Picture this alternative reality:

Imagine that President Barack Obama had been greeted with massive street protests when he waged war against Libya; that favoring that intervention had prevented Hillary Clinton from advancing past the Democratic primary; that the critics now threatening Trump with impeachment had cited his missile strikes on Syria as prominently as the claim that he obstructed justice; that the Democratic presidential candidates were excoriating Trump more for complicity in Saudi Arabia’s dirty war in Yemen; and that street protesters were pressuring the White House with calls for the return home of all U.S. troops.

In this counterfactual universe of furious opposition to waging any war unlawfully, or launching any new wars of choice without demonstrating their necessity, Trump would be less likely to let hawks risk, let alone provoke, a major war. It is conceivable that he wouldn’t have appointed the hawks in the first place, or that he would have long ago fired them or reined them in to offset their political cost. It is certain that anti-war voices would have mobilized earlier, in greater numbers, to speak out against the very first steps toward war with Iran.