Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally at JetSmart Aviation Services on Sunday, April 10, 2016, in Rochester, N.Y. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)
CNN  — 

Iraq is collapsing as a country. This week’s bombings in Baghdad, which killed more than 90 people, are just further reminders that the place remains deeply unstable and violent. There is a lesson to be drawn from this, one that many powerful people in Washington are still resisting.

Donald Trump campaigned as someone who wanted to get America out of the Middle East. But he also cast himself as a tough guy, and his initial instincts in office were to show force — added troops, more aggressive rules of engagement, bigger bombs — in America’s war zones. “These killers need to know they have nowhere to hide,” he said when announcing a troop surge in Afghanistan.

Read the Washington Post column