I dig maps. I ran a search for vintage maps of Iran and found the featured image. It comes from a post called Your Travel  Guide To Iran.  Ironies abound: the Islamic Republic has never been a tourism mecca and is even less so as the bombs drop during Operation Epic Fury. Who wants to be held hostage or get struck by a missile when on vacation?

I’ve done a lot of background reading on this unwise conflict. I’ve even tried to make sense of the shifting rationales coming from Team MAGA. This cartoon captures the confusion sown by that strutting meathead, Pete Hegseth.

I hate sharing a first name with this mook, so call me Adrastos.

I learned some cool things in the course of my reading including the term victory disease from my compatriot Tom Nichols. Team Trump is suffering from a surfeit of victory disease:

“This kind of thinking is an old problem, and it has a name: “victory disease,” meaning that victory in battle encourages leaders to seek out more battles, and then to believe that winning those battles means that they are winning the larger war or achieving some grand strategic aim—right up until the moment they realize that they have overreached and find themselves facing a military disaster or even total defeat. It is a condition that has afflicted many kinds of regimes over the course of history, one so common that my colleagues and I lectured military officers about it when I was a professor at the Naval War College. The issue is especially important for Americans, because when national leaders have exceptionally capable military forces at their disposal—as the United States does—they are even more likely to be seized by victory disease.”

You say victory disease, I say hubris. Let’s call the whole thing off.

In my attempt to place this war in historical perspective I came upon an article in The Guardian that includes a discussion of this fresco:

Here’s what Iranian expert Ali Vaez had to say about the mural:

“A famous fresco in Isfahan depicting the 16th-century battle of Chaldiran, fought between the Turkish-Ottoman and Persian-Safavid empires, offers the template: in the painting, the Persians appear triumphant, having shattered their Turkish adversary. The historical record says otherwise: Chaldiran was a decisive Ottoman victory. It is not an attempt to erase defeat so much as to reframe it – less a tale of loss than an ode to endurance, to heroic resistance against an enemy that outnumbered and outgunned them. Defeat can be recast into proof of valour, and endurance can be sold as triumph.”

You say fresco, I say mural. Let’s call the whole thing off.

The mullahs are survivors. They’ve been in power since 1979, and plan to stay there regardless of efforts to decapitate their leadership. In this case, decapitation is synonymous with the assassination of a head of state, which is banned by American law, a ban that is honored in the breach, alas.

WaPo survivor David Ignatius has written the best piece I’ve read about decapitation, The Dangerous Rise Of Decapitation Warfare.

Does decapitation work? Only if there are rational actors to mount the headless steed as it were. Iran has a shortage of them: Religious fanatics are rarely rational. It’s made worse by the fact that the Insult Comedian believes in nothing, so true believers mystify him. That’s yet another reason I expect an extended conflict: Mutual incomprehension.

Why do I think the war is likely to drag on? Bombing alone has never won a war according to political scientist Robert Pape:

“In war after war, cities have burned, infrastructure has collapsed, leaders have been targeted from the sky, yet no regime in modern history has fallen solely because it was bombed from the air end.” 

You say regime change, I say stalemate. Let’s call the whole thing off.

Pape makes another important point in that interview with New York Magazine:

“Before the bombs fall, it’s essentially a two-actor game. You have a society and you have a regime, and a lot of times the society doesn’t like its regime. But when you have the foreign power come in, it becomes a three-actor game, and the foreign power using military force injects nationalism into the politics in a way that just simply wasn’t there before.”

Americans like President Pennywise have a hard time understanding that nationalism is a double-edged sword. The bombing campaign will activate enough nationalistic frenzy to keep the regime in place unless and until there are, to use the current cliche, “boots on the ground. ” Trump hasn’t ruled that out but he’s afflicted with victory disease, so he believes that Iran is the next Venezuela. Holy wishful thinking, Batman.

The post title captures my emotional reaction to Operation Epic Fury, which sounds like a shitty action movie. I have an epic flashback pondering past Middle Eastern wars, all of which were bad trips. Bummer, man.

My search for context led me to Patrick Wintour’s brilliant retrospective, From Bush Sr To Trump: The Risks, Lessons and Legacy of US Interference In The Middle East.

The lessons have not been learned and we’re making the same mistakes again including inciting the Kurds to rise against the regime. That could cause problems with Trump’s little Turkish friend, President Erdogan because greater Kurdistan includes a slice of Turkey. Does Trump even know this?

This war of choice will also cause problems with Trump’s little Russian friend, President Putin who’s allied with Iran. Does Trump even know this?

I have another reason for having flashbacks: The Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979-80. Jimmy Carter’s inept handling of that crisis opened the door for the right to come to power. Unintended consequences abound when dealing with the Middle East. It’s where optimism goes to die.

Repeat after me: Bombing doesn’t win wars.

The last word goes to Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong: