Damn With Faint Praise

In a peculiar op-ed at The Wall Street Journal, Gerard Baker decides Trump is no big deal, he just did what any president would have done:

No country, let alone a superpower, can approach national security with a rigid dogma about the use of force, and for all the binary nature of the contentions we have had on the subject in the past few decades, I suspect no American president ever has.

. . . Seen in this light President Trump’s decision to order a U.S. military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities isn’t a “win” for the interventionists against the noninterventionists in the president’s coalition, a decisive departure in Trumpian foreign policy. It looks instead like a classic and—as far as we can tell—effective piece of operational expediency born of tactical opportunism to advance legitimate strategic objectives.

As far as I can see, the sort of any-president Mr Baker has in mind must be Josiah Bartlet, the one played by Martin Sheen in The West Wing. The problem Trump appears to have solved as a real president is the one created by Jimmy Carter and tolerated in one way or another by all of his real successors. Rick Moran at PJ Media has a much clearer assessment:

While the CIA was telling presidents that the Iranians had stopped trying to build a bomb in 2003 after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, work continued on a bomb until the window to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon closed.

Trump's decision to strike Iran's nuclear facilities was more than 40 years in the making and represents a generational failure of leadership of historic proportions. Each president in turn—beginning with George H. W. Bush, through Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, the first Trump administration, and Joe Biden—acknowledged the Iranian threat of a nuclear weapon but refused to act on it.

He mentions "generational failure", and the only equivalent failure I can think of is the inability of Presidents Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan to resolve or even effectively compromise on the slavery question until it degenerated into a shooting war with Lincoln's election.

The solution seems to have required a new approach from a new political party, which led to the rise of the Republicans, who held their first national convention only in 1856, when they nominated John C Fremont. Fremont came in second in a three-way contest among James Buchanan, the Democrat, and Millard Fillmore, a former Whig who had succeeded to the presidency as vice president in 1850 but lost to the Democrat Pierce in 1852 and had since become a Know-Nothing.

The upshot of this political stalemate was that by the time of Lincoln's election in 1860, the Democrats entered a political wilderness, and the Whigs and Know-Nothings faded from the picture, with the anti-slavery factions of both absorbed into the Republicans. Lincoln became a highly controversial figure who was nevertheless able to to take advantage of a new anti-slavery political alignment.

Lincoln had the old problem forced on him in a new way, but it's worth noting that unlike his predecessors, he was able to recognize the new alignment and act on it. Yes, an idealized President Bartlet would do the same -- in fact, let's face it, Bartlet would be far less narcissistic, obnoxious, crass, and generally in-your-face, which is why The Wall Street Journal seems to think it necessary to point out that of course, the Iran move had nothing to do with Trump, Bartlet would do what any American president would do, except that given the opportunities, none actually did.

I think Iran's Military Central Command was much more insightful when it addressed him as "Gambler Trump". As things appear to be turning out, first, unlike 2003, Iran actually appears to have had a nuclear program that was close to building a bomb. Then, second, unlike Jimmy Carter's 1980 Operation Eagle Claw, there was no ignominious desert disaster:

Eight helicopters were sent to the first staging area called Desert One, but only five arrived in operational condition. One had encountered hydraulic problems, another was caught in a sand storm, and the third showed signs of a cracked rotor blade. During the operational planning, it was decided that the mission would be aborted if fewer than six helicopters remained operational upon arrival at the Desert One site, despite only four being absolutely necessary. In a move that is still discussed in military circles, the field commanders advised President Carter to abort the mission, which he did.

As the US forces prepared to withdraw from Desert One, one of the remaining helicopters crashed into a transport aircraft that contained both servicemen and jet fuel. The resulting fire destroyed both aircraft and killed eight servicemen.

Considering the complexity of the B-2 raid, it's remarkable that nothing like that occurred -- recognizing in addition that Trump appears to have purged and replaced much of the Pentagon leadership that was tasked with its planning and exrecution. President Bartlet would certainly have done a better job overall without creating such unnecessary turmoil, but doggone it, Trump was lucky.

And it's better to be lucky than good. But I have an increasing feeling that Trump is also good -- like Lincoln good, not Bartlet good.