Some Hard Questions About the Iran Situation

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We need an uncomfortable conversation about American military strategy. First, let me be clear: I support our military and the men and women who wear the uniform. I support a military with the best equipment and weapons available. The problem isn’t our troops or equipment. It is the strategy handed to them.

Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan—and now Iran—raise the same question: What exactly are we trying to accomplish, and what happens when limited military action isn’t enough?

World War II was fundamentally different. We entered with one unmistakable objective: total victory. We mobilized the nation, crushed the enemy’s military, occupied Germany and Japan, dismantled their governments and stayed long enough to establish an entirely new political order. Modern American wars have generally been something else: limited wars fought with unlimited political ambiguity.

We don’t want to conquer a country, occupy it indefinitely, destroy its infrastructure or suffer enormous American casualties. Those are understandable positions. But they create a strategic problem:

If you aren’t willing to go all the way to victory, then what exactly is victory?

Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated that America could win battles while still losing strategically. We spent enormous amounts of money and sacrificed thousands of American lives yet achieved remarkably little lasting change. Now we find ourselves in Iran. We certainly cannot allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons and the missiles capable of delivering them. That is a legitimate national-security concern. But it increasingly appears that Iran’s capabilities and determination were underestimated, leaving us in an uncomfortable impasse.

So where do we go from here? We need to admit the possibility that the original calculation was wrong.

And if military force becomes necessary, there must be a clearly defined objective—and a plan for what happens afterward. The greatest mistake would be continuing down the same road simply because we have already spent so much.

America doesn’t need another war without an exit strategy.

We owe that to the taxpayers who pay for these wars—and especially to the young Americans who are asked to fight them.