The U.S. just learned that last month, when its citizens thought President Donald Trump had fled his Qatari-donated luxury plane for the relative safety of a proper Air Force One, he was actually on a third plane out of Turkey. Fearing an Iranian assassination attempt, military and security officials had secreted him off the official aircraft and onto an Air Force C-32A inside a catering container. That left a plane full of staff and press to fly to England — and potentially into the ayatollah’s crosshairs — as his unwitting sacrificial stand-ins. Trump’s non-daring escape is an apt analogy for his self-defeating war with Iran. The president has reached a point of desperation to retreat from the conflict and save what little is left of his political hide. The rest of us, meanwhile, will be the unwilling targets of whatever consequences may come. Trump’s frenetic ricocheting among ordering air attacks, leveling idle threats, and engaging in half-hearted diplomacy with the Islamic Republic has increasingly given way to a palpable apathy about the whole losing endeavor. A week af