How Trump Lost the Iran War
By Major General (Ret.) Paul D. Eaton
"I have spent a career planning military operations and evaluating the operations of others. The first question any competent military planner asks before committing forces is not “can we hit the target?” The United States military can always hit the target. The question is: to what end? What is the strategic objective? What happens on Day 4, 5, 6 and so on? What does success look like? How do we know when we’ve achieved it? And how do we get out?
In forty days of a war of choice (not necessity) with Iran, the Trump administration never answered any of those questions. Not once.In forty days of a war of choice (not necessity) with Iran, the Trump administration never answered any of those questions. Not once.
What we got instead was a pattern that repeated itself from the first week to the last: a threat, followed by bombing, followed by a frantic search for an offramp that didn’t exist because no one had built one. Deadlines were set and extended. Objectives shifted from destroying military capability to regime change to the nuclear program to the Strait of Hormuz to threatening to obliterate civilian infrastructure. The President threatened to destroy a “whole civilization” and then, two hours before his own deadline, took Iran’s offer and called it quits.That is not strategy. That is improvisation. And when you improvise a war, people die and families are left to wonder why..."
