I will just say this. A military performs as well as its leaders. Proper planning and execution prevent a lot of terrible things from happening. One example is the bombing of that school. At one point in time it had been a military installation but it hadn't been for years. Nobody bothered to check if it was a proper target at the time it was bombed. Instead they depended on old intel without any updates or current verification.
I will not however isolate this to the trump administration. This is not all that uncommon. The thing I find most odd about the current situation seems to be the consistent moving of the goal posts and the mixed messages. In June trump said that Iran's nuclear program had been obliterated and set back decades if not years. In March, the US intelligence community assessed that Iran was “not building a nuclear weapon.”
Yet it was presented that Iran was an "immanent threat". 2+2 does not equal 6. Unless it's the White House version of new math. There is zero evidence to support that Iran was an immanent threat when he decided to attack.
The first time he struck Iran he said our goal was to eliminate their nuclear threat. This time it is their nuclear capability he claimed he obliterated just months before plus destroying their missile capability which is no threat to the U.S., their drones and a regime change.
Now he claims to be in talks with Iran but it's not the new supreme leader while claiming he has achieved a regime change even though it is still being run by the same group that ran it before and the revolutionary guard.
I can't make sense out of any of it because none of it makes any sense.
But just like other examples of our wars in the middle east he grossly underestimated the resolve of the enemy and there was no clear exit strategy.
I'm glad I stopped by here to read, for a change. I'm not sure I can agree with this post much more than I do.
There are some caveats and "yeah, but maybe" moments, but ^ that's ^ the nutshell version.
What pisses me off, literally, is that there was never any real exit strategy *if* there was no plan to chop off the head. And no plan can be effective without one.
If there isn't already a new regime lying in wait, you're just spoon-feeding a never-ending cycle. Only thing that changes is being "nuke-ready" will take place on an ever-quickening timetable.
We didn't think this whole thing through very well. We convinced ourselves that overwhelming force and the "epic fury" at which we administered it would be enough. The snake is still slithering.
And now Trump is caught with his pants down. His only hope to avoid "forever war" is to root out the snake by installing a new regime. I'm not sure how that's possible without boots on the ground.
