Jon Meacham: No Administration Has Handled War in This Way

MEACHAM: “No. You know, there’s there have been covert operations, but to launch this level of force with one level of rhetorical engagement, which is a the president speaking entirely on his own terms and when he wants and with not a great deal of consultation and almost no interest that I can discern in what the American people really think about this. And presidents for a long time, obviously have done things that they wanted to do in spite of perhaps a lack of public support. But this is particularly odd because he’s just assuming, from what we can tell, that the people are with him, and if they’re not, he’ll just say they are. And I think one of the things he said today about calling for an unconditional surrender from Iran, that’s language that was first used by U.S. grant in the civil war and then was used at casablanca by franklin Roosevelt and winston churchill in 1943, about two of the largest struggles in American history the civil war and world war two. The language. The rhetoric is as if we are putting the entire force of our democracy behind an into this struggle, and yet part of the covenant of wars in democracies is that you will explain it to us, and you will bring us in the what American history says is that if you make the case, we’ll do what it takes, even when we might disagree with it. But this is a level of. I don’t want to say contempt, but maybe that is the right word. It’s a a blasé approach to building support for a case for war that”