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🚨 🚨 BREAKING NEWS ALERT 🚨 🚨 House approves measure limiting Trump’s authority to take further military action against Iran

By Karoun Demirjian | Published Jan. 09 at 6:21 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 09, 2020 |

The House passed a war powers resolution Thursday seeking to limit President Trump’s ability to take military action against Iran without congressional approval.

The 224 to 194 vote fell largely along party lines, with only three Republicans and Republican-turned-independent Justin Amash (Mich.) voting for the resolution from Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.). Eight Democrats opposed the measure, which instructs Trump “to terminate the use of United States Armed Forces to engage in hostilities in or against Iran or any part of its government or military” unless Congress has made a declaration of war or there is “an imminent armed attack upon the United States.”

The vote comes just a day after the administration’s top national security officials met with lawmakers behind closed doors to discuss the intelligence and decision-making that informed Trump’s order to kill top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, who was responsible for the deaths of more than 600 U.S. troops since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Yet Democrats and a handful of Republicans emerged from those briefings so frustrated by the administration’s refusal to fully engage Congress that it fueled new momentum behind efforts to restrain Trump’s actions as commander in chief when it comes to Iran.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a close Trump ally who has publicly defended the strike, spent a significant amount of time following Wednesday’s briefings in discussions with House Democrats about fine-tuning the resolution. On Thursday, he announced on the floor that he would support it.

“I support the president, killing Soleimani was the right decision. But engaging in another forever war in the Middle East would be the wrong decision,” Gaetz said, announcing his yes vote.

But the critical forum is the Senate, where Democrats are in the minority and will need the help of at least four Republicans to pass a similar war powers resolution from Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), which could come up for a vote as early as next week. Republican Sens. Mike Lee (Utah) and Rand Paul (Ky.) committed to supporting Kaine’s resolution upon exiting the administration’s briefing Wednesday, after administration officials failed to specify when, if ever, they might seek Congress’s approval for military strike.

“They struggled to identify anything,” Lee told reporters, complaining that the officials instead communicated that lawmakers “need to be good little boys and girls and run along and not debate this in public. I find that absolutely insane. I think it’s unacceptable.”

Kaine said Thursday that he is discussing his resolution with Sens. Susan Collins (R-Me.) and Todd C. Young (R-Ind.), in addition to Lee and Paul, each of whom has proposed changes to the text — such as removing language that specifically addresses Trump by name — that could help build a critical mass to get it across the Senate floor.

Procedurally, it is likely that the House will have to take up the Senate’s resolution, should it pass in that Chamber, in order to send Trump a war powers resolution that has the weight of potential law. It is also extremely likely that the president will veto it — and that Congress will not be able to muster the votes to override that veto.

But Kaine sounded undeterred Thursday about that ultimate prospect, arguing that Congress could still influence Trump’s thinking, even if supporters cannot override his veto. As evidence, he pointed to last year’s experience when Congress voted to invoke its war powers to curtail U.S. support for the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen.

“He vetoed it, we couldn’t override it. But he stopped doing what we were complaining about. It had an impact,” Kaine said, noting that the administration stopped refueling Saudi jets. “President Trump may not care about Congress, but he does care about the American public … and if he sees a strong vote on this, and it goes to him, it’s an expression not just of what we think but of what our constituents think.”

At this point however, Republicans and Democrats remain bitterly divided over whether Trump’s strike was prudent and justified, or illegal and reckless, with the dispute coming down to whether Soleimani posed such an imminent threat to warrant going after him without the consent of Congress.

The administration has argued that it had a right to target Soleimani under the Congress’ 2002 authorization for use of military force in Iraq and the president’s constitutional right to self-defense of troops directly and imminently in harm’s way. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that the House would vote to repeal the 2002 AUMF “soon.”

The war powers resolutions going through Congress recognize an exception for an imminent threat, but Democrats are not buying the Trump administration’s argument that one existed — and are upset with the administration for withholding intelligence from lawmakers that could inform their determination.

“We deserve the respect from the administration, and the Congress deserves by dint of the Constitution, the requirement of the Constitution, to consult Congress,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday, arguing that the administration’s justification for the strike should be redacted and made available to the American public as there was “no reason for it to be classified.”

Republicans, meanwhile, have endorsed the administration’s approach, arguing that “this Congress leaks like the Titanic,” as Sen. John D. Kennedy (R-La.) put it, and thus could not always be trusted with the most sensitive information.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) argued Thursday that the administration’s briefers had provided lawmakers all the information they needed to support the strike.

“In terms of where there is an imminent threat, General Milley was compelling and chilling about what was going to happen and what had happened,” Graham said, referring to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, who briefed lawmakers Wednesday along with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and CIA director Gina Haspel.

“I think a third grader could have believed there was an imminent threat coming from the man that we killed,” Graham said.

Republicans are also warning their colleagues against voting for the war powers resolutions, arguing they are “only intended to try to undermine the president in the middle of a conflict with the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism,” as House Minority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) put it Thursday.

“How can you sit here and try to apologize for the things that he did by saying taking him out was wrong?” Scalise continued. “This world is a safer place with Soleimani gone.”

House Democrats have been taking pains to condemn Soleimani as they complain that the administration’s moves were illegal for having cut out Congress.

“Qassem Soleimani was a malign force responsible for the death of many Americans,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said, adding that he nonetheless has “no confidence that there is some broad strategy at work, or the policies of the president are doing anything but increasing the dangers to the American people.”

He called the House’s vote the first step “of a broader reassertion of Congress’s war powers. … It is past time for Congress to do our job and not simply write the executive a blank check.”

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By Claiming Democrats Support Terrorism, Republicans Hit A New Low

By Max Boot | Published January 09 at 2:37 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 09, 2020 |

If truth is the first casualty of war, dissent is the second. The United States has a long, ignominious history of attacks — both physical and rhetorical — on critics of its conflicts.

Loyalists during the American Revolution were sometimes tarred and feathered. Southern sympathizers in the North during the Civil War were arrested and held without trial. Critics of America’s involvement in World War I were arrested and deported. Anti-Vietnam War protesters were investigated and harassed by the FBI and attacked by police and blue-collar workers (“hard hats”).

Such excesses were not repeated during the Iraq War, thankfully, but anti-war advocates were still routinely slandered. The most common claim was that opponents of the invasion were, as Glenn Reynolds (a.k.a. Instapundit) wrote, “objectively on [Saddam Hussein’s] side, and not neutral.” After Hussein’s capture in 2003 — which was as celebrated as Qasem Soleimani’s death is today — James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal claimed that “the Angry Left” was “pretty bummed.”

I was guilty of some over-the-top rhetoric myself. I wrote a strained op-ed in early 2003 arguing that anti-war protesters made conflict more likely by encouraging Hussein to hold out against U.S. demands. I now cringe when I read that column, because of course the anti-war protesters were right and I was wrong: The invasion of Iraq was a terrible idea even though Hussein was a terrible person who deserved what he got.

Instead of learning from past mistakes, President Trump and his unscrupulous supporters appear intent on repeating them by labeling all critics of his confrontation with Iran as traitors and supporters of terrorism. After Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) complained that he was not given advance notice of the drone strike that killed Soleimani, pardoned felon Dinesh D’Souza wrote, “Neither were the Iranians, and for pretty much the same reason.” Trump then retweeted this vile suggestion that Democrats were equivalent to anti-American terrorists. This week, Trump claimed that “elements” of the Democratic Party are “openly supporting Iran” — another noxious falsehood.

Both Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo falsely argue that the current crisis was created by President Barack Obama. Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R.-Ariz.) jumped in with a Photoshopped image of Obama shaking hands with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani even though the two men never met. His defense: “No one said this wasn’t photoshopped.” What a license to lie! When he’s caught, Gosar can simply say, “No one said this wasn’t false.”

Competing for the title of the most dishonest McCarthyite in Congress are Rep. Douglas A. Collins (R-Ga.), who said Democrats are “in love with terrorists” and “mourn Soleimani more than they mourn our Gold Star families,” and Rep. John Rutherford (R-Fla.), who accused Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) of being part of a “squad of Ayatollah sympathizers ... spreading propaganda that divides our nation and strengthens our enemies.” But while dismaying and appalling, their vile comments are hardly surprising coming from such rabid Trump apologists.

We expect better from former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley. Fat chance. Seemingly eager to shred the last remnants of her dignity, she said: “The only ones mourning the loss of Soleimani are our Democrat leadership and Democrat Presidential candidates.” This is offensive and false. What most Democrats actually said was that Soleimani’s demise was a good thing (Joe Biden: “No American will mourn Qassem Soleimani’s passing”) before going on to raise well-warranted doubts about whether it’s wise, as Biden put it, to toss “a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox.”

Bernie Sanders, admittedly, went over the line by comparing the killing of Soleimani to Vladimir Putin “assassinating dissidents.” But Republicans have no standing to criticize him after giving Trump a pass for excusing Putin’s killing of dissidents by saying, “You think our country’s so innocent?” Likewise, Haley’s lame defense of her indefensible statement ("Leading Democrats are aggressively arguing that we would be better off if Qasem Suleimani was still alive today. That is effectively mourning his death”) falls apart, as my colleague Aaron Blake notes, because Trump expressed regret about Saddam Hussein’s overthrow. Does that mean Trump mourned Hussein’s death? And of course it’s pretty rich that Collins accuses Democrats of dishonoring Gold Star parents when the only person who has insulted them is Trump.

The Republican position seems to be that it’s fine to attack and undermine a Democratic president in his conduct of foreign policy (as 47 Republican senators did in 2015 when they sent a letter telling Iran’s leaders not to make a deal with Obama), but it’s treason to question anything a Republican president does. Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs compared Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) to Benedict Arnold for criticizing an administration briefing and said: “It is a shame that this country which is benefiting so much from this president’s leadership does not understand their obligations to this leader who is making it possible.”

Theodore Roosevelt had a different view of what we owe the president. In 1918, he protested his successor Woodrow Wilson’s attempts to criminalize wartime dissent: “To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” So, by Roosevelt’s definition, guess who is being “treasonable”? Hint: It’s not Trump’s critics.

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Trump proved himself to be America’s biggest security risk

By Jennifer Rubin | Published January 09 at 11:00 AM EST | Washington Post |

Posted January 09, 2020 |

President Trump and his senior advisers’ rhetoric and actions on Iran over the past week have deeply unnerved many Americans and even cracked the previously solid wall of Republican sycophancy. USA Today reports: “Americans by more than 2-1 say the killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani has made the United States less safe, a nationwide USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds, amid broad concerns about the potential consequences ahead. A majority of those surveyed, by 52%-34%, called Trump’s behavior with Iran ‘reckless.’" Even worse: “[There] was overwhelming agreement — in each case by more than 6-1 — that the attack made it more likely Iran would strike American interests in the Middle East (69%), that there would be terrorist attacks on the American homeland (63%), and that the United States and Iran would go to war with each other (62%).” Finally, “By 52%-8%, those polled said the attack made it more likely that Iran would develop nuclear weapons.”

It was not just Trump’s slurred words or the incoherent screed he delivered on Wednesday. It was not just his threat to commit war crimes. It was not just Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s arrogant dismissal of any skepticism about an “imminent threat,” nor the administration’s contempt for Congress’ role in war-making. It was not just the administration’s blithe disregard for Iran’s capacity to inflict serious harm on Americans through surrogates or cyberterrorism. It was the recognition that we were dependent on the Iranians, of all people, to deescalate and that left to his devices, Trump surely would have sent us careening into a disastrous war.

Each time Pompeo snidely declared we should take the administration’s words as gospel, he heightened the conviction that we should not trust these people any farther than we could throw them. Vanity Fair’s T.A. Frank aptly writes: “Trump looks less like a stealth strategist than a loony gambler who wins low rewards in exchange for sickening risks.” The administration is so reckless and thoughtless that even some Republicans or ex-Republicans who generally would defer to the president on national security matters are now hollering for Congress to tie his hands.

Brian Katulis and Peter Juul from the Center for American Progress remind us that Iran’s most potent tools — its capacity for cyberwarfare and its “network of terrorist organizations, proxies and criminal organizations stretching from Afghanistan to West Africa and including the Western Hemisphere” — remain available in the weeks and months ahead to avenge Soleimani’s killing. Katulis and Juul deadpan that “we need a more balanced and steady approach on Iran than we’ve seen in the past three years.” Yes, a sane, stable and informed president would be helpful right about now. Unfortunately, it turns out that Trump’s unhinged conduct is not only self-impeaching, but self-enfeebling.

“We must restore trust and confidence in America’s own intelligence and law enforcement institutions, not launch corrosive political inquisitions against them,” Katulis and Juul warn. "We must work with our allies and partners around the world to defend against terrorism and cyberattacks, not undermine our credibility through social media bluster we’re unwilling to back up.” But wait a minute. After the last week, does anyone think there is the slightest chance Trump can do any of those, let alone all of them? Americans can barely persuade Trump not to start a disastrous war. Indeed, removing Trump is a prerequisite to pursuing the smart objectives Katulis and Juul outline.

Trump and his advisers have nowhere near the understanding, judgment, self-discipline, competence or diplomatic deftness to conduct themselves in ways designed to lower tensions, and even if they suddenly acquired those qualities, the damage they already have wrought will take months or even years to reverse. Trump’s trashing of the intelligence community, of allies and of cold-hard facts has done lasting harm to our international standing and to his ability to rally the country. He has bled himself dry of moral authority and credibility, both of which are essential to carry out the duties of commander in chief. Trump cannot lead us; he can only scare us.

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Republicans accuse majority of Americans of hating America

By Paul Waldman | Published January 09 at 1:01 PM EST | Washington Post |

Posted January 09, 2020 |

Perhaps it’s no surprise that the possibility of yet another war in the Middle East has brought out the worst in so many conservative supporters of President Trump. But even if that prospect seems to have been put off for now, it’s likely that the ugly impulses that have surfaced will emerge again and again as we approach the elections in November.

Democrats should decide now how they want to respond.

First, let’s take a little tour around the Republican authoritarian mind-set in the wake of President Trump’s decision to assassinate Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani:

Rep. Douglas A. Collins said that Democrats are “in love with terrorists, we see that they mourn Soleimani more than they mourn our Gold Star families.” I have a vague memory of a presidential candidate attacking a Gold Star family in 2016; can’t quite recall who that was.

“The only ones that are mourning the loss of Soleimani are our Democrat leadership,” said former U.N. ambassador and future presidential candidate Nikki Haley. After it was pointed out to her that literally zero Democrats were mourning Soleimani’s death, she argued that “mourning” means wishing he were still alive, and anyone who criticized the decision to kill him wishes he were still alive and is therefore “mourning” him. That, of course, is not what “mourning” means.

When Rep. Pramila Jayapal said the administration had presented no evidence of an “imminent threat” that necessitated Soleimani’s assassination, Rep. John Rutherford of Florida responded by saying, “You and your squad of Ayatollah sympathizers are spreading propaganda that divides our nation and strengthens our enemies.”

White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said, “The alarmists and apologists show skepticism about our own intelligence and sympathy for Soleimani.”

Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina tweeted that “the vast majority” agrees with the killing, while “Democrats are falling all over themselves equivocating about a terrorist.”

Republicans are quite certain not only that the American public shares their belief that the Soleimani assassination was the right thing to do, but that anyone who disagrees must love terrorists.

There will be much more polling in coming days, but as it happens, the first poll out from USA Today finds that 55 percent of the public say the killing of Soleimani and its aftermath made the United States less safe, with only 24 percent saying it made us more safe. The poll also found:

There was overwhelming agreement — in each case by more than 6-1 — that the attack made it more likely Iran would strike American interests in the Middle East (69%), that there would be terrorist attacks on the American homeland (63%), and that the United States and Iran would go to war with each other (62%).

By 52%-8%, those polled said the attack made it more likely that Iran would develop nuclear weapons.

It’s true that the poll found that a plurality of 42 percent supported the killing, but that’s actually pretty low given all the noise that Trump’s propaganda machine has whipped up. And the more important point is that solid majorities reject the arguments Trump is making around the killing — that it was necessary to keep us safe and to weaken Iran as a threat.

America, it seems, is a nation of Ayatollah-sympathizing, terrorist-loving Soleimani-mourners. Or maybe most people just don’t buy the proposition that unless you support every decision Donald Trump makes you’re a traitor.

This has a familiar ring: Going all the way back to the Alien and Sedition Acts, advocates for war have accused those who don’t share their enthusiasm of being traitors. More recently, the September 11 attacks were followed by endless accusations from Republicans that any Democrat who failed to support whatever the Bush administration wanted to do was supporting al-Qaeda, and later, Saddam Hussein. As George W. Bush himself said, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

The difference now is that Democrats don’t appear particularly frightened of that charge. But how should they respond to the specific accusation that if they disagree with Trump, they love terrorists?

In the past, they’ve responded by trying to show they can be tough. That’s why so many Democratic leaders voted for the Iraq War, at a time when memories of 9/11 were still fresh and nearly two-thirds of the public supported the war.

But now they have an opportunity. While Republican rhetoric may be the same, the public is on the side of Democrats and against a deeply unpopular president. So instead of whimpering in fear and trying to change the subject, they can actually call attention to the execrable charge and make Republicans the issue.

For instance, a presidential candidate could say:

I refuse to allow you to say that the majority of Americans who question President Trump’s erratic decision-making are terrorist sympathizers. And when I’m president, I’ll treat Americans with respect for a change. When Republicans disagree with me, I’ll explain why I think they’re wrong, but I won’t call them traitors. I think we’ve all had enough of that kind of poisonous politics.

To be clear, I’m not saying that candidates should say that we can all join hands and work together. This is about what kind of rhetoric is going to be tolerated and what should be condemned. This is the perfect opportunity to get Republicans on the defensive for their hatefulness.

And it isn’t going anywhere, no matter happens with Iran. As we get closer to the election and the possibility of Democratic victory becomes real, Republicans will get more extreme in their words. Their predictions of cataclysm (the governor of Mississippi, Phil Bryant, recently said that if Democrats win the Senate “we will take that first step into a thousand years of darkness”) will regularly bleed over into accusations that if you don’t support Trump then you wish for the apocalypse and therefore hate America.

That kind of rancid bile shouldn’t go unchallenged for a second.

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Suspected shoot-down of passenger jet near Tehran mirrors 1988 Iran Air tragedy

By Adam Taylor | Published January 09 at 1:59 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 09, 2020 |

The Wednesday crash of a passenger jet near Tehran that killed all 176 people aboard carries echoes of a 1988 tragedy in which a plane that had originated in the Iranian capital was shot down, leaving 290 people dead.

But while that catastrophe has fueled antipathy among many Iranians toward the United States for 32 years, the latest incident raises a different set of questions for the Iranian state — which may be both victim and perpetrator in the tragedy, if early reports prove accurate.

The passenger plane, bound for the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, had just left Tehran’s international airport Wednesday when it lost contact with ground control and plummeted into a field. A preliminary investigation by Iran found that the Ukraine International Airlines jet was on fire before it went down, citing witness statements that the plane had tried to turn around.

However, Ukrainian investigators have been considering the possibility that an antiaircraft missile brought down the jet. A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, told The Washington Post that it was likely that Iranian forces accidentally shot down the plane.

President Trump told reporters Thursday that he had “suspicions” about what had happened to the plane. “Someone could have made a mistake on the other side,” Trump said, adding, “It has nothing to do with us.”

The jet was destroyed in the midst of heightened tensions between the United States and Iran in the wake of the killing of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani in a U.S. drone strike Friday in Baghdad. Roughly four hours before the Wednesday plane crash, Iran had launched more than a dozen ballistic missiles targeting U.S. personnel in Iraq, an unprecedented direct strike against U.S. forces.

The allegations of a shoot-down would mirror a tragedy that has hung over relations between the United States and Iran for more than three decades, fueling grievances and suspicion between the two nations.

On July 3, 1988, Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down by the U.S. military. The flight, a passenger jet that had originated in Tehran and had already stopped in Bandar Abbas, Iran, was flying over the Strait of Hormuz toward its destination, Dubai, when it was hit by two surface-to-air missiles.

Though Pentagon officials at first denied any knowledge of the incident, it soon emerged that the plane had been targeted by the USS Vincennes, a cruiser that had been involved in a skirmish with Iranian boats in the Persian Gulf and had mistaken the passenger jet for an Iranian warplane.

President Ronald Reagan expressed sympathy for the “terrible human tragedy” but suggested that the plane had “failed to heed repeated warnings.” However, an investigation by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a U.N. agency, found that U.S. military ships in the region did not have the equipment necessary to monitor civilian air-traffic-control frequencies.

Iran reached a settlement with the United States in 1996 after it sued in the International Court of Justice. The U.S. government refused to accept liability but agreed to pay $61.8 million to the families of victims.

Though the tragedy appears to have largely faded from public memory in the United States, the memory of it lingers in Iran, where it is frequently commemorated.

At the time, many suspected that the United States struck down the plane deliberately in a bid to aid Iraq in the war it was fighting with Iran. Iranian hard-liners have long suggested that the downing of Flight 655 shows that the United States cannot be trusted.

“Those who refer to the number 52 should also remember the number 290,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani wrote on Twitter after Trump threatened earlier this week to target 52 Iranian sites, a reference to the number of Americans who were held hostage in Iran from 1979 to 1981.

Rouhani, who has previously supported dialogue with the United States, was referring to the number of people killed aboard the 1988 flight. “Never threaten the Iranian nation,” he said.

A U.S. official told The Post that authorities think the Ukrainian plane was probably hit by an SA-15 surface-to-air missile, a Russian-made system also known as a Tor air-defense system. Ukrainian officials have said they want to search the site for evidence of Russian missiles.

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, wrote on Facebook that a Ukrainian investigative team sent to Iran includes specialists who helped probe the July 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in Ukraine.

That disaster killed all 298 people aboard. Investigators later concluded that a Russian military missile had shot down the plane.

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I’m a U.S. citizen. My family was detained at the border because we’re from Iran.

By Negah Hekmati | Published January 09 at 10:26 AM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 09, 2020 |

My family often crosses the border between the United States and Canada. We live in Seattle and visit friends and family in Vancouver once a month. At this point, it’s become a routine: We drive up, show our documents, answer a few questions and then go on our way. The trip usually takes under three hours.

We planned to drive home after a party on Saturday evening in Vancouver. Earlier that evening, a friend had called to warn us that his wife, who was born in Iran, and their children had been detained and questioned at the border that afternoon. He thought that this must be related to the American military strike that killed the Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani. We told ourselves we shouldn’t have any problems. Everyone in our group was an American citizen; we were even enrolled in NEXUS, a border prescreening program for frequent travelers.

Around midnight, as we approached the Peace Arch Border Crossing in Blaine, Wash., our friends in the car ahead of us were instructed to pull over. We saw them get out of their vehicle and follow the Customs and Border Protection officers into a nearby building. When my husband and I pulled up to the booth, our children sleeping in the back seat, the officer asked us when we had left the United States. Then he asked where we were born. We, too, were pulled aside, our car keys and passports confiscated.

When we entered the building, we saw around 50 or 60 people already sitting on benches and the floor. All of them were Iranian. Some had been there for 10 hours. When it was our turn to be called up, the officers asked us endless questions: Where were you born? Where did you go to high school? To college? Did your father serve in the military? Are you on Facebook, Instagram? What are your account names? Do any other family members live in the United States? What are their names? Afterward, we went back to the sitting area for another four hours, waiting to be told what to do.

This was the first time my husband and I had faced a problem like this. Around us, everyone was so calm that it disturbed me. They didn’t seem frightened or bewildered; they seemed resigned. They asked the officers for pen and paper to play word games and settled in for a long night. The whole time I was there, I didn’t see anyone complain or even ask why this was happening. When they got their passports back, they thanked the officers pleasantly. I thought to myself, Why are you thanking them? Why should any of us thank them for this unfair treatment?

Eventually, the officials called our names, returned our documents and told us we could go. We finally made it home two hours later, exhausted and shaken. Later, we learned that the U.S. government denied treating us differently because of our ties to Iran, claiming that the delay was because of high traffic, not enough staff and “the current threat environment.” That’s when I knew I had to speak up.

The experience terrified my children. That night, as we walked through the chilly parking lot, they were bursting with questions we couldn’t answer. My daughter told me, urgently, not to speak Farsi. If I didn’t speak Farsi, she said, they wouldn’t know that we were from Iran, and we wouldn’t get into trouble. The officers’ uniforms scared her and her brother — they thought that we were being taken to a detention center or to jail — and the line of questioning confused them. As someone who has immigrated from Iran to Canada, and then from Canada to the United States, I’m used to a certain amount of scrutiny (though never anything this arbitrary and unexpected). But I never imagined that my American children would have to experience it. I never expected them to have to worry about where their family is from, to be anything but proud of their heritage. They didn’t sleep at all that night, fearful that if they did, they might wake up and find us gone.

I grew up in Iran during the war with Iraq. Years after the conflict ended, its traumas restricted our sense of the future. My husband and I left our home country for more opportunities and personal freedom; we were drawn to the United States because it seemed like a place where freedom was prized. We’d been told that it was truly a melting pot compared with Canada, where various communities tended to keep to themselves. When I moved to Seattle in 2014, I was delighted to meet people from all kinds of places — South Africa, Lebanon, Colombia, Venezuela — to befriend them, and learn about their lives. When I took the oath of citizenship in March 2016, I was so proud. I have voted in every election since.

My husband and I became Americans during the Obama administration, a more hopeful and positive time. The following winter, Donald Trump got elected, and almost immediately announced a travel ban on people from Iran and four other mostly Muslim countries. Ever since then, my father’s green card application has been on hold, and he’s had difficulty getting visas to enter the country to visit, including when my brother passed away last year. Throughout my time living in America, no American had ever discriminated against me because of my ethnicity or religion. Even the Border Protection officers treated us as nicely as they could. But American policies are a different story.

After what happened to us last weekend, our friends and neighbors have shown amazing kindness, leaving flowers and even wine and cheese on our doorstep. They wanted to make sure that we felt free, safe and at home. I fear that I can’t say the same about our government.

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For Trump, foreign relationships aren’t about strategy. They’re about cash.

By Marc Fisher | Published January 09 at 12:52 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 09, 2020 |

George W. Bush explained his decision to send thousands of additional troops to Iraq, at a time when most Americans had soured on U.S. involvement there, as a strategic necessity: Without more boots on the ground, “radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits.” Barack Obama, who came to office promising to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, justified his “surge” of 30,000 more troops to the Afghan war as a matter of principle: “America will speak out on behalf of . . . human rights, and tend to the light of freedom and justice and opportunity and respect for the dignity of all peoples. That is who we are.”

Donald Trump, like Obama, campaigned on a pledge to get the United States “out of the nation-building business.” But when Iraqi leaders demanded that U.S. forces withdraw after Trump orderedthe killing in Iraq of a top Iranian military commander, the president’s instinct was to describe the crisis in purely mercenary terms: “We’ve spent a lot of money in Iraq,” he said. “We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that’s there. It cost billions of dollars to build. . . . We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it.”

Trump won the presidency by promising to run the country like a business. He would be the consummate negotiator, driven not by ideology or grand strategy but by his gut, by a plain-spoken, transactional commitment to winning. In this, perhaps more than any other realm, he has fulfilled his promise: He possesses a singular focus on transactions — deals, not relationships; the bottom line, not long-term goals or foundational principles.

In the Middle East, as in Europe, Asia and North America, Trump’s approach has hewed closely to his lifelong belief that a person is judged by the deals he makes, by a reckoning of wins and losses. Trump believes he wins because he can be purely transactional, free from the norms, ideologies and traditions that restrainhis rivals.

He turned against America’s European allies because he thought NATO saddled the United States with way more than its share of the cost of mutual defense. He overturned trade deals such as NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and then the Iran nuclear pact as well, because he perceived that the United States was giving more than it got in return. He has levied or threatened stiff tariffs on China, the European Union, Turkey and Mexico, arguing that they provide net profits for the United States, even though numerous analyses say they have raised prices for American consumers and cost the country hundreds of thousands of jobs. He argues that North Korea should join the community of nations so it can realize its prime beachfront real estate potential. (“Boy, look at that view,” he told reporters. “Wouldn’t that make a great condo?”

The controversy that got Trump impeached began when he wanted to withhold aid from Ukraine, in part because of his long-standing resentment of America’s tradition of helping other countries with humanitarian, military and economic aid: “Why aren’t all of these countries — why aren’t they paying? Why is it always the United States that has to pay?”

This is not an attitude he developed when he entered politics. In 1980, Trump gave one of his most revealing interviews, to TV celebrity interviewer Rona Barrett, saying that winning transactions was the core of his life: “I think about it literally 24 hours a day, and I really enjoy it. . . . I do understand it’s all basically a game. . . . The people that enjoy it are the people that have been winners.” Trump views existence as a battle to make the best deals. “I really look at life to a certain extent as combat,” he said at the time. His first bestseller described dealmaking as his “art.”

No unified theory of Trump explains his every provocation or impulsive decision. He has said throughout his life that his primary skill and motivation is to be a showman. And he struggles to balance his craving for respect with his desire to win the spotlight, even when it means alienating the very elites and authorities whose respect he seeks. That’s why he talks about hiring“the best people” as aides, yet often turns on adviserswho grabthe attention of the media.

But Trump’s obsession with the bottom line permeates his approach to governing, including his current stance toward Baghdad: We own you. You owe us. “We had Iraq,” Trump said on “Face the Nation” last year. “We spent a fortune on building this incredible base. We might as well keep it.” That idea has stuck with the president, and on Jan. 3, he tweeted that “the United States has paid Iraq Billions of Dollars a year, for many years. That is on top of all else we have done for them.”

Trump “boils complex issues down to things he can count,” said G. Richard Shell, a professor of business ethics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “He asks, ‘What’s the asset here, and how can I get it?’ He perceives unequal benefits being exchanged, and he immediately escalates to the highest level of conflict he can see. And then his people signal to him, ‘No, no, no,’ and he backs off. He backed off on separating families at the Mexican border, and he’ll back off on this crisis,” Shell saidTuesday. On Wednesday, Trump did just that, delivering a measured address, noting that “Iran appears to be standing down” and seeking to “work together” with Tehran on “shared priorities.”

Perhaps counterintuitively, Trump’s impulsive attraction to transactional thinking may make him less likely to stumble into a war than more ideologically driven presidents. “Many wars have begun because politicians felt they couldn’t lose face,” Shell said. “Trump relishes the unpredictability of his behavior. He would never say ‘my word is sacred to me, I have to pull the trigger.’ ”

The decision to kill Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani without any apparent plan for managing Iran’s inevitable retaliation is typical of how Trump has always operated. He takes pride in acting swiftly and decisively, in the moment. He does not want to hear about antedecents that might inform his decision-making or about how today’s decision might alter future options.

Trump’s attitude toward Iran traces back to the 1979 hostage crisis, the first time the young New York real estate developer opined on national TV about a matter of foreign policy. He focused immediately on the notion of acquiring Iran’s oil: “That this country sits back and allows a country such as Iran to hold our hostages, to my way of thinking, is a horror,” Trump said in the 1980 Barrett interview. If the United States had sent troops to Iran to rescue the American hostages, “I think right now we’d be an oil-rich nation,” he said, “and I believe that we should have done it.”

Trump’s willingness — eagerness, even — to focus on the financial bottom line and then take extreme measures to win, or rather, to be perceived as someone willing to go to extremes, is nothing new. It’s how he built his career, positioning himself as a provocateur who would destroy historic landmarks after promising not to do so or threaten to move homeless people into a high-end apartment building to pressure tenants to leave — all in service of higher profits and better deals.

Research on executives who favor transactional deals over enduring business relationships finds that “you get better deals and fewer of them” with the more impulsive approach, Shell said, but “you get many more deals, and they’re much more nuanced,” if they are based on lasting relationships.

In government, Trump has cycled through a series of top advisers, often frustrated that he hasn’t found people he thinks he can trust. Instead, he focuses on the one thing he can always measure — the value of a deal. As Trump put it in a speech in 2004: “Watch out for people, even [those] close to you, because in the end, if it’s a choice between you and them, they’re usually going to choose themselves. . . . You really have to think of yourself as a one-man show.”

Trump’s great strength — and his frightening emptiness — stem from the same character trait: He lives in the moment and is therefore liberated to take actions that more studious leaders might shy away from. His transactional focus has allowed him to take advantage of Richard Nixon’s “madman theory,” the notion that a president who is willing to be perceived as tough, unpredictable and even unhinged can force an enemy to make concessions for fear of suffering an immoderate attack. Threatening to bomb Iran’s cultural sites, and then backing away after his own defense secretary said it would be a war crime, comes easily to a president who cares mainly about winning the moment. Transaction complete, he moves on to the next deal with the slate clean, at least in his own mind.

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