Trump telling on himself that his 'strategy is not under control': Marine Corps veteran

President Donald J. Trump greets U.S. Army General Vincent Brooks.. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Alex Echols III/Released)

President Donald Trump keeps calling the U.S. operation in Iran “a little excursion,” that will keep the United States out of war. But one Marine Corps veteran says it’s clear Trump has no strategy beyond his chaotic messaging as the war in Iran enters its third week.

As the Guardian reported Saturday, the Iran war’s “timelines and goals are also continually shifting.”

Trump Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “has said it is up to the president ‘whether it’s the beginning, the middle or the end’ of the war,” the Guardian notes. “But Trump has been all over the map on this question.”

Marine Corps veteran and Vet Voice Foundation leader Janessa Goldbeck told the Guardian Trump is directly contradicting his Pentagon with his shifting messaging on the war, and waned that “contradiction sends dangerous signals to adversaries about US resolve."

“When the president says the war is basically over and his Pentagon says it’s just the beginning, that tells the world the strategy is not under control,” the Marine Corps veteran added.

For Goldbeck, Trump seems motivated by “fear” as he tries “to find an exit strategy without comprehending the reality of what he has launched the United States into illegally and without congressional authorization.”

“President Trump launched a war without defining the mission and the goals of this war have changed multiple times,” she explained. “He seems to have expected regime change on the cheap but we’re clearly seeing an escalation with no end in sight and his own Pentagon is contradicting him in real time. It is a real mess.”

She’s far from the only military vet criticizing the president. Matthew Hot, an Iraq war combat veteran, told the Guardian Trump is leaving allies “confused by it but also likely frightened by it.”

“We can be glib and we can say, well, maybe there’s a genius in that because if you don’t set any clear goals no one can hold you to them,” he noted. But allies are still scrambling to make sense of the president's moves.

Jonathan Alter, a presidential historian, acknowledged Trump is “a chaos agent,” arguing, “that’s what he specializes in.”

“[Trump] doesn’t think any further ahead than the next news cycle and so you get an on-again off-again zigzag foreign policy,” Alter said.

“He lies as easily as he breathes so to believe anything out of his mouth like, ‘we demand unconditional surrender’ – well, two days later, he won’t be demanding it anymore and he’ll pretend he never said it,” Alter explained. “His words are at some level meaningless except, because they’re backed by so much weaponry, they take on enormous importance.”

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