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It's also tied up in narrow legalism. The Trump admin claimed they had legal authority to wage war for 60 days without talking to Congress about it. The ceasefire leading to the MOU came at 60 days. Now they're claiming that war was concluded and this is a brand new war. Expect a similar result if we make it another 60 days.
What's frustrating to me is the failure to think about the world that is reflected in so much of the analysis of the war.
Trump chose to start the war the way he did, with no warning and no lead up. This delivered certain advantages to the United States and Israel, allowing them to kill the former Ayatollah and replace him with his gay son, along with various other high level regime figures who were behaving normally and not under threat of assassination.
The cost of this was that there was no sale to the American people. No effort to convince the American people that the sacrifice was worth it. The assumption from the administration was that the US public was so used to being at war with some ragheads or other that people would just accept the war, like my wife getting a Poshmark package and assuming she must have bought something and forgotten about it. And for the most part they seem to be right, the American public will just accept that I guess we're in a war now and deal with the consequences. What they won't do is pay the bill.
Support for the war in public polling peaked at net -10 right at the start of the war, and currently sits at net -21. For comparison, approval of Iraq at this stage was flipped, with 56% in favor. What can we expect when the war was never justified publicly, when the aims have shifted constantly, when it's been over or won or subject to a ceasefire so many times already?
Foreign policy "Realism" is increasingly revealed as Idealism with the serial number sanded off, the realists idealize a world where "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must," and throw tantrums whenever real life gets in the way.
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