No. of Recommendations: 21
The President had some additional statements on the Iran war yesterday, and I thought they offered a very good crystallization of why some folks think the war is yielding worthwhile outcomes and others think it's been a terrible decision:
“We are totally destroying the terrorist regime of Iran, militarily, economically, and otherwise, yet, if you read the Failing New York Times, you would incorrectly think that we are not winning,” the president said.
“Iran’s Navy is gone, their Air Force is no longer, missiles, drones and everything else are being decimated, and their leaders have been wiped from the face of the earth,” he added. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/578252...The reason there's a difference of opinion on the war is that the first sentence doesn't necessarily follow from the second sentence. We
absolutely have accomplished all the things that Trump lays out in the second sentence.
Operationally, the military has achieved all of the specific tasks set out for it.
However, that does
not mean we are "totally destroying the terrorist regime of Iran," as Trump claims in the first sentence. That
strategic goal has not been accomplished. The regime very much still exists, still controls the country, and has complete continuity with the regime that existed prior to the war. The individuals have changed (we killed nearly all the old leadership), but the regime has not. Which is why critics of the war point out that we're not winning. We weren't able to effectuate any material change
to the terrorist regime (not the individuals but the actual government), and we're moving into the phase where we've already bombed most everything worth bombing.
And that's the main issue. We haven't destroyed the regime. We've destroyed most (nearly all?) of their then-existing facilities and larger weapons, but the regime is in place. Since that regime is still in charge of one of the world's larger countries and larger economies, and will still be closely allied with China and Russia and other "bad actors," there's no reason to think they won't be in a position to rebuild all the stuff we've blown up within a few years. Or perhaps even sooner. After all, in the 12 Day War less than a year ago we obliterated their nuclear program and blew up all their ballistic missile facilities (well, Israel went after the missile sites) - and yet it wasn't even a year later that the Iranian regime had pushed those programs back to the point where they were an intolerable threat.
