From “reason.com”
Fighting forever: President Donald Trump has always pitched himself as the peace candidate. This was not only in contrast to Democratic opponents. It was also meant as a contrast with the Republican Party in the years before Trump.
One example: In his 2019 State of the Union address, Trump said that as a candidate, he pledged a new approach: “Great nations do not fight endless wars.”
The message was clear: The old GOP, the GOP of George W. Bush and John McCain, would drag America into forever wars in places like the Middle East. Trump would not.
Over the weekend, Trump launched a new war in the Middle East. And now he says that “wars can be fought forever.”
The president was responding to worries that American forces don’t have sufficient munitions to fight an extended war. The missile math, in which U.S. forces are fending off low-cost drones with very expensive interceptors that are in rapidly dwindling supply, doesn’t look great. Before the war, Pentagon insiders raised concerns about limited munitions supplies.
But Trump says we shouldn’t worry. On Truth Social he wrote: “The United States Munitions Stockpiles have, at the medium and upper medium grade, never been higher or better.” The U.S., he wrote, has “a virtually unlimited supply of these weapons.”
“Wars can be fought ‘forever,’ and very successfully, using just these supplies.”
Sit with that one for a moment. Wars can be fought forever.
Wasn’t Trump supposed to make America great? And didn’t he say that great nations don’t fight endless wars?