare a clear exit strategy.

“Trump has broken an important post-Iraq and Afghanistan constraint in Washington against launching another major, open-ended war in the Middle East,” said Sina Toossi of the Center for International Policy, a Washington think tank. “That could leave his successor inheriting … an entrenched US-Iran confrontation. ” Administration officials have said the war against Iran is nothing like the protracted post-9/11 engagements. During the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US removed hostile governments, committed thousands of ground troops who took and held territory, suffered and inflicted much higher casualties and struggled to instill Western-style governance. This time, the US is relying mainly on air and naval power, operations that have damaged Iran militarily and economically but have not defeated it or spurred Iranians to overthrow their rulers as Trump initially urged. But after six months of war, the United States is mired in a battle of attrition punctuated by bursts of hostilities – exemplified by this week’s exchange of attacks on oil…