Tom Nichols

But I don't think it's going to be that easy, and I don't think he's thinking of it in those terms.

And the problem for the generals is that when you're thinking about a goal like regime change, that's really not a military operation.

That's where you really need—

good intelligence.

You need the CIA.

You need people on the ground.

You need Iran experts.

You need allies who are going to help you with intelligence.

All that the military can do is kind of pull the fangs out of the regime's ability to repress people.

So it can hit their military targets and ground their aircraft.

I mean, that's what we did to Muammar Gaddafi.

We did not depose.

We, the United States and Europe, did not depose Muammar Gaddafi.

We basically just stripped away his military ability so that he couldn't defend himself.

We kind of put him on an even more even footing with the people that wanted to overthrow him.

Well, the first order of business for Americans playing in away games like this is to suppress all of the enemy's air defenses.

It's to gain control of the skies.

And so what you'll see is waves of flights

coming off of those carriers and from American bases that are going to hit air defense sites, radars, basically to just blind and take out anything that could be a threat to our aircraft.

What you do with that, you know, I'm back to saying it.