Trump is failing at everything. We must hope he succeeds against Iran.
The Trump administration is failing. DOGE's budget-cutting efforts appear to have cost taxpayers more than they saved, the expulsion rate of illegal immigrants trails Biden-era rates and we are in a trade war that will force an embarrassing national retreat – but only after damaging our economy.
Internationally, we have more fractured alliances today than at any time in the last century. Friend and foe alike are puzzled by Trump's behavior, as well as his unqualified cabinet picks at the Department of Defense and Department of National Intelligence. None of this is lost on Americans, placing Trump as the lowest-polling president in modern history.
One need not be a cynic to suppose that Trump could view victory against Iran as a welcome distraction from his domestic struggles. Yet even those of us who question Trump's competence should recognize that his administration now confronts a genuine national security challenge that transcends partisan politics.
As Trump weighs military strikes against Iran's uranium enrichment sites, Americans who oppose him can still hope he succeeds in neutralizing a decades-long threat. The case against Iran's regime stands on its own merits, independent of one's view of Trump's presidency.
Iran has been exporting terror for more than 45 years. Its government has funded terrorists and state actors against the U.S., Israel and most other Middle Eastern countries. Iran imprisoned our embassy staff, killed marine peacekeepers, and captured sailors. It has cost the lives of thousands of Americans, tens of thousands of Iranians, and hundreds of thousands of other people across the Middle East.
Destroying the Iranian government, its nuclear capacity and its ability to make war and export terror would make the world an objectively better place. Even a large majority of Iranians favor a different government.
The challenge lies in the execution.
The U.S. has been planning war with Iran since the late 1970s. Much of our force structure since the 1980s was in response to Iranian aggression. Indeed, the success of Desert Storm was partly a consequence of the training and preparation we undertook to fight Iran, not Iraq.
The U.S. and Israel can, with relative speed, stop the Iranian economy, close its ports and end its oil exports. We can destroy its government agencies, scatter surviving leadership, destroy its air force and navy, cut off its armed forces from key supplies and destroy most arms stockpiles. We can attrit its air defenses, target its ballistic missile sites and generally render it unable to defend itself.
The destruction of Iran would give democratically minded leaders across the Middle East time and space to expand their influence and power. We should increase foreign aid to these nations, especially through USAID, but Elon Musk has gutted that capacity at a time when it might be more important than ever.
Conflict with Iran will be costly. We will lose men and women in that fight, and should expect for some of the worst images of war to appear before the American people. We will lose air crews, see our bases in the Middle East targeted, our ships fired upon and attacks to occur on American targets wherever Iran has pre-positioned terrorists.
In a war with Iran, Americans should expect to be attacked at home.
This is why Trump's leadership deficiencies are so concerning. His poor policy judgment, incoherent planning, sloppy crisis management and poorly staffed war cabinet represent exactly the wrong combination for such a complex undertaking.
No American president has been less prepared to sell the case for war, build necessary coalitions or execute the careful strategy such an operation demands.
If Americans are to spend hundreds of billions of dollars and send the flower of their youth into harm's way, Trump owes us a clear explanation of costs, benefits, and realistic war aims. We cannot expect air power alone to achieve "regime change" or "unconditional surrender" — hope is not a plan. If ground forces may be necessary, he must say so.
Trump must prepare Americans for casualties at home and abroad, distinguish between the Iranian people and their government, and build bipartisan congressional support. His failure to maintain international alliances means Israel stands as our only partner — a diplomatic catastrophe that makes success far more difficult.
Nothing in Trump's personal or public history suggests he can provide this kind of thoughtful leadership. The stakes demand we hope he proves us wrong. If he rises to the occasion, Americans should support him. If he cannot, he will likely fail, at enormous cost to the world.
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