I don't want to "bury the lede" so let me say up front: Going to war requires a tremendous cost in lives and money. You cannot succeed in this without the unified backing of the country. And to get this support the leaders (e.g. the President) must articulate a noble, or at least convincing, reason for the endeavor. For example, it is the failure to do this that resulted in America's failure to unite behind the war in Vietnam.
It also explains why the Left is so inexplicably against this war to topple the regime in Iran. We were given a gift on Purim--Haman was killed again. No reasonable American felt any sympathy for the Iranian ayatollah. And yet even within the highest counsels of U.S. government no consensus has been articulated that explains, let alone justifies, going to war with Iran.
So let me suggest the real reason and the "public reason" that might help us understand what is happening. The real reason is that the deep water channel in the Gulf of Hormuz passes between three tiny islands, Greater Tums, Lesser Tums, and Abu Mesa. The sinking of a single ship in this channel would cut off the supply of oil to Western Europe. Look at that waterway today, rather than at Teheran... In its "negotiations" with the DT administration this threat was the only leverage Iran had and it was palpable. Yet the "public justification" for going to war could more easily be articulated and understood by the largely low-information public: Iran is the patron and weapons supplier for every terrorist and anti-western polity in the Middle East. It needed to be neutralized before any progress can occur in the rebuilding of Gaza.
I wonder if the un-critical Left's moronic, ill-informed, naive, and immoral support for Hamas and other purported leaders of an exhausted and forlorn Palestinian population led the Republican elite away from taking this route to justify the war against Iran.
Whatever the reason, the government failed, as it did in Vietnam, to unite the country behind a war that is further dividing the country and continues to make little sense to the public.
Think about WW II. Antisemitism in America was such that fighting to save Jewish lives was not a good enough reason to justify joining the Allies in their fight against Hitler; it took Pearl Harbor to get us into the war. Even with Korea--the (supposed) threat of communism united the country. We have not been united in fear of an enemy since then, with the possible exception of 9/11--though even that did not unite us behind the debacle in Afghanistan. Lesson to all future presidents: Be sure to have a convincing ideology, a justifiable explanation, before taking the country into war.
