Donald Trump introduced callousness as a weapon in American politics when he launched his presidential campaign. It took many forms, but one was a complete indifference to the deaths of innocent people abroad. He openly advocated killing the families of terrorists—that is, civilians—and, from the podium at his rallies, suggested his strategy to fight ISIS was to "bomb the shit out of them."

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That was a common refrain:

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Some supporters deluded themselves with the suggestion this was merely campaign rhetoric from a would-be strongman. Yet a report from The Washington Post Thursday suggested it was not mere rhetoric, and that Trump—who has never had any aversion to violence and has shown little capacity for genuine empathy in public—has not changed his tune one bit since taking office.

Later, when the agency’s head of drone operations explained that the CIA had developed special munitions to limit civilian casualties, the president seemed unimpressed. Watching a previously recorded strike in which the agency held off on firing until the target had wandered away from a house with his family inside, Trump asked, “Why did you wait?” one participant in the meeting recalled.

This is a deeply disturbing window into the president's thinking, particularly considering that, by some estimates, civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria from American bombs increased 200 percent from 2016 to 2017. That indicates destroying civilians along with suspected terrorists is not merely the president's fever dream of strongman anti-terror policy, but is now, in fact, American anti-terror policy.

We have always been woefully callous to this dimension of the endless War on Terror, but with the Trumpian circus in full swing domestically, the issue has basically disappeared.

If nothing else, do we think killing innocent people in Iraq and Syria will make their friends and relatives more pro-America? Do we think this will drive them away from anti-American terrorist groups?

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And, as Thursday's Post report makes fully apparent, that endless war really is endless—at least according to The Generals:

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis echoed that point in late November when he outlined an expanded role for U.S. forces in preventing the return of the Islamic State or a group like it in Syria. “You need to do something about this mess now,” he told reporters. “Not just, you know, fight the military part of it and then say, ‘Good luck on the rest of it.’ ”

His remarks reflected a broader Pentagon consensus: In the absence of a clear outcome, winning for much of the U.S. military’s top brass has come to be synonymous with staying put. These days, senior officers talk about “infinite war.”

“It’s not losing,” explained Air Force Gen. Mike Holmes in a speech earlier this year. “It’s staying in the game and . . . pursuing your objectives.”

This is some truly Orwellian shit. It's not losing, it's pursuing your objectives. The top military brass are essentially saying that we cannot win this war, yet our only option is to fight it forever.

When, exactly, did the American people agree to an "infinite war" in the Middle East featuring unlimited occupation of nations with understandably hostile populations? As a reminder, Congress never declared war on Syria—or on any of the scores of countries in Africa and beyond—where American troops are currently stationed, fighting, and dying. This administration, like Barack Obama's, has used the 2003 Authorization to Use Military Force—which specifically concerned Iraq—to intervene militarily all over the world. The role of Congress in declaring war has been gradually eroded over decades, but this is the most egregious example of a true constitutional breakdown.

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In a weird twist, it's Trump who seems more interested in trying to drag the U.S. out of the Mideast quicksand. The problem is that his method requires turning the place into a parking lot as soon as possible.

Trump’s words, both in public and private, describe a view that wars should be brutal and swift, waged with overwhelming firepower and, in some cases, with little regard for civilian casualties. Victory over America’s enemies for the president is often a matter of bombing “the s--- out of them,” as he said on the campaign trail.

He returned to the theme this week. “We’re knocking the hell” out of the Islamic State, Trump said at a rally in Ohio last month. The boast was a predicate to the president insisting that U.S. troops would be “coming out of Syria real soon.”

So the choice is between endless war or a continued, but shorter, humanitarian disaster that probably won't solve the problem anyway. And the two viewpoints are held by the people currently empowered to make United States foreign and military policy. What, as we so often ask, could go wrong?

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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