Just to be clear – and this should really be something both sides agree on, including Trumpers, most of whom (rightly or wrongly) approved of his isolationist foreign policy precisely because they believed that it would keep us out of yet more conflict – if we enter another major war in the Middle East, it’s over. America is officially done. The cost and commitment will push us far beyond the brink of what we can incur as a nation. Honestly, we’re probably there already – but if we go to war with Iran, it will be certain.
Terrorists know this, as do the evil regimes that support them (and often are them). It is their stated aim to drag us into regional wars that cannot be won by traditional standards, so that we overextend ourselves and ultimately collapse from within, the way every single empire in history has within a short period of time after invading the Middle East: Greeks, Romans, Mongols, British, Soviets, and on and on and on. To go to war yet again – in a country four times the size of Iraq, and look how that turned out – is to play right into the hands of our enemies by doing exactly what they want us to do.
As George Washington warned in his farewell address: “[America] goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”
We didn’t listen. I pray with all my heart that this time we will.
