(Dobbs) Mr. President, Did You Actually Think This Through?You should spend more time figuring out not only why some things have gone wrong, but how to make them right.
Now, from reading the tea leaves in Donald Trump’s posts, the United States might wipe out Iran’s whole energy infrastructure, which could put more than 90 million blameless people in the dark. It might destroy its desalination plants, which could leave tens of millions without fresh water to drink. And despite his assertion yesterday that the war will be over in “two or three weeks,” the U.S. still has an estimated 50,000 troops in the war zone and he might put some on the ground, which inevitably would raise the American death toll in Trump’s war of choice. It all sounds like a far cry from the president’s promise when he gave his victory speech on election night in 2024: “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.” From the looks of things today, despite Trump’s best efforts to save face, it’s going in the other direction. Whether any of us thinks the war is a noble campaign or not, this raises a key question that bedevils me: Mr. President, no matter how sure of yourself you were, did you actually think this through? • Did you think as you set this war in motion that you might not just make Iran’s extremist government suffer, but all the citizens trapped in its vice? • Did you think that while Iran is outgunned and outmanned, it would use the most potent weapon in its toolbox, the Strait of Hormuz, to strangle America’s economy and the world’s? • Did you think that when you said the continued closure of Hormuz is “not our problem,” anyone would take you seriously because of course it’s our problem since you created the problem. • Did you think as you initiated this war that whether some of America’s most important Arab allies liked it or not, you were dragging them into the war with you? • Did you think that although Iran’s military has been greatly weakened, maybe it has more missiles and drones and more places to hide them than American intelligence realized? • Did you think that Russia might use its own network of low orbit satellites to help Iran strike American and allied targets? • Did you think that your own citizens would end up with rising gas prices and plummeting stock prices which diminish the savings of half of all Americans? • Did you think that this war might have worldwide ramifications, none of them good, because fertilizer that can’t get through the strait means farmers from Vietnam to India to Brazil to South Korea are struggling to survive? • Did you think that while American/Israeli bombardments would decimate Iran’s leadership, we would end up only with new faces but still the same old regime, which is not what “regime change” means? • Did you think that with Iran’s nearly thousand pounds of enriched uranium, enough for up to a dozen bombs, still buried underground and still controlled by the Iranians, this war might not extinguish its nuclear aspirations? • Did you think, when you said back in June that Iran’s nuclear program was “obliterated,” then had to go after it again this time and again pronounced it “obliterated” even though it’s not, that people might rightly conclude that you don’t know the meaning of the word? • Did you think that after the first six American troops died in an Iranian strike at Kuwait and you almost casually said, “It’s a part of war,” you would be able to be so casual if you put troops on the ground and the death toll multiplies? • Did you think that when you started this war, it would kill not only government leaders and security forces but also an estimated 1,600 innocent civilians, reportedly including more than 240 children? • Did you think that the timelines you proposed for a quick conclusion of the war, especially since yesterday you added two to three more weeks, would prove to be nothing more than hot air? • Did you think that when you tried giving Iran an escape route from the war by talking about a 15 point peace plan and said negotiations were making ”great progress” because “they gave us most of the points,” Iran’s foreign minister would flat-out say it’s not true? • Did you think that while you encouraged Iran’s dissidents to rise up against the regime, telling them, “Take back your government,” they might not be able to, or that big crowds of Iranians would rise up to support it? • Did you think that while Iran has taken some bullets to its head, it would still be standing? And fighting? Because it is doing both. • Did you think, when you visited the Middle East early in your term and criticized “so-called nation builders” who “wrecked far more nations than they built…. intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand,” that you would become one of them? • Did you think that taking the fight to someone else’s neighborhood, where people have a greater capacity for suffering than anything you’ve ever known, might not lead to the results you expected, and certainly not when you expected? • Did you think that people around you were foolish to quote that military axiom, “The enemy also gets a vote?” Because it does. Iran has proved it. • Did you think, back when you wrote in a post on Day One that your objective is “PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”, that this war might put us further from that goal than we were before, not closer? Even one of Donald Trump’s most dedicated defenders in the media, Fox host Laura Ingraham, asked some of these same questions on her show Monday: “Was the president fully briefed about the risks of all of this from the beginning? And was he then able to take it all in and understand the complexity of this? How complex it could actually get, and further possibilities of casualties or other damage, the difficulty of dealing with these people? Or was he told this would be relatively quick, in and out?” So, back to that initial question, Mr. President: no matter how sure of yourself you were, did you actually think this through? Since there are so many things that haven’t gone according to your plan, how in the world can you feel so sure of yourself now? Here’s an idea: maybe instead of spending so much of your time concocting tributes to yourself, from your image on a gold coin to your oversized triumphal arch to your controversial ballroom to the latest, your skyscraper of a presidential library, revealed just yesterday, which somehow is sure to put more money in your pocket….. …. maybe instead, you should spend more time figuring out not only why some things have gone wrong, but how to make them right. Maybe you should try to figure out why your deceptive description of a “short-term excursion” is a farce. Livelihoods and lives themselves depend on it. © 2026 Greg Dobbs |