With no definite end in sight on Iran, the president has to either fish or cut bait

When you are the president of the United States it is a good idea to play the movie through in your head to the end before you take your country to war. But caution is not President Trump’s style. He is, as Peter Baker put it in the New York Times, “The most impulsive president of modern times,” who “follows his instincts and can completely reverse himself by the day, or sometimes the hour.”

His impulses led him to believe that war with Iran would end quickly, that it would not drag on as his critics alleged.

The war started on Feb. 28. One day later, on March 1, the president said, the war likely would last “four to five weeks.”

On March 5 he said, “The United States military, together with the wonderful Israeli partners, continues to totally demolish the enemy far ahead of schedule and at levels that people have never seen before.”

And two days after that, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that, “We’re winning the war by a lot. We’ve decimated their whole evil empire.”

On March 20 he said, “I think we won. We’ve knocked out their Navy, their Air Force. We’ve knocked out their anti-aircraft. We’ve knocked out everything.”

But it is August, the war still isn’t over. Talks are stalled, and Americans have grown more and more weary of the president’s optimism.

A new Associated Press poll tells us that about two-thirds of all Americans — 64 percent — say the war is not worth fighting. Eighty-seven percent of Democrats are........

© The Hill