I don’t often agree with Kagan but he seems to be right that this is what Trump is hoping for. He started a war without a plan, wasted billions of dollars in equipment, failed to prepare obvious targets for defense, which resulted in unnecessary deaths of American soldiers, hollowed out the Pentagon’s ability to assess targets, which resulted in us murdering over 150 civilians, mostly girls, when we bombed their elementary school in Minab, handed Iran incredible strategic victory by allowing them to take de facto control of the Strait of Hormuz and show that we are powerless to stop it, exposed the strategic isolation of the U.S. that his antagonism to our allies has brought us in, and now he’s trying to slink away with some cockamamie cover that he’s going to use to claim victory. The Iran hawks are clamoring for him to “finish the job” but he’s already finished, and Iran knows it. He doesn’t have a mandate to send ground troops, and even he he orders more bombing, it will be a cosmetic tactic designed to disguise the defeat. What can you possibly accomplish by trying the exact same thing after it failed the first time except now you have depleted a lot of the ammo and Congress has gotten more assertive about not expanding the war?
