People who were saying that Somalia had been lost to Al Qaeda a few months ago were premature. It looks like we’ve built a trap for them, and they’ve been caught.

Well, the comments drifted pretty far off topic in this post. Many of them would have been better directed toward this one, on the administration’s seeming unwillingness to recognize that we are in a state of war with Iran.

I’ll repeat my comment there, in response to the comment that we need boots on the ground to “win” a war with Iran.

Do we have sufficient infantry (today) to sustain a win over Iran?

We don’t need any infantry to “sustain a win over Iran” for certain values of “win.” Despite the nutty straw man comments from the trolls, I’ve never proposed invading, or conquering them, or even necessarily regime change (though that would be nice, and might be a side benefit of a more robust stance against them).

If the goals are to a) prevent them from getting nukes, b) discourage them from continuing to arm people killing us in Iraq and c) prevent them from disrupting Gulf shipping, that can all be done with airpower (and seapower) alone. Certainly Israel has no intention of invading or conquering Iran, or putting boots in Persia, but you can bet they have plenty of war plans, and they don’t expect to lose.

Melanie Phillips, like me, doesn’t understand why the administration doesn’t see the obvious–that we are at war with Iran, but not fighting back in any discernible way. They continue to go completely unhindered, and unpunished, as they frustrate our ability to stabilize Iraq, and provide the arms and training with which our troops are killed daily. We don’t need more troops. We need more clue, and a new strategy.