A Modest Proposal to End This Stupid War

A way out of a worsening deadlock

Kenneth Schmidt argues that the US should end the Iranian War like it ended the Korean conflict.

Donald Trump’s extremely foolish tendency to take the orders of (possibly dead) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and follow the Talmudic fanatic around like a little puppy has gotten the US into the worst strategic disaster in our history. This stupid war threatens to throw the nation into an economic depression the likes of which we haven’t seen since the thirties. Sadly, the rest of the world will follow us into the garbage can, and poverty and want will likely affect much of the planet.

I was sitting in a coffee shop today and an idea struck me. I have been doing a little re-examination of the circumstances surrounding US participation in the Korean War, another conflict that could have been avoided. When the war began in 1950, there was no major opposition to it on the part of the public. However, as time wore on, the war was turning into a complete deadlocked morass. Public opinion polls showed support for the war declining to under 50% beginning in 1952.

Dwight Eisenhower, who would eventually be elected president in 1952, was initially a big supporter of the Korean War. However, he knew that if he ran as a hardcore supporter of the conflict, he might lose and extend Democrat control of the presidency, which began in 1933, if he didn’t moderate his opinion. During the campaign, he stated that he would find some sort of negotiated settlement to end the thing. A kind of boring guy, his slogan was: “I will go to Korea.” Oddly, this somewhat dull sentence did the trick and he won the White House.

What Eisenhower got was not a technical end of the war but a ceasefire. What is interesting about the ceasefire was that it never transitioned into a negotiated settlement. From 1953 until today, there have been many incidents at the ceasefire line, which have included shooting, artillery fire and axe attacks. However, the mass killing ended.

What could be done is that the US could unilaterally move all US air, land and naval assets out of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula, including the Red Sea. We could keep our naval assets out of the way near Diego Garcia. After this, it’s possible that the Iranians might interpret it as a gesture of goodwill, and a ceasefire could be arranged through intermediaries in India or Pakistan. Because we attacked them twice, the Iranians might still not be in the mood for a negotiated settlement and we might have to wait for years for a settlement and an eventual return to normal relations.

Of course, this non-conditional ceasefire would be somewhat of a national humiliation for the United States and for Donald Trump personally. Trump, Rubio and Hegseth deserve to look like idiots because they ignored fundamental rules of good strategy. They will just have to take their chastising but the American people should not have to suffer to protect the egos of public servants.

This article was originally published here.