Trump's 'excursion into hell' commentary may come back to bite

There has been a tendency to give a low mark for veracity to many of the utterances of US President Donald Trump in recent times.But many might find themselves agreeing with his observation this week that the American ventures into Iraq this century have been a "very expensive excursion into hell".His comments came as the US military announced it had completed its withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq."It's been a long time with very bad decision making that got us involved in this quagmire in the first place," Trump said. "It was a quagmire. For many, many years it lasted. But soon that part of history will be over."Members of the Iraqi security forces celebrated the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq this week. (Reuters: Alaa Al-Marjani)Given the war against Iran — which he claimed would only take a couple of weeks — is now in its eighth month, with no end in sight (and possibly even a resurgence), there seemed to be some characteristic chutzpah in Trump's remarks.He compared the sad US story in Iraq to his administration's actions in Venezuela, and even to the Iran war in terms of the number of US casualties.But what so many of the current major global conflicts have in common with the debacle in Iraq is their undefined, or sometimes not truthfully defined, missions.The lack of definition so often explains why there is no end in sight to them and why they seem to only be spreading and escalating by the day.What happens next is unclearWhat happens next in Iraq is not clear. It is already embroiled in the Iranian war, due to the involvement of Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. There are concerns that the United States' withdrawal will also leave a broader vacuum in a still fragile and unstable state.Trump continues to prevaricate over his next moves against Iran: deploying thousands more troops and a third aircraft carrier strike group to the Middle East, but still flip-flopping about both his bargaining position and the goal of the whole exercise.The US is talking more again about foiling Iran's nuclear capabilities, rather than regime change or opening the Strait of Hormuz.US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz claimed this week that Iran is enriching uranium to 60 per cent with "no credible civilian purpose".But with the US mid-term elections only a month away and current indications that the Republicans face a drubbing, most analysts believe Trump will be reluctant to escalate action against Iran before November 3.A poll this week found 71 per cent of Americans disapprove of the president's handling of Iran and the war.Trump's ally in that war — Benjamin Netanyahu — faces his own election even sooner, with Israel going to the polls on October 27.Netanyahu under pressureThere was an extraordinary escalation this week in what it is hard not to see as external interventions in the Israeli election campaign.Over the course of September, there has been revelation after revelation about Netanyahu's knowledge of, and therefore culpability for, the greatest lapse in Israeli intelligence in its history, which in turn led to the horrors of October 7.There have been revelations piling up from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic magazine.All document claims that Netanyahu was directly warned before October 7 that Hamas was planning a major attack, and that those warnings came from no less than the president of the United Arab Emirates and the head of the Egyptian Intelligence Service.Once the shock and relief of the flydubai incident had eased, the political brawl has all been about Netanyahu. (Reuters: Ronen Zvulun)Netanyahu branded the stories as "lies". But tellingly, other governments have not denied them.The former head of Israel's domestic counter-intelligence agency Shin Bet, Ronen Bar, also announced he will sue Netanyahu for defamation over the PM's claims he was not told of any threats by his officials, saying he had warned the PM "of an impending disaster, and he ignored me".And then came the Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani who, as part of a broad attack on Netanyahu as a "war criminal", told British broadcaster Piers Morgan that Qatar had been involved in negotiations with Hamas immediately after the October 7 attacks, approaching Israel with a proposal to release civilian hostages in exchange for a temporary ceasefire window.According to Al Thani, Israeli officials declined to engage with the proposal, responding that Hamas should release the captives without receiving anything in return.His statements appeared to confirm earlier reporting that there had been a window in which the Israeli government could have got at least the young and old hostages back from Gaza, but refused to act.It was hard to escape the impression that even some of those Gulf states closer to Israel had formed the view that there was little chance of stability being gained with Netanyahu in office and were emerging to confront Israeli voters with what they believed was the Israeli PM's record.All these claims were starting to put intense pressure on Netanyahu in a political environment of a knife-edge election campaign.There seemed the slightest whiff of panic when Netanyahu emerged on Tuesday to claim there were new "indications that … our enemies will try to attack us" ahead of the October 27 vote.He did not elaborate on the nature of the threat or give any details — prompting Opposition scepticism and reported denials from officials and the Israeli Defence Force.The Jerusalem Post reported officials saying there was "currently no specific intelligence warning on the table".Opposition parties demanded a briefing. Afterward, opposition leader and founder of the centrist Yesh Atid party, Yair Lapid, criticised Netanyahu, saying there was no reason to panic the public, and that if the PM was so worried about security, he should draft the ultra-orthodox Jews who currently had an exemption from military service.The flydubai shock turns into a brawlThen came the extraordinary story of the flydubai plane and the apparent attempt by the co-pilot to crash it, imperilling 174 people flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv.Such is the political mood in Israel now that, once the shock and relief of the near-miss had eased, the political brawl has all been about Netanyahu.His opponents have accused him of trying to exploit the incident. His supporters have argued it shows he had been right to issue the unspecified alarm (even though he conceded later there had been no reference to an attack on a commercial airliner).Israel's election is being fought in an environment where its own war aims — in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, and Syria — seem likely to create as much of a mire as Iraq once did.Another war that was supposed to only take its aggressors a few weeks until victory drags on, with the rhetoric only escalating by the day between Russian President Vladamir Putin and NATO, as Putin finds himself bogged down in the frontline battle in Ukraine.Alarmingly, Russia now paints NATO as the aggressor, sending the Western military alliance a letter this week threatening to use its nuclear weapons if NATO hinders its access to the Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad.Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz warned this week that Europe is preparing for "severe" Russian hybrid attacks, after Putin threatened that his conflict with the West could reach a "fatal point of no return".The world now seems to be facing a much broader, multi-fronted and expensive incursion into hell, than it did in Iraq.Laura Tingle is the ABC's Global Affairs Editor.