Bob Kagan

Setting aside my concern, which is not really worth setting aside, about the domestic consequences of Trump being at war, which I think we have still yet to fully discover.

If we're going to be at war for several months, the opportunities for declaring national security issues on one thing or another, arresting protesters because they're domestic terrorists, et cetera, we haven't fully gone down this road.

But more from a strategic point of view,

I did not believe that bombing alone was going to solve our problem with Iran.

And this is we somehow forgot.

You know, we learned this lesson in the 1990s.

There was this great idea, especially after the decimation of the of the Iraqi army in Kuwait in the you know, in the first Gulf War.

where our missiles, our airplanes, just completely decimated their force, really.

And then it was just a matter of mopping up at the end.

And this gave, I think, Americans and American strategists even a great perception that we could really accomplish our goals pretty much through air power alone.

And you may remember, I don't know how much you were paying attention, but people like Don Rumsfeld and a guy who used to be a big

She's named Richard Pearl, had this idea that you could pretty much cut the armed forces of the United States by a third and just do everything, you know, with missiles and bombs.

And so and the Clinton administration tried to accomplish a lot through air power.

You know, they bombed Saddam Hussein for four days in 1998, 99, and that didn't really do anything.

Then there was the long bombing campaign against Slobodan Milosevic in 99, which was supposed to be over in three days and then went on for three months.

And it really wasn't until we threatened to send in troops.

that he capitulated.

Anyway, long, long way of saying we have learned before that bombing alone wasn't going to do it.

And now we've had the most abject demonstration possible because it has been a free fly pretty much, although we just lost a

an F-15, apparently.