How Trump has failed to learn the lessons of the wars that followed 9/11
There were some real American operational successes during the war on terror: The CIA became an effective paramilitary agency hunting and killing terrorists; Joint Special Operations Command transformed from a barely used counterterrorism force to an industrial-level killing machine; US Special Forces partnered adeptly with Afghan and Iraqi ground forces; and the National Security Agency skillfully penetrated enemy communications.
With Operation Epic Fury in Iran, President Donald Trump reached a new peak in the war-making powers claimed by the US commander in chief.
The US military has long been adept at breaking things and killing people, but when its tactics were not aligned with a clear strategy, the United States ended up in the quagmire of Vietnam, or the sectarian civil war in Iraq that eventually birthed ISIS, or precipitating a possible global economic recession caused by the Iran war.
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