So it finally happened: the MM ran out of patience and decided to twat the MMs, though this was perhaps a little late for the tens of thousands already killed by the regime. There is of course a vast backstory on all this, see for example Reflections on recent events in the Middle East, but perhaps recent events in South America are also relevant.Ilya Somin thinks Donald Trump's Iran War is Unconstitutional and he is likely to be correct, in principle. However both House and Senate have rejected stop-the-war resolutions, and the armed forces are obeying their commander, so there is no practical constraint. And as long as nothing terrible happens - a large number of USAnians killed, or the price of petrol staying high for too long, the horror - I doubt the public cares enough to matter.
Doing all this in violation of international law is something I covered in Reflections. But I'd add that coming from the lawyer-heavy UK, where nothing can be done, I feel that the time has come, if not to kill all the lawyers, at least not to leave them in charge.
I'm in favour of this war, at least, when compared to all other practical courses of action or inaction. Diplomacy was obviously a waste of time, no matter how many highly paid high status elites it kept in lucrative employment. I opposed the Iraq war at the time, by actually bothering to go and protest, but I think far too many commentators are too ready to relearn the lessons of the last war: blah blah quagmire blah vague objectives blah and so on. Richard Hanania suggests that Killing bad people is an achievable goal that the US is good at and probably has positive effects on the world. We should do it more often, and do much less of many other aspects of foreign policy, and that seems reasonable. The most likely outcome is a weakened Iran, left with essentially no missile stockpiles or production facilities for same, and less capacity to export terrorism. The good outcome is the MMs get overthrown. The bad outcome is... I dunno: we take out some more schools, a pile of Iranian drones get through and destroy major infractructure and kill piles of Yanquis, and we retreat in confusion? Perhaps you, dear reader, can think of a plausible bad outcome; da meeja certainly hasn't presented any. Note how convenient it is that the Ivans are stuck in the quagmire of their own creation and are far too weak to cause any mischief.
Doing all this in violation of international law is something I covered in Reflections. But I'd add that coming from the lawyer-heavy UK, where nothing can be done, I feel that the time has come, if not to kill all the lawyers, at least not to leave them in charge.It becomes ever more obvious to me - as I think I said in Poling Pales - how central the Iranian poison is to the problems of the Middle East and how much better off the region - and of course even more so the people of Iran - would be, if they just settled down to tend their own garden.
Updates
I expect things to continue to evolve...
2026/3/10: The Economist tells us that "Donald Trump must stop soon" and this is the kind of armchair-warrior stuff that is in a way amusing, in its combination of taking-itself-oh-so-seriously and total irrelevance. But it is a good source for the common complaint that Trump needs to "define what you want to achieve". I don't think that's true: the general direction is of course clear, and Trump has said that he'd like to end up with regime change, but I see no reason why that should be a firmly-fixed objective. If it turns out to be really hard, why should he really be obliged to keep pounding away? Continuing, "War aims direct the campaign" and this is true but pointless: the initial aim was to take out the top MM; then destroy Iranian military infrastructure, and so on and so forth; and these aims dictate the current actions, regardless of the final aims. "Strategically, his failure to say what Epic Fury is for is its biggest vulnerability" is bullshit.
Refs
* Wealth of Nations: This masterwork is turning 250. It’s needed now more than ever; 250 Years Later, The Wealth of Nations Still Has Lessons To Offer the Political Class.
