The killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been the dream of Washington war hawks for decades. American troops are dead, too, and Donald Trump and his allies are hand-waving away the losses, writes political columnist Ross Barkan. “Trump’s second term seems to represent the return, full blast, of this pre-MAGA, right-wing foreign-policy consensus,” writes Barkan. “Trump is less subtle than George W. Bush and, ironically, a tad less ambitious — a Bush regime might have parachuted American troops into Caracas to start the full occupation — but the attacks on Iran and Venezuela, the former coordinated with Israel, fit well with Bush’s legacy.” There is a dark political logic to this administration’s military adventures in Venezuela and Iran and the aborted threat to seize Greenland, Barkan argues. As Trump’s popularity plummets at home, his immigration and economic policies largely judged a failure by the American people, he has turned to sowing chaos abroad. Read the full column: