Americans have seen this movie before. Trump playing the hero doesn’t fool anyone

I was six years old when 9/11 happened. From my classroom in South Carolina, I watched Flight 175 hit the South Tower of the World Trade Centre at 9.03am. For those of us who came of age during this era, it destroyed our image of America as an untouchable fortress. It’s a kind of anxiety that we will always live with, that an attack can come out of nowhere at any time.

Growing up under the shadow of the Iraq War, the anger felt justified at the time. Our leaders told us that we had to march into battle, and we believed them because we knew nothing else. When we found out we had been lied to and that our friends, our siblings, our neighbours had been sent to fight in a conflict that did nothing to advance our own interests – and made the world a less safe place – it set the stage for the defensive and aggrieved America we have today.

Now the world sits under the nuclear sword of Damocles, with Donald Trump, a president who is nursing a bruised ego looking to make his mark on the world.

In some ways, the past few days have felt like a kind of horrendous time warp back to 2003. We’re heading closer towards what feels like the United States walking into another war in the Middle East.

Trump’s White House address to the nation after the bombing had taken place felt eerily similar to the night George W. Bush spoke from the Oval Office to announce the invasion of Iraq. Then, as now, our cause was not defending the rights of innocent people, but rather exerting a kind of needless power. But while Bush at least spoke about the illusive goal of creating a better country for Iraqis, Trump talked only of going after the “many targets left” in Iran.

Things also feel different, too. The rest of the world does not appear to be lining up to follow the US into conflict. Leaders among US-ally nations have been elected on mandates that, at some level, include an expectation to establish distance from the chaos that Trump’s centrifuge is spinning out.

Of course, when necessary, the use of force is beneficial – especially if it is being used to defend a nation’s right to self-determination. But let us not forget that the US helped resolve the Troubles in Ireland through diplomatic negotiation and played a significant role in the signing of the Oslo Accords.

Then, our power was derived from our ability to bring people together and advance the common cause of global interests, leaving our military as a last resort. But no one in their right mind trusts Trump to negotiate in good faith, and now it appears that the kinetic power of the world’s most powerful military is becoming a toy for a dangerous man at the helm.

You can draw a direct line between the Iraq War and the frustration and dissatisfaction Americans felt towards their own government. They were the kinds of broken promises that made many voters feel as though Trump spoke directly to them when he first ran for office in 2016. That he was willing to tell the truth. That he could fix the broken system or would burn it down after leaving so many behind.

It was a war that left America in trillions of dollars of debt and saw people of my generation grow up in a country that was more willing to spend money on a war across the world than to make sure that its own citizens could live dignified lives.

But the current leader of the free world is a man with no deeply held political beliefs. He seeks only the loudest applause. In Iran, he is making a bet that this kind of show of force will earn him the ovation of a lifetime, which is, of course, how democracy dies.

People are exhausted by living through unprecedented times. Now, there is something extremely precedented in the worst possible way. We should remember the lies we were told, and we should remember how unnecessary and avoidable it all could have been.

Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne looking at the impact of AI on democracy. He served the Biden-Harris administration for three years.

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