Finish the Job
Iran and Venezuela
Entirely unsurprisingly, Donald Trump appears to be caught flat-footed in the Middle East. After the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps demonstrated that Rocky Balboa was right when he said, “It’s not about how hard you can hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward,” Trump got a case of cold feet. He expected the regime to fold, and to be fair most governments in the world would fold if you took out the entire top political echelons, the entire military leadership, most military infrastructure, most of the navy, etc.
What Trump didn’t count on was the fact that many in the Islamic Republic are true believers. He’s never believed in anything, and so he’s not sure what to do when he encounters real fanaticism.
Some critics are now saying that America has “lost” the war. Despite American forces killing thousands more of the enemy, disabling almost their entire command structure, and killing their Supreme Leader. They are saying this on the basis of the fact that Iran appears to have Trump over a barrel on the Strait of Hormuz. Which is a fair point. But more on that later.
What the situation looks like right now is the classic sketch of the big, athletic bully on the playground fighting the scrawny kid who doesn’t know when to quit. The kid is like Rocky. He doesn’t have to outfight his opponent, he just has to outlast him. As long as he is willing to endure endless amounts of punishment, he can occasionally land a few blows on the bully. The bully keeps knocking the kid down, but every time the kid gets back up. And it turns out, the bully is a bit of a wuss. When the kid does hit him, it doesn’t hurt all that much, but it’s still more than the bully can take. So he taps out without really being hurt all that much, while the kid stands there as the winner, his nose broken and his face covered in blood.
I’m riffing off of something Jonah Goldberg or John Podhoretz said, but the comparison occurred to me before I heard it from either of them, so I feel fine using it. Most of the time in the movies, the underdog is the hero. This time, the underdog is an evil dictatorship which is only strong enough to slaughter innocent young women but can’t so much as touch its regional rival (Israel).
People are upset about gas prices and inflation. I don’t like the economic situation either. But let’s be clear about something: if we compare the damage inflicted on the US economy by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz to the damage our military has inflicted on the military and political leadership of the Islamic Republic, Iran has broken all of its ribs and punctured a lung, while we’ve sustained a papercut.
Let’s also be clear about something else: the American military can open the Strait of Hormuz. We could march into Tehran and take it over. We could win this war so decisively that Iran never threatens our interests again.
But that would be costly. It wouldn’t be easy. More Americans would die. More Iranian civilians would die. We might lose valuable equipment. We might be forced to have boots on the ground. We might be forced to occupy Iran and engage in “nation building.”
I’m not necessarily saying we should do any of that. What I’m saying is that we have the physical capability to do all of that, should we wish to. It isn’t a question of ability. It’s a question of will. Right now, the American people are extremely skeptical of anything that smacks of nation building, given our experience in Iraq.
(It is outside the scope of this essay, but if you compare Iraq under Saddam with Iraq today, I think it’s clear the Iraq War was actually a success. Same with Afghanistan. We won the war in Afghanistan. Before we bugged out, we barely had to lift a finger to protect the Afghan people from the Taliban. Instead, we lost the will, and so we handed the country back to the Taliban in such an obvious way that many Afghan men threw down their arms and refused to fight.)
Trump is a pansy, and he does often “chicken out.” And so he keeps looking for a “deal,” because he mistakenly operates from the assumption that making deals is something he is good at. I don’t know what he is going to do, but I know what he needs to do: finish the job. Break the Iranians’ grip on the Strait. Or, as he sometimes calls it, the “Straight.”
It’s the same story in Venezuela. Trump shocked me and the world by extracting Maduro. But then he chickened out before the job was done. He needs to finish the job. In this case, it would be easier than in Iran. We would apply a minimal amount of force, remove Rodriguez, install Maria Corina Machado, and leave with promises to assassinate anyone who tries to make a move on her. We wouldn’t need to maintain a high security presence in the country. We’d just need to make sure Venezuela and the world know we mean business.
Although it’s also outside the scope of this essay, this is what national honor means. It means that the world knows that we keep our word. When we are challenged, we smack down the challenger. When we say, “If you do this, we will kill you,” we make good on our threats. For threats to work, they have to be believed. Too often, America has reneged on her word. I suppose that’s what you have to expect in a democracy. Public sentiment is fickle and leaders are temporary. But American interests would be better protected abroad if we always had our allies’ backs and always backed our own rhetoric (and never made threats we couldn’t back up).
Trump may yet do the right thing in Iran. My guess is that it won’t be pretty if he does, and that either way the situation will be messy for a while. It is also possible that the regime will fall due to internal revolt (Israeli intelligence seems to think so), or that the Arab countries will try to open the Strait.
America liberated Normandy from one of the most powerful militaries in the world. We did the same at Okinawa and Iwo Jima. Liberating the Strait of Hormuz from Iran will not be nearly so tough.
But it won’t be as easy as walking into Venezuela in the middle of the night and nabbing Maduro, either. And that’s why Trump is so hesitant. For the sake of the Iranian people, the American people, and the world, I hope he eventually works up the backbone. But he’ll exhaust every other option first, it appears.
"Sometime nothing can be a real good hand." --Cool Hand Luke.
Take care.