Michael Hudson explains why Trump attacked Iran: his Napoleon complex

'It seems that he Trump had a very abusive father and he really felt his ego was injured and he wanted attention and he wanted approval. And so when he came into office, I think in this last time certainly, he said what he wanted to be was a famous US president. He wanted and he said he wanted to be like Napoleon, somebody famous. Everybody he thought looks up to Napoleon, famous guy.
I mean that was the character that he'd mentioned. Well, he also knew that every American president who's greatly admired, the most admired presidents won wars. Washington won the Revolutionary War. Lincoln won the Civil War. Teddy Roosevelt won the Spanish American War and [Franklin] Roosevelt won World War II. Those were the days. Trump knows that, you know, if you read world history, all the world leaders and kings throughout history, the ones that people know, are the kings that have made great, the emperors that have made great conquests and built empires. And Trump thought he could do the same thing. .... But his sort of either or way of thinking led him to forget that Napoleon lost the war in Russia. He lost at Waterloo. He was known for being exiled to Elba.'


It is clear that Trump is motivated by vanity and love of money. It is also clear that the enemy he wants to overcome in his war on Iran is Obama.

A lot of the problem is American historiography.

I have quoted before Professor Paul Gottfried, the palaeo-conservative American political thinker, saying in The Managerial President, "All the major conflicts into which our leaders thrust us from the Civil War on, with the possible exception of Vietnam, are seen as morally desirable actions. … The U.S. is a land of morally driven, energetic presidents who have made us into the envy and dread of the world."

Though to be fair nobody thinks Trump is morally driven.