by Geoff Vasil

The first task in the American and Israeli war against Iran is to open the Strait of Hormuz. This isn’t an impossible military task. It simply entails a cold, hard slog up the coast, reducing by attrition Iranian radar, speedboat, drone and missile sites.

For Donald Trump to lose the military engagement in Iran would be an American tragedy. Never mind he forgot to sell the war to the American public and Congress. Maybe he thought a 4-day war’s results would speak for themselves. I might be misremembering, but George Herbert Walker Bush spent about 6 months selling his First Gulf War and about 4 months actually fighting it, to a semblance of victory. My flawed memory doesn’t recall any war at all America engaged in which didn’t include a prequel to war, a long build-up and more importantly an argument or explanation of why it was in America’s national interest. The secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos might be an exception, but “Ho Chi Minh Road” was kind of self-explanatory in the end. Did fourth American president Madison make the case against Canadian terrorism and British imperialism in the War of 1812? I don’t know, I wasn’t born yet, but I kind of think he did make that case to the American people in that weirdest of all American wars. America’s third president Thomas Jefferson definitely did make the case in the two Barbary Pirate Wars before that..

Donald Trump as the most significant American president since George Washington can’t afford to lose. Of course he never wanted to be a “wartime president” and he probably isn’t cut by nature or nurture to be a great military leader. Maybe there was some hubris involved in the technically good military kidnapping of the Venezuelan president a month before; if we can do that, we can do anything.