Since taking office, Trump yielded to White House hawks on issues of war and peace, favoring the former, scorning the latter.

He breached his campaign promises to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan and Syria, escalating war instead, including in Iraq by the rape and destruction of Mosul.

He vetoed legislation to end US involvement in Yemen and OK’d terror-bombing of Somalia while waging all-out war by other means on Venezuela and Iran — wanting their legitimate governments replaced by US-controlled puppet regimes, along with gaining control over their vast resources.

Like most of his predecessors, he promotes peace while waging war in multiple theaters, threatening more against Iran, what the late Gore Vidal explained in his book titled: “Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We (the US) Got to Be So Hated.”

The Pentagon operates globally, using hundreds of bases in scores of countries on every continent as platforms for endless wars of aggression against nations threatening no one.

The cost of this adventurism is staggering, countless trillions of dollars down a black hole of waste, fraud and abuse at the expense of social justice fast eroding in the US to benefit Wall Street and the nation’s military, industrial, security, media complex.

Iran is in the eye of the storm, Trump, Bolton and Pompeo threatening war on the country.

Trump is a geopolitical know-nothing. He showed profound ignorance of the fallout from wars, telling Fox News on Wednesday:

If his regime wages war on Iran, it “would not last very long” and won’t involve invading the country, adding:

“We’re in a very strong position…(W)e’re (not) going to send a million soldiers. I’m just saying if something would happen, it wouldn’t last very long.”

He also tweeted:

“Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration.”

The Islamic Republic never preemptively attacked another country — what the US and its imperial partners do repeatedly. Iran may be next.

Its ruling authorities vowed that if attacked by the US, it’ll hit back hard in response, including against nations allied with US aggression.

If things unfold this way, protracted full-scale war would likely follow with devastating consequences, something potentially far more serious than other post-9/11 US wars of aggression.

Trump has no understanding of what wars are all about, the death and destruction toll, how millions of noncombatants are harmed, why aggression is considered the supreme high crime against peace.

DJT is ignorant of international, constitutional, and US statute laws. No nation may legally attack another country except in self-defense, never preemptively, how all US wars are waged.

He’s profoundly ignorant about the Islamic Republic, tweeting:

“The US request for Iran is very simple – No Nuclear Weapons and No Further Sponsoring of Terror!”

In their annual assessments of global risks, the US intelligence community affirms no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program or intention to have one.

The US, NATO, Israel, and their imperial partners are the world’s leading state sponsors of terrorism, a scourge Iran abhors and is aiding Syria combat it.

Most Americans know nothing about the horrors their country inflicted on many others throughout the post-WW II era.

They’re ignorant about ongoing US imperial wars, naked aggression against multiple countries, new ones threatened against Iran and perhaps other nations, nor possible catastrophic nuclear war if things are pushed too far.

Authorizing wars without declaring them is longstanding US policy. Big lies launch and perpetuate them, terror-bombing a key way the US wages them.

Millions were slaughtered during Harry Truman’s aggression against North Korea, much of the country turned to rubble. US pilots exhausted targets to bomb.

From 1965 – 1973, eight million tons of bombs were dropped, threefold WW II tonnage, around 300 tons for every Vietnamese man, woman, and child. Millions died, including from banned terror weapons, in Cambodia and Laos as well.

Post-9/11 US wars of aggression took countless millions of lives from terror-bombings, ground attacks, untreated diseases, environmental degradation, starvation, and overall deprivation.

If the Trump regime attacks Iran, something similar to the above would likely follow, the mother of all post-9/11 wars becoming the mother of all high crimes during this period.

America’s ugly past heads toward repeating, a geopolitical know-nothing president perhaps on the cusp of OKing it.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Gage Skidmore