Dumber than Vizzini

Ah, you fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is "never get involved in a land war in Asia."

—The Princess Bride

Every Republican administration in this century has gotten us into land wars in Asia, and every Democratic administration has pulled out of them. Seeing a pattern? And yet, this one has got to be the dumbest one yet. No one knows what our goals are, apparently up to and including the OAFPOTUS.

Adam Kinzinger: "[e]liminating a dictator is not the same thing as having a strategy. War is not a television episode. It is not a moment designed to generate a headline or project toughness. War is the most serious decision a nation can make. When the United States uses military force, Americans deserve clarity. They deserve to know why we are fighting, what the objective is, and how the mission ends. Right now, that clarity does not exist. Explain the mission to the American people. Define the objective. Show how success will be measured. And most importantly, demonstrate that there is a plan for what comes after the bombs stop falling."

Julia Ioffe: "Behind the bravado and the patriotic chest-thumping, what, exactly, are we doing? What are America’s goals and how are we achieving them? It’s hard not to find joy in the footage of Iranians celebrating the ayatollah’s death, especially after he had shot so many of them in the streets just over a month ago—but we’ve seen such footage before. We saw it a decade ago in Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt; two decades ago in Iraq and Afghanistan; and three decades ago in Russia: the overwhelming relief that occurs when a people brutalized by a repressive dictator collectively realize that the dictator is gone. It’s a beautiful moment that, in recent history, has proved to be rather fleeting. Life is not a movie, and it keeps going after the villain is vanquished and the credits roll. Without real institutional alternatives—and even with American support—countries can easily descend into civil war or revert back to autocracy. Joy and relief are not antidotes to the darker sides of human nature and the laws of political gravity they create."

Glenn Kessler: "A functioning democracy conducts its foreign policy based on the nation’s interests. That’s because elected representatives, such as a president, should make decisions based on the long-term goals of the country, not the leader’s whims. Foreign policy based on personality is not only damaging to the long-term interests of the United States but also deeply corrupting. When policy depends on presidential moods, the country eventually pays the price."

Brian Beutler: "It’s slightly reductive, though defensible, to suggest Trump attacked Iran to distract from the Epstein files. But it’s quite clear that Trump views setting the news agenda for the country to be politically paramount. Attacking Iran...shakes the snow globe in ways that might make partisan politics less turbulent for him and his allies in Washington. If Democrats understand (as they should) that Republicans view politics as war by other means, they should also be prepared to pre-empt these slanders. If they want Trump and the GOP to suffer politically for this war, they need to understand it, the way Trump does, as a brickbat of domestic politics. Whose Benghazi will this be?"

Josh Marshall: "What strikes me in these poll numbers and my general read of the moment is not so much the opposition to the conflict, though that’s certainly there, as how irrelevant most Americans see this conflict to anything that is happening in the country. You’ve got economic concerns over affordability, health care, the long half life of the shock of the pandemic. You have the domestic political situation, which many Democrats see as an existential battle over the future of democracy and the country itself. MAGA may be thinking about crime, the culture war, mass deportation and more. But neither of these worldviews hold much place for a regime change war against Iran, especially one that seems to be escalating rapidly. Trump might get lucky and hasten the fall of the Iranian government by killing Khamenei. But I don’t get the sense much of the public cares. A clear majority opposes the whole thing. But it doesn’t seem like ingrained anti-war sentiment, the kind of thing that will bring people into the streets, at least not now. It reads more like a grand 'what the F is this about.'"

In other news of a perhaps ill-advised decision, albeit one that will be much easier to change, the government of British Columbia will start permanent daylight saving time on Sunday, with 93% of 223,000 people surveyed agreeing with the change. Let's check in with them at the end of the year when the sun rises at 9:07 am in December.