The Old Man Dreaming Up Wars for Young Men to Fight

I was a child during the Vietnam War, and it was impossible to miss antiwar protests. I remember a common sentiment best expressed by Senator George McGovern: “I’m tired of old men dreaming up wars for young men to fight.”

And here we go again.

President Trump has reached a fork in his Iran war. One path would be diplomatic, and Trump has tried to reassure financial markets that we’re headed that way. Iran is “‘begging’ us to make a deal,” he claimed.

The problem is that Iran is not in fact begging for a deal. On the contrary, it has found fabulous leverage by closing the Strait of Hormuz to most traffic other than its own. Iranians must be thinking that they largely gave up their nuclear program in the accord with President Barack Obama, and they got a measly $400 million for that (later, there was more). This month, all Iran had to do was block the Strait of Hormuz for a few weeks, and the Trump administration lifted some oil sanctions that could amount to upward of $14 billion. No wonder Iran seems to feel it has the upper hand.

So while Trump may want an offramp, his conundrum is that any deal reached now would be substantially worse than Iran’s reported offer last month (a three-year pause in all uranium enrichment and strict limits thereafter).

I’m in favor of the diplomatic path, but let’s be honest: Any deal would be a pretty bad one and would strengthen a brutal regime that oppresses its people and menaces the region.

Because the diplomatic option is so unappealing, Trump seems poised to seize an even worse one: dispatching ground troops to invade Iran. He is sending thousands of Marines and paratroopers to the region, and The Wall Street Journal reports that the Pentagon is considering whether to send another 10,000 ground troops.

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Nicholas Kristof became a columnist for The Times Opinion desk in 2001 and has won two Pulitzer Prizes. His new memoir is “Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life.” @NickKristof

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