The Treaty of Versailles

"We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

-Winston Churchill

Thinking of old Winnie this morning, of how he won the war by not losing it in 1940-41. Cities pounded into rubble, air force decimated, and yet the Brits soldiered on. They waited things out, and eventually the dictator who'd attacked them became distracted with other priorities to the east.

It seems a little like the Iranians' situation this morning. There's no doubt the American military did its job--Iran no longer has an air force or a navy besides a handful of speed boats. Its leadership on Day One of the war is now dead. But it endured our murder of little girls at school, the war crime of attacking its desalination plants, our blockading the oil exports that were its only real source of cash to resist. Then Dear Leader became "bored" and moved on, happy to leave the Iranians stronger and more dangerous than before, knowing they can hold the global economy hostage by simply threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz and having their proxies in Yemen do the same to the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

And while making Iran stronger, the U.S. diminished its own place in the world. Our allies who weren't consulted before we started a war for which they'd bear the economic consequences no longer see us as a reliable partner. Israel, certainly an unsympathetic player in this fiasco, saw itself sold out in the end. Above all, we showed the world that our enemies need not fear us imposing our will militarily---we have the technology, to be sure, but not the stomach for the task of regime change and the sea of blood and treasure that requires.

Any end to a war is a good thing. Make no mistake about that. But this peace to which we capitulated materially damages the U.S. even beyond past debacles like Vietnam or the invasion of Iraq in 2003. At least back then we were a serious country.

And to sign the MOU at Versailles? You can't even make that up.