The truth is never enough for Trump, even when he kills a US enemy like Iran's Soleimani Every moment must be a heroic thriller, an action movie starring Trump and SEAL Team Six. It's not enough to be a responsible steward of US security.

Tom Nichols | Opinion columnist

Show Caption Hide Caption Are we really ready for a World War III? Fears are mounting around the world following the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani - but is World War 3 about to happen?

Why can’t this administration just tell the truth about the U.S. strike on Iranian terror boss Qasem Soleimani?

The truth, after all, should be enough. Soleimani helped organize and plan attacks that killed thousands, and he helped to turn entire regions of the Middle East into a charnel house. He was an avowed enemy of the United States and its allies who was directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition troops.

Previous administrations did not kill him only because the risks of further conflict with Iran were too high. The Trump administration — whether wisely or foolishly — took its shot and killed him. This is a clear enough narrative that administration officials should be able to go out and tell it to Congress, the American people and the international community without shooting themselves in the foot over and over.

But no. The truth is never enough for this administration. Every moment must be a heroic thriller, an action movie starring Dona­­­ld Trump and SEAL Team Six. It is not enough to be a responsible steward of the nation’s security, a role that requires patience and prudence, for which Trump is unprepared and has failed repeatedly.

A Hollywood script about attacks

Instead, President Trump must portray himself the way his base sees him, as a forceful avenger riding an American eagle into battle. He cannot bear to think of himself as Jimmy Carter, who agonized over risks and deliberated too long about the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979, nor can he stand to think of himself as Barack Obama, the much more popular president he clearly envies, who created the "terrible" and "defective" Iran nuclear deal.

Now, inquisitive members of Congress, nosy reporters, disloyal Democrats and all the other people Trump thinks of as his enemies have asked obvious questions about U.S. policy. Rather than answer them, Trump has sent his national security officials out with a Hollywood script about an “imminent” attack that he says involved four U.S. Embassies but refuses to explain to anyone, not even to his trusted surrogates at Fox News.

The story began to unravel as soon as it hit the street. Apparently, the threat was so severe that it was worth killing Soleimani and courting war with a country of 80 million people. It's unclear, however, whether it was severe enough to actually warn any U.S. Embassies that they were in peril. National security adviser Robert O'Brien dodged the question when it was asked. (Republican members of Congress might consider that such laxity was why they grilled then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for 11 hours about Benghazi, Libya, in 2015.)

Worse, Defense Secretary Mark Esper has said that he saw no such evidence. Making the rounds of the Sunday shows, Esper said only that the president believed the attacks were possible, and that therefore he believes the president. It is inconceivable such intelligence would have been kept from Esper, and his admission that he has not seen any such thing raises justifiable suspicions that this “exquisite” intelligence does not exist.

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Esper’s honesty, especially in an administration whose hallmark is daily dissembling, is refreshing. But again, it raises the baffling problem of why the Trump team didn’t just make the case that Soleimani, like Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and others before him, was a legitimate target and that U.S. forces finally had a clear shot at him. Why lie when the truth is compelling? Why create a story that will fall apart in a matter of hours?

This is all reminiscent of Trump’s embroidering of the killing of the leader of the Islamic State terrorist group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, an action that is to his credit and will be one of the few unarguably positive additions to this administration’s foreign policy record. Trump couldn’t leave it at a stoic and confident proclamation that the United States killed a ghastly terrorist; instead, he had to pile on ridiculous details about al-Baghdadi crying and pleading, things he could not have known and which remain unverified.

Security for America or Trump?

With both al-Baghdadi and Soleimani, as with so many other moments with this president, Trump can’t seem to stick to one coherent story. And so we end up talking not about policy, but whether there is something deeply wrong with the commander in chief and whether he can be trusted with American national security.

The more ominous problem here is that the Trump team’s deceptiveness looks much more like “wag the dog” than the elimination of a clear and present danger. It might well be true that any day when Soleimani is taken out of action is a good day. But Trump — like Bill Clinton ordering an airstrike on Iraq the day after the Republican House accused him of "high crimes and misdemeanors" in 1998 — is arguing that military necessity forced him to act.

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By refusing to provide any details to anyone, and instead sending his briefers out to tell members of Congress, in essence, to shut up, the president looks like he is trying to cover up a strike whose purpose had more to do with the security of Donald Trump than the security of the United States.

In every presidential tenure, there are important moments that reflect the personality of the chief executive, especially in times of crisis. Trump is a man who cannot tell a simple story without dishonesty, even when the facts are on his side. This deficit of character is bad enough in a single leader, but when it spreads to an entire administration, it is dangerous to national security and destructive to trust in democracy.

Tom Nichols is a national security professor at the Naval War College, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors and author of "The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters." The views expressed here are solely his own. Follow him on Twitter: @RadioFreeTom