View from Washington: Trump's ill-fated attempt to copy Israel's 'mowing the grass' strategy

Destruction in Israel: The flip side of Trump's “strategy”
Photo: publics

Coming out of the Global War on Terror, the Trump administration seems to have arrived at the conclusion that the U.S. military failed in its objectives because the nation’s martial prowess was politically restrained, ‘The Responsible Statecraft’ writes.

Administration officials, principally “Department of War” Secretary Pete Hegseth, assert that the rules of engagement throughout the various theaters of the Global War on Terror constrained the military’s combat prowess and thereby prevented victory.

Similarly, the Trump Administration has come to claim that the surge of “wokeness” eroded competency and therefore mission success in the Global War on Terror. Finally, a perennial complaint of conservative Republicans returned: the previous Democratic presidents “gutted” the military and kept their budgets woefully low.

In his second administration, President Trump’s solution to the “forever war” problem was to wage war, often under the narrative cover of euphemism, without clear, achievable political end states in mind. While Trump is far from the first president to initiate hostilities without explicit authorization from Congress, nor the first to vigorously employ airpower, he has repurposed these tools for open-ended geopolitical coercion.

From Yemen to Iran, Venezuela, and then Iran again, Trump sees military force as a tool of first use rather than last resort. In all these cases, his administration has initiated military force without clear end states in mind.

In this latest and biggest war, Trump is once again waging a war without a clearly articulated and achievable political end state. In the war’s opening days, he and his cabinet have floated everything from regime change to regime capitulation, continued negotiations to unconditional surrender. Similarly, supporters of this war from the president on down have assured us that the threat emanating from Iran was both imminent and enduring.

In a blatant example of real-life double speak, the President asserts that by starting a war with Iran, he is in fact ending one, a “47-year-long” conflict.

In light of this absurdity, the administration and its supporters have fallen back on the U.S. military’s success as evidence of the war’s necessity. In addition to its amorphous political agenda, the administration also insists its mission is limited to destroying Iran’s naval and missile forces and, once again, “obliterating” its nuclear program. As proof of their success, officials cite the destruction of Iranian military assets.

The result is that the Trump Administration has committed the United States to a condition of endless war. Not only is such a policy an affront to Trump’s campaign promises, it is materially and morally unsound — and unnecessary for securing America’s national interests. During his first term, the president declared that “great nations do not fight endless wars.” He was right. He should remember that now.

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