I don’t believe they could do so today, because I believe if they could have done so today, rather than hit Abu Dhabi and Oman, they would be hitting New York and Miami. And what we have seen in the last month, in terms of Iran’s response, is that their capacity with ballistic missiles has expanded much more rapidly than I think anybody expected.
Trump declared that we destroyed one hundred per cent of Iran’s “military capability.”
I don’t have the intelligence briefing to know whether that’s true or not. I think that one of the things that concerns me is that he may simply declare victory and stop too soon. And one of the reasons that I wrote the article that I did is that I don’t want political pressure on him to stop before–
We need to give him some runway.
You know, I don’t know how much runway he thinks he has.
That’s what I mean. It seems like it’s important for him to have enough to finish the job.
Yes. That’s my view.
Just thinking this through, you said you’re worried that Trump could stop the war too soon. If, in fact, he does just quit, and America doesn’t accomplish what you want it to accomplish, but there is an economic hit, there are people who’ve died, then that seems like one reason to not support the war.
Well, if you knew that he was going to stop before he finished the job, I think it would be a complicated question, because, while he may not have destroyed everything in Iran at this point, he has certainly set the regime back a long time. And so I think that even if he were to stop now I believe he will have accomplished something, and what I would hope is that people think about this, think about what this means to our country, think about what this means to the future of our country, and they would give him the support that would encourage him to finish the job.
Right, so we should sort of be egging him on. I know that’s a cheap phrase. But we need to make sure he’s got the wind in his sails to keep going.
Exactly. I think that’s fair.
Does it worry you at all that we may find ourselves in the position of egging on an authoritarian figure who is engaged in a war that he started? It just doesn’t quite sit right with me.
One of the things about democracies is that the person that you support doesn’t always get elected, but the person who gets elected is nevertheless your President. And, while I think that part of democracy is opposing things that you disapprove of, part of democracy is supporting our elected officials, regardless of whether they are the same party, regardless of whether you agree with them generally, when they are making decisions that you support. I think that we’ve got to find common ground. We have got to get back to the point where we can support people that we oppose.
I mentioned the White House posting fascistic video edits of strikes on Iran and the things Pete Hegseth says about killing people. Something just feels wrong about egging them on.
I would rather that we had a Department of Defense rather than the Department of War. I believe that this is a conflict that is important to our defense.
There was an American strike that killed at least a hundred and seventy-five people, many of them Iranian schoolgirls. The U.S. government denied this for a long time. The President himself is still denying it. It doesn’t take someone supersmart to realize that Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth do not care that much about the fact that an American strike killed a bunch of Iranian schoolgirls. I’m curious how you synthesize that with your larger feelings about the war.
Sure. Well, first, nobody can feel comfortable with civilian casualties.
No one outside of the Administration, you mean?
I don’t even think . . . I really don’t think that Donald Trump doesn’t care about civilian casualties.
Sir, you’re a very, very smart guy. You don’t think Donald Trump actually cares about casualties, do you?
Look, I actually do, O.K.? In his first Administration, in 2019, when he turned back the bombers from hitting Iran, I think he did that because I do think he genuinely cares about human life. Now that doesn’t mean that he respects human life the way I would.
It’s a sliding scale.
But, if we bomb that school, and I agree with you that I think the evidence is that we did, I don’t think it serves us well to deny it.
On the other hand, I do understand that in wartime people say a lot of things that are untrue to support their side. We’ve done that repeatedly in every war we fought. Now, with respect to civilian casualties, it is a terrible cost of war, and it is an inevitable cost of war. And, by my count, the civilian casualties that have been incurred are far less than the civilian casualties that this Iranian regime caused in suppressing the protests.
These aren’t in competition with each other, right? They’re both bad independently.
Exactly right.
You said it’s possible that Trump does, in fact, really care about civilian casualties, but he’s not going to say it right now. I hadn’t thought of that.
