Just to comment on #2, as a Jew Khamenei wanted me, my family, my relatives, and any other Jews dead or unacceptably subjugated. This is in addition to the internal human rights violations and killing of Iranians who dared to dissent.
I think this is why across the spectrum, except in the far left and right wing as you mention, politicians are saying something along the lines of “Khamenei was evil and Iran can’t have a nuke but we don’t want a forever war and maybe Trump should consult Congress.” In other words, no objection on a moral basis, just a cost and procedural basis
Only extreme nutjobs think Khamenei was anything other than evil, but his death would be a lot more meaningful if the administration had even a semblance of a plan for how to get a better government into place there. All levers of power and force in Iran are still controlled by the regime and some social media posts aren't going to change that. A country being bombed by enemies, killing scores of children, tends to band people within that country together, not incite a new revolution that shakes out in the enemy's favor. Even competent well-intentioned administrations have a great deal of trouble implementing positive regime change.
Iran will be temporarily reduced by this, but if I were a Jew in the Middle East I wouldn't be feeling good at all about the current war. The one upside with Khamenei was that he was incompetent, as most 86 year old religious dictators are. There's an unfortunately high chance Iran emerges from this with an equally evil but more competent ruler.
Another likely outcome after Trump declares victory and walks away in a couple weeks is a failed state that provides a breeding ground for terrorists.
Trump isn't going to bother with "getting a better government into place there." That's their problem. And that was the mistake Rumsfeld and Cheney made. Trump may support Pahlavi's son, who seems to want the job, more fool he since as the British used to say, "they always kill the emir," that is, the puppet the colonial power puts in place.
From the fact that the Israelis today bombed the SECOND meeting of what leaders are left while they were trying to pick a new Supreme Leader, the strategy seems to be to take out layer after layer of theocracy types till democracy has a chance, and a new kind of government the Iranians will have to do, if they can.
Regime change from the air -- works for me. What does NOT work is us going in there and trying to change a culture we know nothing about and turning everyone there against us. I think Trump well realizes that: we all do, by now, after so many failures trying just that.
Trump seems to care about peace greatly and seems to be leading the world to a more peaceful place !!! Trump also seems to care a lot about drugs. As mention in a previous post 70% of all drug deaths are from fentanyl and in 2025 all 50 states had lower Fentanyl deaths( 21% decrease on average). Opioid deaths are down 34%
This is a misleading comment on both points. On the former, I would just say, judge someone based on their actions, not their words. Saying the word “peace” a lot means nothing when your actions are increasingly hawkish.
As for drug deaths, looking at the actual numbers, the decreases in 2025 were merely a continuation of the same downward trend-line that clearly began well before Trump took office. And the post-pandemic spike that occurred also pretty clearly began during the last year of Trump’s first term.
I think it’s more than procedural, though. Going to Congress demands that the executive branch has actually thought out the reasons for the attack, war, whatever, and has thought out the risk/reward analysis adequately. And because people in Congress will have to live with their votes, there will be some measure of critical thinking (though for sure some will just vote yea or nay without really thinking at all). The morality itself can be complicated, depending on the odds you attach to various possible outcomes.
Khamenei can be a terrible person, with blood on his hands and we can have a legal and moral objections to killing leaders of countries (and religious sects). Legal: no state has the right to unilaterally kill another’s leader. Even in war the goal should be to capture and try. Moral: criminals should face justice, justice can only be served by man through a just system (trial, and jury). Extrajudicial killings can never bring justice, justice victims of crimes deserve.
So, not the objection is not just a cost and procedural and my view is neither far right nor far left (it’s apolitical or dead center if political at al). War can never deliver justice, it only deliver a resolution. Justice is what comes after war.
War is not about "legal." War is about killing people: that's the point of war. Killing the war leaders is an obvious way to try to win, and Iran tried twice to assassinate Trump, so fair is fair. 2000 years ago Cicero said, "Law is silent in war," and the Romans were big on law. But "legal" and "moral" are just not words that are useful in any discussion of war.
4) Duration and intensity of media coverage (largely driven by 1-3)
The comparison to Libya deserves more attention. Substantial air strikes and very limited special forces ground operations resulted in regime change. This transformed Libya into a failed state. But the impact on public opinion was negligible. #1, minimal lives lost. #2, no real impact on quality of life. #3, seen as effective in the beginning and then fell out of public awareness, due to #4, not a major story after the initial action.
By contrast, Biden's evacuation from Afghanistan appears to have hurt him due to #s 3 and 4.
If Israel and Trump can compete the campaign in 1-2 months, without major disruptions to the global economy, and without a post-war Iran driving frequent negative news, the impact may be small.
If the war hurts Americans by disrupting the global economy, the war drags on for months, and/or events keep occurring that keep Iran in front page headlines, I suspect Trump will regret this decision.
There's also another significant difference between Libya and Iran. You'll remember President Obama saying "we'll lead from behind," that was because France and the UK were the impetus behind the intervention and they provided much of the firepower.
In the case of Iran, we have no allies supporting the war except for Israel, and the US is doing much of the heavy lifting, and it's costing American lives and costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.
In Libya the only American lives lost were in the BENGHAZ!1!! attack, and the Republicans used that incident as a political cudgel for half a decade.
This is an odd assertion. The US led the operation for the first two weeks. France and UK provided a lot of the fire powers, but the US was still the largest contributor, just for ordnance. The US also provided the vast majority of critical support that is lacking from the rest of NATO like ISR, targeting, aerial refueling, SEAD, naval assets. If you think the bill was equally shared, or even picked up mostly by the rest of NATO, well this is not accurate.
As far as NATO involvement in this current fracas, it’s more likely they were just not invited. NATO is not required for every intervention. Nor does it magically justify the endeavor.
I think 3 in this case will be judged by the cost (we’re spending millions/billions on this and not our own people, again???) vs the benefit (how is there more benefit now than before the nuclear strike, and even less benefit now than when we had the nuclear deal in place with real monitoring. Even setting aside my political biases, how is there more benefit now destabilizing the region than after the targeted strikes that immobilized Iran’s nuclear program). Biden’s age hurt him far more than sillily and incompetently carrying out Trumps Afghanistan deal.
I think another key thing to point out is there were more organized, viable entities in opposition to the incumbent regime in Libya than there are currently in Iran. Even if we were to just keep killing successive leaders, it remains to be seen where pro-democracy forces would even come from to take control of the rubble.
There is Upside if things playout well !! USA no war or foreign policy success since world war 2 !! A success could be much more important than the pundits believe !!!
Granted it took about 10 years for us to realize that it may not have been (thanks to 9/11), but, the actual war itself was a great success..& waiting for 10 years after a conflict to judge it gives time for a lot of other things, some of them not related to the initial conflict, to change minds.
FWIW, re your opening about whether to use the word "war," here's what the AP said, which sounds right -- they agree with you that's the right word to use:
"The Associated Press will use the word "war" to refer to the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, and Iran's retaliation. This decision reflects the scope and intensity of the fighting. The Merriam-Webster definition of war is quite broad: "A state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations," or "a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism."...
"It is acceptable to use the term "war" to refer to the conflict in all contexts, including in headlines, photo captions and video scripts. Lowercase the word war. AP capitalizes that word only as part of a formal name. The terms "conflict" and "attacks" may also be used to describe the situation. Include specific details of the military action." "
It's a war by now, for sure, I'd say. And getting pretty large. The question was probably whether it's a "punitive expedition," such as when the British burned the White House during the War of 1812, or the takeout of Iran's nuclear facilities last June.
It’s laughable to me, the pretzels I see Trump supporters online are tying themselves into to say this isn’t a war. If we apply the logic they’d seemingly like us to consistently, then the U.S. arguably hasn’t been involved in a war since 1945. Which would make Trump’s campaigning on “no new wars” look pretty silly, in retrospect. Either this is in fact a new war, or Trump ran on being against something that hasn’t happened since before he was born.
One way Trump could be hurt by Iran is it lets Democrats say he’s out of touch. Most people care about affordability and don’t believe he’s focused on it. Starting a war is a great way to amplify that perception.
Yeah so apparently trump's plan to address the affordability crisis is to cause oil and gas prices to spike? At a time when household power bills are already spiking in part from Trump pushing data center build outs and cutting power generation projects??
It also doesn't help that trump and his top flunkies loudly and repeatedly called him the Candidate of Peace during the campaign. I get that his ardent fans will excuse literally anything from him, but him so clearly violating a major campaign promise won't help with the marginal supporters.
It's not just the Democrats. There are many America First MAGAs feeling betrayed by Trump's Iranian war. Trump promised no more wars. Stephen Miller told those supporters that it was Kamala Harris who was going to start an Iranian war. Trump has a long record of criticizing US involvement in Middle East conflicts, and Trump's supporters believed what he said.
Now they know Trump meant none of it, and lots right wing influencers are voicing their displeasure loudly.
The 3-time Trump voters probably don’t leave him for this. Where this is risky for him is with the early-20s, Joe Rogan/Theo Vaughn-listening bros, who cast their first ever Presidential vote in 2024 for Trump, don’t really remember the Bush administration, and were still in middle/high school for most of Trump’s first term.
I don’t really see them as the type to be particularly likely to show up to vote in the midterms to begin with, but if Trump were going to buck the historic trend of the president’s party losing seats in the midterms, he’d probably need them to. So Trump only taking 13 months to make all their favorite podcasters and TikTok influencers look stupid for believing the “no new wars” spiel isn’t going to help turn those people out.
There is a big difference between the traditional model and what Trump has done. In these previous conflicts, the President at the time came before the American people and made his case for war and laid out their reasoning why our country should act and then asked for the congress and people's approval and support.
Trump has done no such thing. He had the perfect opportunity to make his case during the State of the Union speech, but all we got out of those incoherent ramblings was to include only one paragraph about Iran. In that short section of a nearly two hour long diatribe, no mention was made of an eminent threat of Iran against the US. No mention of why we needed to do regime change. All he said was Iran has been an American adversary for 47 years, but nothing to indicate it's worse now than a decade ago or three decades ago. He also included two sentences that Iran is oppressive against its people. What's not included is any explanation why the US forces needed to start bombing three days later.
Now that Trump's war has started, the goals of his war is on constant rotation. This was documented by The Economist’s Middle East Correspondent Gregg Carlstrom. First was freedom for the Iranian people, but not why American soldiers need to die for that and we need to spend tens of billions of taxpayer's dollars to get it done. Then the narrative shifted to "end it in two or three days" and then might be "four to five weeks." First it was no regime change, then it was regime change with his choices to assume power after the death of the Ayatollah, but they were also killed. So now Trump has no idea of who will take power.
What's worse is Trump refuses to answer questions from reporters about the war, and SecDef Hegseth gives a presentation that clearly shows he has no idea of what the plan is.
So the American public have no clue what Trump and his administration are doing, and Trump is doing nothing to clarify anything.
This is a long explanation why Trump got no polling bump in the first few days of his war. If this follows the usual trend for war polling from the past, it only gets worse for Trump from here.
Tim_Tec said, ""The traditional model: Rally-around-the-flag"
Very traditional, Civil War, in fact.
**********************************
Rally 'round the flag, boys
Rally once again
Shouting the Battle Cry of Freedom --
The Union together, hurrah boys, hurrah
Down with the traitors
And up with the Stars ----
**********************************
But in 2026, what flag is that? The Palestinian flag, according to a lot of Democrats, and they sure are not going to rally 'round the Stars and Stripes. They never do.
Myself, I'm delighted that Iran has now lost the nukes and missiles it needed to hit Omaha.
Who know who the Democratic Party holds no allegiance to? Putin and "Bibi" Netanyahu. They have Trump dangling by their strings. They pull the strings and Trump does his little dance. Because Trump is working for Putin, "Bibi" and Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman aka Prince Bone Saw and the MAGA sheep follow right along with the betrayal America and the American patriots in the Democratic Party. These are who pledges allegiance to the Constitution and they honor the flag. Not Russia's flag. No Israel's flag.
Iran was no closer to getting nukes now than 10 years ago when Trump was first in office. But that time he had actual American patriots in command of our armed forces and not a drunken rapist and a confederacy of dunces. In the first term, SecDef Mattis and General Mark Milley told Trump Iran was no threat to the US and attacking them was a fools errand. Now the fools are running the place and we're in another quagmire war of choice in the Middle East. The very thing Trump campaigned against. But he's a pathological liar and nobody should have believed him.
Oh, there are many lessons to be learn. The main take-home message is MAGAs have no claim on patriotism.
They are totally subservient and worship a convicted felon and a rapist who has no loyalty to our country. Trump will sellout you, me, and America to our worst enemies in a second if the price is right. And nary a contrary peep will be heard from the MAGA cult. They will cheer him on like no-one has seen before.
Isn't Occam's razor here that the administration is skirting calling this a war (even though Trump himself has used the word) so they have plausible deniability when they get called out for bypassing Congress?
The Saudi’s, UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, and Qua-tar generally prefer stability even while aligning strategically with U.S. positions.
They are quietly rejoicing. They realize that Iran wants to dominate the Middle East. They want Iran destabilized so they lose their nuclear and ballistic capabilities for the foreseeable future. Also, since Iran supplies China with 90% of its oil and Russia with many of its weapons, the war in Ukraine may end sooner. America MAY come out of this with greater world peace than in the last 35 years. Time will be the barometer. This war is about weakening China and Russia. That’s the real reason.
I think there's another take on things. This might help Russia. If oil prices spike, that helps the Russian cash flow. Their economy is tittering on collapse and their oil revenue was at a five year low. If Iranian oil stops flowing to China, Russia can sell more to them at a higher price they're getting now. Also Russia is less dependent on Iran for weapons. Russia has taken over much of the production of Shahed drones.
I think this is sadly correct. Iran no longer provides Russia much support and the higher oil prices are going to greatly help Russia's economy.
It's so frustrating seeing how weak Putin has gotten himself over the war in Ukraine, and knowing we won't capitalize on it. Even with trump doing what he can for Putin the Russian economy is teetering, a concerted effort would have a real shot of pushing it over the edge and forcing an end to the war on good terms for Ukraine, but obviously this president has zero interest in defeating Russia and defending freedom.
The whole US/Ukraine situation is a disgrace. Rick Wilson related a conversation he had with a contact in the military, and this person felt like the total cost of starting the war with Iran was $500 billion. Even if it's only a third or half of that, it's obscene Trump can spend that much money to help Israel with their goal of regime change in Iran and Trump refuses to give Ukraine a single dollar.
I'm pretty sure that a change in oil prices from $72 a barrel to $80 a barrel reflects higher oil prices. Average price of gasoline has gone up 11 cents a gallon and is now over $3 a gallon- Higher than one year ago. Reuters says some analysts are predicting oil could spike at $100 a barrel
Why would oil spike ?? Conflict to be short & straits will be kept open. Plenty of oil & other energy(nuclear, solar etc...)available. Trump would not have made move without support of other Arab countries & oil producers. they will rapidly increase production as needed. They not only want Iran leadership gone, they want Putin gone which means not letting oil have a sustain increase. Oil ,goes lower not higher as long as Putin is at war with USA. USA is now king daddy in Energy markets and Trump is open to higher Energy prices because they (net-net benefit USA) once Putin threat is gone.
The real reason is vibes because Trump thought the Venezuelan faux-regime change went well and made captain Bone Spurs look tough. Now he’s trying it again with a Theocracy of about 90 million people. Captain Bone Spurs looks for easy wins and the easy way out. Too bad this adds to the pile that Trump doesn’t care about Americans and his slogans and projections are lies to get elected and to avoid prosecution. His hubris: backing out of promises core to his mandate: economy and peace. By Trump made crises of tariff and war based inflation along with war crises. There is no deep thinking here, if there was he wouldn’t so blatantly stupid.
Trump's second term is Vance, and if Vance is elected in 2028, expect that the foreign policy precedents that Trump is establishing now will be continued.
Wikipedia does have it correct. This instance is a war initiated by US-Israel.
I think the American people - leaving the extremes on side aside - understand and support legitimate threats, reasons to attack. 9/11 was a clear case of support when it was focused on Bin Laden & the Taliban in Afghanistan, until it was used as a vehicle to invade Iraq. In this case, if Iran had indeed attacked Americans, America or genuine American interests then this current exercise would garner more support, but with (a) this president, administration that have zero reputation for anything positive and has always been about "follow the money to themselves", (b) Israel-Netanyahu being the primary benefactor with zero changes on their end or of their policies in Palestine, (c) being selective about who and when to support/attack - Venezuela for Oil, less involvement and support for Ukraine to benefit Russia, and (d) this "America First and alone" policy about zero wars etc being the trotted policy - there is little reason to support this war. All this, regardless of how evil the Iranian regime has been, including as recently as January with their own citizens, or how Congress was not allowed to vote, or how the rest of the world is being relied on as a coalition, like initial Afghanistan was.
This war started 47 year ago with Khomeini initiating it and it will finally end shortly thanks to Trump's brave, creative & skilled Team getting the job done. Peace & prosperity will now come as Putin & Iran's horrible leadership get booted out of the middle East
With Trump, the last word to think of is 'brave'....with him and his cronies, the main characteristic is "how does it benefit me personally - financial-wise, power-wise - regardless of what the consequences are"...the entire administration is an exercise in false bravado, fake jingoism and classic con-man-ship
Joe, Joe, Joe. If you really want to get in the weeds like that, this war started 73 years ago, when the CIA overthrew the DEMOCRATICALLY elected Mossadegh government for the sake of British Petroleum . Blame Eisenhower, not Carter. Trump's posse of clowns, bigots, and incompetents are just causing chaos, wasting tax dollars and watching our soldiers die
Certainly this war started 47 years ago and Trump is doing the job that Carter should have done long, long ago. Note that Carter was a Democrat: Dems have always fought shy of taking on Iran (Obama gave Iran bales of dollars), and Iran was soon to get nukes, and the ballistic missiles to carry the nukes to Omaha.
Also, the conflict started 73 years ago, when the CIA helped overthrow a popular DEMOCRATICALLY elected government, and foisted a US friendly dictator on Iran. The resentment of that imperialistic action is what fomented the Islamic revolution, and led to the latest conflict in the Persian Gulf.
You might consider adding the Philippines Insurrection to your war chart, and amazingly there were about 4,200 US dead in that conflict (about 75% from disease).
Or it could theoretically be included in the Spanish-American War chart, as it flowed from defeating Spain.
With regard to "it’s not clear who was asking for this exactly," is it really not clear to you who was asking for this? Or did you mean "it's not clear what Americans were asking for this"?
Also, Hegseth and Trump both called it a war today so no need for anybody to bother calling it a mere "conflict."
People want Strong Leadership, Peace ,Prosperity, And perceived safety. Wars that benefit only the Generals ,Military- industrial Elite such as recent wars will have voter dis-approval. If the result is success that seems real to voters it will be a positive but not as important as a Tariff dividend check, Voters feeling better about their current & future purchasing power, strong borders with a professional Ice agents recognized as doing a great job under the most difficult of circumstances.
Just to comment on #2, as a Jew Khamenei wanted me, my family, my relatives, and any other Jews dead or unacceptably subjugated. This is in addition to the internal human rights violations and killing of Iranians who dared to dissent.
I think this is why across the spectrum, except in the far left and right wing as you mention, politicians are saying something along the lines of “Khamenei was evil and Iran can’t have a nuke but we don’t want a forever war and maybe Trump should consult Congress.” In other words, no objection on a moral basis, just a cost and procedural basis
Only extreme nutjobs think Khamenei was anything other than evil, but his death would be a lot more meaningful if the administration had even a semblance of a plan for how to get a better government into place there. All levers of power and force in Iran are still controlled by the regime and some social media posts aren't going to change that. A country being bombed by enemies, killing scores of children, tends to band people within that country together, not incite a new revolution that shakes out in the enemy's favor. Even competent well-intentioned administrations have a great deal of trouble implementing positive regime change.
Iran will be temporarily reduced by this, but if I were a Jew in the Middle East I wouldn't be feeling good at all about the current war. The one upside with Khamenei was that he was incompetent, as most 86 year old religious dictators are. There's an unfortunately high chance Iran emerges from this with an equally evil but more competent ruler.
Another likely outcome after Trump declares victory and walks away in a couple weeks is a failed state that provides a breeding ground for terrorists.
Trump isn't going to bother with "getting a better government into place there." That's their problem. And that was the mistake Rumsfeld and Cheney made. Trump may support Pahlavi's son, who seems to want the job, more fool he since as the British used to say, "they always kill the emir," that is, the puppet the colonial power puts in place.
From the fact that the Israelis today bombed the SECOND meeting of what leaders are left while they were trying to pick a new Supreme Leader, the strategy seems to be to take out layer after layer of theocracy types till democracy has a chance, and a new kind of government the Iranians will have to do, if they can.
Regime change from the air -- works for me. What does NOT work is us going in there and trying to change a culture we know nothing about and turning everyone there against us. I think Trump well realizes that: we all do, by now, after so many failures trying just that.
Trump isn't going to bother...period. He doesn't care about consequences for other people.
Trump seems to care about peace greatly and seems to be leading the world to a more peaceful place !!! Trump also seems to care a lot about drugs. As mention in a previous post 70% of all drug deaths are from fentanyl and in 2025 all 50 states had lower Fentanyl deaths( 21% decrease on average). Opioid deaths are down 34%
This is a misleading comment on both points. On the former, I would just say, judge someone based on their actions, not their words. Saying the word “peace” a lot means nothing when your actions are increasingly hawkish.
As for drug deaths, looking at the actual numbers, the decreases in 2025 were merely a continuation of the same downward trend-line that clearly began well before Trump took office. And the post-pandemic spike that occurred also pretty clearly began during the last year of Trump’s first term.
I think it’s more than procedural, though. Going to Congress demands that the executive branch has actually thought out the reasons for the attack, war, whatever, and has thought out the risk/reward analysis adequately. And because people in Congress will have to live with their votes, there will be some measure of critical thinking (though for sure some will just vote yea or nay without really thinking at all). The morality itself can be complicated, depending on the odds you attach to various possible outcomes.
Khamenei can be a terrible person, with blood on his hands and we can have a legal and moral objections to killing leaders of countries (and religious sects). Legal: no state has the right to unilaterally kill another’s leader. Even in war the goal should be to capture and try. Moral: criminals should face justice, justice can only be served by man through a just system (trial, and jury). Extrajudicial killings can never bring justice, justice victims of crimes deserve.
So, not the objection is not just a cost and procedural and my view is neither far right nor far left (it’s apolitical or dead center if political at al). War can never deliver justice, it only deliver a resolution. Justice is what comes after war.
War is not about "legal." War is about killing people: that's the point of war. Killing the war leaders is an obvious way to try to win, and Iran tried twice to assassinate Trump, so fair is fair. 2000 years ago Cicero said, "Law is silent in war," and the Romans were big on law. But "legal" and "moral" are just not words that are useful in any discussion of war.
Risk 1 is huge, Inflation declines have primarily been driven by gas price declines.
Exactly.
Added, looking at the oil sourcing as Iran is wrong. It's the Persian Gulf (or Arab Gulf as the Gulf Arabs try to insist)
Straights of Hormuz are closed at this time. Qatar LNG also shut.
The percent of lower-cost oil and LNG production bottled up by Hormuz actions is not trivial.
US combat deaths are not really even a trivial risk, it's knock-ons on direct pricing pressure into inflation.
Of course me as a financier of Renewable energy assets, the hydrocarbons effect here has a sort of guilty pleasure on multiple fronts.
Norwegian drivers have to be feeling pretty smart right now.
I'd evaluate this through four lenses:
1) American lives lost
2) Impact on quality of life across America
3) Perceived government competence
4) Duration and intensity of media coverage (largely driven by 1-3)
The comparison to Libya deserves more attention. Substantial air strikes and very limited special forces ground operations resulted in regime change. This transformed Libya into a failed state. But the impact on public opinion was negligible. #1, minimal lives lost. #2, no real impact on quality of life. #3, seen as effective in the beginning and then fell out of public awareness, due to #4, not a major story after the initial action.
By contrast, Biden's evacuation from Afghanistan appears to have hurt him due to #s 3 and 4.
If Israel and Trump can compete the campaign in 1-2 months, without major disruptions to the global economy, and without a post-war Iran driving frequent negative news, the impact may be small.
If the war hurts Americans by disrupting the global economy, the war drags on for months, and/or events keep occurring that keep Iran in front page headlines, I suspect Trump will regret this decision.
There's also another significant difference between Libya and Iran. You'll remember President Obama saying "we'll lead from behind," that was because France and the UK were the impetus behind the intervention and they provided much of the firepower.
In the case of Iran, we have no allies supporting the war except for Israel, and the US is doing much of the heavy lifting, and it's costing American lives and costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.
In Libya the only American lives lost were in the BENGHAZ!1!! attack, and the Republicans used that incident as a political cudgel for half a decade.
This is an odd assertion. The US led the operation for the first two weeks. France and UK provided a lot of the fire powers, but the US was still the largest contributor, just for ordnance. The US also provided the vast majority of critical support that is lacking from the rest of NATO like ISR, targeting, aerial refueling, SEAD, naval assets. If you think the bill was equally shared, or even picked up mostly by the rest of NATO, well this is not accurate.
As far as NATO involvement in this current fracas, it’s more likely they were just not invited. NATO is not required for every intervention. Nor does it magically justify the endeavor.
I think 3 in this case will be judged by the cost (we’re spending millions/billions on this and not our own people, again???) vs the benefit (how is there more benefit now than before the nuclear strike, and even less benefit now than when we had the nuclear deal in place with real monitoring. Even setting aside my political biases, how is there more benefit now destabilizing the region than after the targeted strikes that immobilized Iran’s nuclear program). Biden’s age hurt him far more than sillily and incompetently carrying out Trumps Afghanistan deal.
I think another key thing to point out is there were more organized, viable entities in opposition to the incumbent regime in Libya than there are currently in Iran. Even if we were to just keep killing successive leaders, it remains to be seen where pro-democracy forces would even come from to take control of the rubble.
There is Upside if things playout well !! USA no war or foreign policy success since world war 2 !! A success could be much more important than the pundits believe !!!
Gulf War wasn't a success?
Granted it took about 10 years for us to realize that it may not have been (thanks to 9/11), but, the actual war itself was a great success..& waiting for 10 years after a conflict to judge it gives time for a lot of other things, some of them not related to the initial conflict, to change minds.
Define success---Trump and Hegseth can't
FWIW, re your opening about whether to use the word "war," here's what the AP said, which sounds right -- they agree with you that's the right word to use:
"The Associated Press will use the word "war" to refer to the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, and Iran's retaliation. This decision reflects the scope and intensity of the fighting. The Merriam-Webster definition of war is quite broad: "A state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations," or "a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism."...
"It is acceptable to use the term "war" to refer to the conflict in all contexts, including in headlines, photo captions and video scripts. Lowercase the word war. AP capitalizes that word only as part of a formal name. The terms "conflict" and "attacks" may also be used to describe the situation. Include specific details of the military action." "
It's a war by now, for sure, I'd say. And getting pretty large. The question was probably whether it's a "punitive expedition," such as when the British burned the White House during the War of 1812, or the takeout of Iran's nuclear facilities last June.
It’s laughable to me, the pretzels I see Trump supporters online are tying themselves into to say this isn’t a war. If we apply the logic they’d seemingly like us to consistently, then the U.S. arguably hasn’t been involved in a war since 1945. Which would make Trump’s campaigning on “no new wars” look pretty silly, in retrospect. Either this is in fact a new war, or Trump ran on being against something that hasn’t happened since before he was born.
One way Trump could be hurt by Iran is it lets Democrats say he’s out of touch. Most people care about affordability and don’t believe he’s focused on it. Starting a war is a great way to amplify that perception.
Yeah so apparently trump's plan to address the affordability crisis is to cause oil and gas prices to spike? At a time when household power bills are already spiking in part from Trump pushing data center build outs and cutting power generation projects??
It also doesn't help that trump and his top flunkies loudly and repeatedly called him the Candidate of Peace during the campaign. I get that his ardent fans will excuse literally anything from him, but him so clearly violating a major campaign promise won't help with the marginal supporters.
It's not just the Democrats. There are many America First MAGAs feeling betrayed by Trump's Iranian war. Trump promised no more wars. Stephen Miller told those supporters that it was Kamala Harris who was going to start an Iranian war. Trump has a long record of criticizing US involvement in Middle East conflicts, and Trump's supporters believed what he said.
Now they know Trump meant none of it, and lots right wing influencers are voicing their displeasure loudly.
The 3-time Trump voters probably don’t leave him for this. Where this is risky for him is with the early-20s, Joe Rogan/Theo Vaughn-listening bros, who cast their first ever Presidential vote in 2024 for Trump, don’t really remember the Bush administration, and were still in middle/high school for most of Trump’s first term.
I don’t really see them as the type to be particularly likely to show up to vote in the midterms to begin with, but if Trump were going to buck the historic trend of the president’s party losing seats in the midterms, he’d probably need them to. So Trump only taking 13 months to make all their favorite podcasters and TikTok influencers look stupid for believing the “no new wars” spiel isn’t going to help turn those people out.
"The traditional model: Rally-around-the-flag"
There is a big difference between the traditional model and what Trump has done. In these previous conflicts, the President at the time came before the American people and made his case for war and laid out their reasoning why our country should act and then asked for the congress and people's approval and support.
Trump has done no such thing. He had the perfect opportunity to make his case during the State of the Union speech, but all we got out of those incoherent ramblings was to include only one paragraph about Iran. In that short section of a nearly two hour long diatribe, no mention was made of an eminent threat of Iran against the US. No mention of why we needed to do regime change. All he said was Iran has been an American adversary for 47 years, but nothing to indicate it's worse now than a decade ago or three decades ago. He also included two sentences that Iran is oppressive against its people. What's not included is any explanation why the US forces needed to start bombing three days later.
Now that Trump's war has started, the goals of his war is on constant rotation. This was documented by The Economist’s Middle East Correspondent Gregg Carlstrom. First was freedom for the Iranian people, but not why American soldiers need to die for that and we need to spend tens of billions of taxpayer's dollars to get it done. Then the narrative shifted to "end it in two or three days" and then might be "four to five weeks." First it was no regime change, then it was regime change with his choices to assume power after the death of the Ayatollah, but they were also killed. So now Trump has no idea of who will take power.
What's worse is Trump refuses to answer questions from reporters about the war, and SecDef Hegseth gives a presentation that clearly shows he has no idea of what the plan is.
So the American public have no clue what Trump and his administration are doing, and Trump is doing nothing to clarify anything.
This is a long explanation why Trump got no polling bump in the first few days of his war. If this follows the usual trend for war polling from the past, it only gets worse for Trump from here.
Lets see how this post ages come the first week in November.
Tim_Tec said, ""The traditional model: Rally-around-the-flag"
Very traditional, Civil War, in fact.
**********************************
Rally 'round the flag, boys
Rally once again
Shouting the Battle Cry of Freedom --
The Union together, hurrah boys, hurrah
Down with the traitors
And up with the Stars ----
**********************************
But in 2026, what flag is that? The Palestinian flag, according to a lot of Democrats, and they sure are not going to rally 'round the Stars and Stripes. They never do.
Myself, I'm delighted that Iran has now lost the nukes and missiles it needed to hit Omaha.
Who know who the Democratic Party holds no allegiance to? Putin and "Bibi" Netanyahu. They have Trump dangling by their strings. They pull the strings and Trump does his little dance. Because Trump is working for Putin, "Bibi" and Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman aka Prince Bone Saw and the MAGA sheep follow right along with the betrayal America and the American patriots in the Democratic Party. These are who pledges allegiance to the Constitution and they honor the flag. Not Russia's flag. No Israel's flag.
Iran was no closer to getting nukes now than 10 years ago when Trump was first in office. But that time he had actual American patriots in command of our armed forces and not a drunken rapist and a confederacy of dunces. In the first term, SecDef Mattis and General Mark Milley told Trump Iran was no threat to the US and attacking them was a fools errand. Now the fools are running the place and we're in another quagmire war of choice in the Middle East. The very thing Trump campaigned against. But he's a pathological liar and nobody should have believed him.
Very colorful. I like colorful writing. I particularly liked Prince Bone Saw and the MAGA sheep. BAAAAA-AH!
I'm glad I entertain you. And maybe you learned something.
No, there was nothing to learn from that. Lively pejoratives, though.
Oh, there are many lessons to be learn. The main take-home message is MAGAs have no claim on patriotism.
They are totally subservient and worship a convicted felon and a rapist who has no loyalty to our country. Trump will sellout you, me, and America to our worst enemies in a second if the price is right. And nary a contrary peep will be heard from the MAGA cult. They will cheer him on like no-one has seen before.
Isn't Occam's razor here that the administration is skirting calling this a war (even though Trump himself has used the word) so they have plausible deniability when they get called out for bypassing Congress?
No need to skirt, there's for better or worse plenty of unchallenged precedent...
Wasn't saying it hasn't been done before. Just that it's what they're doing.
The Saudi’s, UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, and Qua-tar generally prefer stability even while aligning strategically with U.S. positions.
They are quietly rejoicing. They realize that Iran wants to dominate the Middle East. They want Iran destabilized so they lose their nuclear and ballistic capabilities for the foreseeable future. Also, since Iran supplies China with 90% of its oil and Russia with many of its weapons, the war in Ukraine may end sooner. America MAY come out of this with greater world peace than in the last 35 years. Time will be the barometer. This war is about weakening China and Russia. That’s the real reason.
I think there's another take on things. This might help Russia. If oil prices spike, that helps the Russian cash flow. Their economy is tittering on collapse and their oil revenue was at a five year low. If Iranian oil stops flowing to China, Russia can sell more to them at a higher price they're getting now. Also Russia is less dependent on Iran for weapons. Russia has taken over much of the production of Shahed drones.
I think this is sadly correct. Iran no longer provides Russia much support and the higher oil prices are going to greatly help Russia's economy.
It's so frustrating seeing how weak Putin has gotten himself over the war in Ukraine, and knowing we won't capitalize on it. Even with trump doing what he can for Putin the Russian economy is teetering, a concerted effort would have a real shot of pushing it over the edge and forcing an end to the war on good terms for Ukraine, but obviously this president has zero interest in defeating Russia and defending freedom.
The whole US/Ukraine situation is a disgrace. Rick Wilson related a conversation he had with a contact in the military, and this person felt like the total cost of starting the war with Iran was $500 billion. Even if it's only a third or half of that, it's obscene Trump can spend that much money to help Israel with their goal of regime change in Iran and Trump refuses to give Ukraine a single dollar.
Good. Trump shouldn't give Ukraine a single dollar. It's a stupid, losing war and we need to be completely out of it.
The big loser in every Trump action is Putin. Assad, Madura & Khomeini were all Putin allies. I doubt if Putin is sleeping well these days.
The 500 Billion , check your sources
I would not be so sure of higher Oil prices at this time. Or until the real Trump objective is achieved the Putin power threat is eliminated.
I'm pretty sure that a change in oil prices from $72 a barrel to $80 a barrel reflects higher oil prices. Average price of gasoline has gone up 11 cents a gallon and is now over $3 a gallon- Higher than one year ago. Reuters says some analysts are predicting oil could spike at $100 a barrel
Why would oil spike ?? Conflict to be short & straits will be kept open. Plenty of oil & other energy(nuclear, solar etc...)available. Trump would not have made move without support of other Arab countries & oil producers. they will rapidly increase production as needed. They not only want Iran leadership gone, they want Putin gone which means not letting oil have a sustain increase. Oil ,goes lower not higher as long as Putin is at war with USA. USA is now king daddy in Energy markets and Trump is open to higher Energy prices because they (net-net benefit USA) once Putin threat is gone.
The real reason is vibes because Trump thought the Venezuelan faux-regime change went well and made captain Bone Spurs look tough. Now he’s trying it again with a Theocracy of about 90 million people. Captain Bone Spurs looks for easy wins and the easy way out. Too bad this adds to the pile that Trump doesn’t care about Americans and his slogans and projections are lies to get elected and to avoid prosecution. His hubris: backing out of promises core to his mandate: economy and peace. By Trump made crises of tariff and war based inflation along with war crises. There is no deep thinking here, if there was he wouldn’t so blatantly stupid.
Let’s see where the country and world are in 6 months. It’s easy for us to Monday morning quarterback.
Trump's second term is Vance, and if Vance is elected in 2028, expect that the foreign policy precedents that Trump is establishing now will be continued.
You think? Vance has consistently expressed isolationist views on foreign policy
Look at his social media posts about the current attack.
Give it a few months or a couple years and Vance will slip into some new views that he thinks are expedient.
He's a politician, isn't he?
Wikipedia does have it correct. This instance is a war initiated by US-Israel.
I think the American people - leaving the extremes on side aside - understand and support legitimate threats, reasons to attack. 9/11 was a clear case of support when it was focused on Bin Laden & the Taliban in Afghanistan, until it was used as a vehicle to invade Iraq. In this case, if Iran had indeed attacked Americans, America or genuine American interests then this current exercise would garner more support, but with (a) this president, administration that have zero reputation for anything positive and has always been about "follow the money to themselves", (b) Israel-Netanyahu being the primary benefactor with zero changes on their end or of their policies in Palestine, (c) being selective about who and when to support/attack - Venezuela for Oil, less involvement and support for Ukraine to benefit Russia, and (d) this "America First and alone" policy about zero wars etc being the trotted policy - there is little reason to support this war. All this, regardless of how evil the Iranian regime has been, including as recently as January with their own citizens, or how Congress was not allowed to vote, or how the rest of the world is being relied on as a coalition, like initial Afghanistan was.
This war started 47 year ago with Khomeini initiating it and it will finally end shortly thanks to Trump's brave, creative & skilled Team getting the job done. Peace & prosperity will now come as Putin & Iran's horrible leadership get booted out of the middle East
One might argue that the war started even earlier when the US and the UK had the democratically elected leader ‘removed’ to install the Shah instead…
With Trump, the last word to think of is 'brave'....with him and his cronies, the main characteristic is "how does it benefit me personally - financial-wise, power-wise - regardless of what the consequences are"...the entire administration is an exercise in false bravado, fake jingoism and classic con-man-ship
Joe, Joe, Joe. If you really want to get in the weeds like that, this war started 73 years ago, when the CIA overthrew the DEMOCRATICALLY elected Mossadegh government for the sake of British Petroleum . Blame Eisenhower, not Carter. Trump's posse of clowns, bigots, and incompetents are just causing chaos, wasting tax dollars and watching our soldiers die
Certainly this war started 47 years ago and Trump is doing the job that Carter should have done long, long ago. Note that Carter was a Democrat: Dems have always fought shy of taking on Iran (Obama gave Iran bales of dollars), and Iran was soon to get nukes, and the ballistic missiles to carry the nukes to Omaha.
Also, the conflict started 73 years ago, when the CIA helped overthrow a popular DEMOCRATICALLY elected government, and foisted a US friendly dictator on Iran. The resentment of that imperialistic action is what fomented the Islamic revolution, and led to the latest conflict in the Persian Gulf.
You had to go all the way back 73 years to find a way to blame this war on the USA? Wow.
I bet I know what party you vote for -------
NOBODY wants to nuke OMAHA
Probably not till they've first nuked Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta, and Miami.
Not even then. NOBODY cares about Omaha
Certainly you don't; that's plain. [:-)
You might consider adding the Philippines Insurrection to your war chart, and amazingly there were about 4,200 US dead in that conflict (about 75% from disease).
Or it could theoretically be included in the Spanish-American War chart, as it flowed from defeating Spain.
Let’s see where the country and world are in 6 months. It’s easy for us to Monday morning quarterback.
Have a pleasant day.
With regard to "it’s not clear who was asking for this exactly," is it really not clear to you who was asking for this? Or did you mean "it's not clear what Americans were asking for this"?
Also, Hegseth and Trump both called it a war today so no need for anybody to bother calling it a mere "conflict."
People want Strong Leadership, Peace ,Prosperity, And perceived safety. Wars that benefit only the Generals ,Military- industrial Elite such as recent wars will have voter dis-approval. If the result is success that seems real to voters it will be a positive but not as important as a Tariff dividend check, Voters feeling better about their current & future purchasing power, strong borders with a professional Ice agents recognized as doing a great job under the most difficult of circumstances.
I’d pay good money to chat with a swing voter who feels any of that, aka a person not already on board with Trumpism/MAGA.
Everyone is taking the under and under-estimating Trump. I will take the over. Wars that are won and actually have a benefit are a big benefit !!
Very useful from Dan Drezner. https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/good-tactics-do-not-add-up-to-a-strategy Good Tactics Do Not Add Up to a Strategy on Iran