re: Official US/Israel vs Iran war thread

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1. Iranian leadership decapitated.

2. Iranians restore a secular government that is not trying to raise the Hidden Imam.

3. Absent funding to Hamas and Hezbollah, the Arab-Israeli conflict ends.

4. Abraham Accords in full force across the region.

5. Peace in the Middle East.

Unlike some of our stupider adventures in places like Somalia and Iraq, this one has clear objectives and a well defined outcome, all without boots on the ground or an enduring US military commitment.

Explained.

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Six years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the Soleimani killing, I participated in a joint conference tasked with planning for war scenarios with Iran.

My unit was asked to advise the Air Force on the integration of Marine Corps HIMARS into potential combat operations in the Straits of Hormuz. The conference was relatively brief and very much preliminary.

At the time, I thought the whole thing was a farce. Many of the other planners were eager for conflict, but I, correctly, believed the likelihood of a wider conflict at the time was very low.

One conversation, however, stands out to me. In a break out session one of the consultants, a retired Lt. Col, started going on about how "we" were going to crush the Iranians in a potential war.

Mind you, he was overweight, dressed in a too-tight polo, and eating chips out of a bag when he said this.

It occurred to me then that there was no "we" here. In a war, men like that would be sitting in the rear, fat and happy, going home to their wife and kids every night.

"We" didn't mean him; it meant me and my men.

War is not a game. It is existential. The stakes are always high. Serious men do not bloviate about war.

What bothered me most about that conference--what bothered me most about my military service as a whole--was the lack of connection between means and ends. No one ever asked what war was supposed to accomplish.

We were great at discussing communications architecture, logistics, capabilities, and alternative courses of action. Yet it never occurred to anyone to raise the core premise: what exactly were we supposed to achieve? What did success look like? Why?

At that time, in early 2020, I knew I was getting out and going to graduate school for precisely that reason. To me, the most important questions remained unanswered.

The ensuing years brought clarity. I see the problems far more clearly. I have come to a much better grasp of the possible solutions.

My skepticism of the military and political apparatus remains. Some things have obviously improved with Trump's re-election, but we have not yet gone to the heart of the problem. The current war with Iran reflects, in my view, an ongoing misunderstanding at worst and lack of clarity at best regarding what exactly the American government is supposed to do in the world.

There is much talk online of how millennials were "one shotted" by George Bush's failures in Iraq, that this is the source of our opposition to military involvement in the Middle East. In my case at least that is not true.

The problem is not that America hasn't fought effectively enough. The problem is the conflicts themselves. The real problem is at the very center. Why? Why are we going to war? Why are we killing people? Why are we risking our lives? What have we really accomplished?

I do not think that even America's "successful" interventions such as the Gulf War, WWI, and the Spanish-American War have been good for the United States. I am not wealthier, happier, or safer because of our global crusades for morality and "international stability." The long term consequences of these interventions have been quite ruinous indeed.

America as global policeman has been uniformly bad for our national character; it has been profoundly expensive, resulted in a massive expansion of taxation and state power, and an enormous loss of life. There were and are better alternatives.

My goal now, for the last several years, has been to try and make arguments for a better way. I have had some success but obviously not as much as I would like. It is what it is. There is much more work to be done.

The current conflict offers an opportunity for serious men to reflect, to plan for the future. It opens the problems anew.

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