Dem Rep. Smith: ‘Time to Stop the War,’ Trump’s Objectives ‘Going in the Opposite Direction’

Wednesday on CNN’s “Inside Politics,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) said it is “time to stop the war” because President Donald Trump’s objectives are going in the wrong direction.

Host Dana Bash said, “In the last segment, we were talking here at the table about something that Senator Josh Hawley said, which is that we ought to say to our heroes, thanks for a job well done, it’s been astounding, it’s been historic, now it’s time to declare victory. Is that a good strategy?”

Smith said, Well, I think it’s time to stop the war. I’m going to disagree strongly that it was any kind of victory. But look, I mean, there’s three basic pieces to this. One, we wanted to degrade Iran’s military capability. So that’s one objective. The second objective and this was central to this war, it was central to the reason that it was launched, was we wanted to fundamentally change the Iranian regime. Now, some wanted the regime in to have, you know, brand new people come in and others. And I think this was sort of Trump’s position: even if we don’t change the ideology of the regime, we will have broken them. There will be so afraid of us, they won’t dare oppose us. That objective very clearly is going in the opposite direction. You know, with them picking the Ayatollah’s son, the hardliners seem to have consolidated power. And the likelihood that Iran is going to be any more amenable to the US after this, it doesn’t seem to be succeeding. But third, there’s the cost. The part that Trump seems to dismiss without even thinking about it.”

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