President Airstrike
The peace president in action.
Axios notes “Trump’s lethal presidency” and his propensity to use airstrikes.
He’s attacked seven nations, three of which — Iran, Nigeria and Venezuela — had never been targeted by U.S. military strikes. He authorized more individual air strikes in 2025 than President Biden did in four years.
Here’s a chart.
It all fits a pattern: He is able to engage in unilateral action that has an immediate payoff, pretending that whatever his amorphous goal is, it is met, while all the while avoiding the complexities of ongoing operations. Further, it all happens at a distance with relatively small risks to US forces (although, as we are now seeing, not zero risk).
I recognize that the chart does not include Obama’s drone strikes, nor the prodigious list that would be on a Bush chart. But the contrast with Biden is especially striking, given the campaign rhetoric in the last electoral cycle.
It also fits the profile of a bully. Punch down on those weaker, suck up to those stronger.
If only those darned Norwegians had given him the Nobel Peace Prize.
He’s probably upset that there is nothing in Greenland worth bombing.
When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Hence why there are many Trumpers unhappy with this warmongering, particularly non-traditional Republican voters who gambled on him. That’s why the polling on this is really ugly for Trump. Big political loser. Bush started the Iraq campaign with over supermajority support, President Trumpstein is facing the exact opposite. And war weariness tends not to move in reverse.
@DK:
I will predict that his top-line poll number doesn’t drop by a significant amount. In fact, short term it’ll probably bump up a couple points.
MAGAs don’t really have beliefs, they have faith in Dear Leader. If raping little girls, or shooting Minneapolitans in the face doesn’t bother them I doubt that killing people and exhausting our munitions stores in order to steal oil money and earn strokes from Bibi is going to do the trick. At best we’ll see a small drop in the already diminished ‘intensity’ number.
@Michael Reynolds:
If gas goes up and inflation picks up, it may bother them.
But maybe not.
And even if it does, they’re more likely to take it out on Powell.
In all fairness, Stephen Miller was person who greenlit the airstrikes on Yemen last year.
That’s the one operation for which we have a record of the administration’s planning process because they conducted it via a non-secure app with a reporter in the text chat.
So Fatso intentionally hunted and murdered another leader. Fatso and every future POTUS is now fair game. Cool.
It never ‘fricken ends … I wonder what his plan is for Cuba?