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Bold, perhaps; but not Brave and not Right

Steven Calabresi gets it only half right in his defense of Trump's handling of the Iran war

David Post | 9.16.2026 12:33 PM

Steven Calabresi writes, here on the VC, that our President has been "bold, brave, and right," and "done all the right things," in pushing ahead attacking Iran. "We should all be very grateful," he writes, "for President Trump's boldness, bravery, and steadfastness with respect to this war."

Respectfully, I disagree.  Trump's Iran policy is, I suppose, "bold." A nuclear attack on Canada would also be "bold," as would aiding and abetting an attack on the US Capitol to prevent election certification, or draining the Rio Grande to make it easier to spot unlawful entrants.  Boldness in pursuit of flawed policies and unlawful ends and downright stupidity -- all of which are on display here in the handling of this war -- is not a virtue.

Prof. Calabresi spends most of his time in his essay showing that "Iran is our mortal enemy —  that it is a "revolutionary theocracy that wants to pave the way to an entirely Shiite Islamic World," that it is "committed to regime change in the United States," that it "wants to destroy the United States and all that it stands for." And that the possibility that Iran can acquire nuclear weapons is both "appreciable" and "unacceptable."

I happen to agree with him on all that. But that's not the question before us, which is: Given all that - that a nuclear-armed Iran poses an unacceptable risk to our country and to the world - what should we do about it? How do we reach the goal of a non-nuclear Iran? Have our President's actions brought us closer to the goal?

Calabresi begins his defense of Trump's decisions in paragraph 9:

"President Trump wisely bombed Iran's nuclear facilities........

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