I'll try to ignore the angry bitterness, but you do make two excellent points. One is the cacophony of "why haven't we won yet," which plays directly into the hands of the Iranian propagandists, anti-administration left, and isolationist Israel hating right, may be the most blatant public display of ignorance and lack of understanding of warfare that I have seen in my lifetime.
Second, The first chapter was written in this conflict with Carter's policy and military failures to confront the revolution in its infancy. Every successive administration, republican or democrat, has kicked this can into the future. It is now 2026, and I defy anyone with half a brain to deny that Iran has not been a growing and ever more dangerous threat to both our and frankly all of Europe and the Arab East for nearly fifty years. I defy even the most ardent America first Tucker Carlson enamored zealot to explain to me how an Iran with intercontinental missiles and nuclear weapons is not an imminent threat to this nation and its interests.
You rolled out your list of failures, well let me offer you one that actually parallels the situation in Iran and the Gulf region. For fifty years (sound familiar?) following the Korean war, we watched North Korea steadily develop nuclear capability and long range ballistic missiles and did nothing. In 2003, North Korea withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 03, and tested a nuclear weapon in 2006. They likely have a dozen weapons capable of reaching Hawaii and the West Coast, and a fat murderous lunatic in charge of them. And we did nothing, and now can not.
Due to its location and the imminent threat the current regime in Iran represents to regional Western economic interests, doing nothing this time represents a concession to eternal blackmail at best, and growing instability as Iran pushes its hegemonic ambitions and religious zealotry across the Middle East. More existentially, does anyone really believe the zealots in Tehran would not find a means to deploy such a weapon against Israel and/or the United States?
The worst case scenario on which to conclude this war will be the Theocracy still in place, the Iranian people still in bondage, but the ability of Iran to pursue nuclear weapons and long range ballistic missiles curbed for a generation. Even that limited success will be infinitely better than staring at the smoking radioactive ruins of Tel Aviv , New York, or London, or attempting to deal with an Gulf region under control of a hostile religious cult with unlimited resources.
