Seven percent

Trump is deeply underwater on Iran

It looks as if American ground troops will be committed in Iran within the next week or so. As I described last week, a Marine expeditionary force is being moved from Okinawa to the Persian Gulf, and Senator Lindsey Graham has indicated that the target is Kharg Island, an Iranian oil facility at the opposite end of the Persian Gulf from the Strait of Hormuz.

Graham may be engaging in a strategic deception because, to get to Kharg Island, the Marines would have to run the gauntlet of the Strait of Hormuz with its nearby Iranian missile batteries and drone sites. The alternatives would be either to disembark the Marines and move them by air to Kharg Island, in which case the question is why use the Marines at all, or have the amphibious fighters assault the Iranian mainland and islands adjacent to the choke point of the strait. This would make more strategic sense when it comes to reopening shipping lanes, and if I can figure this out, the Iranians can too.

Image by ChatGPT

The Iranians can also figure something else out: The war is not popular, either at home or abroad (except maybe among Iranian dissidents and neocons). If you only inhabit Republican and MAGA internet circles, this might come as news.

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that overall support for the war is hovering at about 40 percent, but only seven percent support large-scale ground operations in Iran. An additional 34 percent would support limited operations by Special Forces, but even the combined figures are less than 55 percent who oppose all use of ground troops.

Seven percent.

It’s hard to find the country united on any issue enough to render single-digit polling, but Trump has done it. Even Republican support for a ground invasion is only at 14 percent, although a 63-percent majority of Republicans supports Special Forces raids.

By way of comparison, by 1973, the year that the US combat troops were withdrawn from Vietnam, public support for that war was at 29 percent. Yes, you read that right. The most unpopular war in American history was more than three times as popular as the idea of invading Iran.

But the real kicker is that 65 percent of Americans think Trump is going to commit ground troops anyway.

Think about that for a second. Two-thirds of Americans think that the president is going to follow a course opposed by more than 90 percent of the voters. That indicates an electorate that sees the president as out of touch and unresponsive.

My first instinct is that launching a ground war is political suicide when it comes to the midterms. Of course, Donald Trump is constitutionally term-limited despite talk of a third term, but I think someone as vain as he is cares about his legacy.

Following quickly on that thought is the fact that American service members are likely to bear the brunt of public dislike for the war. It is not fair to America’s fighters to dump them into a situation that is not only almost universally unpopular, but may not be strategically winnable.

I would not be surprised if an invasion didn’t initially become somewhat more popular with a rally-around-the-flag (or more accurately, rally-around-Trump) effect, but a long-term war with such low support cannot be successful in a democracy. Elective wars should not be started without popular support, a good reason, a clear objective, and good chance of success.

If Donald Trump sends American ground troops into Iran, he is not only gambling with their lives (and possibly, as in Afghanistan, the lives of soldiers yet unborn), he is gambling with his legacy. If he involves the US in yet another Middle East quagmire, his memory will be cursed by future generations.

Trump is also gambling with America’s financial future. The Administration is already asking for $200 billion in new spending to fight a war that has not been authorized by Congress. This as the national debt has just added $1 trillion in five months, almost doubling since Trump vowed to erase it in 2017. The deficit hawks have been replaced by Iran hawks.

Trump’s original error was going to war without first building support of either the American public or our allies, but he has spent the past year disregarding the opinions of both when not actively working to alienate them. Now the president is staking everything on a Hail Mary to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and win the war.

It is a desperate strategy that is more likely to embroil the US in another generational quagmire that will strain the US and world economies while giving China an opportunity to expand, not to mention killing and maiming untold numbers on both sides. If Republicans allow Trump to follow this destructive course with seven percent of the country behind him, they deserve to be cast into the political wilderness for the foreseeable future.

F-35 DAMAGED by apparent enemy fire over Iran. The pilot landed safely, but if Iran can hit the stealthy fighters, it raises the risks of attacking and makes the use of drones and standoff missiles more necessary.

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