Could Trump’s Iran ‘excursion’ be a bigger global turning point than Vietnam?

In a 1965 speech justifying the war in Vietnam, Lyndon B Johnson argued that the goal was to ensure “every country can shape its own destiny” since only in such a world could the US secure its own freedom. However, he also admitted “such were infirmities of man that force must often precede reason, and the waste of war, the works of peace”. It was the kind of elegant justification of the country’s moral mission to which successive US presidential speechwriters have turned at times of war. Lyndon B Johnson gives a televised speech about the war in Vietnam on 13 May 1965 in the White House. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images Assured by limitless military superiority and filled with such noble intent, US presidents have repeatedly been lured into launching wars only to find themselves confounded, ensnared and then broken by their inability to overpower an inferior opponent they wholly misjudged. It seemed safe to assume that this was a fate that would never befall Donald Trump . He was implacably opposed to endless wars that seemed disconnected to the everyday lives of his supporters. He would never equate military power with military victory. Yet Trump’s “little excursion to Iran”, judging by the drafts of the potential peace agreements that are circulating, is being universally perceived as a defeat. Almost regardless of the outcome – most likely a return to the old status quo – the war looks ill-conceived, a monument to confused objectives, bad planning and misplaced assumptions. …