I knew better after paying attention to the conquest of Lebanon and Iran.
I posted it here a lot when the younger bush went in.
You cannot accomplish anything on the ground in the middle east unless you have the stomach to set up a surveillance state and lethally stamp out Islam over a period of seventy or eighty years, allowing non of the indigenous population in or out.
America doesn’t have the stomach for that, so the only viable wars are punitive wars where you reduce things to rubble and leave them rubble. Congress would need to declare war to pull that off.
Wow. Great post.