Mission Accomplished! Trump Proves He Can Always Be Even More Wrong

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Yesterday, Donald Trump tweeted this:

A perfectly executed strike last night. Thank you to France and the United Kingdom for their wisdom and the power of their fine Military. Could not have had a better result. Mission Accomplished!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2018

Not surprisingly, ridicule rained down on him almost immediately for declaring “Mission Accomplished!” Not just for declaring it so soon after what’s at best an almost-pointless missile attack on Syria (or at worst the most blatant example of a “wag the dog” scenario since, well, the film “Wag the Dog”), but for declaring it at all in this post-Bush “Big speech on a big boat” era. Remember?

A few of the better responses to Trump’s childish bragging:

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/985132811739951104?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rawstory.com%2F2018%2F04%2Fnever-say-mission-accomplished-internet-roasts-trump-comparing-syria-attack-bushs-botched-iraq-war%2F&tfw_creator=rawstory&tfw_site=rawstory

American foreign policy in three quotes:
"Mission Accomplished!"
— George W. Bush
"Mission Accomplished!"
— Donald Trump
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
— George Santayana

— Jeff Tiedrich [retired account — see bio] (@jefftiedrich) April 14, 2018

"Mission Accomplished" is definitely a very good phrase to use about a military intervention in the Middle East https://t.co/zMYMrAcbHr

— Tom Phillips (@flashboy) April 14, 2018

Well, Donald Trump wasn’t about to let such comments go without hitting back 10 times harder! Oh, no! Testify, Trump:

The Syrian raid was so perfectly carried out, with such precision, that the only way the Fake News Media could demean was by my use of the term “Mission Accomplished.” I knew they would seize on this but felt it is such a great Military term, it should be brought back. Use often!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 15, 2018

As is his way, The Donald completely missed the point pretty much everyone on the internet was trying to make: it’s not the phrase that’s problematic, it’s the context.

When Bush declared victory in his Iraq War on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in 1983 -standing beneath that “Mission Accomplished” banner- he couldn’t have known that the war would drag on for years more… but he should have known that it’s a special kind of hubris to think that any conflict in the Middle East could be so quickly resolved. The phrase still hangs like a star-spangled albatross around his neck.

Likewise, one would hope that if Trump isn’t smart enough to avoid using the phrase so soon after a single missile strike that’s surely only the beginning of more strife in Syria, he’d at least be self-aware enough to know that tweeting “Mission Accomplished!” only opens the door to well-earned ridicule from the media and countless internet denizens with itchy Twitter fingers. Some of it even from Bush’s own ex-press secretary, Ari Fleischer: