A ground war with Iran risks another Vietnam for America |
Washington has a favourite word for moments like this: options. It sounds sober. Responsible, even. It suggests prudence, flexibility, a commander-in-chief keeping every door open. But in practice, “options” is often just the polite way this town avoids saying what it is really doing. It is preparing itself, step by step, to go further than it said it would.
That is what makes the talk around Iran so unsettling. The administration keeps insisting that it does not need a ground war. Senior officials have said the United States can achieve its aims in Iran without ground troops, even as thousands more U.S. forces are being moved into the region to preserve “maximum optionality.” Read that sentence twice. If ground troops are unnecessary, why is Washington still so determined to keep the idea alive?
Americans know where this language usually leads. First, the war is limited. Then the deployment is precautionary. Then the mission expands by degrees, never quite enough at any one moment to trigger a national reckoning, but enough in aggregate to wake up one morning and realise the country is in another war it was told it would not have to fight.
Americans know where this language usually leads. First, the war is limited. Then the deployment is precautionary. Then the mission expands by degrees, never quite enough at any one moment to trigger a national reckoning, but enough in aggregate to wake up one morning and realise the country is in another war it was told it would not have to fight.
That is not cynicism. It is memory.
One month into this conflict, even sympathetic observers would struggle to say with confidence what success is supposed to look like. The White House now........