if the point of this is to stop a larger war, walking away now is the dumbest thing possible.

by slowing the process down, all the americans would be doing is prolonging the misery.

there is no alternative to regime change in iran. the regime is over. they can do it the short way or the long way. 

the americans are arguing that they never intended to carry out regime change in iran and there's not going to be regime change because it wasn't an objective.

that appears to be accurate, but it wasn't made clear. the suggestion was the opposite.

i supported the operation on the basis that it would lead to the overwhelming crippling of the iranian state, which is apparently not the operation's goal. the operation's goal is merely to degrade their military ability.

as a mission, this is incredibly stupid. if you leave the iranian state in place, it will regenerate. the americans are failing to learn the lesson of the humiliation of germany in world war one.

the pentagon may disagree, but i won't consider this successful without regime change, and don't think the americans have the choice to not carry through. they can do this now or come back and do it later. they should do it now.

on the premise of the operation being merely to temporarily degrade their abilities, i would have opposed the operation. i was actually clear about that. i was tentatively supporting the full scale liquidation of the iranian state, not an attempt to weaken it for a few months and force it to remilitarize.