Matisyahu's Blog

I was watching a video from ‘Amanpour & Co’ on YouTube where David Frum was interviewed regarding the recent military operations being carried out by Israel and the United States:

I have to prefix this that I am not a fan of the Iranian regime nor am I a supportive of the military operations taking place but David Frum did make an important point. If you are going to carry out such a military operation then you need some sort of plan, some sort of goal – what are you tryign to actually achieve and then creating a plan on the milestones you need to hit to get to that goal and then in turn the objectives that there needed to get to reach milestone. The problem with Donald Trump is that he half asses it and quickly loses interest

With a military operation it is either an all or nothing, you’re either all in on it or you don’t do it at all because when you’re indecisive there is almost a guarantee that you’ll leave the situation in a worst situation than when you found it. Btw, let’s also stop with this nonsense that Trump was available the war in Iraq and Afghanistan (link) – the guy is a weather vane where he takes both sides of the issue depending on the audience and whether it benefits him. If you are going to do regime change then be straight with the American people about what the goal of the military operation is but then again I don’t even think Trump has the slightest clue because either he is utterly clueless or that the person or persons making the decision have kept Trump out of the to avoid him saying something stupid on his social media platform.

What happens if the United States leave the country in a half finished state? a power vacuum with various factions vying for power, ethnic groups pushing to have parts of the country to break away, oppressed religious minorities and victims of state violence wishing to seek revenge against the remnants of the state etc. Long story short the outcome isn’t good no matter which way you look at it and something I think far too many fail to appreciate is the fact that many times in life it isn’t about choosing the ideal but rather choosing the least worst option from amongst a list of potentially bad options.

It reminds me of online leftists who have this romanticised vision of a revolution – storming the winter balance, overthrowing the bourgeoisie, making promises that the system that’ll replace it will be better than the last…then reality sets in and you realise that society doesn’t run on promises and good vibes, that a lot of statecraft is a lot of boring drudgery. A good example of that is like what happened when the Taliban took power they quickly realised that there is a whole lot of boring bureaucratic work that needs to be happening behind the scenes to keep a government functioning and meeting the needs of its citizens.