Much of my life was spent overseas in the developing world across multiple continents. No surprise, a considerable number of those countries were corrupt. I may not have seen it all, but I have experienced quite a bit, especially as corruption relates to the government—nepotism, theft, coercion, extortion, graft, political violence, and bogus claims of threats from foreign lands.

It always starts at the top. The national leader was often tyrannical. Once in power, he fired or “eliminated” anyone with integrity, and replaced them with sycophants, who shared his vision of a prostrate nation—likened to a cow—to be milked for the benefit of a few. He—always a male in my experience—usually adopted democratic trappings, calling himself a president, while creating a slavish legislature and puppet judiciary. I never imagined that I might see my own country brought low in a similar manner. I was wrong.

I give you the most corrupt president in the history of our republic, Donald J. Trump. He, in turn, has done what many tin-pot dictators do. He fired the honest and competent, while filling the resulting empty chairs with similarly inclined grifters. To keep their jobs, all the grifters the dictator ‘hired’ had to do was to remain loyal, turn a blind eye to the illegal financial dealings of the president, while feeding his enormous ego and stroking his unending vanity.

How did we get here?

Although arguable, it may have begun with Fox News. This network literally created “niche reporting.” Niche reporting is simple. Fox News tells those who identify as conservative viewers exactly what they wish to hear. Millions tune in to hear their favorite pundit tell them how very Right they are—pun intended—and how very wrong everyone on the Left must be. Consequently, political adversaries soon became political enemies. Of course, there can be no accommodation with enemies. Compromise, the hallmark of all genuine democracies, became unthinkable.

It is my contention that if there were no Fox News, there would have been no President Trump. The hyper-biased network provided the serial conman with a free national loudspeaker to amplify his multitude of mendacities. For his part, Rupert Murdoch perverted constitutionally guaranteed free speech to enrich himself. Moreover, it worked beyond his wildest dreams; the fact that his avarice resulted in a massively corrupt administration twice seems to have escaped his notice, even if he cared. We are now living in a highly polarized America created—in large part—by a ruthless Australian corporate businessman, unencumbered by empathy or conscience.

Then, there is the US Supreme Court. Mr. Trump, in his first term, and with the unbridled support of malleable GOP lawmakers, selected three ultra-conservative justices for elevation to the highest court in the land. Those additions resulted in a hard-core majority of right-wingers, who have given Mr. Trump a free hand to indulge many of his most outrageous dictatorial impulses in his second term.

The groundwork was accomplished well prior, and way back in 2010, when the Supreme Court made the disastrous “Citizens United” decision. Broken down to its essentials, that decision says that money equates to free speech, and that, like free speech, cannot be infringed. The wholly predictable result—dark money as defined by author Jane Mayer poured into GOP coffers—corrupting the democratic process from that time to the present.

This sad tale must also include a Republican Party that chose to embrace a petty narcissistic autocrat, while jettisoning anything that once resembled true conservatism. The party today is a mere dried-up husk of its former self.

But even that is not the whole story. By some lights, Mr. Trump is a mere symptom of a much more serious disease. That disease is greed. The overwhelming majority of the wealth of America is continuing to flow toward the top. What I call the New Nobility—without the “oblige”—now massively influences the levers of power in their own interests.

Two prominent examples—Tesla’s Elon Musk and Washington Post’s Jeff Bezos— put Trump over the finish line. Musk offered roughly a quarter bullion dollars in campaign donations. Bezos continues to hemorrhage honest journalists. The corporate media of today cares little for journalistic ethics and integrity in reporting, especially if it negatively impacts their bottom line.

Moreover, the Oval Office’s cabinet is full of billionaires, thirteen at last count, who are very far removed from the daily hardships of most Americans. They do as nobles have done since the European Middle Ages and act in their own self-interest. We are their new serfs.

But there is more. If we are learning anything, it is that the wealthy and powerful seldom suffer for their illegal and immoral acts. Justice has been made meaningless for the well-heeled. This, in and of itself, is a corruption of the Framer’s intent. The outrageous protection given to a convicted felonious chief executive by a clearly self-serving attorney general, and before Congress over the Epstein Files, acts as proof of this assertion. The truly terrifying part of this story is that most Republican lawmakers continue to remain silently complicit in clear violation of their oaths of office.

For today’s New Nobility—an echo of our own 1890s Gilded Age—the metrics are uncomplicated. The more money one has, the more justice and political influence one can buy. The Framers intended the law to be the great equalizer. Instead, our government and legal system have been hijacked by the wealthy to protect themselves and their wallets. America -Corrupted seems already well underway.

Robert Bruce Adolph , a qualified Military Strategist, is a retired senior US Army Special Forces soldier. He holds graduate degrees in both National Security Studies & International Affairs and was formally trained as a counterintelligence special agent. Robert also taught university level courses in American Government, US History, and World Politics. Following his retirement from the active military, he joined the UN, subsequently seeing service in Sierra Leone, Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, Israel/Palestine, Indonesia and more, culminating in the role of Chief of the Middle East and North Africa at UN Headquarters in New York. He is a member of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 390 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.

Epic Fury: Our Latest But-Not-Only “Pearl Harbor” Moment: Will We Never Learn?

At 3:38 p.m. Eastern Time on February 27, 2026, Donald Trump gave the ‘final go order to launch Operation Epic Fury, a combined US-Israeli air campaign against Iran. The operation began at 9:45 a.m., February 28, Tehran time, as many people were having late breakfasts, and children were settling in at school. The ‘trigger event’ was conducted by the Israeli military, with the US’s initial actions consisting of cyberattacks to jam Iran’s ability to communicate and coordinate.

With the massive naval armada that the US had positioned near Iran, the attack itself should’ve come as no surprise to anyone. The timing of the attack, on the other hand, is a different matter entirely.

Between April and June 2025, there were five rounds of talks between Iran and the US. This was the third round of talks that had begun in Muscat, Oman, on February 6. The last round ended without any agreement, but there was a commitment that they would ‘resume soon.’ Just before the talks ended, Iran indicated that it was not prepared to meet Trump’s demands that it stop enriching uranium, that it ship all enriched uranium abroad, and while it wanted to avert war, it did not want to discuss other issues, such as its long-range missile program or support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. On February 27, Oman’s foreign minister announced that Iran had agreed to degrade its current stockpiles of nuclear material to ‘the lowest level possible,’ but this apparently did not sway Trump or Israel.

While the lack of progress in the talks surprised no one, the timing of the attacks seems to have caught everyone—especially the Iranians—off guard, and the Administration’s justifications for the attack shifted several times, from fear, to an impending attack, to a desire to change the regime, and from a brief conflict, to ‘as long as it takes.’ The timing, in fact, makes one believe that the decision to launch had been made well before the order was given, bringing to mind the Imperial Japanese Navy’s December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.

There are significant parallels between the US-Israeli attack and the Japanese attack, which US President Franklin D. Roosevelt called “a date which will live in infamy.”

The Japanese, determined to attack the United States in retaliation against aggressive US policies and sanctions, planned a surprise attack aimed at destroying the US Pacific Fleet in order to cripple US naval power in the Pacific. The rounds of negotiations had stopped. The Japanese attempted to deliver the declaration stating that further negotiations were impossible because of US policies, thirty minutes before the attack commenced. (As we know, the Japanese embassy in Washington took too long to decode the 5,000-word document, and the declaration was delivered two hours after the attack.)

In the case of the current conflict in Iran, negotiations had paused but with an expressed intention to resume; the US and Israel attacked despite ongoing diplomatic negotiations–and without any declaration at all. Nearly 1,000 Iranians were killed, including over 100 school children when their school was struck, and who knows how many other noncombatants. In addition, the initial, surprise attack included significant other damage, including the sinking or destruction of most of Iran’s navy, including one warship that was in the Indian Ocean, in an attack in which the attacking US force failed to try and rescue any survivors; and the killing of Iran’s supreme leader in a targeted attack.

Epic Fury is not the only “Pearl Harbor” action in US history; one need only look at the 17th-19th century US history of war. With the federal government preoccupied with the Confederate armies in the east, the western tribes took advantage of the situation to try to recover some of the tribal lands that they’d lost to whites before the Civil War. War broke out between the US Government and many of the Western Native American nations, but Black Kettle, White Antelope, and 30 other Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders brought their people to a site along Sand Creek near Fort Lyon in Colorado to make peace in accordance with instructions from Colorado’s territorial government. The camp, containing approximately 750 people, including women, children, and the elderly, was under a flag of truce, and despite being recognized as ‘friendly Indians’ by territorial authorities, it was attacked on November 29, 1864, by 675 Colorado Territory militia troops under the command of Colonel John Chivington. The militia killed over 230 people in the camp, including approximately 150 women, children, and the elderly. Chivington was initially lauded for his ‘victory’, but subsequently discredited when it became clear that the ‘battle’ had, in fact, been a massacre. The Sand Creek Massacre was a chief cause of the Arapaho-Cheyenne war that followed, and motivated the Plains Wars of the 1870s.

The Sand Creek Massacre was not the first, nor was it the last such incident in America’s history, with both whites and Native Americans guilty of atrocities. The first such wars took place in the 1600s, beginning with the Jamestown Massacre on March 22, 1622, when Powhattan Chief Opechancanough attacked the colony of Jamestown, killing some 350 of the 1,200 colonists. In retaliation, the English attacked Powhatan villages, destroying crops and driving them from their land. During the 1636-37 Pequot War, in the Connecticut colony, English militia with aid from the Narragansett and Mohegans attacked the Pequot at Mystic, killing hundreds, many of them women and children. Incidents like this were a constant in America’s history up to December 29, 1890, and the most famous of all, the Massacre at Wounded Knee, when troops of the Seventh US Cavalry surrounded a band of Sioux Ghost Dancers under the Sioux Chief Big Foot at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota near Wounded Knee Creek. In the incident, hundreds of unarmed Sioux men, women, and children were slaughtered in what was one of the last military actions against the people of the northern Plains. The US government awarded 20 Medals of Honor to soldiers who took part in the massacre.

While the actions thus far in Epic Fury pale in comparison to wars with Native Americans throughout this period, the underlying principle is no different: Like Japan in 1941, in 2026, the norms of what we could call “civilized behavior in war” have again been ignored by the United States.

One would hope we would have learned the lesson that when we normalize the flouting of norms, we undermine trust and sabotage opportunities to negotiate lasting peace. In the nineteenth century, a massacre of 150 innocents was a root cause of another ten years of war, and even though peace was finally restored on the Western frontier, it can be legitimately argued that trust between Native Americans and the US Government has not been restored over a century later. We should be asking ourselves at this critical moment in time if we’re not risking history repeating itself, but with the potential for much more serious consequences. As Mark Twain wrote in his 1874 novel The Gilded Age, “history never repeats itself but often seems constructed from fragments of past events.”

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Charles A. Ray served 20 years in the U.S. Army, including two tours in Vietnam. He retired as a senior US diplomat, serving 30 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, with assignments as ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Republic of Zimbabwe, and was the first American consul general in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He also served in senior positions with the Department of Defense and is a member of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 390 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.

On Monday, the Trump administration walked away from its attempts to punish disfavored law firms when it moved to voluntarily dismiss its appeal of earlier court decisions. The attempted punishment included, in part, the suspension of “any active security clearances held by individuals at (the firms), pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest”. On Tuesday, the Trump administration attempted to walk back its walk away.

The actions in question dated back to March 2025, when Trump issued a series of executive orders which singled out several law firms for punishment, owing largely to past legal work on behalf of clients opposing the president and policies he had championed. In addition to suspending security clearances held by their lawyers, the orders directed federal agencies not to contract with the firms or permit their staff into federal buildings.

When a number of the affected law firms went to court in order to block the punitive orders, I was one of a number of individuals who filed an expert report in favor of the plaintiffs. My background and credentials for filing this report included serving as the Director of the Information Security Office, wherein I was responsible for policy oversight of the Executive-branch-wide national security information classification system during the George W. Bush administration. Before that, I served for nearly three decades in the Department of Defense, including as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Security and Information Operations).

In its filings, the government acknowledged that these suspensions applied to all the plaintiff’s employees, lawyers, and non-lawyers, regardless of their role at the firms, the reason for the grant or use of the clearance, or any other individual characteristics, such as the employee’s former or current military service. Citing Lee v. Garland, the government held that the section of the orders suspending security clearances was “not judicially reviewable,” considering “governing D.C Circuit precedent” and thus required dismissal of plaintiff’s claims regarding security clearances. However, the government’s citing of Lee represented a fundamental, if not uncommon, misreading of the 1988 Supreme Court case Department of the Navy v. Egen, which served as the underlying case cited in Lee.

Navy v. Egan has often been interpreted to support broad presidential authority over national security generally and particularly over access to classified information. Egan is regularly cited in support of strong, even unchecked executive authority and judicial deference to executive claims. However, at its core, the Egan decision was prompted by a narrow statutory dispute: Did the Merit Systems Protection Board (an executive branch body) have the authority to review the revocation of a security clearance by the Navy (another executive branch body)? The court concluded that Congress had not intended to permit such review.

As I stated in my expert report, the core issue in the matter of the security clearances for employees of the targeted law firms was not only different from Egan but even more fundamental. I wrote “The arbitrary directive of immediate suspension of security clearances not for any personal conduct by any clearance holder but rather simply for that individual’s association with a law firm is no different analytically than if a directive were issued to immediately suspend the security clearances of all Jews or Muslims, all members of the LGBTQ+ community, all women, or all registered Democrats or Republicans.”

While it is encouraging in this instance to see the Judiciary not reflexively grant unfettered deference to the Executive in national security affairs, more needs to be done to constrain overreach by the current and future presidents in the realm of access to classified national security information, regardless of how the administration’s off-again, on-again appeal evolves. As noted by constitutional law scholar Louis Fisher in a legal analysis written for the Law Library of Congress, in Egan, the Court appeared to deliberately limit its deference to the Executive by explicitly stating “… unless Congress specifically has provided otherwise”.

So, what can and must Congress do? The ability of Congress to insert itself in matters of classification is not without precedent. Pre-Egan, Congress very much involved itself in classification matters with the passage of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Post-Egan, Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which included the establishment of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) to consider and render decisions when a U.S. government agency sought to postpone the disclosure of classified or otherwise sensitive assassination records. Finally, in 1994, Congress created the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy (also called the “Moynihan Commission,” after its chairman, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.) The very first recommendation of this bipartisan panel was for Congress to enact a statute “to improve the functioning of the secrecy system and implementation of established rules.”

It’s incumbent upon Congress to step up to its role in this matter as envisioned by Senator Moynihan over 30 years ago. Protecting our nation from actual and potential adversaries is not a partisan issue. In an increasingly dangerous world, critical national security tools such as personal security clearances and safeguarding classified national security information must be free of partisan considerations and abuse. While democracy and justice triumphed in this instance, more needs to be done to constrain the actions of this and future presidents who so readily disregard the rule of law.

J. William Leonard is the Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Security & Information Operations), Former Director, Information Security Oversight Office and Former Chief Operating Officer, National Endowment for Democracy. He is a member of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 390 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.

The United States is at war with Iran.

American service members are dead. Iranian leaders are dead. Civilians, including Iranian schoolchildren, are dead. The region is destabilizing. Oil markets are rattled. The Strait of Hormuz is under threat. And now the President and his senior military advisors state that they are not ruling out sending in ground troops.

So far, the American public has not been shown the intelligence, if any, that may have provided the analytic foundation for President Trump’s unilateral decision to initiate this war.

Whatever Congress decides under the War Powers Resolution, one obligation precedes any vote: demand whatever intelligence was relied upon as a foundation for this war. And they should demand it in a form that allows the American people to understand why their country is fighting and what may come next.

This is not procedural. It is about whether the United States entered another major conflict in response to an imminent threat, to fulfill long term strategic goals, or on the basis of some other presidential rationale.

The Shifting Case for War

The administration’s explanations have not been consistent. At various points, the President has suggested the strikes were necessary to:

• prevent imminent danger, specifically, an Iranian first-strike against the U.S.;

• destroy Iran’s nuclear capability;

• remove control of Iran by “a vicious group of radical people;”

• force negotiations on Iranian nuclear enrichment;

• enable the Iranian people to rise up to remove the clerical regime;

• achieve other unspecified strategic goals of the United States.

These are not the same objective. Preempting an imminent attack is one thing. Degrading long-term capabilities is another. Coercing negotiations is different still. Regime change is something else entirely. Each rationale carries a distinct evidentiary threshold. Each implies a different scope, duration, and risk profile.

Congress must ask: what did the intelligence community assess before the strikes? Was there credible evidence of an imminent Iranian attack on U.S. forces? Was this a strategic escalation grounded in a broader assessment of a long-term threat? Or was it a war of choice?

The public deserves to know which it was.

Lessons from Iraq

In the run-up to the Iraq War, the George W. Bush administration argued that Saddam Hussein maintained active weapons of mass destruction programs. Senior U.S. intelligence officials testified that intelligence assessments judged Iraq to possess chemical and biological weapons capabilities and to be pursuing nuclear weapons development. Congress relied on those formal intelligence assessments and the accompanying testimony when authorizing the use of force.

Some of the intelligence supporting these conclusions rested on reporting from an Iraqi defector known by the codename “Curve Ball,” who claimed that Iraq had mobile biological weapons laboratories capable of producing agents such as anthrax. His reporting, became an important element of the case presented publicly by the United States.

Yet the intelligence picture was not as settled as the public case suggested. Some CIA officers raised doubts about Curve Ball’s reliability. The Defense Intelligence Agency issued a warning that the source might be a fabricator. German intelligence reportedly cautioned U.S. officials that the source had credibility problems. Analysts at other agencies, including the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Department of Energy, disputed key elements of the broader intelligence picture used to justify the war. Those dissents appeared in classified intelligence assessments but were far less visible in the public presentation of the case for military action.

In the highly charged political environment preceding the war, intelligence judgments were interpreted, emphasized, and presented publicly in ways that masked these internal disputes. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations reflected that public case, advancing claims about weapons of mass destruction and alleged operational ties between Iraq and al Qaeda that were far more certain than the underlying intelligence justified. The episode left lasting questions about the credibility of the U.S. government’s public statements regarding its intelligence findings.

The consequences were catastrophic: thousands of American lives lost, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, trillions of dollars spent, and a lasting erosion of U.S. credibility.

The lesson is not to discount intelligence assessments but to examine them rigorously before a war begins, and in public where possible.

Here the sequence appears reversed.

Strikes came swiftly. Justifications followed. No comprehensive intelligence assessment has been released publicly framing the threat. There was no extended congressional deliberation before the first bombs fell.

Action first. Scrutiny later. That inversion is precisely what past failures were supposed to prevent.

A President at Odds with His Intelligence Community

Oversight is even more critical because President Trump has repeatedly questioned the competence and integrity of U.S. intelligence professionals. He has publicly contradicted their findings, dismissed their judgments, and suggested bias. When a President signals distrust of his own intelligence agencies, Congress must assess the extent to which formal analytic judgments, instinct, grievance, or perceived political opportunity shaped the decision to strike and continue to shape decisions now.

What intelligence was presented, and what did it conclude? Were analytic caveats respected? Were confidence levels clearly stated? Were they overridden?

In 2002 and 2003, intelligence was interpreted selectively – and over the objection of dedicated career professionals – to fit policy preferences. If that dynamic is repeating without robust public review, the risk is greater.

What Is the Objective?

Wars do not become strategic simply because they are bold. Congress must ask what constitutes success. If the conflict expands to include U.S. ground forces, the scale of risk, cost, and duration changes dramatically.

Is the objective the permanent destruction of Iran’s nuclear capabilities? If so, what evidence supports the claim they have been destroyed? What follows if they have not?

Is the objective regime change? If so, what replaces the current system, and how would that transition occur without prolonged instability?

Is the objective coercive leverage in pursuit of a negotiated settlement? If so, where is the diplomatic channel?

If economic assumptions are intertwined with military action, including expectations regarding energy access or sanctions leverage, those assumptions must be examined openly. Americans were once told Iraq’s oil would finance reconstruction and that “the war would pay for itself.” Instead, that war has cost the U.S. roughly $2 trillion.

Absent defined objectives grounded in intelligence, military operations risk being driven by momentum rather than strategy.

The Public’s Right to Justification

When American troops die, the burden of explanation shifts. The public is not entitled to operational secrets. But it is entitled to know:

• whether this war was unavoidable;

• whether alternatives were exhausted;

• whether the intelligence justified the risk; and

• what comes next.

If the evidence supports the President’s decision, it should be shown. If it does not, that fact is more consequential still. The emerging discussion within the Administration of sending U.S. ground troops into Iran highlights the importance of sharing solid analytic assessments with the Congress and the public before any such decision is made.

The country has already begun to pay the price, with American lives lost in uniform. The American people deserve clarity before the price climbs higher. And before the remaining off-ramps narrow and escalation hardens into a lengthy and dangerous conflict. Intelligence First. War Second.

Jonathan M. Winer is the former Special Envoy for Libya and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Law Enforcement and a Distinguished Diplomatic Fellow at MEI. He is a member of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 390 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.

President Donald J. Trump oversees Operation Epic Fury at Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, FL

National-level warfighting strategies are defined by the objectives established by the commander-in-chief, in this case, Donald Trump. The end state desired, assuming the chief executive of the nation did not misspeak, appears to number three: (1) to ensure that Iran can never construct an atomic device, (2) “raze” Iran’s ability to build missiles, while destroying its navy; and (3) regime change. The ends, ways, and means of a strategy to accomplish these goals are all subject to examination under three analytical criteria. These are suitability, feasibility, and acceptability.

The Iranian Atomic Bomb

At the outset, I will remove the first objective from later discussion. This president recently told Americans on live TV that the Iranian capability to build an atomic bomb had been “obliterated.” The word obliterated cannot be easily misunderstood. One other related matter, the Obama Administration previously solved this problem successfully, securing an inspectable agreement with European Union assistance. Mr. Trump blew up that agreement in his first term. Nobody seems to know why. By some estimates, he created the problem that he now seeks to solve using America’s sons and daughters as cannon fodder. Bottom line, the Iranian regime, no doubt deserving of the label heinous after killing thousands of their own, is also no existential threat to the American people. That leaves only two objectives for further examination.

Raze Missiles and Destroy Navy

Assuming good intelligence, and the Israelis are very good at this sort of thing concerning Iran, it is within the realm of the possible that missile production facilities and a navy can indeed be destroyed from the air using a combination of missiles, drones, and manned aircraft. It is therefore feasible. However, as the US Army saying goes, “The enemy always gets a vote.” The Iranian military had plenty of time to move or camouflage some of their most effective offensive combat systems that, to date, have been challenging to locate. There are historical antecedents. It was no easy task to find, fix, and destroy SCUD rockets during the first Gulf War. US and NATO pilots destroyed hundreds of dummy mock-ups of Serbian tanks following the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. Also, air wars consume ammunition rapidly. It has been suggested that current expenditure rates are unsustainable. Finally, acceptability is a critical yet thorny political issue, which involves not only the US but all those who are impacted, including thousands of American citizens, now stranded, who were not evacuated during the weeks leading up to this decision.

Regime Change

In my student readings on Military History, a required course at the US Army’s Command and General Staff College, I cannot recall even one instance where a country compelled regime change in another utilizing only air power. If accurate, then it would be the wildest stroke of luck if the Iranian people rose up and threw off the shackles of the ayatollahs. We might all hope for a better future for the people of that sad country, but as one of my generals once told me, “Hope is not a course of action.” It is critically important to know that Mr. Trump’s uniformed military advisors would have informed him well before attacking Iran again that the chances of sparking a regime change in Tehran had no historical precedent, utilizing the ways and means chosen (air power). However, it was previously reported in credible media that the advice of the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, would be given great weight in Oval Office decision-making. Both are billionaire property developers. What could possibly go wrong?

Acceptability

Acceptability is an extraordinarily important consideration in the strategy development process, especially for America. Presidents are not royalty. They do not rule by divine right. Congress is the direct representative of the people in our republic and must be consulted. Moreover, only Congress may fund a war. The Framers of our Constitution knew better than to leave such a profound decision as risking our citizens in uniform in war to one person. It is not acceptable that this president took America into sustained armed conflict by choice. Other stakeholders are our traditional NATO allies, who are not universally supportive. More naysayers might include those nations that are now cut off from their usual oil shipments that formerly passed through the Strait of Hormuz, now shut. Those nations that have suffered missile and drone attacks, including Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq, may also have serious doubts regarding the acceptability of Mr. Trump’s decisions. An expanded conflict in the Middle East, which is in nobody’s interest apart from the Netanyahu government in Jerusalem, is where we are now.

Possibilities and Conclusions

The possible permutations are multiple. Nobody knows what comes next. This White House occupant has opened Pandora’s box. All sorts of potential maladies are now loose. Iran’s proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen might attack those who are associated with the Trump Administration’s actions. Israel has already struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. Iran can easily mount assaults on oil and gas infrastructure. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, and Kuwait are all equally vulnerable. Unattributable asymmetrical acts of terror are once again a very real prospect. The Strait of Hormuz will remain closed for the foreseeable future. The list goes on.

Unsurprisingly, all these events were perfectly predictable prior to the first US missile being launched. The US Secretary of State stated that America had to preemptively strike Iran because Israel was planning to do so. Has our national warfighting decision-making been outsourced? Based on this thumbnail analysis, I am compelled to call Mr. Trump’s Iranian strategy patently absurd and uncorrectable by even the world’s most powerful military.

Clearly, there is also a major domestic issue at hand that can be found in the question: will the US Congress bring this Oval Office to heel? Thus far, Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives have repeatedly demonstrated cowardice in the face of this president. It is well beyond time to find their courage and act in the interests of the nation by complying with the intent of the Framers and their oaths of office to “support and defend” our Constitution. Their failure to do so to date is in large measure responsible for the ongoing death and destruction currently unleashed across the Middle East.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 390 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.

Robert Bruce Adolph , a qualified Military Strategist, is a retired senior US Army Special Forces soldier. He holds graduate degrees in both National Security Studies & International Affairs and was formally trained as a counterintelligence special agent. Robert also taught university level courses in American Government, US History, and World Politics. Following his retirement from the active military, he joined the UN, subsequently seeing service in Sierra Leone, Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, Israel/Palestine, Indonesia and more, culminating in the role of Chief of the Middle East and North Africa at UN Headquarters in New York. He is a member of The Steady State.