Joe Kent

American presidents can stomach that if it's for a greater objective.

Clearly, you disagree.

Why would more escalation or any sort of ground invasion, even a limited one like Karg Island, why would that cross a line for you?

And why do you think it's a bad idea?

Well, let's just start with... Actually, let's start with probably the most important thing.

The most important thing if you're going to commit troops to a fight is you have to state up front what your strategic objective is.

Why are we doing this?

When this is all said and done, this will look like what?

And that has not been clearly fleshed out.

That has not been clearly articulated.

We've said very vague things like...

Well, Iran's not going to have a nuclear weapon.

We're going to take away their ballistic missiles.

We're going to take away their Navy.

Those are tactical things.

Taking away equipment, essentially, capabilities, those are tactical capabilities.

I know some of them technically for the wonks out there have strategic impact.

But that's not a true end state.

We actually have to have a true end state.

And if we're going to go with the whole regime change thing, we've got enough data from the last 20 years that any time we try it, it ends up screwing up the region even more.