David French

So you have no public buy-in.

We're not clear of the objectives.

Throwing in regime change seems to be an extraordinary reach.

Other than that, Michelle, everything's going great.

show.

You know, the analogy I've used, it's this cocked pistol.

You've moved in enough forces, you've put them in a posture that is extraordinarily aggressive.

It's like a cocked pistol aimed at Iran.

And the other thing that I would say about this is there's another factor hovering over in the background here.

And that other factor is that

I think Donald Trump feels like he has a really good track record at dealing with Iran aggressively.

So, you know, he had the strike against Qasem Soleimani.

Iran retaliated with a ballistic missile strike that was really limited, telegraphed.

Although it inflicted American casualties, no Americans were killed.

Then, you know, you come in at the very end of the long Israeli operation that had gone very, very well, and then you sort of administer the coup de grace to a limited number of targets.

And you call that a day.

He just went through the Venezuela raid, which was from a purely military perspective, swooping in with special forces, spiriting out the leader of a country without widespread death and destruction.

It was a remarkable military feat.

This is also a time when you should be very careful

alarmed and aware that that's exactly when the temptation to reach too far locks in because you know one of the records of american military engagements prior to when both afghanistan and iraq began to bog down is we had been through a a long run of very successful military engagements from desert storm to the interventions in the balkan states