Matt RourkeAP
In the wee hours of Saturday morning, President Donald Trump announced he had launched a war against Iran. He insisted that Iran posed a direct threat to the United States. He detailed its past acts of aggression. He claimed he had tried to reach a deal with Tehran to end its nuclear program. He warned the public that American soldiers might die as a result of this attack. He noted that the aim of this war was to end the Iranian regime and urged the people of Iran to rise up and “take over your government.”
What Trump did not say was that he had a plan.
It’s easy for an American president to bomb a country. It’s much tougher to figure out what to do in the aftermath. Trump, who initiated this attack with Israel without seeking congressional authorization (as the Constitution requires), clearly engaged in little, if any, preparation for what comes following this “massive” operation, as he termed it.
Trump appears to be winging it, letting loose the dogs of war and then seeing what the hell happens.
For years, Trump has demonstrated that he often sees no need for plans. He vowed repeatedly during the 2024 campaign that he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. But he had no plan to do so. In his first term as president, he said he could deliver cheaper and better health care. But he proposed no plan for that. He also said he would rebuild American infrastructure and, again, put forward no plan. He tends to act impulsively, believing chaos and discord can be exploited by a masterful negotiator, as he sees himself.
Yet one of the most obvious lessons of the past 25 years is that warring requires planning—not just for the initial assault but for what occurs afterward. The best example is the Iraq War. George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld had no idea what to do after the invasion and the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical regime. In the violent chaos that ensued for years afterward, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians died, ISIS arose, regional instability reigned—and Iran consolidated power.
It’s not that the brighter bulbs of the Bush-Cheney administration did not see the need to prep for the post-invasion period. As Michael Isikoff and I reported in Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, in the months prior to the war—when it was evident Bush was committed to attacking Iraq—there were several well-executed projects focused on what would need to be done after Saddam was forcibly removed from power.
A small Pentagon unit examined this question, assuming a high level of violence would continue after Saddam was deposed. Its analysts concluded that an enormous number of US troops would be required to provide security throughout the country—a greater amount than those being sent to Iraq for the invasion.
Separately, the Army deputy chief of staff for operations and plans asked the War College’s Strategic Studies Institute to examine post-war questions, and it produced a report identifying numerous challenges for any occupation. The paper tallied 135 post-invasion tasks that would have to be accomplished to reestablish an Iraqi state. This included securing the borders, setting up local governments, protecting religious sites, maintaining power systems, opening hospitals, and disarming militias. A big concern was what to do about the Iraqi Army. This paper recommended not disbanding it. (The Bush-Cheney crowd did dismantle the army, a move that fueled vicious sectarian violence.) “Massive resources need to be focused on this [post-occupation] effort,” the report said.
The State Department, too, tried to do the responsible thing. A year before the invasion, it established the Future of Iraq project. This operation had 17 working groups, full of Iraqi exiles (lawyers, engineers, academics, and businesspeople), that considered all the steps necessary to remake a post-Saddam Iraq: reorganizing the military and police, creating a new legal system, restructuring the economy, and repairing the nation’s water and electric power system, among many other tasks.
The Bush-Cheney White House wasn’t interested in any of these exercises. In one pre-invasion meeting of the National Security Council, Bush asked Gen. Tommy Franks, the CENTCOM commander in charge of the invasion, about security in Iraq after Saddam’s ouster. Who would maintain law and order? he inquired. Franks said he had that covered: The US would keep the peace, and each major Iraqi town and village would have a “lord mayor”—an appointed US military officer who would be in charge of preserving civic order and administering basic services.
That was an idiotic concept. Worse, there was not even a true plan to designate and install these “lord mayors.” This seemed to be just Franks’ own fanciful notion. No such exercise was even attempted following the invasion. The lack of a post-Saddam game plan led to a debacle.
The Iraq War case illustrates both how much work it took to devise post-war plans and the disastrous results that came from the Bush-Cheney gang eschewing these preparations for the aftermath.
There’s no sign that the Trump administration has spent months—or even days— working out what should be done after this military operation. Instead, his Pentagon spent the hours leading up to the attack feuding with an American AI company, various “woke” universities, and Scouting America. Trump appears to be winging it, letting loose the dogs of war and then seeing what the hell happens.
There’s another Bush-related episode that casts a shadow on Trump’s actions. In his statement, Trump egged on the Iranian people to rebel against the mullahs, declaring: “America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force. Now is the time to seize control of your destiny and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach.”
This sounded familiar. At the end of the Persian Gulf War that President George H.W. Bush launched in 1991 to drive Saddam’s forces out of Kuwait, the elder Bush called for “the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands to force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.” Many Iraqis took this as a signal that the United States would support them if they mounted a revolution, and they did so. Bush did nothing to assist these rebels, and to quell this uprising Saddam slaughtered tens of thousands of Iraqis.
Trump appears to be following the bad examples of both Bushes. There are no preparations for what to do if he succeeds in driving the ayatollahs out of power and no strategy for protecting the opposition should it heed Trump’s call and face a further violent crackdown.
Trump has no plan for Iran. Just blow shit up, kill some people, and hope for the best. Tehran, for all its horrific transgressions (including its recent killing of thousands of protesters), did not pose an immediate threat to the United States. Perhaps military action against this regime could be justified. But there was ample time to seek congressional authorization and an international alliance for a regime-change war. Instead, Trump proceeded with an unconstitutional action without readying for what is to follow. It is the war of a Mad King.
