He’s Earned the Benefit of the Doubt
To the surprise of many online foreign policy experts, World War III did not break out over the weekend. As was increasingly apparent last week, the U.S. ended up joining Israel’s war against Iran. President Trump decided the time was right to hit three Iranian nuclear facilities with precision strikes.
Operation Midnight Hammer was a 37-hour, carefully planned and coordinated attack, showing that the U.S. military is still capable of projecting force in an overseas theater, surprising both our adversaries and the American public.
At the president’s command, a squadron of B-2 stealth bombers dropped bunker busters on two underground sites, Fordow and Natanz. A third facility, Isfahan, was hit by Tomahawk cruise missiles that were launched from a submarine. Though there have been conflicting claims about the mission’s success, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in an unequivocal statement that the three sites are destroyed and will take years to rebuild.
With a ceasefire now solidly in place between Israel and Iran that was brokered by President Trump with Qatar’s help, we have the opportunity to assess the U.S.’s role in the war, and especially the Right’s reactions to what’s transpired.
For starters, as the Center for the American Way of Life’s Will Thibeau argues, though it was a successful operation that “demonstrated America’s unrivaled ability to project force across continents, penetrate air defenses, and strike hardened targets with precision,” it won’t easily translate to other theaters of war. China, for example, is a far more skilled adversary than Iran, which is a weakening power. It boasts an underground network of aircraft taxiways, artillery depots, and military assets that far surpasses Iranian resources.
As demonstrated by both Israel’s attacks inside Iran and Ukraine’s inside Russia, unmanned systems are crucial weapons for the battlefields of the 21st century. The U.S. needs to be building a fleet of drones, which costs a fraction of the price of one F-35 fighter and does not put our soldiers into harm’s way.
Additionally, it’s clear that the U.S. needs to upgrade its capabilities. Thibeau notes that in the airstrikes, the U.S. used nearly half of its B-2 fleet—we currently have just 19 bombers—and its bunker-buster bombs, which numbered somewhere between 20 and 30 before the strikes. More of both can be built, of course, but replenishing its B-2s, which are slated to be gradually replaced by the B-21 Raider over the next decade, and munitions will not happen quickly.
Also, we should consider the long-term repercussions of the Iran bombings. Ayatollah Khamenei has not been seen or heard from in nearly a week, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, sensing weakness, could help stage a coup and put a more hardline political coalition in power. This could draw the United States into more battles with Iran in the years ahead, distracting us from pivoting to Asia. Another possibility is that these strikes did not, in fact, destroy these sites. They could have the effect of sending the Iranian nuclear program completely underground, with enrichment being done at facilities that our intelligence agencies may not be able to detect.
On the positive side, the U.S.’s short war with Iran—and it was a war per the jurist Emer de Vattel—demonstrates that the country is starting to reposition itself in the world. The United States is clearly stepping back from its post-World War II position as world hegemon, allowing sovereign nations to battle each other without refereeing every controversy. This has the benefit of having clear winners and losers instead of stalemates and never-ending conflict. After all, as Daniel McCarthy contends, “Having America’s allies take more responsibility for their own security, and their regions’, is precisely what restrainers have desired.”
But extricating ourselves from the existing liberal international order could be perilous. “But with greater independence may come a greater willingness of our allies to use force in situations where we would not use it, and might prefer that they did not use it either,” McCarthy contends. The U.S. will therefore have to be wise and cautious, and be ready to traverse a potentially treacherous international minefield in the immediate years ahead.
Plan Trusters Vs. Panicans
What should be the Right’s takeaway from the U.S.’s short war with Iran? In my mind, its embarrassing conduct online stands out. Instead of sober, careful analysis from those who are knowledgeable about the Middle East, too often big accounts pumped out hysteria and blackpills. And they were too often boosted by trolls that masquerade as pro-MAGA voices but simply pine for clicks and attention.
Especially in light of the past few decades of intervention, regime change, and nation-building, the onus was rightly placed on the Trump administration to explain why engaging Iran at this time was to the U.S.’s benefit. Strong opinions are welcome, including from military veterans who have seen the devastation that wars of choice have wreaked on military families. While the president’s team could have done a better job communicating the administration’s plans, war also demands taking covert action that can only be assessed afterward.
But stoking panic, counseling despair, and endless catastrophizing is something else entirely.
If the Right ever wants to become a long-lasting political coalition, it’s clear that it needs a massive infusion of seriousness, prudence, and wisdom in its upper ranks. Smart accounts should avoid the downward spiral of X’s incentive structure, which rewards non-American grifters who hide behind accounts adorned with bald eagles and American flags. At Pirate Wires, Lachlan Markey noted that Red Pill Media, a “self-proclaimed red-blooded American” who was highly critical of the U.S. entering the war, is actually registered in Karachi. The Dave Smiths of the world—the so-called MAGA voices who call Trump a war criminal and want to see him impeached—need to be shunned and cast aside.
No president who is wholly controlled by Israel would dare call them out, as Trump did on Tuesday morning using strong language. No president who is merely doing the bidding of Benjamin Netanyahu would assert American independence so quickly after the Saturday bombings. No neoconservative puppet would have tried to bring this short war to such a swift conclusion. There is good reason why John Bolton, the editors of Commentary magazine, and other icons of the D.C. circuit are none too pleased that the war ended so quickly. It should come as no surprise that the wrong people like Lindsay Graham cheered on the airstrikes, but have since been deeply disappointed that the military campaign has not continued.
Contrary to the dumb meme flying around, Trump was never the second coming of George W. Bush—there’s no new quagmire and no start of yet another endless war. Besides, nothing in Trump’s first term suggests he’s interested in anything approaching regime change or nation-building.
Trump has clearly done enough to deserve the benefit of the doubt. He’s the first president in decades who has bucked the conventions of the cosmopolitan class that has been running our country into the ground. He’s the first one to question the main tenets of Republican orthodoxy on foreign policy—that the Iraq War was an utter disaster—that most now accept as truth.
Though Trump may not even end up being our greatest general in the larger war against the ruling class, he is by far the most important leader we have right now. If we want to have any shot at recovering self-government—that is, our historic American traditions and practices—we need to trust that he has our best interests at heart and act accordingly.
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