I am very glad our POTUS decided NOT to escalate the situation, I’d it had been a plane with a pilot totally different situation, HOWEVER an unmanned drone can be handled without escalating tempers over there, we still have boots on the ground in the area and their safety comes first!!!
I discussed this with a fellow officer yesterday—it was all about proportionality. Blowing up SAM/radar sites is certainly acceptable given the enemy’s action, but the problem is that we just lost an expensive RC plane. Attacking those sites would’ve killed people.
I have no clue if that 150 EKIA number is accurate (I’ll assume it is), but that’s a lot higher than what we lost—zero. Suddenly we become the bad guys which gives Tehran some international momentum they didn’t have before. EU is only reluctantly on board with Iran sanctions and Russia is just itching for a reason to push us out of the area altogether.
All of that is diplomatic stuff. Look at the field day the Democrats would have with Trump acting like a “warmonger.” It was more than a little suspicious that The Usual Suspects were cheering hard for military action. They wanted Trump to bomb Iran so they could accuse him of starting yet another losing Middle East war and beat him over the head with it from here to November 2020.
By exercising patience, Trump has robbed EU, Russia, and the Democrats/Neocons of their golden opportunity to pounce. By further dragging this out, he puts more pressure on Russia and China to pull Iran to heel since they need the Persian Gulf oil lanes open far more than we do (China especially). And for what? The loss of a UAV? That’s a real bargain.
On top of all of that, I’m not so sure this wasn’t Trump’s plan to begin with. Early on he was talking about how this whole thing may have been “a mistake.” He said that in an Oval Office press event with Madame Trudeau and again on Twitter. The tweet could’ve been construed either as “Iran had an accident” or “Iran has pushed us too far.” Either way, he gave himself leeway to act or not act.
This is the value of having a legitimate strategic thinker in the White House. Every President in my lifetime most likely would’ve pulled the trigger. Not Trump.