The justifications for the war have been stunningly incoherent. Maybe the war is about regime change, about Iran’s nuclear program, about the narrow military objectives of degrading their ballistic missile and drone capabilities, or perhaps it was because Israel was about to attack and we’d be at risk, or because the United States was under imminent threat from Iran, or to achieve peace in the Middle East, and so on.
Maybe it’s not a war at all. Maybe it’s an “excursion that will keep us out of a war” or an incursion or maybe it’s only a “little excursion.” In President Trump’s America, there may be only two genders, but our military adventures can identify however they please.
[…]
Without a clear moral or political purpose, we’re left with what the military analyst Franz-Stefan Gady calls the “strike-as-strategy” paradox, in which we substitute tactical prowess for comprehensive strategic design. This tendency, he writes, “is reinforced by a political culture that demands televised displays of military prowess.”
Well, I am not entertained. And though my ideals have been bruised and battered, not least by the war I served in not long after Mr. Hegseth’s first deployment, I still retain a faith in the principles of the Constitution I swore an oath to 20 years ago. They are universal, not nationalistic, principles, and they should serve as a check on the hubristic American tendency to think we can dominate others by sheer force of military might.
As Washington knew well, war is a “plague to mankind,” even when it goes well and the only targets we strike are valid military targets. The average junior Iranian sailor on a ship off the coast of Sri Lanka could be a conscript. He might even dislike the regime that just murdered thousands of his fellow Iranians but which he feels helpless to overthrow. He is, like the average American, endowed by his Creator with inalienable rights.
The whole piece is worth reading.