The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

CONECUH NATIONAL FOREST – Trump has done it now.

All our worst fears about how Donald Trump’s ignorance and abuse of power could screw up the country and the world just came true with his ill-conceived decision to order a drone strike Friday at Baghdad International Airport to kill Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran’s most powerful commander.

There will be dire consequences, and not the ones Trump tweeted about, threatening to commit war crimes against Iran’s 52 “cultural” sites.

Unlike most of the reporters covering this story from New York, Washington or the Middle East — where we are now on the run from Iran and Iraq and other countries where American citizens and U.S. government and military officials are being ordered to leave for their own safety – I am feeling glad not to be in the middle of a war zone right now, far from the action in the middle of a national forest on the Alabama-Florida line.

Of course the internet could go down at any moment, when Iran decides to retaliate with a massive cyber attack. Even Trump’s friends in Russia are not happy with this decision, since Suleimani was, after all, essentially our ally in the fight against the Islamic State.

Democrats on social media are once again calling Trump a dangerous dumbass, for good reason.

But my first thought in reaction to this news is this. If it wasn’t for our dependence on oil and belief in religion, we would not be going through this crisis.

There are only two national leaders praising Trump’s decision at this point. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who is facing criminal charges and an election crisis of his own not unlike Trump, has been urging Trump to go to war with Iran for three years. Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, is also happy with Trump’s unilateral action.

Was it Steve Bannon who convinced Trump to go ahead and make a military move that was rejected both by Presidents Obama and Bush?

Trump didn’t consult any other experts even in his own administration, the U.S. intelligence community or the military about the wisdom of this strike, or consult with anyone in Congress, as he is required to do according to the War Powers Act. Someone in the White House did send over a form informing Congress of the decision, as required by law — after the fact.

Will Trump get away with this?

It’s a little like then-Senator Jeff Sessions changing his testimony after the fact in his confirmation as Trump’s attorney general, informing Senators that he did in fact have contact with Russians during Trump’s campaign for president. At least he went on to recuse himself from the special counsel investigation of Trump, an investigation that should have been the end of Trump but ended with an inconclusive whimper.

Apparently nothing in the recent House impeachment of Trump was enough to convince Republican Senators to turn on this president and vote to remove him from office.

There was a slight chance of this back in December, but Trump did not threaten a government shutdown at Christmas again and signed the budget resolution compromise forged by Alabama’s Republican Senator Richard Shelby and Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont. And Trump signaled that he would compromise to settle trade wars with China and Mexico.

So Senators went home for the Christmas-New Years holiday recess happy to celebrate the status quo.

What do they think now?

Will a full-blown war with Iran convince them that this president is too dangerous to hold the nuclear codes as commander-in-chief?

Stay tuned.

Almost as infuriating as the killing of Suleimani to those of us who actually care about the future of this country and the planet is Trump’s total lack of a response to the burning Amazon rain forests and the country of Australia, both caused by and doomed to exacerbate climate change due to the burning of fossil fuels.

Once again, if not for oil, would we care about religious wars in the Middle East?

There are far more important things we should be worried about than what Trump and Suleimani say about each other on Instagram.

But like many wars in the past, this one started because of misinformation, miscalculation — and the egos of madmen.

As I said Saturday on Facebook, it’s more obvious than ever that for the sake of the country and the planet, Trump has to go, one way or another.

Unfortunately, neither Iran nor our own CIA can take out Trump by assassination, because that would just make him a martyr to his radical right-wing militia following and very well could lead to a civil war here.

Suleimani was a bad guy who deserved to die. But not this way, not now.

Trump just made him a martyr even to moderates in Iran who wanted to work with the West. Now they want Trump’s head on a platter, along with many of our heads.

Like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, this is another war we can’t win. But unlike the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, this is a war we can lose, badly.

The only thing that can save us now are the votes of 20 Republican Senators to remove Trump from power.

It may be too late to wait for “the people” to remove Trump from office in the election of 2020.

There is still no clear front runner in the Democratic Party primary who has the celebrity appeal to beat Trump in the election. Trump will just use this war to “wag the dog” and an acquittal in the Senate to fire up his mostly white, Republican, Christian base.

Trump was just in Florida on the campaign trail and what did he talk about? Prayer in schools.

We are stuck in the inception (have you seen the movie?) of a dream of George Wallace and Judge Roy Moore.

It’s hard to know what level we are on, or how to trigger a massive awakening. But that’s what it’s going to take to save us now.