The New York Times Gift Article: “Six American service members were killed, and U.S. military jets were shot out of the sky. Investors are bracing for market turmoil, fearing prolonged disruption to oil supplies. President Trump says the military campaign against Iran could extend for weeks, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that “the hardest hits are yet to come from the U.S. military.” With his decision Friday to authorize war against Iran, Mr. Trump is taking the biggest gamble of his presidency, risking the lives of American troops, more deaths and instability in the world’s most volatile region, and his own political standing. Mr. Trump, facing declining approval ratings and staring down the possibility that Republicans will lose control of Congress in the midterms, plunged the United States into what is shaping up to be its most expansive military conflict since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In just over a year since taking office, Mr. Trump has authorized military action in seven nations, even after he repeatedly promised American voters that he would end, not start, wars. During his inaugural address, he said his “proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker.” Even as he has struggled to provide a clear endgame for the military campaign, Mr. Trump has portrayed the operation as a resounding success. He has acknowledged the U.S. casualties as a cost of war but has spent more effort on boasting about the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, the But interventions in the Middle East have bedeviled generations of American presidents. Conflicts there scarred the legacies of Presidents George W. Bush, who led the country into lengthy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that came to be deeply unpopular, and Jimmy Carter, whose failed operation in 1980 to rescue American hostages in Iran has been top of mind for Mr. Trump. Now it is Mr. Trump who is orchestrating a rapidly expanding military effort in a region whose history and religious and factional politics make it an especially complex battleground. “Presidents are reluctant to engage in these situations unless we are provoked, attacked directly,” said Barbara Perry, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “Then there is usually a rally around the flag effect. You’re not going to have that now.”…