Voters from military towns are worried that President Donald Trump, despite campaigning on a “peace” platform, is “bumbling” America into another Iraq or Afghanistan war, The New York Times reports.
“It’s a waste of resources, a waste of money, and we come off as bullies,” Krystal Zimmerman, an Army veteran who fought in Iraq, told the Times. She had supported President Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites last year, “but as the conflict lurches from bombings and threats of annihilation to a shaky truce with no clear exit, she worries that President Trump has now stumbled into his own forever war.”
The Times conducted three dozen interviews with voters in military towns across America — including Colorado Springs, San Antonio, and Fayetteville.
After six weeks of war, many voters “said they still had no clear sense of the president’s goals in Iran, or why he had joined Israel in attacking now. It all felt so fast and erratic, they said.” They were used to past presidents making the case for months to the public, as Republican Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush did.
“Nothing like that preceded the attack on Iran, the Times noted. “And the blizzard of shifting statements that Mr. Trump has offered in phone calls with reporters and late-night Truth Social posts only added to some people’s confusion.”
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On April 1, the White House published a press release declaring “President Trump’s Clear and Unchanging Objectives Drive Decisive Success Against Iranian Regime.”
It listed remarks made by several different administration officials including the president, offering varying reasons for the war, which the White House said were the Trump administration “repeatedly and unambiguously” reaffirming “core objectives.” Some of the quotes mentioned nuclear weapons, some did not.
“Nearly two-thirds of voters,” the Times reported, “and 71 percent of political independents — said they thought Mr. Trump had not provided a clear explanation in the lead up to the war, according [to] a Quinnipiac University poll from early March.”
“I don’t think Trump is making wise decisions,” Emmelia Lorenzen, a Trump voter from Fayetteville who was raised in a military family, told the Times. “One of Trump’s biggest campaign motives was that he is not a man of war,” she said. “And then you see us moving to war so quickly after saying that. It just doesn’t really make sense.”
She “was particularly disturbed by his vow to annihilate the entire Iranian civilization if Iran did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz — a threat averted at the last minute when the United States and Iran agreed to a two-week cease fire.”
Mike Keefe in Portland, Oregon, told the Times, “I’m incredulous that more people aren’t in the streets but, yeah, it’s kind of hard to be surprised or even shocked by anything he does now.”
Not everyone the Times spoke with opposed Trump’s actions.
“It’s a threat — it needs to be neutralized,” Gary Freese, who served in Iraq, said. He praised the president, saying his actions show “he’s got spine” by attacking Iran.
“These guys are religious zealots,” Wayne Brincks, a retired farmer, said of Iran’s leadership. “I think the president thought it was now or never, and we had to do something.”
Others disagreed.
Iowa farmer Mike Nelson, who questions Israel’s influence in Trump’s decision to attack Iran, told the Times, “I don’t think there was any imminent danger.”
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Image via Reuters