Also pointing at the Hormuz situation as a victim of this is silly. I would be very surprised if the top military leaders truly believed that Iran couldn’t execute asymmetric warfare to disrupt the gulf without a US invasion.

Israel gave presentations to DoD that said they could affect regime change in Iran. The DoD said “lol yeah, okay buddy, ain’t now way in hell.” Israel had a single audience, Trump, and just had to play into his ego + pretending that this would be Venezuela 2.0.

Dan Caine has come out in testimony before the Senate in support of this war and this strategy, shoulder to shoulder with Hegseth.

If this is due to post Venezuela kool-aid, then he drank from the same cup. Many others in the natsec space have resigned or been fired for standing by their convictions in the Trump era. The DoD is not without responsibility for this failure. Blaming Trump alone has been the sad redoubt of modern American discourse, a rather depressing reflection of a country that cannot look itself in the mirror, that treats Trump as a cause rather than a symptom.

If the quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq had not occurred, Trump would likely have never been elected. His entire electoral premise has always been institutional incompetence. He famously was elected the first time by destroying the Republican guard from the inside, by tearing down Jeb Bush - a proxy for his brother and his two wars of failure.