Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin are drastically different men, but they do have one important thing in common: Each thinks he is the smartest person in any room he enters. Alas, though, because they have all done the dumbest thing you can do as a leader — surround yourself with sycophants — they have all blundered into dead-end wars from which they can extricate themselves today only by eating a banquet of crow.
Watch out. There is nothing more dangerous than a reckless leader faced with a plate of crow: Sometimes his instinct is to double down on a losing strategy instead.
Let’s start with the Israeli prime minister. The tell that Netanyahu has gone off the rails — and taken the leadership of the famed Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad, with him — is reflected in two decisions he made that were flat-out crazy: The first is the idea that Israel could topple the Tehran regime with one big blow from the air, and the second was that it could choose Iran’s new leader.
