President Trump has been under a lot of stress during the holidays after being impeached by the House of Representatives. His signature move is to serve up a distraction to get the public thinking about something else.

He recklessly signed off on the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the second most powerful leader in Iran. To be sure, Soleimani has been behind terrorist attacks all over the Middle East for over 20 years. The question is, what will the attack on Soleimani cost us in terms of retaliation?

What was the imminent threat needed to claim self defense with the drone strike on Soleimani? The storming of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad was over. If there was intelligence supporting the need for the strike, it should be immediately presented to Congress. The Iranians have perceived this event as an act of war. If there was such a dire need for swift action, it should be made public right away.

With all the fecklessness of the Trump presidency, the Donald acted like he was teeing up a golf ball on the first hole of a dangerous escalation of conflict that has worldwide implications, and he said a war with Iran would be a short one. He said that he did not take action to start a war. Seriously, he does not think things through.

In November 2011, Trump publicly chided President Obama about possibly starting a war with Iran in order to boost Obama’s image for his upcoming reelection campaign. What is Trump thinking now? He ran his campaign about getting us out of the Middle East conflicts.

Trump walked away from the Iran nuclear deal when Iran was in compliance with it. Since then, everything has gone awry with Iranian relations. Thus Trump has no credibility, no bargaining power or ability to negotiate any type of de-escalation of this conflict.