The Trump campaign lost no time in touting the president’s decision to kill Iran’s most senior and most feared military leader. “Thanks to the swift actions of our Commander-in-Chief, Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani is no longer a threat to the United States, or to the world,” runs the wording that appeared in more than 600 advertisements running on Facebook.
Click on the image of a jubilant Trump, and users are directed to a survey — here’s a sample question: “Do you think the mainstream media should give President Trump credit for all he’s done to combat terrorism?” — before being invited to make a campaign contribution.
The medium is nothing new. It is how the Trump campaign is tracking down possible supporters online, directing messages their way, and trying to win their votes. But the chosen message reveals the way that campaign officials see an electoral win with what critics warned was a contentious drone strike with dangerous repercussions for world security.
Moreover, Trump’s decision runs the risk of dragging the U.S. into another foreign adventure under a president who promised to avoid the mistakes of his predecessors and bring troops home.
The first indication of unease is that the strike, killing a commander accused of more than 600 American deaths during the Iraq War, won narrow approval from voters. Some 43% of respondents said they approved the decision compared with 38% against in a HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted in the immediate aftermath.
More problematic are the longer-term concerns. Only 8% believe removing Soleimani makes conflict less likely, while 57% say it is more likely.
The attack on such a senior Iranian figure opened fractures in the Trump alliance. Sen. Rand Paul, representing libertarian thinking, has offered a voice of dissent in the Senate, spelling out his reservations in a string of TV appearances and tweets. “We need to stop the escalation before it leads to another endless war in the Middle East,” he said.
And Tucker Carlson has used his Fox News position to urge the president to remember the domestic concerns of voters who brought him to power and to be suspicious of Washington’s warmongers. “It seems like about 20 minutes ago we were denouncing these very people as the ‘Deep State’ and pledging never to trust them again without verification,” he wrote. “But now, for some reason, we do seem to trust them implicitly and completely.”
White House aides have taken pains to explain how Trump’s strike on Soleimani came against a backdrop of restraint, pointing out that he kept his weapons holstered after a U.S. drone was downed in the Persian Gulf and after an Iranian-backed attack on Saudi oil fields.
By the end of the week, the immediate tension had been defused. Iran launched more than a dozen missiles against Iraqi bases but caused only “minimal damage,” according to Trump, and no American casualties. He responded by warning Iran that America’s armed forces were stronger than ever before. “The fact that we have this great military and equipment, however, does not mean we have to use it,” he said. “We do not want to use it.”
The sentiment was welcomed by Paul and represented a neat balancing act for a president who promised to project American power while ending entanglements in foreign wars, according to Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union.
“If you don’t want to make war, the best way to accomplish that is to have rogue nations like Iran fear America’s military power,” he said. “That’s the goal.”
The result, he added, was a safer world without the risk of a new ground war.
“The way the president executed these decisions in Iran is being well received by his supporters, by conservatives, by most Americans,” he said. “He took out a murderous terrorist, but it doesn’t seem to have triggered some kind of inevitable, long-term military conflict.”
