Clarissa's Blog

How do the people who insist that the U.S. army is not in terrible shape explain the war in Iran? It’s been dragging out for months. There have been zero successes. If the army is good, why are the results so bad?

The only attempt to handle this contradiction that I’ve encountered so far is to say that the army is good, but its leadership is bad. This is ridiculous because army and its leadership are inseparable. What’s good about it if it’s not achieving any results?

Let’s leave aside for the moment the issue of whether the war was necessary. I don’t believe it was, but that’s not the point. Is this the army anybody wants defending them in case of an attack? With all of the money in the world, with all of the best science and technology, why is it so exceptionally unsuccessful against a smaller, weaker, more primitive regime?

The war was unnecessary. It was a big unforced mistake of the Trump administration, but since it already happened, can’t we try to learn something from what we’re seeing?

I have no idea how it is possible to sit on a conflict with Iran for half a century and fail to prepare for it to this degree. I also have no idea how it is possible to observe Iran actually wage war for the past four and a half years, as it has done in Ukraine, and not learn anything from the kind of weapons it very obviously and insistently uses. What kind of a “good” army fails to notice the rise of a completely new type of warfare spearheaded by the very country you’re attacking? A good army is prepared for the existing warfare. You can’t be a good army when you come out with muskets against machine guns. This is exactly what the US Army is doing in the war with Iran.

None of this would change if the war were completely justified. Let’s say, God forbid, that we need to fight a defensive war. How would we suddenly gain competence in drone warfare? Not that this army won anything before drone warfare was invented.

The US Army is like the US secondary education. Gigantic amounts of money are thrown stupidly at the issue, with predictably poor results. Maybe this is the unplanned purpose of the war with Iran. It’s a low-stakes conflict that finally makes us realize that urgent reform to the armed forces is needed.