Congress has traditionally allowed the president great freedom in using the Navy for quick, sharp actions. Your Barbary Pirate example is a good one.
Trump might be right regarding Iran. But the longer it goes on, the less it will look like a Barbary Pirate thing, and more like a “foreign entanglement” thing that Washington warned us about.
Thanks.
Trump might be right regarding Iran. But the longer it goes on, the less it will look like a Barbary Pirate thing, and more like a “foreign entanglement” thing that Washington warned us about.
I agree 100%. So how long is too long? Note that the First Barbary War lasted 4 years. To be fair to expecting shorter wars now, I'll grant that the 1st Barbary War took 4 years in part because the US Navy hadn't been fully rebuilt yet and our nation was new. And back then a war many miles away from us was a lot harder to pull off than it is now. All of those would be sound arguments for not expecting wars to take anything close to 4 years now with a relative small fry like the U.S. vs Iran today.
So how long is a reasonable expectation today? 20+ years like the Sep 11 response to Afghanistan and Bush's "win over hearts and minds" approach? Of course not. Almost 4 years like it took from the bombing of Pearl Harbor to Japan's surrender? IMHO that's too long, even though WW2 was more recent than the Barbary Wars. Does half a year to a year sound like a reasonable expectation? Especially given Trump's approach, which I like, to hit Iran hard for a while, give them a breather to think about it, then hit 'em hard again, etc.
Lost in all the "Trump can't win the war" rhetoric are these facts that I'm sure other nations are paying attention to. Iran has had:
161 ships destroyed
55 aircraft destroyed
At least 16 high ranking leaders killed
3K to 6K military killed, and
And $270 billion in losses for Iran
I haven't seen anyone else report this next part. But I personally paid attention to the fact that after Sep 11 we didn't go to war with Pakistan even though everyone knew that Pakistan was as hip deep in supporting Al Qaeda as Afghanistan was. Especially after Bin Laden was found in Afghanistan. Why didn't we go to war with them? Pakistan had nukes. That apparently gave Pakistan the cover to fight us by proxy without much FAFO. Which is mostly how Iran fights us (by proxy) while trying to get nukes.
Above all other middle east policy I don't want Iran to have the same status that Pakistan does.