Jamel Bouie

No, no, dude.

That's a problem you created.

Ending the conflict with the Straits firmly in the control of Iran.

is an outright defeat for the U.S.

And I was just struck by how this was, like, it felt like he was protesting too much, you know?

Oh, I have no idea.

I mean, I can't speculate about this.

I have no idea what the president will claim as a real victory.

Because it gets to, I think, one of the fundamental issues, not just with this war, but with this administration.

And it's somewhat connected to David's point about not attempting to get authorization or have a debate.

And that is, both David and I have been using this term strategic.

I'm not sure that anyone in the White House understands what strategic thinking is.

I think that all of their thinking happens exclusively at the level of tactics.

So exclusively at the level of what is the specific thing we can do

to an opponent to try to attain like a very narrow objective.

Not so much what are our broad goals that will establish a new status quo going forward.

And so like that's, you fight wars to attain specific strategic goals.

And if you do not attain those goals,

then it does not matter how much stuff you blew up, how many battles you won, how much valor you displayed.

None of that matters.