You may be correct that the American people will not politically support an extended war. But the U.S. has the military capability use precision guided bombs to progressively degrade Iran’s infrastructure to a degree that it will not be able to produce sophisticated offensive weapons or develop nuclear weapons. And a continued shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz would shut down Iran’s economy that is based almost entirely on oil exports.
These should be credible threats in the negotiations with the Iranians (or whoever is negotiating for them at the moment) but the credibility is reduced by the unwillingness to make the relatively modest sacrifices that you advocate, with the objective of eliminating much greater long term threats.
Bombing their electrical and water infrastructure might be able to dislodge the mullahs (prob not) but at the cost of mass starvation and dehydration measured in 6 figures at least if not 7. Turning Iran into Dresden or Tokyo isn't a plan I'm willing to support. At least not on the whim of a President.
I would feel differently about a Congressionally declared war. If the American people's representatives have declared another nation an enemy and authorized military action to destroy it, the means of carrying that out can be far broader. But massive Iranian infrastructure destruction by Trump (unilaterally, sans Congress) would appear little different than massive Ukrainian infrastructure destruction by Putin.
(Note: This is not TDS. I was and generally remain a Trump supporter.)
Precision guided bombs make it possible to selectively disable infrastructure—for example to destroy an electrical substation without destroying the main power plant. It would be possible to return Iran’s economy to its level in, say 1910 without causing nearly as many deaths as the regime recently committed by shooting demonstrators.
Iran is essentially self-sufficient in food, but they are running low on water. Oil in the ground is valuable because China knows it will need oil a year from now. LNG is now more important than oil and Iran shares Qatar’s massive field…that’s why this war wasn’t necessary because Iran is sitting on a gold mine that everyone wants access to and their government needs revenue to fund their economy. The reason Trump couldn’t come to a deal with Iran is because Netanyahu demanded regime change.
Btw, America needs to spend at least $500 billion on water infrastructure to get fresh water to Texas and the Southwest in the next 10 years…I can’t believe we are going to spend probably $500 billion on rebuilding Cuba when our infrastructure is inadequate?
How entertaining to watch the America First (Alone) wing of the party split with the MAGA wing. It's just beginning, so I'm stockin up on popcorn:). Imagine the dance as JD and his flock seek to separate themselves from Don, with Oren as a trusty wingman. Why don't these guys learn, in the end Don humiliates and betrays all his followers, no matter their level of obsequiousness. Paging Mike Pence as but one example...
Sadly, America has been humiliated, and Iran strengthened, from Don's latest incoherent flailing. Not exactly a shocking outcome.
Way too long, Oren. You are late to the party, and there is really nothing new in anything you say. Even if I agree, don't make me wade through long, wordy essays. In general, if there were one tip I could give Commonplace, it would be tighten up the editing and deliver shorter, much more crisply focused pieces, especially given the frequency of your emails.
I disagree; this piece takes just a few minutes to read, and contains some good details as all these "weely update"-type of articles on this site do. I say: keep them as they are.
It's so predictable that the majority of the people in the comments here who have a problem with disentangling from the engagement are old men. Who, conveniently, have little skin in the game and were alive long enough ago to treat a 50 year old slight as if it were somehow relevant to our modern geopolitical situation.
Riddle me this. Would Iran striking out through proxies in the Middle East be dangerous to the US if we, lord willing, weren't engaging in petty regional disputes that no longer serve our interests? We need to stop rolling in the mud to preserve a status quo that no longer benefits us, even if that means letting go of perceived humiliations from five decades ago (sorry boomers)
It is terrifying to see otherwise intelligent people confidently reveal that they know nothing about Iran. Oren's writing this week was excellent and necessary, and it will probably never be read by its most appropriate audience.
This is the first of his articles I’ve read. There won’t be more. Too long, making invalid points.
Cass assumes that the war started with the US campaign against Iran, kicked off by a bombing raid. Dead wrong, but the blind idea supports his overall thesis, so he uses it nevertheless.
The war started with the occupation of the US Embassy in 1976. That’s fifty years ago and it has been prosecuted by Iran and its minions ever since. And for Cass and his adherents to declare that we have lost is both premature and wrong.
Reading time was not wasted. It’s always worthwhile to discover that a writer is a dismissible source.
Oh look, a boomer with a bug up his ass about a 50 year old humiliation. Better send the young generation of Americans into a costly and pointless charnel house to avenge it, right?
It appears that you don’t realized there was history before your birth, Mac. That “50 year old humiliation” was but one in a long string of battles between Islam and European civilizations. Just in the years since the Embassy occupation there have been persistent attacks on the US and other western peoples. Our fight with Iran is less with a country and more with radical Islam and those proponents who now run Iran.
Until you realize that these battles began in the 700s and have been ongoing since then you’ll never understand. Western civilization looks at history as a series of unrelated events. The East tends more to see it as a continuum.
Iran is the existential threat to Israel. They are a serious threat to everyone else in the region. They are a minor threat to America. This logic remains even if Iran develops a nuclear weapon.
Going to war with Iran to curtail their nuclear program was a good idea. That is part of America's (and our allies, and not just Israel but a good many Muslim countries as well) interests.
Going to war because Iran massacred their own protestors was not a good idea. Lots of theocratic / dictatorial regimes do that. Welcome to the land of Westphalian states.
Stopping the war (despite the large political cost) before we sent a few hundred thousand Americans into Iran was also a good idea.
I wish Donald Trump had thought the whole thing through better. I wish he was able to be honest with the American people (and even himself): "We took a chance and attempted to overthrow the Iranian regime, but it didn't work, so now we're coming home. Iran, here are the conditions required for us to not come back." But Trump can't do that because he can't admit that ANY plan he makes is ever anything less than totally successful.
A commenter on TFP said that Donald Trump comes from a world where you can always declare bankruptcy, so consistent hard-charging on maximal demands makes total sense. But real estate development is not governance or intl relations. I think this explains a lot of Trump's problems. (Well, that and being a total narcissist.)
Oren, no war is ever won. When you go into conflict that one feels is necessary, one should never feel or think they will emerge again with some kind of win. No one wins in conflicts with extreme violence. Even after WWII we didn't really "win" look at all of the burden we had to take on after everyone else was in shambles. We had to carry all these countries which is what we are trying to do now, unload them. Which should have been done 30 years ago. $$$ was being made though.
Wars are usually thought as win/ lose zero sum outcomes, but they never are and is not the way to look upon wars or conflicts. Win lose will get you nowhere in these situations. These aren't baseball games they are real. winners and losers there are none basically.
It wasn't just a bad war, it was a flat out crime, done in support of an even bigger crime by the Trump admin's criminal sponsors and manipulators (the Epstein's of the world). That's our political system. There won't be any rational debate about this as long as we are ruled by these ruthless sociopaths, they need to be locked up for life.
"Well, we've bombed Jaluit and Kwajalein Lagoons and the Taroa airfield but the Emperor still hasn't capitulated. Guess we'll just have to give up all of Micronesia and New Guinea to Imperial Japan. There's no way we can win, bombarding Rabaul and Wake Island too would just be really expensive."
All this sidesteps the risk US supported Zionist Israel's regional monopoly on nuclear weapons poses to the long term security of rich western democracies.
Trump is the same President of the USA as he was of the small Trump family business: he thinks he has leverage on everyone he works with and it’s a zero sum game. The Iranians and even our allies are showing Trump global geo-politics and his tiny business are not the same thing. Trump is getting fired by just about everybody these days.
You not only have the cart before the horse, you have your facts wrong. Iran has struck offensively through support for terrorist organization for the last 47 years...fact.
Trump never said it was about regime change, it was to keep a unstable radical Islamic regime from getting nukes. Would you wait until they dropped one on Israel and if you think they wouldn't your niave.
When it comes to Iran, Too many people are trying to have their cake and eat it too. Either we deal with the growing threats, sometimes that means rolling the dice and seeing what can be achieved, or we pull all of our military back to our own territory and territorial waters. Then let the rest of the world sort out their own affairs. Ignoring the rising threats of terrorist proxies, drones, ballistic missiles, and a fast approaching nuclear armed Iran is just a recipe for American forces in the region getting massacred.
The problem in Iran is the same as in Ukraine. We have gone way too long allowing our "allies" to free ride off our defenses and shirk their own responsibilities. If the Saudis, Emiratis, Kuwaitis, and Qataris spent a bit less on vanity projects and more on building out a network of pipelines, railroads, highways, and ports around the region. Then at a minimum, they would have turned the Straight of Hormuz from a weapon that could be used against them, to one that they could use against Iran. Add in that if they had put some of the network of infrastructure into and through places like Yemen and Lebanon, then they would have also undermined Iranian clout in those populations.
So quit blaming Trump for changing the rules of a games that we have been loosing for the last thirty years.
Iran wasn't a threat at all before US regime-changed their democratic government and put in the Shah, because hey better a corrupt dictator than socialism or democracy. And when the Iranians overthew our CIA stooge they doubled down and lost again. This was then repeated yet again when US sponsored Saddam (chemical weapons and all) to fight Iran, and yet again the CIA stooge lost. In a truly rare moment, JCPOA made peace, and Iran stopped being a threat. Specifically because of sponsorship by AIPAC and company, and at the urging of Netanyahu himself, Trump admin 1 undid all that in a return to the same old cycle, and Trump admin 2 kicked the hornet's nest even harder. They never learn and never will. Turns out people who actually fight for their freedom - nowadays mostly found on the opposite side of US policy - are more determined than those fighting for PR points and money from the State Dept. The party to blame is entirely in Washington, and they should be in jail for life for all the people they killed.
A serious question to you. Israel is a democracy, has socialized healthcare. They even have a system of legal communes (kibbutz's). On the other side you have the theocracy in Iran. Such that anyone that wants to run for office has to get permission from the un-elected clerics. Iran funds, arms and trains the very undemocratic and un-socialist groups, the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah that all attacked Israel. Yet you think we should just allow the un-democratic groups to destroy Israel.
Oh, as well as annex Iraq, and force Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Emiratis to pay ransom if they want to use the straight of Hormuz. I guess we shouldn't have given any help to Ukraine as well. We should probably refuse to sell weapons to Taiwan. I'm sure the world will go back to singing song of peace and joy, and no nation or non-state groups will try to kill and take that which belongs to others.
Israel the state, is not a democracy. Literally has a two tier legal system that un-persons people native to the land it’s on, and actual convicted criminals in charge of important parts of the government. It’s a criminal enterprise built on ethnic cleansing pretending to be a state, and abusing the claims of a religion whose principles it violates daily.
Don's I don't wanna be Herbert Hoover comment tells you all you need to know about the strategic implications of the Bibi/MAGA Middle East war.
After refusing to explain to the American people, or Congress, or our allies (if we still have any) what the aims of his war were, Don belatedly offered a handful of objectives-nukes, proxies, missiles, regime change. We've achieved none of them, yet we're now shoveling cash to the Iranians as a frantic bribe to open the strait we failed to believe would be closed. Iran has emerged stronger while Don frets about a depression and becoming Herbert Hoover...
Don has randomly bleated unending incoherent and contradictory statements-we've already won, I don't care about the strait, your civilization will die tonight, they need missiles because Saudi Arabia has them, help is on the way, maybe we'll split the tolls with Iran, open the f...... strait you crazy bastards, we're dealing with people that are very rational people, they were nice to deal with... The stupidity is mind numbing.
Here's a direct quote from a press conference on the world stage at the G7: “If we didn’t do this deal, we could have dropped more bombs for another three weeks, two weeks, four weeks, two years. You would never have the Hormuz Strait open. You would never have success.”
Followed by this: “If they don’t honor that, we’ll probably go back to bombing them until they honor it, you know? It’s amazing what bombs can do.”
Both on the heels of this after last years bombing: “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace.”
We've come a long way since he promised us "unconditional surrender" for a war of choice he launched unilaterally while refusing to seek Congressional authorization.
And yet, you don't think he should be held accountable? Who exactly do we blame, Sasquatch?
Not all wars are WW2. In fact, no other wars are WW2. It's pretty conventional wisdom that none of our wars since are like that in terms of aims or popularity. How about the ones before. WW1 was a strange one, started by a President who campaigned to keep us out. War aims were always a muddle. Spanish American war was whipped up by the yellow press with little Presidential involvement and at the end we found ourselves with an empire that didn't have much support and a quagmire in the Philippines. CW1 by definition didn't have support from the secessionists and there were large elements in the North that were opposed. Draft riots in NYC had to be suppressed with Federal troops. The Mexican War was opposed by those who didn't want TX as another slave state. War of 1812, had it gone on much longer would have seen secession by New England which was being strangled by the British blockade. In the Revolution, only about a third supported independence, a third supported the British and the rest just wanted it to go wasaway. So why was WW2 different. Big boost by the Japanese, of course. FDR sprung unconditional surrender on everyone including his military advisors and Churchill. Such was his mystical power from solving the Depression, as was commonly thought at the time, that he got away with it. In fact, the Japanese were able to extract one condition and the Italians lots of them. We were also in alliance with the Soviets which neutralized a lot of potential opposition.
You may be correct that the American people will not politically support an extended war. But the U.S. has the military capability use precision guided bombs to progressively degrade Iran’s infrastructure to a degree that it will not be able to produce sophisticated offensive weapons or develop nuclear weapons. And a continued shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz would shut down Iran’s economy that is based almost entirely on oil exports.
These should be credible threats in the negotiations with the Iranians (or whoever is negotiating for them at the moment) but the credibility is reduced by the unwillingness to make the relatively modest sacrifices that you advocate, with the objective of eliminating much greater long term threats.
Bombing their electrical and water infrastructure might be able to dislodge the mullahs (prob not) but at the cost of mass starvation and dehydration measured in 6 figures at least if not 7. Turning Iran into Dresden or Tokyo isn't a plan I'm willing to support. At least not on the whim of a President.
I would feel differently about a Congressionally declared war. If the American people's representatives have declared another nation an enemy and authorized military action to destroy it, the means of carrying that out can be far broader. But massive Iranian infrastructure destruction by Trump (unilaterally, sans Congress) would appear little different than massive Ukrainian infrastructure destruction by Putin.
(Note: This is not TDS. I was and generally remain a Trump supporter.)
Precision guided bombs make it possible to selectively disable infrastructure—for example to destroy an electrical substation without destroying the main power plant. It would be possible to return Iran’s economy to its level in, say 1910 without causing nearly as many deaths as the regime recently committed by shooting demonstrators.
Iran is essentially self-sufficient in food, but they are running low on water. Oil in the ground is valuable because China knows it will need oil a year from now. LNG is now more important than oil and Iran shares Qatar’s massive field…that’s why this war wasn’t necessary because Iran is sitting on a gold mine that everyone wants access to and their government needs revenue to fund their economy. The reason Trump couldn’t come to a deal with Iran is because Netanyahu demanded regime change.
Btw, America needs to spend at least $500 billion on water infrastructure to get fresh water to Texas and the Southwest in the next 10 years…I can’t believe we are going to spend probably $500 billion on rebuilding Cuba when our infrastructure is inadequate?
How entertaining to watch the America First (Alone) wing of the party split with the MAGA wing. It's just beginning, so I'm stockin up on popcorn:). Imagine the dance as JD and his flock seek to separate themselves from Don, with Oren as a trusty wingman. Why don't these guys learn, in the end Don humiliates and betrays all his followers, no matter their level of obsequiousness. Paging Mike Pence as but one example...
Sadly, America has been humiliated, and Iran strengthened, from Don's latest incoherent flailing. Not exactly a shocking outcome.
Good luck America.
Make my popcorn bucket extra salty. Gonna be wild!
Way too long, Oren. You are late to the party, and there is really nothing new in anything you say. Even if I agree, don't make me wade through long, wordy essays. In general, if there were one tip I could give Commonplace, it would be tighten up the editing and deliver shorter, much more crisply focused pieces, especially given the frequency of your emails.
I disagree; this piece takes just a few minutes to read, and contains some good details as all these "weely update"-type of articles on this site do. I say: keep them as they are.
It's so predictable that the majority of the people in the comments here who have a problem with disentangling from the engagement are old men. Who, conveniently, have little skin in the game and were alive long enough ago to treat a 50 year old slight as if it were somehow relevant to our modern geopolitical situation.
Riddle me this. Would Iran striking out through proxies in the Middle East be dangerous to the US if we, lord willing, weren't engaging in petty regional disputes that no longer serve our interests? We need to stop rolling in the mud to preserve a status quo that no longer benefits us, even if that means letting go of perceived humiliations from five decades ago (sorry boomers)
It is terrifying to see otherwise intelligent people confidently reveal that they know nothing about Iran. Oren's writing this week was excellent and necessary, and it will probably never be read by its most appropriate audience.
This is the first of his articles I’ve read. There won’t be more. Too long, making invalid points.
Cass assumes that the war started with the US campaign against Iran, kicked off by a bombing raid. Dead wrong, but the blind idea supports his overall thesis, so he uses it nevertheless.
The war started with the occupation of the US Embassy in 1976. That’s fifty years ago and it has been prosecuted by Iran and its minions ever since. And for Cass and his adherents to declare that we have lost is both premature and wrong.
Reading time was not wasted. It’s always worthwhile to discover that a writer is a dismissible source.
Oh look, a boomer with a bug up his ass about a 50 year old humiliation. Better send the young generation of Americans into a costly and pointless charnel house to avenge it, right?
It appears that you don’t realized there was history before your birth, Mac. That “50 year old humiliation” was but one in a long string of battles between Islam and European civilizations. Just in the years since the Embassy occupation there have been persistent attacks on the US and other western peoples. Our fight with Iran is less with a country and more with radical Islam and those proponents who now run Iran.
Until you realize that these battles began in the 700s and have been ongoing since then you’ll never understand. Western civilization looks at history as a series of unrelated events. The East tends more to see it as a continuum.
Iran is the existential threat to Israel. They are a serious threat to everyone else in the region. They are a minor threat to America. This logic remains even if Iran develops a nuclear weapon.
Going to war with Iran to curtail their nuclear program was a good idea. That is part of America's (and our allies, and not just Israel but a good many Muslim countries as well) interests.
Going to war because Iran massacred their own protestors was not a good idea. Lots of theocratic / dictatorial regimes do that. Welcome to the land of Westphalian states.
Stopping the war (despite the large political cost) before we sent a few hundred thousand Americans into Iran was also a good idea.
I wish Donald Trump had thought the whole thing through better. I wish he was able to be honest with the American people (and even himself): "We took a chance and attempted to overthrow the Iranian regime, but it didn't work, so now we're coming home. Iran, here are the conditions required for us to not come back." But Trump can't do that because he can't admit that ANY plan he makes is ever anything less than totally successful.
A commenter on TFP said that Donald Trump comes from a world where you can always declare bankruptcy, so consistent hard-charging on maximal demands makes total sense. But real estate development is not governance or intl relations. I think this explains a lot of Trump's problems. (Well, that and being a total narcissist.)
Oren, no war is ever won. When you go into conflict that one feels is necessary, one should never feel or think they will emerge again with some kind of win. No one wins in conflicts with extreme violence. Even after WWII we didn't really "win" look at all of the burden we had to take on after everyone else was in shambles. We had to carry all these countries which is what we are trying to do now, unload them. Which should have been done 30 years ago. $$$ was being made though.
Wars are usually thought as win/ lose zero sum outcomes, but they never are and is not the way to look upon wars or conflicts. Win lose will get you nowhere in these situations. These aren't baseball games they are real. winners and losers there are none basically.
Oren, you poor poor sap:
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trump-says-iranian-attack-on-cargo-ship-was-violation-of-ceasefire-deal-884c617c?mod=hp_lead_pos1
It wasn't just a bad war, it was a flat out crime, done in support of an even bigger crime by the Trump admin's criminal sponsors and manipulators (the Epstein's of the world). That's our political system. There won't be any rational debate about this as long as we are ruled by these ruthless sociopaths, they need to be locked up for life.
"Well, we've bombed Jaluit and Kwajalein Lagoons and the Taroa airfield but the Emperor still hasn't capitulated. Guess we'll just have to give up all of Micronesia and New Guinea to Imperial Japan. There's no way we can win, bombarding Rabaul and Wake Island too would just be really expensive."
All this sidesteps the risk US supported Zionist Israel's regional monopoly on nuclear weapons poses to the long term security of rich western democracies.
Trump is the same President of the USA as he was of the small Trump family business: he thinks he has leverage on everyone he works with and it’s a zero sum game. The Iranians and even our allies are showing Trump global geo-politics and his tiny business are not the same thing. Trump is getting fired by just about everybody these days.
You not only have the cart before the horse, you have your facts wrong. Iran has struck offensively through support for terrorist organization for the last 47 years...fact.
Trump never said it was about regime change, it was to keep a unstable radical Islamic regime from getting nukes. Would you wait until they dropped one on Israel and if you think they wouldn't your niave.
Dick Minnis
removingthecataract.substack.com
When it comes to Iran, Too many people are trying to have their cake and eat it too. Either we deal with the growing threats, sometimes that means rolling the dice and seeing what can be achieved, or we pull all of our military back to our own territory and territorial waters. Then let the rest of the world sort out their own affairs. Ignoring the rising threats of terrorist proxies, drones, ballistic missiles, and a fast approaching nuclear armed Iran is just a recipe for American forces in the region getting massacred.
The problem in Iran is the same as in Ukraine. We have gone way too long allowing our "allies" to free ride off our defenses and shirk their own responsibilities. If the Saudis, Emiratis, Kuwaitis, and Qataris spent a bit less on vanity projects and more on building out a network of pipelines, railroads, highways, and ports around the region. Then at a minimum, they would have turned the Straight of Hormuz from a weapon that could be used against them, to one that they could use against Iran. Add in that if they had put some of the network of infrastructure into and through places like Yemen and Lebanon, then they would have also undermined Iranian clout in those populations.
So quit blaming Trump for changing the rules of a games that we have been loosing for the last thirty years.
Iran wasn't a threat at all before US regime-changed their democratic government and put in the Shah, because hey better a corrupt dictator than socialism or democracy. And when the Iranians overthew our CIA stooge they doubled down and lost again. This was then repeated yet again when US sponsored Saddam (chemical weapons and all) to fight Iran, and yet again the CIA stooge lost. In a truly rare moment, JCPOA made peace, and Iran stopped being a threat. Specifically because of sponsorship by AIPAC and company, and at the urging of Netanyahu himself, Trump admin 1 undid all that in a return to the same old cycle, and Trump admin 2 kicked the hornet's nest even harder. They never learn and never will. Turns out people who actually fight for their freedom - nowadays mostly found on the opposite side of US policy - are more determined than those fighting for PR points and money from the State Dept. The party to blame is entirely in Washington, and they should be in jail for life for all the people they killed.
A serious question to you. Israel is a democracy, has socialized healthcare. They even have a system of legal communes (kibbutz's). On the other side you have the theocracy in Iran. Such that anyone that wants to run for office has to get permission from the un-elected clerics. Iran funds, arms and trains the very undemocratic and un-socialist groups, the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah that all attacked Israel. Yet you think we should just allow the un-democratic groups to destroy Israel.
Oh, as well as annex Iraq, and force Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Emiratis to pay ransom if they want to use the straight of Hormuz. I guess we shouldn't have given any help to Ukraine as well. We should probably refuse to sell weapons to Taiwan. I'm sure the world will go back to singing song of peace and joy, and no nation or non-state groups will try to kill and take that which belongs to others.
Israel the state, is not a democracy. Literally has a two tier legal system that un-persons people native to the land it’s on, and actual convicted criminals in charge of important parts of the government. It’s a criminal enterprise built on ethnic cleansing pretending to be a state, and abusing the claims of a religion whose principles it violates daily.
Don's I don't wanna be Herbert Hoover comment tells you all you need to know about the strategic implications of the Bibi/MAGA Middle East war.
After refusing to explain to the American people, or Congress, or our allies (if we still have any) what the aims of his war were, Don belatedly offered a handful of objectives-nukes, proxies, missiles, regime change. We've achieved none of them, yet we're now shoveling cash to the Iranians as a frantic bribe to open the strait we failed to believe would be closed. Iran has emerged stronger while Don frets about a depression and becoming Herbert Hoover...
Don has randomly bleated unending incoherent and contradictory statements-we've already won, I don't care about the strait, your civilization will die tonight, they need missiles because Saudi Arabia has them, help is on the way, maybe we'll split the tolls with Iran, open the f...... strait you crazy bastards, we're dealing with people that are very rational people, they were nice to deal with... The stupidity is mind numbing.
Here's a direct quote from a press conference on the world stage at the G7: “If we didn’t do this deal, we could have dropped more bombs for another three weeks, two weeks, four weeks, two years. You would never have the Hormuz Strait open. You would never have success.”
Followed by this: “If they don’t honor that, we’ll probably go back to bombing them until they honor it, you know? It’s amazing what bombs can do.”
Both on the heels of this after last years bombing: “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace.”
We've come a long way since he promised us "unconditional surrender" for a war of choice he launched unilaterally while refusing to seek Congressional authorization.
And yet, you don't think he should be held accountable? Who exactly do we blame, Sasquatch?
Not all wars are WW2. In fact, no other wars are WW2. It's pretty conventional wisdom that none of our wars since are like that in terms of aims or popularity. How about the ones before. WW1 was a strange one, started by a President who campaigned to keep us out. War aims were always a muddle. Spanish American war was whipped up by the yellow press with little Presidential involvement and at the end we found ourselves with an empire that didn't have much support and a quagmire in the Philippines. CW1 by definition didn't have support from the secessionists and there were large elements in the North that were opposed. Draft riots in NYC had to be suppressed with Federal troops. The Mexican War was opposed by those who didn't want TX as another slave state. War of 1812, had it gone on much longer would have seen secession by New England which was being strangled by the British blockade. In the Revolution, only about a third supported independence, a third supported the British and the rest just wanted it to go wasaway. So why was WW2 different. Big boost by the Japanese, of course. FDR sprung unconditional surrender on everyone including his military advisors and Churchill. Such was his mystical power from solving the Depression, as was commonly thought at the time, that he got away with it. In fact, the Japanese were able to extract one condition and the Italians lots of them. We were also in alliance with the Soviets which neutralized a lot of potential opposition.