Obviously, Iran is very unpopular. I still accept Trump's judgment that it was the right thing to do and I still believe that the war is (plainly) a military success. (Call me crazy!)
The issue with the war, from the perspective of the electorate, and incidentally in reality, is that there wasn't enough saber rattling going into it. The voters want to feel as if there was no choice but to go to war before they get involved in a protracted conflict. So you need to build up to a full blown war slowly with a series of smaller skirmishes. Incidentally, if your demands are reasonable and you make an effort to negotiate, you will often end up coming to an agreement instead of going to war. If you really want a war you can often participate in "manifacturing consent" to make the war seem necessary when in fact it isn't. Trump didn't even bother with that. Just one morning "by the way, we executed a sitting head of state yesterday and now we're at war with them". It would not have been difficult to predict how people would feel about that.
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The issue with the war, from the perspective of the electorate, and incidentally in reality, is that there wasn't enough saber rattling going into it. The voters want to feel as if there was no choice but to go to war before they get involved in a protracted conflict. So you need to build up to a full blown war slowly with a series of smaller skirmishes. Incidentally, if your demands are reasonable and you make an effort to negotiate, you will often end up coming to an agreement instead of going to war. If you really want a war you can often participate in "manifacturing consent" to make the war seem necessary when in fact it isn't. Trump didn't even bother with that. Just one morning "by the way, we executed a sitting head of state yesterday and now we're at war with them". It would not have been difficult to predict how people would feel about that.
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