What's the alternative? If you can't "do anything" about the people shooting the missiles at you (because shooting back won't stop them), and if it costs you more than the cost of the defensive operations (in terms of money, military resources, and geopolitical position) to shoot back...then shooting back isn't the right choice, either.


Hmm, I suppose we could just withdraw from the Middle East altogether, tell the Israelis good luck and laugh while Europe learns the hard way what happens when you voluntarily disarm *and* de-industrialize, but that would be counterproductive.

Again, it's the same logical fallacy:

No it isn't. You keep basing your analyses on shaky assumptions. In this case you're assuming that the current status quo is "good". It's not. Far from it. When you have

1. An aggressive China eyeing up territory grabs and economic moves to stave off their impending demographic crisis
2. A US that does not have the ability (nor the will power) to be a two-front power any longer
3. A militant, despotic nation driven to aid the bad guys in point #1 and who is willing to export murder and extort entire continents

...you have a status quo that sucks, frankly. And that's the world we were living in 3 weeks ago.

Because if making war on Iran won't materially improve things from the status quo,

And you know this...how? You don't. You don't have any more idea of how Iran is going to turn out than anyone else does. All you can do is guess at this point.

But a slow ride towards 2029 when Xi gets his military squared away, Iran is left untouched and Europe is still toothless is NOT a good movie for the United States.

Literally everything in the Pentagon is about China right now. Everything. Go look up the F-47 mission patch if you want to see a living example.