Philosophically. I tended to support the Catholic construct of a just war, Via Google AI:
The familiar reader may know I started college thinking I had a vocation to the Roman Catholic priesthood. I still remember we moved to family housing at an Army post in Kansas when Dad got orders for Vietnam. I was about 12, the oldest of 7. I knew Dad, as a jet mechanic, wouldn't be on the front lines, and I wasn't ready to be man of the house. I couldn't see him off at the airport; in a weird way. I figured he couldn't die because we hadn't said goodbye. I'm still not sure why or how, but Dad's orders got changed to Thailand shortly after arriving in Vietnam. My Dad did return, but he was tight-lipped about what he experienced in Southeast Asia up to my last visit before he died. Dad was never the same after that isolated tour.
My closest post friend, Nick, an Army brat, was a die-hard Green Bay Packers fan; I was more of a baseball fan and relentlessly teased him until he cried. One day, I realized I hadn't seen Nick for a while and mentioned it to Mom. Mom told me Nick's Dad had died in the war, and his family had already moved. I felt so bad that I hadn't been there for my friend; I wanted to take back everything I had said about the Packers.
At OLL (my undergraduate alma mater), Tom P., a Vietnam vet and my dorm RA, had lost one of his legs, apparently during the seesaw battle over Hamburger Hill. It reinforced my dismay with a senseless war chewing up American men. Tom often hopped around on his good leg without the prosthesis. I remember my family visited me in the dorms when Dad finished up his assignment in West Germany. My baby sister was obsessed with Tom's missing leg and loudly pointed it out.
I cooled on the idea of becoming a priest for a couple of reasons: a priest has to take a vow of celibacy (and I had started dating, enough to question the commitment); second, the Church, since Vatican II, had drifted in a more socially liberal perspective, away from an emphasis on faith and traditional liturgy. I often cite a sermon I heard while attending mass at UT (grad school), in which the homily reflected on a top Olivia Newton-John hit.
I initially intended to earn a doctorate in mathematics at UT, but I lost my graduate stipend (university politics). and decided to stop with my Master's. I initially attempted to join the USAF after my degree; they recruited me as a potential meteorologist, first doing some graduate work at Texas A&M. But I was passed over in 2 straight officer selection pools, which eliminated me from candidacy for 6 months. Someone in the interim had suggested that the Navy was hiring mathematicians.
Whereas I, in my salad days, had issues with some of the political leadership in the general government regarding an internationalist perspective, I recall my dismay that we didn't dial back our international footprint, our 800+ military bases overseas, and questioned the anachronism of NATO and its relevant expansion at the expense of the former Warsaw Pact in the late 80s. I had transitioned from a socially liberal Democrat to a more conservative one. [I've always been a fiscal conservative with pro-life views.] When I was younger, I tended to identify more with the goals of legislation than to question its morally hazardous government means. This was particularly the case after I took (non-political) economics courses during my MBA courses in the 80s. I began to question activist domestic and international policies. I left the Democrats after becoming a young professor in the late 80s.
A key issue for me was George HW Bush'sintervention after Iraq invaded Kuwait. I think I was particularly skeptical of American intervention after our dubious experiences in Korea and Vietnam. This wasn't the acceptance of Hussein's invasion, but rather the question of whether we are the world's policemen. I didn't know how Bush's decision-making process worked. Still, I felt he had intelligence I didn't have access to and was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt (I didn't agree with it and felt there was a moral hazard in intervening on a regional issue) I also remember being confused by Bush's decision to leave Hussein in power at the end of the Gulf War; I was not really aware of the 3 major sectarian rivalries in Iraq (Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs, and Kurds). In hindsight, we saw another decade of Hussein's crimes against humanity against other Iraqis. But I respect his not going beyond the mandate of his international coalition and recognizing that the US was not the world's policeman; I wish he had convinced George W. to resist intervention a decade later.
Then there was Clinton's intervention in the Serbia/Croatia/Bosnia conflict. Similar to my critique of the first Gulf War, this was largely a regional conflict, ethnic cleansing, atrocities, and some NATO members were unhappy with our intervention. My youngest brother, accompanied by his family, was stationed at an AFB in Italy at the time, and Italians opposed US intervention, Via Google AI:
One of my key reasons for supporting George W. Bush in 2000 was his critique of Clinton's nation-building:
I had a bad case of buyer's remorse during the Bush 43 Presidency, particularly in the war decisions following 9/11. I was particularly opposed to Afghanistan, especially over historical failures to occupy it, more recently including the USSR. I regarded the WMD argument in Iraq as dubious at best, and George W. Bush, in toppling Hussein, seemed to be opening the Pandora's box that his father had avoided in a country with over two-thirds Shiite Muslims, long suppressed under Hussein. More importantly, Hussein's military posed no imminent threat to the US, and we weren't the world's policemen. This is not to dispute Hussein's record of crimes against humanity, not unlike the tragic consequences of Serbian ethnic cleansing had been in Eastern Europe.
At the same time, Bush had been given fatally flawed intelligence (not limited to or unique to American sources). At the time, I wasn't confident I had the quality, nature, and extent of the information Bush had available to him when he made his disastrous decisions to intervene. Still, I couldn't believe that the man who had criticized Clinton's nation-building in Eastern Europe would blunder into multiple nation-building efforts in the Gulf region.
Still, and this is when I began to distrust Presidential war and occupation intelligence: it was with Woodward's The War Within that I bought through a book club. Whereas Bush eventually seemed to stumble into a stabilizing surge (Petraeus) strategy from the post-Hussein chaos of a failed state (for which he was morally responsible), it was clear that Bush did not anticipate or plan for the local government meltdown. And it reinforces the need to get the decision to declare war right, and not to get involved in non-defensive, remote regional hotspots with supply constraints.
The discussion of Iran must start with the dubious involvement of the CIA in toppling the democratically elected government in 1953, basically backing the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In the mid-1960's, the Shah implemented the White Revolution, including modernization, secularization, and a controversial land reform:
So, what did The Art of the Deal POTUS do in his first term (which I, of course, opposed)?:
- As the post above pointed out, Trump canceled the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), "significantly reducing its enriched uranium stockpile and centrifuges" in response to the relaxation of economic sanctions; Trump then reimposed sanctions, his "maximum pressure" campaign
- Trump hypocritically ordered the 2020 assassination of the Iranian government leader Qassem Soleimani, technically an act of war.
The second term of Trump continued the trend. Once again, my fundamental position against Trump's Iran policy has 3 underlying principles:
- The US is not the world's policeman. There are at least 8 other nuclear powers, and we have no moral authority to intervene against another nation's self-defense. One can argue that nuclear nonproliferation is a worthy goal.
- Iran is not a serious military threat to the US, and it has no historical record of international aggression in the modern era.
Via Google AI - Trump does not have legal or constitutional authority to engage in unilateral, nondefensive military action. Only Congress can declare war. No, the War Powers Act does not give the President a 60-day wildcard; Congress cannot delegate its authority to declare war. We, taxpayers, should not be forced to pay Hegseth's high budget price for Trump's war of choice.
Trump had already engaged in unprovoked war activities last year:
