Bob Frasure, one of America’s great diplomats until he was killed in the Bosnia-Herzegovina war in 1995, once sent an “options” paper to the secretary of state ending with, “It depends on which waterfall you want to go over.” He was referring to a bad situation the U.S. was in at that point with reference to our alternatives.
We are, to my mind, at that point now, in regard to America’s domestic political situation and the country’s basic posture in the world under President Donald J. Trump’s leadership. The two waterfalls are these: the upcoming 2020 elections, particularly the candidates we are looking at, and the increasingly dangerous situation in the Middle East.
We are looking at a dangerous confrontation between the Shiite Muslim states, led by Iran, and the Sunni Muslim states, led by Saudi Arabia, with the Trump family at least signed on with the Sunnis against Iran, which would still like to be reasonable. Israel, in its ever helpful role, would love to see us attack and possibly take out Iran, just as it was delighted to see us tackle Iraq in 2003.
On the homefront, the current scrap involving Joe Biden’s son, Donald Trump and the Ukrainians would be unbelievable if it were showed on late-night TV as a 1930s comedy.
The president of the United States urged the president of Ukraine, one of the most corrupt countries on the globe, with a big bundle of U.S. financial aid for Ukraine on the table, to investigate the possibly corrupt activities of the son of a former vice president, who is also front-runner in the upcoming U.S. president election.
First of all, if Mr. Trump, a well-known dumpster diver himself, believed that Mr. Biden’s son’s activities in Ukraine were bad enough to deserve investigation, one has to wonder what Hunter Biden had been up to in thoroughly corrupt Ukraine. If Mr. Biden were to win the presidency, Hunter Biden might make Ivanka look like Joan of Arc.
But, more to the point, Mr. Trump’s request to the Ukrainian president to investigate his American opponent’s son is a clear invitation to interfere in our electoral process. The relationship between Ukraine and Russia is so complex and long-standing that to invite the Ukrainians to mess around in our elections is virtually the same as to extend that invitation to Vladimir V. Putin and the Russians. So what was Mr. Trump doing?
The other dangerous waterfall that Mr. Trump has us looking over is his alliance with Saudi Arabia and the Sunnis in the Middle East, led by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
There is just no reason for us to be allied with the Saudis and other Sunni Muslim states in the Middle East. The Saudis were just attacked by the Shiite Houthis in Yemen, whom we have helped the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates try to bomb back into the Stone Age. And so the Iranians allegedly helped the Houthis sting the Saudis.
For Mr. Trump’s administration to try to use the Houthi/Iranian attack on the Saudis as an excuse for an American attack on Iran is just ridiculous. Are the Houthis just supposed to soak up the Saudis’ attacks on them without retaliating? Without looking for military assistance in striking back at the murderous Saudis?
We don’t even need the oil anymore.
The other piece we should not forget is that a war with Iran would not be a cakewalk. The Iranians would immediately go after American assets in the Persian Gulf area, including U.S. bases in Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and elsewhere. They might also attack Israel, turning the current mess in the region into a near-global conflagration, particularly if Russia and China took an interest in the affair.
I don’t mean to be alarmist about the current state of affairs, but Mr. Trump, his family and their uninspiring cohorts fiddling around in our elections and in the Middle East reminds me of a tale my father used to tell me of a childhood friend of his who was not afraid to stick his hand into a nest of water moccasins.
There is no good reason for Mr. Trump to be fooling around with the Russians and Ukrainians on our elections or with the Sunnis, Shiites and other malevolent elements in the Middle East, risking major warfare.
In the meantime, he pays only peripatetic attention to more immediate concerns such as climate change and health care costs, issues of much more concern to the American people. Could he not shift his scope and try to become a great president, instead of a disaster that we are holding on to survive?
Dan Simpson, a former U.S. ambassador, is a columnist for the Post-Gazette (dhsimpson999@gmail.com).
First Published: September 25, 2019, 9:00 a.m.