Editorial: If the ceasefire holds, Donald Trump’s ill-starred foray into the Middle East will have left the Iranian regime stronger than it was before the conflict
Trump ran into the same problem Dubya and his daddy did in Iraq & Afghanistan- sure we can topple the government and defeat their military. That’s easy-peasy. But after we do that, who’s gonna run the country? In all cases, the answer is “nobody who is acceptable to the US”, so the US ends up having to step in and run the place for a time so that it doesn’t immediately devolve into “new boss, same old bullshit”. Leave a political vacuum in that part of the world and it gets filled by Al Quaida, ISIS, Taliban, or other radical groups that battle it out among themselves for decades, creating another Lebanon. Or Iraq. Or Afghanistan.
The government has been trying this weird half-assed interventionism since actual interventionism is such a hard sell post-Iraq and Afghanistan. Some bombing here, an attempt to arm rebel groups there… and if it fails, that’s for the locals to clean up. I’d argue this goes back to Obama and Trump continued it, but in a room temp IQ way that only Trump can manage.
Trump ran into the same problem Dubya and his daddy did in Iraq & Afghanistan- sure we can topple the government and defeat their military. That’s easy-peasy. But after we do that, who’s gonna run the country? In all cases, the answer is “nobody who is acceptable to the US”, so the US ends up having to step in and run the place for a time so that it doesn’t immediately devolve into “new boss, same old bullshit”. Leave a political vacuum in that part of the world and it gets filled by Al Quaida, ISIS, Taliban, or other radical groups that battle it out among themselves for decades, creating another Lebanon. Or Iraq. Or Afghanistan.
The government has been trying this weird half-assed interventionism since actual interventionism is such a hard sell post-Iraq and Afghanistan. Some bombing here, an attempt to arm rebel groups there… and if it fails, that’s for the locals to clean up. I’d argue this goes back to Obama and Trump continued it, but in a room temp IQ way that only Trump can manage.
well said.