The Lame-Duck War: Why November Worries a Marine's Father

My youngest son, Gavin, is a Marine corporal assigned to the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The Wall Street Journal has reported that he and his fellow Marines are being deployed to the Middle East and are due to arrive just after the November 3 election. I fear that this timing is no coincidence, and that President Trump is waiting until after the midterms to exact retribution on an Iranian regime that has refused to bend to his will.

Trump has repeatedly proclaimed that Iran is ready to fold and that victory is looming. He has staked his credibility on his enemy's imminent collapse. Instead, Iran has not only refused to surrender but has escalated the war by doing what Trump insisted it would not do: closing the Strait of Hormuz and creating the international havoc that led past presidents to refrain from attacking Iran.

The American public's response has been predictable: only a third of Americans support the war. Trump's overall approval rating has plummeted to an all-time low of net -23. His approval for handling the economy stands at 26 percent, and 65 percent of voters blame him for the high cost of living. These figures are tied to the ripple effects of the war: the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the resulting surge in gasoline and diesel prices.

Assuming the polls are right and Democrats win at least the House, if not the Senate as well, Trump will predictably blame Tehran's refusal to surrender, casting the electoral defeat as something Iran did to him. Lara Trump has already claimed that Iran is deliberately waiting out the election.

His history certainly does not suggest that he would accept a Democratic victory as something for which he bears even partial responsibility. Trump has never owned a loss. He still insists that the 2020 election was stolen, and he built his comeback on the promise he made at CPAC in 2023: "I am your retribution."

The predominant characteristic of this presidency is Trump's need to redress wrongs done to him, whether real or imagined, though mostly self-inflicted and deserved. Whether the target is the former FBI director, the chair of the Federal Reserve, or the Olympian who showed the world the debacle of the Reflecting Pool repairs, Trump has shown no inclination to moderate his need to even the score.

Those targets had the good fortune that our Founders created a judiciary to check his need for vengeance. Unfortunately, no court can halt a planned punishment of Iran.

Trump has made it abundantly clear that right after the election he intends to end the war and achieve victory. He told TIME that strikes could resume after the midterms if no satisfactory deal is reached. He rejected Iran's latest ceasefire proposal and said he doubts real peace with Iran is possible. He has framed the choice as blowing Iran up or making a deal, promising victory "one way or the other." In his September 9 speech in Texas to the Republican midterm convention, he warned that Iran would either make a smart deal or "won't be around very long." He has warned that Iran "won't exist any longer" without a deal, a threat some lawmakers say could amount to threatening war crimes.

Trump combines the attributes that make him an extremely dangerous human being. He possesses a trifecta of character traits -- a belief that he is never wrong, a refusal to accept responsibility for adverse consequences, and a lack of empathy -- that, when melded with the immense power of the presidency, can lead to catastrophic results.

The current Congress has shown that it will not step in to curtail Trump. A once-fearsome institution, created by our Founders as a check on an imperial presidency, is now a spent force. We can hope that a new Congress will find its spine, but by then it may be too late.

Once the November election is over, the political calculation that caused him to wait will have evaporated. The Twenty-second Amendment bars him from seeking another term, making him a lame duck. And as a lame duck, he has little to lose politically if he wishes to even the score.

Nor are there greater minds to whom he will listen. He recently declared, "I'm the smartest guy you're ever going to meet. It's true." Trump is certain that he knows better and can still achieve victory. During his first campaign, he claimed he knew more about ISIS than the generals did. Pressed on how he would work with them, he said he would probably have "different generals." The pattern persists. He waved off a Pentagon inspector general's finding that the Iran campaign has drained strategic munitions stocks as "mostly fake news." He is a leader who treats expert warnings as acts of disloyalty to be ignored.

That history has proven him wrong is of no consequence, though the repercussions of his decision to start this war, and Iran's response, should have surprised no one. For three decades, presidents of both parties looked hard at attacking Iran and pulled back, fearing that Tehran would respond exactly as it has. After the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing killed 19 American airmen, Bill Clinton had strike plans drawn up but chose not to retaliate directly; his administration recognized that any operation could escalate into full-scale war. In 2008, George W. Bush turned down Israel's request for bunker-busting bombs and permission to fly over Iraq to strike Iran's Natanz nuclear site, persuaded by Defense Secretary Robert Gates that a strike would backfire. Barack Obama defended the 2015 nuclear deal as the alternative to "some sort of war."

Now Iran is doing what prior administrations all foresaw: choking the Strait of Hormuz, firing on Gulf neighbors and American bases, and unleashing its proxies across the region. Trump bet that he knew better. He did not.

Nor will the consequences for those like Gavin, who must carry out his orders, deter him from escalating. The consequences for the Iranian people certainly will not. Trump, who obtained a deferment from military service, once described his efforts to avoid sexually transmitted diseases as "my personal Vietnam." John Kelly, Trump's former White House chief of staff and a retired Marine general, has publicly confirmed that Trump disparaged American war dead and wounded veterans, calling those who defended their country, were wounded, or were taken prisoner "suckers."

Trump's comments, together with a military buildup scheduled to be completed after the election, are more than a suggestion that escalation is coming. The USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group left San Diego last weekend, followed by an amphibious group carrying more than 2,000 Marines, part of a deployment the Wall Street Journal put at 9,000 to 10,000 additional troops. By the end of November, a U.S. official told Al Jazeera, three carriers and two Marine amphibious groups will be positioned near Iran, on top of the roughly 50,000 service members already in the region. The Pentagon reportedly plans to keep those forces in place even if a deal is reached, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said they stand ready if Trump orders new attacks. Asked by TIME where he might bomb after the election, Trump declined to say.

The most dangerous window may be the lame-duck months before the new Congress is seated in January. A humiliated president could seek a dramatic victory to rewrite the story of his defeat, and act before lawmakers can restrain him.

Gavin and the Marines beside him swore an oath to the Constitution, not to one man's wounded pride, and they will do their duty wherever they are sent. The question is whether those who hold power in Washington will do theirs. Between Election Day and January, the safeguards that remain are political ones: members of the current Congress, of both parties, willing to say plainly and before the votes are counted that a lame-duck period is no time to widen a war; Pentagon leaders willing to give candid advice even when it is unwelcome; and citizens who make clear that a dramatic escalation meant to rewrite an electoral defeat will be recognized for exactly what it is.

Every parent of a service member lives with fear. Mine is sharpened by the calendar. I am not asking that America be weak, only that its strength not be spent settling a personal score. If this war must continue, let it be because the nation's interests demand it, and not because one man cannot bear to lose.