(1) Distance means almost nothing to the US military besides a minor logistical issue. It’s called power projection. We are very good at it.
(2) The idea of putting US troops on the ground has not even been hinted at. (I acknowledge you didn’t allege it has.)
(3) US airpower could make a huge difference at little risk to us.
While I understand your isolationist view, it is a bad idea in view of history and what is going on in the world.
You of course are entitled to your view, and it is good to have different views expressed here (excepting stupidity and evil such as actually supporting Hamas and the like - I don’t think that’s what you are doing). That said, I’m entitled to mine too. My view has the benefit of some passing knowledge of world and military history.
Why not have the Israelis do the fighting and dying? They are much closer to the situation and if they really feel that Iran is a big threat, they are the ones who should do both the fighting and the dying.
Every single involvement that we have had in the Middle East has brought us nothing but misery. Too many Americans have already died in that part of the world. We lost 34 men when the Israelis attacked the USS Liberty in 1967, we lost 264 Marines in a single truck bombing in Beirut, almost 5,000 killed in Iraq, and about 3,000 in Afghanistan, and for what?
The only thing that changed was that thousands of American families are minus their sons. This doesn’t even include the tens of thousands of men wounded, with many thousands who will suffer from their physical and mental wounds for the rest of their lives. Just consider the billions of dollars in VA compensation that will be paid out over the next 50 years to those veterans, in addition to the monetary cost of the wars themselves.
Fighting Iran just to demonstrate our ability to project power is not a good enough reason. I think the world already knows that we can project power just about anywhere we want to.