Running Out of Munitions

Many posts have discussed war powers and the US military.  The Iran War has been a disaster.  We are running low on munitions.

 Bruce Mehlman:

Summer Lesson: There’s a new missile gap (how many we have vs how many we need)

Fall Question: Can America rearm faster, smarter & in time to deter?

The Pentagon's Influencers

 Many posts have discussed social media. 

Dan Lamothe and Tara Copp at WP:

The Pentagon has secretly installed several conservative military veterans with large online followings in government roles, declining to disclose their assignments as they amplify Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s viewpoints and attack those who scrutinize the Trump administration, according to people familiar with the matter and corroborating material.

At least some of the influencers have been assigned to civilian roles that could lead to changes in policy, the people familiar with the matter said. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Neither the Pentagon nor those involved have disclosed the government roles despite the Trump administration’s claims that they are running the most transparent Defense Department ever.

Those involved include Rob Maness, a retired Air Force colonel, and Kurt Schlichter, a retired Army colonel, people familiar with the matter said. Pentagon records reviewed by The Washington Post show that both have active official government email addresses as of this past week and are assigned to the office of Anthony Tata, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. The email addresses include a “.civ” suffix, meaning they are labeled as civilian employees, rather than as military personnel or contractors.

Both served for decades in uniform and, since retiring, have turned from the military to conservative commentary. Maness has more than 135,000 followers on X, while Schlichter has nearly 620,000.

Another retired Army colonel and influencer, Thomas Anderson, was listed in Pentagon records earlier this year with a “.civ” email address and assigned to Tata’s office, according to people familiar with the matter and records reviewed by The Post. An attorney, he writes online under the pen name Cynical Publius and has more than 323,000 followers on X. He was no longer listed in Pentagon records late this past week, the people familiar with the issue said.

The assignments for all three have not previously been reported. Questions have been raised online about influencers’ connections with the Pentagon, including in an article last week by the Bulwark

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Iran and Overstretch

Many posts have discussed war powers and the US military.  The Iran War has been a disaster.

Shelby Holliday, Michael R. Gordon, and Lara Seligman at WSJ:

The U.S. has rushed so many munitions to the Middle East to fight Iran that military planners are concerned the loss of firepower is diminishing America’s ability to defend against potential threats from China and Russia, said U.S. officials.

The cuts have been so deep that the U.S. inventories in Europe of PAC-3 Patriot air defense interceptors and Atacms surface-to-surface missiles are deemed to be “beyond critical,” some of the officials said.

The U.S. and Iran have mostly halted direct attacks in recent weeks. But refilling weapons stocks moved from countries like Japan, South Korea and Germany could take years, leaving soft spots in the U.S. global military posture even as Western military officials don’t assess that full-scale attacks by China and Russia are imminent, officials said.

In addition to Patriot interceptors, other European-based weapons have been drawn down to extremely low levels, including precision-strike missiles and guided rockets, officials added. Thaad antimissile interceptors and Merops counterdrone systems have also been sent from Europe to the Middle East, further diminishing supplies on the continent.

The shrinking inventories have led the U.S. European Command to adjust its operational plans, officials said. They have also increasingly led administration officials to assess that America couldn’t fully execute contingency plans to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion if it occurred in the near term, The Wall Street Journal has previously reported.

Alex Horton and Tara Copp at WP:

Several U.S. military leaders have advised Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that prolonging large-scale operations against Iran is unsustainable and risks weakening their ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the U.S. homeland, according to people familiar with a recent assessment prepared for the Pentagon chief.

The warnings — detailed for Hegseth by the heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force and the four-star commanders overseeing U.S. operations throughout Europe, Asia and Latin America — appear in the Aug. 14 edition of the Secretary of Defense Orders Book (SDOB), these people said. They described the assessment to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because the document is classified.

As President Donald Trump has pressured Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and accept several U.S. provisions for ending the stalemated conflict, he has been adamant that all options remain available to him — including further military action. Consequently, U.S. Central Command, the headquarters responsible for prosecuting the Iran war, has kept a force of more than 50,000 troops on alert for months in case the president orders additional attacks.

The Aug. 14 orders book directs some troops deployed in the Middle East to remain there through September and some others into 2027, said those familiar with the document. The prospect of extending those forces further compelled military leaders to voice their concern, these people said.

Leaders of the U.S. European Command, the U.S. Pacific Command and the U.S. Southern Command, along with the Navy’s top admiral, responded with what is characterized in the SDOB as a “non-concur,” those familiar with the assessment said — meaning they disagree with the secretary’s order to extend their forces but will execute it nevertheless.

Trusting Veterans

Many posts have discussed veterans.

Ellen Maese at Gallup:

Seven in 10 U.S. adults say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in military veterans, according to new research from With Honor and Gallup. That confidence extends to elected leadership, with 77% saying they would trust a person with military experience a great deal or a fair amount to perform well as an elected official. Trust in leaders with military experience spans party groups, with majorities of Democrats (70%), independents (73%) and Republicans (91%) expressing this view.

The findings come as With Honor Action reports that 752 veterans across the political spectrum have run or are running for Congress in the 2026 cycle — a 47% increase from 2024 and the highest number the organization has tracked since it began monitoring veteran candidates in 2018.

Trust Over Time

 Many posts have discussed confidence in institutions.

Bruce Mehlman:

Stripes at 45: A Patriotic Movie

  Many posts have discussed patriotism and American exceptionalism.

Stripes premiered 45 years ago today.  Two years ago, Rich Cohen wrote at WSJ:

Released in 1981, “Stripes” is the story of a burnout named John Winger who, seeking direction, joins the Army. It was the first summer after the election of Ronald Reagan, whose campaign had been powered by the eerily familiar slogan, “Let’s Make America Great Again!” It was a time of high inflation, simmering tension with a communist rival and deep polarization in our politics.

In other words, a moment much like our own, which might explain why Murray’s speech still speaks so powerfully to my own teenage kids. I can’t think of a better statement of what ails us and what still makes America and Americans exceptional.

“We’re not Watusi,” Murray tells his fellow grunts in a moment of disunity and crisis. “We’re not Spartans. We’re Americans, with a capital ‘A,’ huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We’re the underdog. We’re mutts!…But there’s no animal that’s more faithful, that’s more loyal, more lovable than the mutt.”

Murray played it for laughs, and it was funny, but it was serious too. It celebrates our tolerance, stick-to-it-ness and ethnic jumble. It’s John Winthrop’s City on a Hill remade in the shadow of “Saturday Night Live.” I rank it with FDR’s First Inaugural and Lincoln at Gettysburg. It’s the speech we need today.

...

 This silly speech in a silly movie expressed a powerful truth. The Germans of World War II were all the same because they were all the same. We are all the same because we are all different. Which means those differences don’t really matter. Our ancestors came to this country to leave all that B.S. behind. It was the American creed rephrased in the vernacular. It was beautiful. 

Only later did I fully appreciate that Murray, along with screenwriters Harold Ramis and Len Blum, had given us a great gift: a way to love our country without feeling gullible, sentimental or corny.

Constraints on Presidential War Power

Many posts have discussed war powers and the US military.

Matt Glassman:

My view, as discussed last week, is that presidential warmaking is an almost wholly political issue, rather than a legal one. No court is going to stop a war.

That said, I think may people hear "wholly political" and just assume that the president has a free hand to do whatever he/she wants. I completely disagree. In fact, presidents are incredibly constrained by politics when it comes to war.

Take Trump and Iran. What are some of the major political constraints:

1. Military capacity
2. Cooperation of allies
3. Reaction of foreign adversaries
4. Reaction of markets
5. Congressional opinion
6. American public opinion
7. Partisan/base opinion

The first two---military capacity and ally cooperation---are straightforward; they are essentially supply-side constraints. Presidents can only go to war with the military Congress provides. Ditto with allies; absent the ability to use airspace and foreign bases, some operations become impossible. And it's always better to have a coalition of nations fighting the war than going it alone.

The third and fourth items on the list---foreign and market reactions---are constraints because they create immediate negative feedback, political and economic. Trump can't just nuke Tehran because that could easily trigger an escalation to global war, and WW3 with China is a bad outcome. Similarly, now that Iran has closed the strait and oil prices are spiking, the economic costs of the war may soon exceed the benefits, encouraging the president to seek a diplomatic off-ramp.

The final three items---opinions in Congress, the public, and the president's party---are the most purely political. These matter because the president has goals other than the objectives of the war, and negative opinions about the war will inevitably spill over to future political goals, whether they are policy, electoral, or egoist.

The Fallen in the Iran War

Previous posts have discussed Memorial Day.  The United States is in another war, and more Americans have died.

At CBS, Kerry Breen reports on service members who have died in the Iran War.

The first six were members of a U.S. Army Reserve unit based in Des Moines, Iowa, who were killed in a strike in Kuwait on March 1. They were identified as:

• Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida;
• Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska;
• Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota;
• Sgt. Declan J. Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa;
• Maj. Jeffrey R. O'Brien, 45, of Waukee, Iowa;
• Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert M. Marzan, 54, of Sacramento, California.

Another service member who was injured in an attack at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia in March 1 died from his injuries seven days later, the Pentagon said. He was identified as Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, of Glendale, Kentucky.

Six service members were killed in a crash of a U.S. refueling aircraft over Iraq on March 12. Three of the six were members of the Ohio Air National Guard assigned to the 121st Air Refueling Wing at Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base, and the other three were assigned to MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, the Defense Department said. They were identified as:

• Maj. John A. Klinner, 33, of Auburn, Alabama;
• Capt. Ariana G. Savino, 31, of Covington, Washington;
• Tech. Sgt. Ashley B. Pruitt, 34, of Bardstown, Kentucky;
• Capt. Seth R. Koval, 38, of Mooresville, Indiana;
• Capt. Curtis J. Angst, 30, of Wilmington, Ohio;
• Tech. Sgt. Tyler H. Simmons, 28, of Columbus, Ohio.

Blockade

Many posts have discussed war powers and the US military.

 Mark Nevitt at Just Security:

CENTCOM has clarified that the U.S. blockade targets Iranian ports along the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman — not the Strait itself. That distinction matters legally, but the blockade remains an act of war. Further, CENTCOM stated that “forces will not impede freedom of navigation for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from non-Iranian ports.” CENTCOM’s clarification appears to supersede President Trump’s earlier social media post announcing a blockade of the Strait itself. The blockade announced in specific terms by CENTCOM ratchets up pressure on Iran while creating enormous operational risks.

For a blockade to be legally valid, it must meet certain criteria.

First, the blockade can be established only by the government of a belligerent State. Blockade is not a peacetime operation. By establishing the blockade, the United States is exercising a belligerent right under the laws of war, effectively ending the ceasefire.

Second, it is customary for the State establishing the blockade to notify all affected States of its imposition. The form of the notification is not material, so long as it is effective. CENTCOM has announced the blockade via social media and has stated that “[a]dditional information will be provided to commercial mariners through a formal notice before the start of the blockade.”

Third, to be valid, the blockade must be effective. This means that blockading forces must exert force to render ingress or egress of the blockaded area dangerous. While the Commander’s Handbook on Naval Warfare states that “effectiveness does not require every possible avenue of approach to the blockaded area be covered,” an ineffective blockade is an illegal blockade under the law of naval warfare and the San Remo Manual. This will be challenging. This blockade is a massive undertaking for the U.S. Navy, which appears to be operating without naval partners. After all, the Iranian coastline stretches roughly the coastal distance from Boston to Savannah —about 1,100 miles.

At the time President Trump’s version of the blockade had been announced (not the modified CENTCOM version), Admiral James Stavridis, former head of European Command, estimated that an effective blockade would require two full aircraft carrier strike groups as well as a dozen destroyers. That would represent a substantial commitment of naval firepower, and even then, effectiveness would not be guaranteed — a threshold that matters legally, not just operationally. It’s fair to assume the scope of the blockade announced by CENTCOM will also require a very substantial force. These operational realities bear directly on whether the blockade can satisfy the legal effectiveness requirement under the law of naval warfare — a threshold that, if not met, renders the blockade itself unlawful.

Further complicating matters, warships may have to position themselves along the Iranian coastline. If so, that will require several ships to navigate the Strait of Hormuz itself, a risky proposition made even riskier with the ceasefire ending and unaccounted-for mines lurking about.

Fourth, a blockade must be applied impartially to the vessels and aircraft of all States.

Finally, the blockade must not bar access to or departure from neutral ports and coasts. This requirement may become salient if the blockade has the practical effect of restricting neutral access to regional ports.

The Pope, the War, and Hegseth

Many posts have discussed the role of religion in American life.

Pope Leo XIV announced Sunday that he will lead a prayer vigil for peace on April 11 at St. Peter’s Basilica, using his first Easter Urbi et Orbi message to make a forceful appeal for an end to war and a renewed embrace of dialogue. https://t.co/crCqJdAzxd

— Catholic News Agency (@cnalive) April 5, 2026

Motoko Rich at NYT:

Pete Hegseth, the U.S. defense secretary, has asked the American people to pray “every day, on bended knee” for a military victory in the Middle East “in the name of Jesus Christ.”

Pope Leo XIV, the first U.S.-born pontiff, has a starkly different take on what should be done in Jesus’ name.

In a homily during a Mass on Thursday morning before Easter, the pope said that the Christian mission had often been “distorted by a desire for domination, entirely foreign to the way of Jesus Christ.”

Since the United States and Israel began bombing Iran in late February, the pope has consistently called for an end to the violence and a return to dialogue to resolve the conflict. But without naming Mr. Hegseth, he has also pointed out the ways in which Christianity has been marshaled for purposes that the pope says do not align with Catholic teaching.

“We tend to consider ourselves powerful when we dominate, victorious when we destroy our equals, great when we are feared,” the pope said in a homily during a Holy Thursday rite at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of the bishop of Rome. “God has given us an example — not of how to dominate, but of how to liberate; not of how to destroy life, but of how to give it.”

In late March the pope warned against invoking the name of Jesus for battle, saying in a Sunday homily that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”

War and Algebra

Many posts have discussed war powers and the US military.

 Yonatan Touval at NYT:

This is the recurring illusion of overequipped leaders: Because they can map the battle space, they think they understand the war. But war is never merely a technical contest. It is shaped by grievance, sacred narrative, the memory of past humiliations and the desire for revenge. Those are not atmospheric complications added to an otherwise technical enterprise. They are what the war is about.

So the familiar errors appear. The war planners imagine that a regime can be decapitated into collapse, whereas external attack often does the opposite — binding a battered state more tightly to a society newly united by injury, humiliation and rage. They imagine that destroying conventional assets would settle the matter, as if legitimacy, wounded sovereignty and collective anger were secondary rather than the war’s actual terrain. Planners who took their adversary’s self-understanding seriously — rather than discounting it as propaganda — might have anticipated that an attack would not weaken the regime’s narrative but instead fulfill it. They might also have foreseen the paradox that systematic decapitation does not produce negotiators. It removes them.

The military theorist Carl von Clausewitz long ago recognized the delusion of reducing war to a kind of algebra. War, as he understood it, is never merely calculation. It is saturated with passion, uncertainty and political purpose. The algebra has grown more sophisticated. But the delusion is just as dangerous today as it was in the 19th century.

What this war exposes, then, is a failure not only of strategy but of literacy. Literature and history, at their most serious, train precisely the faculties these leaders lack: the capacity to grant that other minds are not transparent to us, and are governed by purposes not our own. A mind tutored by history and literature knows that actors in the grip of a sacred cause tend to mean what they say — and that bombing a founding myth is more likely to consecrate it than to dissolve it.

Cultural knowledge, of course, rarely prevents the catastrophes of war.

Athens at the height of its golden age sailed for Syracuse and lost an empire. Thucydides spent the rest of his life explaining why. The generals of 1914 were cultivated, well-read men, but those qualities did not save Europe. What has changed is not that culture once prevented blindness and no longer does. It is that culture has increasingly ceded authority to systems that mistake information for understanding and speed for judgment.

War, Iran, Quantity, Attrition

Many posts have discussed war powers and the US military.

Michael Raasch at The Daily Mail:

Now, officials are urgently discussing whether Tomahawk missiles in other theaters, like the Indo-Pacific, may need to be shipped to the Middle East as the US continues its offensive against the Islamic Republic. Tomahawk cruise missiles have been a staple of American military might since they were first used in the Gulf War by George H W Bush. But the widespread usage of the bespoke military tech in the US war in Iran has rattled some Pentagon officials who are now sounding the alarm about the depleted Tomahawk stockpiles. The Pentagon hit back against the unnamed officials' concern in a statement to the Daily Mail.

John G. Ferrari and Dillon Prochnickiat AEI:

The parallels to the present are uncomfortable. After the Cold War, the Pentagon actively encouraged the consolidation of the defense industry. In 1993, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and his deputy, William Perry, hosted a now-infamous dinner with the heads of the major defense contractors and told them bluntly that the post–Cold War budget would not sustain them all. The message was clear: Merge or be left behind. The industry obliged. Dozens of firms collapsed into a handful of prime contractors. The dinner became known as “the Last Supper,” and its legacy is the narrow, concentrated industrial base the United States is now trying to surge in wartime. Then came the Budget Control Act of 2011, which imposed automatic spending caps on the federal budget, resulting in defense cuts, as part of a deficit-reduction deal in Congress. Even after the caps were partially lifted in subsequent years, the damage to procurement pipelines, production lines, and inventory depth persisted. The combination of industrial consolidation and fiscal austerity produced the same trade-off the Truman-era Pentagon had made: fewer, more expensive systems and the assumption that wars would be short enough that depth would not matter. Now, as in 1950, a real war is exposing the consequences.

The logic behind that trade-off was not irrational. Precision, stealth, networking, and cutting-edge technology give the American military decisive advantages in short campaigns. The assumption was that the United States would fight brief wars, dominate quickly, and rely on technological overmatch to compensate for smaller inventories. But high-end capability without industrial depth is a fragile foundation for fighting an actual war. When a single interceptor costs millions of dollars and requires long lead times to produce, replenishment becomes a multiyear effort. When cruise missiles are built in limited quantities optimized for peacetime budgets rather than wartime demand, stockpiles evaporate quickly under sustained fire. When the industrial base has consolidated to a handful of suppliers with narrow surge capacity, scaling production becomes an exercise in wishful thinking.

The war with Iran is demonstrating that quantity and attrition still matter. Adversaries understand this well. Iran’s strategy is not to outmatch the United States technologically. It is to impose costs, stretch supplies, and exhaust American magazines beyond our ability to reconstitute them. In a broader strategic sense, China’s military modernization emphasizes mass production of missiles and drones precisely because China understands that sustained combat favors the side that can regenerate combat power quickly. Ukraine and Russia have learned the same lesson in their own war: Modern conflict demands weapons built at the nexus of quality and quantity. The United States must internalize this reality.

Hegseth Endorses War Crime

 María Teresita Armstrong-Matta at Raw Story:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's offhand remark that the U.S. would show "no quarter, no mercy for our enemies," in Iran. In military context, "no quarter" means killing enemy combatants without allowing surrender.

This alarmed legal experts, who warned the statement could constitute a war crime. Even just saying it could count as a violation of international law and U.S. military code, they added.

Wall Street Journal national security reporter Alex Ward flagged the comment as violating international humanitarian law under the Geneva Convention.

Claremont McKenna College professor Jack Pitney cited the Defense Department's own Law of War Manual, which explicitly forbids declaring no quarter will be given. International Crisis Group senior adviser Brian Finucane, a former U.S. government war crimes lawyer, stated that even declaring no quarter constitutes a war crime punishable by up to life imprisonment under the DoD Manual for Military Commissions.

Stanford law professor Tom Dannenbaum confirmed declaring no quarter is prohibited under international humanitarian law and itself amounts to a war crime.


Watch the video below.

It violates international law. \

It violates the DOD manual on the law of war.

It violates US Code.

At Just Security,  Daniel Mauer offers the Secretary of Defense some hypothetical legal advice:

. War Crime liability under 18 U.S.C. 2441:

a. The U.S. War Crimes statute makes it a federal offense to commit a “war crime,” subject to being “fined … or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.”

b. The statute defines “war crime” by incorporating those offenses described as “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions or its additional protocols and acts specifically “prohibited by Article 23, 25, 27, or 28 of the Annex to the Hague Convention IV.”

c. As stated above, Article 23(d) in that Annex is unambiguous: “it is especially forbidden . . . [t]o declare that no quarter will be given.”

d. In describing ongoing and future combat operations in the current international armed conflict between the United States and Iran, your statement “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies” likely violates Art. 23(d) of the Annex to Hague IV and thereby violates 18 U.S.C. § 2441. This interpretation is reinforced when your remarks are considered alongside your previous public comments about the Rules of Engagement, “maximum lethality, not tepid legality,” and the laws of armed conflict noted above in para. 2.b.

e. An intention to merely cause panic and terror within the Iranian armed forces is not a defense because Article 23(d) prohibits the “declar[ation] that no quarter will be given.” It is a speech offense; under normal principles of criminal law, a command to unlawfully kill another person, even if never performed, is still prohibited (“Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal” – see 18 U.S.C. § 2). Whether the order is ever consummated by your subordinates is immaterial to your criminal exposure under 18 U.S.C. § 2441.

f. Any U.S. servicemember who interprets your comments as an order and who subsequently commands, directs, orders, or gives “no quarter” to Iranian forces will be exposed to criminal liability under Article 118, UCMJ, for murder (a premeditated killing of another with no legal justification or excuse). Such an order is “patently” or “manifestly” unlawful; therefore, a servicemember accused of murder for ordering or giving “no quarter” cannot raise an “obedience to orders” defense in their court-martial. Alternatively, servicemembers would also be exposed to prosecution in U.S. district court for violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2441.

The Dog That Didn't Wag: War Without Rally

Many posts have discussed war powers and the US military.

Peter Baker at NYT:

President Trump likes to assert that he has accomplished things no other president has. With the opening of his military assault against Iran, he has achieved another distinction: He is the first president in the era of modern polling to take the United States to war without the support of the public.

Traditionally, Americans stand behind their president when he first orders troops into battle, generally sticking with him unless it drags on, casualties mount and victory seems increasingly elusive. With Mr. Trump’s war against Iran, the public has skipped the rally-around-the-president phase this time.

Support for his ferocious bombardment of Iran has ranged from 27 percent in a Reuters/Ipsos poll to 41 percent in a CNN survey, far below the level of public backing that Mr. Trump’s predecessors initially enjoyed when they used force overseas. Given that wars tend to grow less popular over time, the initial negative response portends political challenges for Mr. Trump and his fellow Republicans the longer the fighting continues.

The opposition is revealing about this particular moment in American history. A country already tired of decades of combat in the Middle East has shown little appetite for yet another adventure abroad. And the deep polarization of American politics only makes it harder to build support across lines. Even some Americans sympathetic to the goal of toppling the repressive, terrorist-sponsoring government in Tehran find it difficult to embrace Mr. Trump as commander in chief.

Iran and the Shadow of Previous Wars

Many posts have discussed war powers and the US military.

 Natalie Jackson at National Journal:

Afghanistan was retaliation for 9/11, and was therefore extremely popular. Americans’ desire to avenge the attacks translated to more than 90 percent support for military action. More than 6 in 10 supported a long-term war. Eighteen months later when we went into Iraq, sentiment was still fairly unified and supportive of going after foreign enemies—two-thirds of voters supported military intervention to take out Saddam Hussein, including a majority of Democrats.

It also helped that the international order supported both wars in the beginning. The world was fairly easily convinced—incorrectly, as it turned out—that Iraq was making nuclear weapons. That fear was accompanied by humanitarian concerns and Iraq's alleged terrorist ties.

Both wars ultimately became unpopular and untenable. The eventual wind-down in Afghanistan was chaotic and unpopular, and in mid-2021 more than 6 in 10 Americans said it hadn’t even been worth fighting. In 2019, 62 percent of Americans and 59 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans said the Iraq war had not been worth fighting. There were two big wins: taking Saddam Hussein out of power and killing Osama bin Laden. But for most, there was little point in continuing the wars after those wins.

Americans have become increasingly isolationist in the last 15 years. Donald Trump campaigned on that isolationism, only to turn toward military action and regime change once he returned to office. That the administration is working closely with Israel also colors the reaction to attacking Iran. The American public has grown substantially less favorable toward Israel over the last few years.

We’ve been involved in periodic conflicts with Iran since the late Ayatollah Khomeini took over in 1979, particularly in trying to keep the ultra-religious regime that chants “death to America” from getting nuclear weapons. But without a huge provocation from Iran, a preemptive strike was always going to be unpopular. Combine that with the recent history of U.S. wars in the region, and you see that public reactions go far deeper than partisanship.

Airstrikes

Many posts have discussed war powers and the US military.

Zachary Basu at Axios: 

No president in the modern era has ordered more military strikes against as many different countries as Donald Trump.He's attacked seven nations, three of which — Iran, Nigeria and Venezuela — had never been targeted by U.S. military strikes. He authorized more individual air strikes in 2025 than President Biden did in four years.
...
The big picture: Trump's strikes are historically distinctive not just in number but in kind.President Bush's post-9/11 campaigns and President Obama's drone wars were massive in scale — but concentrated in inherited or congressionally authorized theaters. Alongside traditional counterterrorism efforts, Trump has opened new fronts — a Christmas Day strike in Nigeria, drug boats sunk in the Caribbean, Nicolás Maduro snatched from Caracas. His preferred model is consistent: no boots on the ground, no lengthy entanglements, overwhelming force applied quickly and framed as essential to defending American interests.

 

Law and War in Iran

Many posts have discussed war powers and the US military.

Jack Goldsmith at Executive Functions:

We’re already seeing a debate about the legality of President Trump’s use of force in Iran. I’ve grown cynical about these debates. Law is the language we use when criticizing presidential war powers—and it has been since the beginning of the nation. But the truth is that there are only political constraints.

As I’ve been saying for a while, there are no effective legal limitations within the executive branch. And courts have never gotten involved in articulating constraints in this context. That leaves Congress and the American people. They have occasionally risen up to constrain the president’s deployment of troops and uses of force—for example, in Vietnam, and in Lebanon in 1983, and in Somalia in 1993. But those actions are rare and tend only to happen once there is disaster.

Last year, Tom Nichols wrote of an earlier Israeli attack on Iran:

But calling this a “preemptive” strike is questionable. The Israelis, from what we know so far, are engaged in a preventive war: They are removing the source of a threat by surprise, on their own timetable and on terms they find favorable. They may be justified in doing so, but such actions carry great moral and practical risks.

Preemptive attacks, in both international law and the historical traditions of war, are spoiling attacks, meant to thwart an imminent attack. In both tradition and law, this form of self-defense is perfectly defensible, similar to the principle in domestic law that when a person cocks a fist or pulls a gun, the intended victim does not need to stand there and wait to get punched or shot.

Preventive attacks, however, have long been viewed in the international community as both illegal and immoral. History is full of ill-advised preventive actions, including the Spartan invasion of Athens in the fifth century B.C.E., the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the American war on Iraq in 2003. Sometimes, such wars are the product of hubris, miscalculation, or plain fear, but they all share the common trait that a choice was made to go to war based on a threat that was real, but not imminent.

The Israelis, ironically, are in the case books as the clearest example of a legitimate preemptive attack. In 1967, Israel got the jump on an Arab coalition that had been so obvious in its march to war that it was literally broadcasting its intention to destroy Israel while its troops massed for an offensive. Indeed, international-law experts have noted that the 1967 war is so clear that it is not much use as a precedent, because most enemies are not blockheaded enough to assemble an army and declare their intention to invade. (Of course, the Israelis could argue that they are already at war with Iran, a country that has launched many missiles at them and directed years of proxy attacks on their people and their military, which would be a far stronger case.)

 

War, Israel, and Public Opinion

WP:

The U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran on Saturday, as President Donald Trump vowed to eliminate Tehran’s missiles and nuclear program and fuel a change in government. “I want a safe nation, and that’s what we’re going to have,” Trump told The Washington Post after announcing the start of “major combat operations.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the joint attack would last “as long as needed,” unleashing a conflict that threatens to engulf the region. As explosions rocked Tehran and other cities, Iran pledged a “crushing” retaliation, lobbing missiles toward Israel and targeting U.S. military bases in the Gulf.

In the past, the public might have had a predisposition to approve joint military action with Israel.  A new Gallup survey rasies doubts.


Benedict Vigers at Gallup:

Forty-one percent of Americans now say they sympathize more with the Palestinians in the Middle East situation, while 36% sympathize more with the Israelis. The five-percentage-point difference is not statistically significant, but it contrasts with a clear lead for the Israelis only a year ago (46% vs. 33%) and larger leads over the prior 24 years.

From 2001 to 2025, Israelis consistently held double-digit leads in Americans’ Middle East sympathies, with the gap averaging 43 points between 2001 and 2018. However, public opinion began narrowing in 2019, several years before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza. The cumulative effect of gradual changes in U.S. attitudes since then has led to the Israelis no longer being viewed more sympathetically.

For the first time on record, as many independents hold a very or mostly favorable view of the Palestinian Territories as they do of Israel (both 41%). Over the past year, independents’ favorability toward Israel has declined six points, while their favorability toward the Palestinian Territories has risen by 10. Looking at a longer time frame, however, the shift is more pronounced on the Israel side. Since February 2023 — the last measurement before the Oct. 7 attacks — independents’ favorability toward Israel has dropped 26 points, compared with a 12-point increase in their favorability toward the Palestinian Territories.

Among Democrats, the Palestinian Territories have held an edge in favorability since 2025. This year, 48% of Democrats view the Palestinian Territories favorably, compared with 34% for Israel, broadly in line with last year. Republicans remain the most pro-Israel partisan group, with 69% holding a favorable view, though that figure has fallen 15 points from 2025 to its lowest level in over two decades. Meanwhile, a steady 18% of Republicans view the Palestinian Territories favorably, recovering from a record low of 5% in 2024.

 

Free Speech and Retired Military Members

At Davos a few weeks ago, Trump said: Usually they say, 'He's a horrible dictator-type person,' I'm a dictator. But sometimes you need a dictator

Previous posts have discussed authoritarian moves by the executive branch.

Judge Richard J. Leon of the District Court for the District of Columbia:

United States Senator Mark Kelly, a retired naval officer, has been censured by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for voicing certain opinions on military actions and policy. In addition, he has been subjected to proceedings to possibly reduce his retirement rank and pay and threatened with criminal prosecution if he continues to speak out on these issues. Secretary Hegseth relies on the well-established doctrine that military servicemembers enjoy less vigorous First Amendment protections given the fundamental obligation for obedience and discipline in the armed forces. Unfortunately for Secretary Hegseth, no court has ever extended those principles to retired servicemembers, much less a retired servicemember serving in Congress and exercising oversight responsibility over the military. This Court will not be the first to do so!

 Worse still, Secretary Hegseth contends that this Court is not yet competent to decide the issues in this case. He and his fellow Defendants argue that military personnel decisions are exempt from judicial review and, in any event, that Senator Kelly should first be required to go through the military appeals process so the military can have the first crack at adjudicating his First Amendment rights. I disagree. This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly's First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees. After all, as Bob Constitution demands they receive it! I. Dylan famously said, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."1 To say the least, our retired veterans deserve more respect from their Government, and our Constitution demands they receive it! 

Senator Kelly's First Amendment claim is not only justiciable; he is likely to succeed on the merits. He has also shown irreparable harm, and the balance of the equities fall decidedly in his favor. As such, his motion for a preliminary injunction on his First Amendment claim is hereby GRANTED.