It is often said that the best-laid battle plan will not survive first contact with the enemy. This adage, attributed to the 19th-century Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke, certainly seems to hold true in the case of the Iran war launched by President Trump. In the 5th century BC, Sun Tzu, the Chinese military strategist, in his Art of War said: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest road to victory; tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” This misadventure in Iran is a classic example of tactical brilliance and strategic failure.

As pointed out in this column on March 23, President Trump’s failure is not moral or legal; his failure as the leader of the world’s pre-eminent power is one of rank irresponsibility. Now, with attacks on civilian infrastructure and his threat to bring Iran “back to the Stone Age where they belong”, that failure is increasingly moral and legal as well. It is also a colossal strategic failure. What started as a war, in part, to liberate the long-suffering Iranian people from the clutches of a murderous theocratic regime has now morphed into a war against the Iranian people and the nation.

Let us hope that even at this late hour, wiser counsel prevails and Iranian civil infrastructure and lives are not endangered. What is shocking is the American establishment’s apparent lack of concern about the enormous global consequences of their local action. For the first time in thousands of years........

© Free Press Journal