Our political culture has a catastrophizing problem, that is true. Many commentators find themselves utterly incapable of measured thinking, especially when they intensely dislike a particular politician. This produces a powerful inclination toward exaggerating their badness. https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/status/1294240253650317313

But there are some problems with this tweet.

It's very important for us to realize that just because something "turned out fine," that doesn't retroactively justify the prior decision.

The Soleimani episode never materialized into war. That’s good.

But that’s not the way we ought to evaluate Trump's action. When we look at what actually happened as opposed to what *might have happened*, we fail to evaluate events adequately.

When we do this, we take too narrow a view. We allow a happy accident to shape our understanding of the world rather than the possibilities that *just as easily* might have obtained.

We need to be capable of separating praiseworthiness/blameworthiness from outcomes. That’s because—consequentialists, please avert your eyes—results are often times an unreliable guide to a person’s moral or professional performance.

Trump's Soleimani strike sprang from the same broken well that gave us the Zelensky phone call.

Trump is not fundamentally interested in doing what’s good for the country. Trump is pathologically self-interested—irremediably so.

On occasion, Trump's pursuit of his own glory coincides with the common interest. But that's pure luck.

It's *not* because there's some sort of hidden orange hand blessedly guiding the country into civic success—harnessing the power of his self-regard into a collective win.

No, the majority of Trump’s designs are for his own success—to the degree that the country experiences a good result, Trump’s role is accidental.

So, back to Soleimani. Trump wanted that news cycle. He wanted that terrorist scalp. He didn't—and doesn't—possess the level of measured thinking that would've appraised the likelihood of catastrophic war as too high a price to pay for a politically advantageous terrorist kill.

Just because the worst case scenario, or even just a net negative scenario, didn't materialize, that's no reason to think the relied-upon expertise was deficient or that Trump was "right" in any morally or professionally meaningful sense.