Iran Out Of Time

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Welcome to the Commentary Magazine Daily Podcast. Today is Monday, March second, twenty twenty six, and I'm laughing'cause this is our third effort to start the show because twice before I said that it was March third. So uh I am amused that it that uh simple matter of counting as Biomi. Maybe that's because we did two emergency podcasts this weekend with the start of the war. And so I'm therefore uh, you know, I'm I'm living in a perpetual past, present, future and can't get the dates right.

Uh this is not a problem for my co-panelists here. Uh executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe. Hi, John. Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth. Hi, John. And don't worry, we're all still writing March third on our checks. There we go. No, we're not don't let's not get into the checks thing again. We already had a whole like whole podcast that jumped off you making a joke about checks. And also, of course, social commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.

Hi John. I was gonna make a joke about you all abusing our emergency podcast powers, but I'll just let that one go. D you mean we need to go to Congress? to to authorize. You did not seek congressional approval for two podcasts. I mean, you know, we you know the War Powers Act gives us sixty days, that's right, to uh yeah, to uh to to be fully authorized.

Okay, so this morning, uh about an hour before we started recording this, uh Pete Hegseth and uh General Kane, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a joint press conference.

uh lot of whining over the weekend about how uh we weren't getting enough information out of the administration, which is funny'cause it's like we live in this hyped up twenty four hour you know, like three hundred and it was it sixty second, sixty minute twenty four hour you know, like if we don't hear from them every five minutes it's like they're not telling us

what's going on to be fair to Secretary Hegseth and to General Kane. They're running a war, so like give'em a break. They so they did their initial briefing. This morning I was Um, and it was very illuminative and instructive. And I wanna just go through some of the things that we heard uh pretty much from General Kane. Uh Hexes started and did a lot of rah rah stuff and you know

attacking previous administrations for not being as brave as we are and all of that, and we can sort of put that to one side. Um here are the things that we learned from from uh General Kane.

So the um the the General Schwartzkopf of this war, the guy who seems to be running the war, is Admiral Brad Cooper. He is the he is the this is his joint command, he is overseeing it along with Fleet Master Chief Compton, General Pat Frank, who is running sort of the counter missile and counter drone activities.

Kurt Renshaw who is who is leading the fight against the Iranian Navy and uh Air Force Lieutenant Sui I I the airfor leader leader of l Air Force leading figure Derek France, who is as um General Kane said crushing Iranian targets from the air. uh the Space Command, the US Cyber Command, both uh heavily involved, particularly at the very beginning of the war or in the hour just before the everything went

active uh in order to disrupt the command control communications capabilities of the Iranians. And uh what we learned is uh I think effectively that it was a month ago, uh at the very beginning of February, um, that the command was given to get every to to get everything in place to strike.

So you said over the last thirty days We've moved our forces to quote reinforce deterrence and provide Americans with credible options. And the joint force began to move, to be postured protected and ready to respond thousands of service members, hundreds of fighters, dozens of fueling tankers. the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, which was elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere, redeployed across the Atlantic to set the theater. They took a deep breath and began planning

to conduct operations. And then uniquely in my experience of these sorts of briefings from Schwarzkopf and from Powell and from others over the last 35 years, he highlighted the work of reservists. the Wisconsin Army National Guard and Air National Guard units, including Vermont and Virginia, said that it was their job to fly F thirty fives to the region

to put them in place that the reservists here played an active role in preparing and making ready. And he said he wanted to shout out the unsung heroes of warfare are logisticians. And sustainment for a who are sitting in control room somewhere watching everything, making sure that, you know, material is being deployed in the right place, you know, sort of like uh a kind of supply chain logistics thing.

Uh and then he said uh at uh fifteen thirty eight on Friday, uh the twenty seventh of February, uh CENTCOM received the final go order from Trump. uh in the region, every element made their final preparations. Operational security was paramount as we sought to maintain and surprise and maintain the element of surprise. That was when Cybercom and Spacecom started layering non kinetic effects on to blind Iran and at w and at uh one fifteen local, nine forty five Iran time, the skies

surged to light. He said more than a hundred fighters, drones, moved synchronously. First Tomahawk missiles closed in on Iranian naval forces on the ground. Precision standoff weapons, a massive overwhelming attack, Striking more than one thousand targets at the

in twenty four hours. And the point that he was trying to make not only served it wasn't just to be self-congratulatory, was we have spent years learning how to integrate our forces, Air Force, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, reservists, spacecom, you know, CyberCon, all of this. working painstakingly, training with allies, not only Israel but the UAE and others, and the all of this training, all of this work, all of this preparedness.

came together when it needed to come together in what he clearly believes was fifty seven hours of an extraordinarily successful initial

uh effort to achieve the goals of this um military action against Iran. I found it listening to him as is true when you like hear a extremely assured extremely competent person laying out what what is going on. I found it very reassuring. Comforting, he wanted people to understand. He said, I wish that the American people could hear what it sounds like on the voice communication.

as I have from these joint communication centers as they are transmitting messages across all of these different divisions of our military and elsewhere, how they remain calm and cool as they execute. So professionalism, he said they were uh steady, frosty, calm, and focused. Our service members are trained, disciplined, and determined.

And so uh if you you know the this uh this uh what what he was conveying was the sense that they know what they're doing, they know what they're doing logistically, they know what they're doing tactically, they are achieving unprecedented levels of success in a mission like this, which is unlike any other mission that we have actually Undertaken. And um and uh we got an answer, by the way, to the question which has been raised over the weekend about who hit

Khamenei because there were two different stories going around. We've were n the initial story was that the Israelis hit Khamenei, and then Trump said, I got him, and then there were other stories about how actually the Americans hit Khamenei and in fact Heg Seth confirmed that it was Israel. and said they did a great job and Hagseth was full of praise for Israel, contrasting Israel with other allies whom he uh was re relatively contemptuous of. I assume he is referring to Kir.

Stormer, uh, who was behavior over the weekend um as he desperately attempts to keep his weird Labour Party coalition together, so so much of which depends on uh Muslim support inside um inside Great Britain, uh that he was in constant, weird, weak, then finally agreed to participate in in some fashion. Um so

Uh if you get a chance to listen to General Kane's briefing, which I think you can go to C SPAN and find it or I'm sure it's on YouTube, uh, you should do so. Hegseth's behavior was a slightly different matter. But um so that that's where we are.

This morning, um with a real sense of uh he said we have control of the skies. uh and that we are broadening our targets and that what his job and the job of the military now and Heggs has said this too is to present the president with as many options and to make sure that we know as much as we can to know what where we need to go next. to achieve our goal, which is They are not saying that the goal is regime change.

They continue not to say that the goal is regime change. In fact, Hegzoth attacked the idea of regime change. But what they have said and what they said on background yesterday and what they're saying this morning is that All Iranian military capacity, all conventional Iranian military capacity is a cover

for the nuclear program. And that one of the reasons that it was necessary to go to war was that as we sat there trying to figure out what our options were, Iran was sitting there with conventional weapons. those are the ballistic missiles in particular, but that the entire ballistic missile program, which could then be deployed as a conventional strike force, is really there in the end to be ready to deliver nuclear material.

if and when they get to the point that they can have nuclear materials. So there is no division between the conventional build up of Iranian weaponry and the nuclear program of Iran. And so this argument that this was a war of choice and we didn't have to do it and there was no imminent threat. As it happens, there was an imminent threat to our forces gathered in the Middle East. If we're

steaming in and we're just gonna sit there. We could be sitting ducks if we don't go first. Which is part which I think was part of the motivation for going along with the fact that they heard that everybody was gathering in that one site and that and that Israel could hit that one site and take and and decapitate the leadership. So that's my that's my summary of what of what we learned this morning.

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It was uh such a good capable summary that it by turn. Left me feeling comforted and secure. Uh it's a big thing. I want if I can comfort you, I can comfort our listeners. um the American people still have and that will I assume will be answered in due course by the administration, particularly because Trump, as we know, has issued these two videos but hasn't yet really faced one on one with the media answering questions. So

As as many of our listeners know, I'm not a super fan of Pete Hegseth by any means, but I think one thing he did this morning that was really useful and helpful and I'd like to see everyone in the administration continue to do this, is not it is push back on the idea that this was a war of choice by Trump. Trump's war is how it's all being described in sort of mainstream media outlets.

He correctly said there is a whole history to this is an ongoing conflict that we have had with Iran. He listed some of you know many of the times when Iran has um murdered our civilians, murdered our soldiers, and I think it's important to keep that context always in in uh front of any discussion of what's is coming next because right now we've had some mixed signals that you know You're right that Heggs said it's not a regime change war, but the regime has surely changed.

Trump over the weekend, you know, sort of saying things like, Well, you know, we don't they're bad guys, we want them out. Well, you know, but the Iranian people will rise up and take their country back very vague, and then these the the question of how long it will last.

You know, we've heard four or five weeks, we've heard, you know, lots of different things. That's completely normal in a circumstance like this. I understand that, but it is very crucial for this administration to start communicating sooner rather than later about some of their own goals as as they um come into more clarity for the administrators and their war planners. But I I will commend uh Hegseth for that. I also think we need to spend a moment saying we

I mean we're certainly sharing in the um the sad news that we've lo already lost a few American service members and uh General Kane's acknowledgement that we will likely lose more. This is a war. People are going to die. And I think that also has to be something that um Americans are prepared for because that is not

the normal situation for us in this country, thank God. But this is something where that question has to be uh answered by the administration. I think Trump will probably be pretty good at that and he has a

a publicly available media thing this afternoon. We'll see if he takes questions on those. So I'm and I'm also I wasn't here over the weekend to to share in the emergency podcast, but I'm just I'm so happy for the Iranian people who have who, although in a very difficult situation right now, have this

opportunity have to have been liberated from a theocratic regime, particularly Iranian women who've been repressed by this regime for so long. So there's a lot of I hope hopefulness in some of the remarks that that uh Trump will make when he does uh engage the American people again on this question.

Yeah. I mean I I I think um part of what we're seeing also is that um there's so many reasons to hit back at Iran that people who are c that, you know, when we're concerned we're hearing conflicted uh justifications for the attack. It's not really that we're hearing conflicting justifications. It's we're hearing different ones that are all valid. Right? I mean, that I think is, you know, they they

There's no question that Iran poses a threat to American troops in the region. Last year their proxy killed three two American Service members too in Jordan. Um I think you're right. It was three. I think it was three. I I I thought it was Um So w you know, that's a recent thing that their proxies You know, during a war against Israel, the proxies also targeted and killed Americans on a base in Jordan.

There there isn't really a question that that's a threat. There isn't a question that they want nuclear weapons because they keep saying, No, you could give us all the free nuclear fuel and whatever else we n you know, we want we offered them everything. and that they could possibly need for civilian purposes. We offered them

to have the the energy and the fuel without having to even refine it and make it. I mean we b we basically just offered to to spoon feed them um, you know, whatever they wanted. And they said no, we we we're gonna enrich so we know that they're building a nuclear Pro we know that they want nuclear weapons. Um and then the third one was is the proxy. Again, all of this, the the Americans that Iran's proxies killed last year, that it that that's that's

Two different categories, right? One of it is Iran is a threat to Americans in the region. And two, uh, Iran's proxies have to be reined in. and have to be stopped because they're killing people, they're killing innocent people, they're killing Americans, they're obviously killing Israelis. Um and so, you know, what I think we're seeing is that like

What's the first one that comes to mind when you ask somebody why we're attacking Iran now? You get like the first thing that comes to their mind. But they could list all these different things, and it's it's not too concerning to me to hear one member of the government say We don't trust what they're doing on their nuclear program. And a different member of the same administration say, well, they won't rein in their proxies and they're a threat to American troops in the region.

You know, what what's come to mind for me um as this whole war has unfolded, um, is this idea that, you know, people like us have been saying for a very long time, but it it makes it so crystal clear. that there has long been in place This kind of absurdity to our posture for decades that we even let Iran get anywhere near to this point.

in terms of its regional power, in terms of its arms build up, in terms of its saber rattling, in terms of its expanding its power beyond the region. Um uh in terms of its going uh um unavenged. Uh uh our our uh American deaths uh at Iranian hands having g gone unavenged for decades. Um so i it seems like a sort of um Cosm it's not even cosmic, a real world writing of of of just this crazy thing that we let get out of hand with uh our fingers crossed.

uh and um a bunch of band aids uh uh uh you know f fifty years worth of band aids. Yeah, I'm a pet owner, probably like you. Didn't want to be, got a dog during COVID, and of course now I love the dog. Bring the dog to the office.

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Right. And and it's also like so after fifty years you hit ba uh it's like if somebody, you know, were were hitting you for fifty years and after fifty years you hit them back and what does the world say? Well, what's your plan exactly, Abe? Right. I mean look this is an I mean the point I think that is important about this forty seven year conflict between uh Iran and the United States is that we there if you want

Uh uh wha what what would the plural o c w is it would it be Cassie Bellai? Like uh you know, if you want Cassis Bell I uh to explain the just justification. For a war, right? The cause of war, the reason that a war takes place. There have been twenty legitimate individual Cassus Belli Iran has been responsible for that we could have justly, according to any understanding of just war. Have launched a war to fight against. Not only the taking of the hostages, which was w which was the original.

But uh attacks on our uh uh people in the you know uh in in Iraq in the in in the two thousands. direct uses of Iranian proxies and Ira and probably regular Iranian forces inside Iraq to kill American soldiers. I think w our count is that six hundred Americans died directly at the hands of Iran during the during the war in Iraq. Remember the entire war in Iraq was forty four hundred casualties. So we're again playing commentary math here.

But that's like, you know, a seventh to an eighth of the casualties in Iraq directly caused or deaths in Iraq directly caused by Iran and various other incidents. The Also, the Beirut barracks. bombing, uh which was done by Hezbollah, which is a very good thing. And in Iraq they got Iranian uh material also, so you had non Iranian militias killing American troops with IEDs that they got from Iran or over and over and over again.

They attacked us and we did not respond. Um but you know, is there like a statute of limitations? Is that where we're sort of being it's like, well, if you don't do it immediately, it doesn't count. Um the point here is that Iran as a destabilizing force kicked into high gear on october seventh, twenty twenty three. Um now they did not directly attack us, they attacked an ally of ours, but on seven fronts Iran went to war with Israel.

On seven fronts, in an effort to where Israel had to go to war with Iran on seven fronts, may may be another way to put it. But had Israel not prevailed, Iran would have restructured The geopolitical landscape of the Middle East very much in its own favor, in a way that would have been a direct threat to us. I mean without question. You know, they would have then had dominant not only sort of reestablish their their domination of m most of Lebanon.

Solidified their position in Syria, strengthened their position vis a vis the Gulf states that don't that that are worried about them, meaning Saudi Arabia and others, weakened Israel, strengthened Hamas. And strengthen Yemen. And so they that was a direct

sort of threat to the United States. I Israel dealt with it and we then dealt with it with Israel by by doing operation Midnight Hammer, and as I think Brett Stevens said in his piece, but a couple of other people have said, after Operation Midnight Hammer, the Iranians could have said, Okay, we're done. We're not gonna reconstitute our ballistic missiles. We're not gonna try to reconstitute our nuclear program. We're done. We're licked.

You know what, this has been a stupid twenty year effort at nothing, cost us, you know, untold billions of dollars. All of our scientists have been murdered. We've been penetrated like no country has ever been penetrated by h enemy intelligence services. You know what? Genog. We're f okay. Uh we're gonna move on. And they didn't. They started buying material from n they're saying importing things from China, buying material from North Korea, maybe taking stuff in from Russia.

And just go like like just okay, we're we're up again. And that's a we if you think about it. Uh they didn't have to do that. Like maybe they thought they would have to do it because like Saddam Hussein, they would think that uh if the Iranian people knew that they were no longer, you know, aggressively pursuing this aim.

that that would be the moment at which they would look so weak that the Iranian people would rise up to take them down. But again, counter history weird. They say, okay, we're done and then America goes, Okay, well we're we see you're done. We see you're like Decommissioning all of these play and everyone's going home and b all that.

We'll relax some sanctions. You know, we have these like hyper sanctions on you that are all based on this. You stop doing and then in December of twenty twenty five, the real isn't worth zero. Isn't is it doesn't go to worthlessness. Iran's in a perfectly fine place financially, or not fine, but you know, is not and then there isn't an uprising. And then all of the this clock doesn't start ticking.

I mean they brought this on themselves. They could have they could have accepted and acknowledged. That their nuclear program and their ballistic missile program was was something that we l viewed as an act of threat and that they should stand down.

And they didn't stand down. This this gets to a a bigger, larger point, and it gets to a topic that No one likes to talk about anymore because then we start throwing around label the neocon and this and that and um the truth is I don't want to share the planet with terrorist regimes.

Um not merely because uh they do bad things to other people and that may or may not affect us and maybe it's none of our business and all that. Um There is a much more practical aspect to why we should not tolerate terrorist regimes. They don't recognize lanes. You cannot expect them to stay in their lanes. Um their mission is to obliterate lanes. They are terrorist regimes for a reason, um, which is that they they are

trying to break down the system of which we are a part. And if you let that go or if you try to uh Give it uh a little bit here, take a little bit there. Over time the problem inevitably metastasizes. And that is what we're looking at. And I'm sorry, you can call it neoconservatism, you can call what whatever you want. Um, it's just a simple fact of history that that is what has got us w w where we are today.

So let's talk about this question of whether or not this is a war for regime change or not a war for regime change. Because I remain puzzled by and Hegzeth began the morning by saying, you know, we're not stupid like other presidents. We're not going around with open ended missions of nation building and regime change. You know, d Donald Trump is smarter than that and he has other things.

in his quiver. So I was trying to recreate in my head where w how regime change became the term of you know of art here to describe our mission our mission after the collapse of the Soviets uh and the Cold War because We had never this was not a term that was in use. We were not ever before. Like we were not looking to change to do regime change. So why was this the term?

And I think oddly it was an effort, though it now means the opposite to many people, at modesty. That is to say, we were going into war. with Iraq in particular, but with Afghanistan. But our purpose was not Thank you. To defeat the nation of Iraq or to defeat the nation of Afghanistan. We Bush said it about Afghanistan and said it about our beef was not with the people. Our beef was with the tyrannical leaders who were oppressing the people and doing thing bad things to us.

So if we go to war with them, all we're trying to do is remove the bad guys who threaten us, and then you get your country back and we'll give you a hand When it comes to what happens after will help you establish a system of elections, we'll bring in NGOs to help run those elections since you haven't had them in a long time, or we could use your local traditions like Loya Jirga and tribal meetings and things like that to try to reconstitute this. We don't have a beef with you.

Iraqis. We don't have a beef with you, Afghanis. In fact, we'd like to help you because we understand what monster you're we have had to deal with the monstrousness of your regimes. You're living with it. We're gonna help you. It was an effort at a kind of You know, we don't have to go in and do what we did to Nazi Germany and to Imperial Japan and obliterate those. Break the backs and wills and spirits of the entire country so that they knew they could not get off the floor.

And try or try to get off the floor or try to establish counterinsurgencies or whatever. Right? That wasn't what we were up to. So in a weird way, they're way more hawkish. Trump and Heg Seth and these guys are way more hawkish. This is well but this is interesting because one of the one of the mistakes I think looking back on some of the both the first and the second Gulf War conflicts and then Afghanistan slightly separately.

inability to kind of understand just how long and punishing we needed to be. to get to the point where the people would be able to create their own more functioning uh way of life in government. Uh we miscalculated on a lot of those. And I think what what's interesting about this conflict is looking at after the first several thousand targets that US and Israel have struck in Iran. Look at the targets they're doing in the last twenty four, thirty six hours. These are smaller security um areas

in the country, many of them along the borders of Iran. And these are the places where the most punishing security forces who keep the population in line, the people who were shooting at protesters, the ones who were in regional areas trying to quell these uprisings. We are striking those now. quite vigorously and intentionally. And I think that is a sign of I hope, a lesson learned from previous conflicts where you can't just take out the guy at the top and one or two of his henchmen.

Because there's this entire superstructure in in countries like Iran of enforcement and some of it's quite localized but it reports to the top, but you do have to take out those units as well, because if you're going to rebuild, if you're and and this is another question I think Americans should be asking, who will be leading Iran in the near future and in in in the long term? Um you have to take those people out. And we were unsuccessful in doing that in some of our previous conflicts.

too soon, we withdrew too soon, and there's lots of arguments about about that that over the years we've all had. But I think in Iran, I hope to see that lesson uh continue to be pursued because the people of Iran will have no choice. um and have no options if those if that level of security state intervention and they are armed and they are perhaps willing to shift their loyalty to someone new, if they're willing to continue to enforce the the the

theocratic regime's vision for what Iran should be in the region, then we're gonna be right back where we started. I just wanna say I think there's something

kind of silly about or that's exposed that's silly about this this regime change. Um knock uh you know because everyone's everyone's no regime change, no regime change. Um unless you go to war with another country for a piece of land like uh uh the uh Azerbaijan and uh uh Armenia or or it or i f or to capture the entire country like uh Putin and uh going into Ukraine. Every other war is a regime change war in the sense that

If you have a problem with a uh another state power, you're fighting to change that regime. Either personnel or when you're done, it's a different regime. We could be the same people, but it's not acting as the same regime. That is the point of of an actual war with another country, unless I said, as unless it's about land. That that is that is what w that is the end goal of of fighting your enemy. I mean you you don't you don't

You don't want to end the fight with the same enemy in place. So it is by definition regime change that you're looking for. A thoughtfully built wardrobe comes down to pieces that mix well and last, and that's where Quince shines. Premium fabrics, considered design, and everyday essentials that feel effortless to wear. And dependable even as the seasons change. Lightwear cashmer sweater.

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It's the only way wars end. If you look throughout history, the way to wend end a war is to change a regime and get a more pliant regime. in place that is willing to play by the rules that you want them to play by. Now you can argue, you know, whether that's right or not, blah blah blah. The point is that that's how wars end. And that in the real world that that's how wars end. And so the forever war argument against regime change runs into a problem because

The truth is that we're getting forever wars because we don't change the regime and the regime changes how you usually end the war. That's the right thing. I mean, I'm sorry, the h whole history of Iran, the Shah

install I mean we we have in the past exercised that power in ways that have ended badly. Um perhaps not the goal, but we have often put our weight behind uh regimes that we've, you know, held up I don't think that's right about Iran, but I do think, for example, that we did weird things in the in you know in the early days of our conflict.

in Vietnam, you know, we interceded to remove DM and uh in sixty three and uh change the government in Vietnam to one because we didn't think that they were in the right frame. to do what we needed to do and that was c clearly a catastrophic

error, but that was regime change in pursuit of a of a that was a friendly that we were on they were on our s we were on their side and then we wanted to do regime change. We've had we've had that like we worked to change the political culture in El Salvador while we were helping El Salvador fight

fight the communist rebels in El Salvador successfully, as it happens. So there is regime there have been regime changes, often friendly. The other Sometimes it works, sometimes it's it's really bad. The United States is unique probably in world history in that almost all wars are fought for, you know, like two or three different reasons, right? Either seizure of land because of

Because that's what you do. And you wanna m you wanna glorify yourself and make your country bigger and grander and dominate your neighbors and that's you know what that's Alexander the Great, you know, like You go out in order that's that's that's your purpose. Um or you want resources, you wanna take somebody somebody's got something you want, you wanna take it from them'cause it's valuable.

either a you know, the route to the sea for uh trading and uh in the in the nineties as the industrial revolution progressed. getting hold of raw materials that are necessary for the creation of the modern industrial state. We, in the last 40 years, have been fighting wars in a totally unique fashion. You know, we go into we go we stage this massive war against Iran uh Iraq in nineteen ninety for the purpose of pushing Iraq out of a third country that it had invaded.

Which was great. But then we stopped. Because we had defined the war as Saddam Hussein needs to be out of Kuwait. We didn't say as Seth, which is why that war ended up being a failure long term, obviously, since we had to go in, we went in twelve years later. We didn't say, well, because he did this. He's gotta go.

Because if we let him stay there, he'll do a lot of other bad stuff. He's a bad actor. He's been a bad actor for twenty years. He started a war with Iran, you know, like We're not just sending in five hundred thousand people to fight in the Gulf to take out To to to remove him from Kuwait and then uh and then Colin Powell says to George Bush, we should stop now,'cause then we're just gonna, you know, like get everybody mad.

Or something like that, you know? Um so that's like the original the original sin in some ways was not doing what Seth says, which is the obvious logic is We just had to go fight a gigantic war, do this, something we didn't want to do, and the person who was responsible for it can't be left standing. It's crazy if you go back and think about it. What? forty seven countries go to war to get Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and then Saddam Hussein is still in power twelve years later?

What the hell was that about? That's not rational because we are not an imperial power, despite what everybody thinks, because we were so worried that that would look like imperialism. That we s that we stopped. And then we're like, oh yeah, it's okay, go kill the Kurds as they try to rise up against you. We're gonna let you fly your helicopters'cause you say you need to get around. So then you'll just, you know, kill thousands of Kurds.

That was our contribution to the good working order of the world after we had succeeded in this mission to get him out of Kuwait. So you know, we didn't pursue regime change there. ruinously. Had to go back. And similarly, we only we would never have gone into Afghanistan in a million years, except that they hosted Al Qaeda on their territory, and that's the other reason you go to war, which is you have to go to war to revenge an injury that is done you.

or to and reve I use the word revenge Honestly, like for some reason people think revenge is bad.

I don't think revenge is bad, you know. Um, we say in Judaism when somebody is murdered, May God may God avenge their blood. Like you don't treat a murder as though it is the same as a natural death and you don't treat an you know an aggressive act of war against you or, you know, murder of thousands of your people as though it is something for which you know, you should mourn and then feel sorry and think that the people who did it should ask for

Forgiveness. Um, so there's revenge, but then you want to then do something more, you know, useful or like better for the world. So you you have to go in, you have to take out the Taliban. And then the question is what what what follows that?

And as Charlie Wilson I quoted yesterday, as Charlie Wilson, Representative Charlie Wilson said, We did great and then we effed up the end game. Because we went in, we helped them, we set up elections, we did this, we did that, and then we took our eye off the ball. And we kinda left and then the Taliban started reconstituting itself and then at the end of the decade we had to go back in with a hundred and fifty thousand people.

to try to get Afghanistan out of the hands of the Taliban and then we we were in this war of attrition for another decade until Biden made the catastrophic error to pull us out, thus leading Putin to believe that he had a green light to go into Ukraine and th that thus the twenty twenties turned into the what the twenty twenties turned into.

Well and it I mean we are we are projecting forward um a lot because uh right now I think Trump is gonna do fine doing what he's done so far, which is saying, you know, I think he told CNN this morning, like we're beating the crap out of him. The newer wave is coming and he can he can talk about the ongoing um attacks and hits and what what we're achieving strategically.

But very soon he's going to have to speak to the domestic impact of this. Americans are f usually gonna be pretty tolerant for a few days or weeks about that. But then, you know, oil prices are gonna probably increase, already have started increasing. You have questions about um whether how whether and how many troops will be in the region. We they have announced that they're sending more troops to the region.

And there's KG on, you know, troops on the ground versus, you know, support troops. So those are completely legitimate questions for the American people to have of this administration and That's where I think um it's been interesting to see how much control over the public messaging they've had over Trump for the last few days. But he will have to talk about that. He will have to say, These are our goals. When we reach these goals, this will be will consider this a victory.

We're doing this, this and this and we can expect Yeah, you know, some loss of life, we can expect some turmoil in the markets, the stock market is down. So all of these are issues that come up in any conflict that we start to pursue. He has to be a good spokesman in these times. This is literally the president's role as commander in chief, is not just to lead this um extensive strategic mission with our allies, but to talk to the American people about what he's doing and why.

I wanna point out one other interesting thing that Kane said that speaks to a a different political issue that people have been raising. It seems to me a disingenuous thing. I mean I believe it constitutionally, but I don't believe in the i i in the seriousness of purpose of the people who are making the claim that Trump needed to go to Congress for an authorization of this effort. And he should have gone to Congress.

either gotten a declaration of war or some version of the authorization for the use of military force like we did uh with uh Iraq. Um cane. If I can find the quote, uh'cause I stupidly closed this file. Kane basically said that they needed to maintain um uh operational security, paramount, as we sought to maintain and protect the element of surprise.

So here's the question I want to ask you. While people say he should have gone to Congress. And you know, Josh Shapiro said he should have gone to Congress, and David French says he should have gone to Congress, and Andy McCarthy said he would have preferred That he went to Congress and all these senators say you should have gone to Congress. Okay, imagine he goes to Congress. Are we maintaining operational security and surprise?

Well and he did go he briefed the leadership, both Democrats and Republicans, in Congress. They they were briefed before this event. It's not as if they were caught, you know uh So by surprise. He they were bringing Literally, literally, if we are with troop with forces in the region Then Trump says, Hi, Congress, please vote on an authorization of military. Do it now, whatever.

And this was the point that was made in this background briefing that w which is extensively detailed in Axios by Mark Caputo and Barak Ravid, that um if you g go to Congress like They have all these ballistic missiles and our ships are sitting there. And our bases are sitting there and the Israelis are sitting and we're not moving. So in a circumstance like this, you want to move first.

to take out the offensive material that might hit you once you know that a war is starting. If we had a two week period in which we had a n national debate over whether or not to undertake this mission, a national debate, which is what essentially people are trying to use as a as a as a cover for their Keeping themselves at arm's length from saying whether or not they support what we're doing. Um that is ju is jeopardizes the safety of American forces worldwide and the ones in the theater.

from surprise Iranian attack, number one. And number two, and let's now talk talkless like You seriously expect that it wouldn't leak out of a meeting if there was like a big briefing of the Senate or of the of the House of what's going on and what we might do? I don't trust those guys. I don't tr now if we were in a better position and this weren't the world that we live in right now, they wouldn't.

But you think Elizabeth Warren wouldn't go out and tell everybody what what was being planned? Or Chris Van Hollen or somebody like that? They can't be allowed to know our sort of thing. My colleague Jack Goldsmith at AEI hit writes about this a lot. He he has a good sort of summary of where the legal justification is for this.

regardless of what you think about whether we should be there or not, there are plenty of legal justifications for the short term. He's got some time and some leeway as the commander in chief. I do think that you we i if this is gonna extend into a conflict of many months and more troops and more lives are lost

then that actually is where Congress needs to assert itself and say, You gotta come here and you gotta act you gotta talk about and lay out for us strategically what the plan is and that so we will see if this is a sort of Quick I I think Trump's preference, this administration's preference is for something quick and done and we're out of there.

Um but but we'll see. If he if he wants to send more troops and he's gonna need more munitions and we're gonna it's gonna look more like a traditional war, yes, he has to go to Congress. But for now he's got a window of time where I think you're right, John, a lot of those

claims are actual weasel words to prevent members of Congress themselves from taking a stand on what what we're doing in Iran. Just quickly just quickly Mike Johnson has said or said last night that the House would take up the War Powers Act.

on Thursday, I believe. So that uh and the War Powers Act as it as it's constituted, you pass the War Powers Act and the president has essentially sixty days to go and ask for a formal declaration.

of war. Uh that was that was how it was sort of like written in the seventies in an effort to make sure that we did not repeat the Vietnam situation in which we were at war in a conventional standing war with hundreds of thousands of people and Congress had done nothing to say that it was that it was except appropriate money, to say that it was

a war that we we should fight. So a as it happens, the War Powers Act kind of worked in reverse, basically giving presidents a free hand to act in some ways, or having a defensible claim, as Jack Goldsmith says that having a defensible claim that that that the that the thing the con congressional role is only necessarily triggered sixty days. after or you know, the the the full involvement of the legislative branch is only triggered sixty days after the beginning of hostilities. So, um

Uh that may happen this week. I don't know what it what the Senate is up to or will be about. Um And uh but that that's that's that's on the table.

I was just gonna say uh it's not just that Congress doesn't wanna have to take a stand uh on the war, it's that the Democrats and uh a few Republicans want to preserve the ability to um attack Trump over it uh should anything go wrong. Right. I I mean or or to jump on the bandwagon should everything go right. Bush in two thousand two said, weirdly enough, he said, I don't have to go to Congress. over Iraq because the uh what what what was passed in the wake of nine eleven

gives me authorization to go into Iraq. But you know what? I wanna go because I want he said very like ominously, he said, I want the Senate really or basically, but I want the I want Congress To be a participant, I want them to say yay or nay. Like if if they say nay and we don't go, I want the public to know who said this was a good idea and who said this was a bad idea.

Now this may be amazing to people thinking about it twenty three or twenty four years later, but that scared the Democrats. Half the Democrats voted to authorize the war in Iraq. Right. Twenty four, twenty-five Democrats voted, so it was a seventy-seven senators voted to authorize the war in Iraq. So it worked. That was then when it looked like if you didn't do that, and obviously we would win, they thought, so you better jump on the bandwagon. That was safer than not.

Uh and then of course it turned out that it was politically vastly more complicated and Hillary Clinton lost to Barack Obama. Ogu, of course, didn't have to cast that vote or not cast that vote because he wasn't in the Senate yet. But that that was the politics then. Now Congress irresponsible, refusing to play its proper role. Republicans are worse as uh as as bad about this as Democrats were under Biden.

Terrible s set of circumstances. But, you know, yeah. So uh They've now gotten to this point where it's like, what can I do to keep my hands as clean as possible or like To not get you know, to not get have to m sully myself with actual politics. All I want to do is performative stuff.

That's all anybody wants from me anyway. Right? So um, you know, maybe they this will back them into a greater sense of responsibility, though I don't There's another interesting difference between uh the Bush and Iraq and and what's happening today, um and that's in the international politics in terms of um uh international institutions. uh the w we're not even pretending uh that they have a legitimate role to play here, right? Bush, despite the the the cowboy Uh cowboy diplomacy uh knock.

was actually very, very desperate to get uh the UN on board, to get Europe on board with um inspections uh i i in Iraq really thought

the vet if if we we wanted to avoid war desperately, so we went multiple resolutions to the UN to say no we need to get inspectors back in there. We d we we're we're hearing that Saddam has everything over and over And, you know, J Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder, uh, you know, European leaders just said, you know, they they they they they pushed by by killing these resolutions, they pushed Bush into this

In t into the into the final last ditch effort which was which was which was war. Um What you know. W the w at the UN we saw b people fighting over this w over the war after the fact or this weekend. But uh Oh it was beautiful though. It was beautiful because it was Danny Danon taking a two by four and bashing it over the head. of the Iranian guy sitting there who said, Stop yelling at me and he's like, Stop killing your own people, you piece of garbage.

Like it was one of the great moments of all time. Finally an Israeli gets to like bang his shoe on the po on the podium you know, in a position of total moral high ground with an Iranian You know, hack creep. You know, complaining complaining that they that that Israel was being uncivil.

Yeah, a much better use of the UN than than trying to get crooked European leaders to do something. Yeah. Right, exactly. And there's also how we define multilateral, right? I mean Yeah. There's plenty of multilateralism going on. UAE's not siding with Iran. No, no, no.

If we have to do a multilateral coalition that includes the Arab states and the Jewish state, uh that's multilateral to me. It's it maybe it didn't go through the UN, but it's like okay, so you know, Starmer is not part of it, but Kerr Starmer is not the you know that hey that's not my you know barometer for whether something is unilateral or multilateral. He's free to stay out of it. But I think they did this to Bush wrongly too. I think Bush

w what he put he was putting together a multilateral coalition. And in Afghanistan we obviously had a multilateral coalition. I mean that we had NATO at our back, we had but we, you know, he He was the the war began. The war responding to nine eleven began with an undeniably Multilateral coalition. Countries saying we are all America, we're you know, we all have your back, NATO there, you know, everybody sending troops, all this other stuff.

Um and so I think honestly Bush got a bad rap on the unilateral stuff too. I don't think it was ever really true. Um but I and I think now it's like if you can look at this and say, you know, it's unilateral because the US and Israel agree or something like that. But the truth is that these these people, these critics, especially on the left, because of the split, this weird partisan coding, of the Saudi Iran split in the Middle East. Where you know Republicans felt

You know, they were gonna support the Saudis, Democrats supported the Iranians. This was during the the Iran nuclear deal negotiations, it really became a partisan flash point and just kind of stuck there. Um you know, this situation is like you've they've just been ignoring the allies that are part of the multilateral coalition. The Jordanians scrambled to shoot down Iranian rockets.

at Israel during the first, you know, a year and some ago or whatever it was. And they did and they did it this weekend too. Fifty From Jordanian territory, fifty Iranian ballistic missiles were were shot down. So that of course is a science fictional multilateral coalition we we have going here. The United States, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait. Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, and Bahrain, Jordan, Egypt, and Israel. And Israel and Israel.

With the spa with the space lasers if you want to make the science fiction coalition really, you know. Right. Anyway, so I mean, you know, the hell with the UN. Like this is this is the formation of an entirely new understanding of what it means to make alliances. in the twenty first century. The UN is a r is an artifact and a relic of the post World War Two era. You know how long ago that was? The UN was established? It's like, you know, almost eighty years ago.

And this is the region. Aside from being a bad actor, this is the theater. Right. The theater of war, they're on our side, part of our coalition. People miles out of it who are not participating right are grumbling about it. But that's that's a ridiculous thing is to replace the people who are sitting there having missiles fired at them by Iran.

thing'cause we'll use Starmer as the example and then we can we can we can end but I mean this is a domestic political problem for Keir Starmer who is in a domestic political crisis. in which having won this colossal landslide only a year ago is seeing his entire coalition collapse. And he may not survive much longer, and his only hope is to somehow stanch the bleeding of the far left and the and the Muslims who voted him in.

And so he's not making decisions based on Britain's national interest as is understood in terms of the world order. That's a that's a no brainer. uh, you know, like s siding against Iran. I mean Iran just shot thirty thousand people in the street. It's not a hard call. Unless you're worried about your boroughs going to the greens, as happened last week. while the anti immigration party that isn't the Tories surges into the lead.

I mean it's a very you know, this is a very odd s situation in which there's n no principle attaches to what Starmer is up to. He it's a desperate effort to cling to power. So it's pretty dismissible. It's not like, oh, you know, what Bush is doing it's a cowboy diplomacy and Trump. Even though you could say that about Trump much more readily. That's why I said that Trump's anti regime change logic ends up being way more hawkish.

Then the regime change logic does, and I just want to cite one uh unexpectedly, I'm going to cite a publication I would not have cited before, but which has been crushing it over the last six weeks, and that is Compact under the leadership of Matthew Schmidt. Schmitz has a piece today called Trump was always an Iran hawk, and he goes through systematically, I think I strongly recommend you read it, everything Trump has said about Iran since nineteen eighty.

In 1980, what historians Charlie Laterman and Brendan Sims describe as Trump's earliest recorded statement on foreign policy to a national audience. Trump said in an interview with NBC that America no longer commanded international respect'cause of the hostage crisis. And Trump said we you know, we should have gone in there w he was asked, should we have gone in there with troops and brought our boys out? And Trump replied, I absolutely feel that, yes.

And he went on eighty seven, eighty eight, two thousand, it's like, we need to go in, crush those Iranians and take their oil. He has had this view for forty five years. It hasn't changed. It's a consistent opinion that he has had about Iran, that Iran played us for fools and suckers, and it did, and it has, and he's right.

And now, you know, so I it's a very interesting thing. No, I think it's such an important point because uh um a lot of what we're seeing on the right, on the disaffected right, is all this I didn't vote for this. Uh, and then they they play, as I said on Twitter, this th they they sort of overlay real world politics with their Dungeons and Dragons uh idea of what's happening, you know. Trump got co opted by the Israelis.

Vance was always a a a a a a crypto neocon, uh, you know, in hiding and all this. I wish. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And they're just not looking at any any of the actual real world circumstances and contingencies here and pressures. Um and they're missing the entire picture. And it's b the childness childishness that uh they're evincing is astounding. They also seem to forget Trump's age.

and that he marinated in the popular culture of the eighties, which was just full I mean, I remember pictures in my high in my elementary school yearbook of all the high school guys with like, get the Ayatollah signs. I mean this was part of popular culture too. And he was very much in the mainstream seeing um Iran as a constant villain. I mean the Shiite Muslim was always the villain in all these big blockbuster movies. So he

He's old. Just because his methods of politics are quite new to our system and and of recent vintage, they have forgotten and actually many of them on the New Right were never you know, they they were not even a spark in their parents' eyes. I do wanna just to just to piggyback a little bit on Seth's um

and John's absolute wonderful raking over the coals, uh the uselessness of the of the UN. An old recommendation, I think I made it years ago, but if people are interested in understanding just how long this rot has been i uh going on there. Um what the UN's founded in what, nineteen forty five? In nineteen sixty seven the wonderful novelist Shirley Hazard, who had worked for the Secretariat, wrote a wonderful book called People in Glass Houses that's just

tears to shreds the UN bureaucracy and everything she diagnosed then has only gotten worse. Um Since so if you're interested in it kind of good. That is an amazing that is an amazing book. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for that. All right. So there we have a recommendation, Shirley Hazard. Yeah, off the cuff, but yeah. I might have recommended this before, so I apologize.

as uh the the uh Austrian Chancellor as as a basically as a Nazi uh transitive being also a great novelist. He's a great novelist. Yeah. He had been a sec the Secretary General of the UN. Yeah. She's a great novelist in general. If you haven't read her work, it's well worth well worth reading her novels too. Yes. Okay. So we'll uh we'll be back tomorrow for a