The fantasy of American military power.

I see a lot of chatter by Trump supporters that if Trump were to get us into a war (with Iran is the normal fantasy) that it would be a quick in and out “punishment mission” that would “teach them a lesson” and collapse the regime there.

Tell me you don’t understand decades of failure to do exactly that with air power since the end of WWII. I understand that the bombing of North Korea’s dams in 1952-1953 and the air war over Serbia in 1999 are viewed as the sort of thing that disproves this, but they are not. Eisenhower credibly threatened North Korea and China with nuclear weapons deployment in North Korea and Manchuria (back when the PRC lacked such weapons and the USSR was not going to deploy its nuclear arsenal to defend the PRC) and Clinton/Blair made Milosevic aware and his supporters that an air war was a prelude to a ground invasion.

Everyone has a fantasy about American military power, and the idea that the U.S. can engage in nation building in a presldictable way isn’t any worse than the idea that the U.S. can brandish a big stick and other nations will just get in line. Neither idea accepts the idea that there are limits to American power. They simply arrogantly always forget that the “enemy gets a vote.”