Tom Nichols

Um, but having watched it, caught up on it later, you know, it's, it's, it's just insane.

I mean, it's all, you know, chest thumping Conan, the barbarian stuff, not the kind of thing that's going to make anybody in Iran say, you know what I ought to do?

I had a trust Pete Heg set that I should lay down my arms and everything, you know, will be okay.

I mean, we are to, to some extent by what we're doing, we're putting some of these guys on death ground.

And that's a bad plan.

Yes, and the thing I was going to say about a transition to democracy or something less oppressive than the thing we just overthrew.

We get it that it's not going to happen tomorrow.

We've learned our lessons.

We're not going to send you copies of the Federalist Papers and say, here's your homework.

But it can't be.

Just as I think we should have done in Iraq, there was a plan, I guess, from the British to say, look, we don't disband the military.

We take a bunch of generals and we say, we're going to put this country under military rule for now.

And we're watching you.

And you're going to have to transition to a civilian government.

And all the time with Uncle Sam and the allies saying, don't screw this up because we can come back here anytime.

Instead, we're simply saying, hey, people in Iran, kill your government and go take power.

And we're not coming, by the way.

not that's, I mean, everything that Trump is saying, and I, and I really want to emphasize this so much of what Trump is talking about would be more credible if he were talking about doing it backed by ground troops.

And I don't want him to do that.

So that, that is where the steel, you know, even though we're off the cliff, there are still dumb things we can do, even as the car is, you know, plunging, we can unbuckle our seatbelts and try and stand on the roof.