War is Not a Branding Exercise
What, exactly, is our goal in Iran and how will we know if we have achieved it?
The Islamic Republic of Iran is a deeply odious regime. For decades, the Iranian security services have actively connived at the murder of U.S. civilians and attacks on American service members. They have created a network of nasty proxies across the Middle-East: Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. On the radical fringes of the western left, hatred of Israel and a justified concern for the suffering of Palestinian civilians has led some to play footsies with idiots who romanticize these groups. (Here’s looking at you, Zoram Mamdani.) Most reasonable people, however, can recognize Hamas et al for what they are: Murderous zealots driven by what amounts to little more than apocalyptic nihilism. The leaders in Tehran clearly lust after nuclear weapons. At home, the Islamic Republic runs a repressive and puritanical police state that in the last few weeks has murdered tens of thousands of its own citizens protesting the regime in the streets. There is thus something deeply satisfying about Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, a man who has murdered thousands in the name of an apocalyptic religious ideology, struck by fire and destruction from the heavens. The aesthetics of nemesis and cosmic justice are perfect.
The problem is that war is not an exercise in aesthetics.
War is about using violence and death to reshape the world. I am not a peacenik. I think that in a nasty and fallen world filled with nasty people, sometimes reshaping the world with violence and death is better than the alternatives. On the whole, I think that the U.S. military is a force for good in the world. I do not think that there is anything per se illegitimate about military attacks on the Islamic Republic. (As opposed, for example, to invading Greenland.) But war is always a terrible and serious matter. Reading reports about U.S. military operations, I cannot help but be impressed by the careful planning and professionalism that has gone in to these attacks. The generals and admirals at U.S. Central Command who have been creating strike plans against Iran for decades and the sailors, pilots, and soldiers who carry out those plans are clearly very serious people.
The same cannot be said of our commander in chief. As President, Trump’s job is not to plan or execute military operations. Rather, his job is to define the goal of military operations, explain how we will know when success will be achieved, and explain to the American people and the world why the death, suffering, and wasted treasure of the war is worth it. This is what Roosevelt and Churchill did with the Atlantic Charter, which clearly spelled out Allied war aims in World War II. This is what George W. Bush did when he invaded Iraq. One can disagree with Bush and what he did in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he clearly understood his job. Having made his case, the President then needs the authorization of Congress to wage a war. This is necessary as a matter of constitutional niceties. It is necessary because this is a republic not a monarchy, so it is the American people not the President who ultimately goes to war. As a practical matter, it is necessary because wars are expensive and dangerous enterprises that cannot be effectively prosecuted without widespread national support. And a poorly prosecuted war is a recipe for pointless death and violence.
Donald Trump’s strategic goals for this war shift from tweet to tweet: We are creating the conditions for a mass uprising against the regime in Tehran. We are executing a decapitation strike followed by a pliant government as in Venezuela. We are halting an imminent threat of nuclear armament. We are stopping a long- or medium-term threat of nuclear armament. We destroying Iran’s long-range weapons systems. We are eliminating instability in the Middle East. These are all different goals. Some of them are flatly inconsistent with one another. Freedom for Iranians is NOT the same thing as a post-Khamenei Islamic Republic under the control of a sullen by pliant leader plucked from amongst the mullahs or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp. Some of these stated reasons are flatly inconsistent with things that the administration was saying just days before the attack. (Did earlier U.S. and IDF strikes destroy Iran’s nuclear capability or did it not?)
In the simplest terms, what is our goal and how would we know if it has been achieved? Why is it worth it?
Trump has failed to answer these questions. This failure of justification works in tandem with Trump’s contempt for constitutional forms. The constitution unequivocally grants to Congress the sole power to declare war. There are complications here. I think that as a matter of law and prudence it makes sense to allow the President to engage in some military operations without the consent of Congress. We live in a small, faster world than the one inhabited by the founders. Presidents may be faced with exigent situations where they must act. However, this does not seem to be a case of exigency. Trump has failed to articulate why he had to act militarily without going to Congress for authorization. It’s worth remembering that as recently as the George W. Bush administration, the President obtained an “Authorization to Use Military Force” from Congress before the military launched its global war on terror. And that was after the United States had suffered one of the two most devastating attacks on its home soil in history. We are supposed to believe that there is an imperative for immediate military action right now that was not present immediately after 9/11? Unless, Donald Trump knows something that he’s not telling us, that is absurd. Nor was there some operational military reason that forestalled going to the Hill. A debate in Congress wouldn’t have signaled any military intentions toward Tehran that hadn’t already been signaled by stationing a massive armada off Iran’s coast.
In short, Trump didn’t go to Congress because he didn’t want to go to Congress. He was probably worried that Congress wouldn’t approve his war, particularly in light of his inability to explain precisely what the war is for. More importantly, I suspect, he didn’t go to Congress because he didn’t like how it would look.
Given the absence of any strategic vision from the White House, this war looks to me like a branding exercise for Donald Trump. He likes to project an image of power, and he hopes that the deadly seriousness of the U.S. Fifth Fleet will make him look serious. He wants credit for “solving” the Middle East precisely because George W. Bush and Barak Obama failed to do so. He thinks that would look really cool, even though he seems to have no sense of what a “solved” Middle East would look like or how we would get there. Still splashy action allowing him to at least pretend to have solved something big and important would give him a thing to brag about as he asserts yet again that he is The Greatest President Ever(tm). His narcissism would be forgivable — if a little pathetic — it it was coupled with a coherent strategy competently executed. But there is little evidence of that here.
I am willing to be persuaded that war against the Islamic Republic is necessary. I am willing to be persuaded that there are worthy objectives in Iran that can be achieved by the U.S.S. Gerald Ford. However, I am not willing to support a war on Donald Trump’s say so, one whose justification is being worked out in real time on social media. Given that ultimately war is about directing fire and steel and pain against fragile human bodies, I am most certainly unwilling to support a war as yet another chapter in Trump’s career as a flim-flam self-promoter.
That would be odious.