The Morning Rant: What Is Winning In Iran?

The thoroughly discredited and, frankly impossible goal of America's recent wars have been to create some form of benign Jeffersonian democracy to replace evil, despotic, murderous regimes. It didn't work, and the template from World War II, Japan and Germany, ignores the obvious...that those cultures were industrious, nationalistic, valued education, and had been absolutely destroyed. The slate had been wiped clean, so reconstruction of the governments was relatively simple.

But Iraq and Afghanistan were savage, backward, tribalistic countries whose self-governance, as it were, was based on Islamic doctrine or even more ancient: family and clan over all others. Their cultures were, to put it gently, not particularly well suited to function in the modern world of individual liberty and autonomy. So the efforts...the unimaginably bloody and expensive efforts failed miserably. And because we were fixated on being a gentle invader, the people of those countries never learned to fear us, and were never really beaten the way Japan and Germany were!

Luckily we have an administration that is less enamored of the idea of America as an engine of social change, and one that is more interested in defending our and our allies' interests. And those interests are clear: prevent the Mullahs from continuing to dominate the Persian Gulf, and prevent them and their Armageddon fantasy from coming to fruition via nuclear weapons.

The goals, as repeatedly stated by the Secretary of War, are simple:

• Destroy or severely degrade Iran's missile forces, military infrastructure, and command systems that threaten American forces and regional allies, while also preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
  
• Deter further attacks against the United States and partners such as Israel and the Gulf states, and to reduce Iran's ability to project military power in the region.
  
• These objectives are meant to remain limited and that the United States is not officially pursuing regime change in Iran.

So...to answer the question: Winning in Iran means degrading their war-making capacity down to nothing, so they cannot threaten their neighbors and world commerce. It means destroying their nuclear program so that rebuilding it would take many, many years.

And we are approaching that success. Will it take another week or another month? Who knows? And on the way to those achievable goals we are degrading the internal security apparatus of the Mullahs in such a way that the people of Iran have a better chance of overthrowing them and rebuilding their government...but in their own image! No externally imposed government that is doomed to failure.

And most of all, no boots on the ground to enforce our image of what Iran should be. That is up to the people of Iran, and I wish them the best of luck!

[Crossposted at CutJibNewsletter and X/Twitter]. If you folks who are on X/Twitter would follow us it would be much appreciated!

posted by CBD at 11:00 AM

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