President Donald Trump and JD Vance spent years promising that the era of American “forever wars” was over. Seven months after the United States and Israel launched military operations against Iran, the administration has found a unique way to keep that promise: Don’t call it a war.
“I wouldn’t call it a war,” Vance told reporters at a White House briefing earlier this month. “Right now, there is no active shooting.”
There has been plenty of shooting since the conflict began on Feb. 28. Eighteen American service members have been killed and more than 800 wounded. American forces have struck targets inside Iran, Iranian forces have attacked American military installations across the Middle East, and the U.S. maintains more than 50,000 troops in the region while enforcing a naval blockade. The Strait of Hormuz remains a flashpoint, with Iran attacking commercial shipping and the American forces attempting to keep oil moving through one of the world’s most important waterways.
The Congressional Budget Office calls it an “armed conflict” and estimates that military operations have cost taxpayers about $38 billion through Aug. 1. U.S. Central Command subsequently put the bill at $43.6 billion through Sept. 3. The CBO estimates that even at relatively low levels of fighting, continuing the conflict would cost $2 billion per month.
Whatever Vance wants to call it, the U.S. is engaged in an expensive military operation with no indication that it is close to a final resolution.
Asked whether it would be over by the midterm elections, Vance acknowledged that he had no idea.
“The reality is I don’t know the answer to that question,” he said. “You’d have to ask the Iranians.”
That is actually an honest answer, and there is nothing inherently wrong with it. No president or vice president can know how long a military conflict will last, particularly when its resolution depends in part on the adversary’s actions. The problem for Vance is that it collides with years of rhetoric from him and Trump about the supposed folly of American “forever wars.”
In May, Vance was more confident.
“This is not a forever war,” he said. “A big chunk of that has been a ceasefire.”
Four months later, the ceasefire is gone, negotiations have repeatedly stalled, Iran keeps attacking ships, and American military operations continue. Talks mediated by Qatar this week produced little progress, while U.S. officials are considering the possibility that major combat operations could resume.
Though it was likely a slip of the tongue, the president said on Monday that the U.S. would win the Iran “war” very soon. The following day, asked whether Iran was ready to give up, Trump said he didn’t know.
It’s a stark contrast to what Trump said in February. He told Americans the operation would last four to six weeks. It is entering its eighth month, and its vice president says its duration depends on Tehran.
The cost is not limited to the military budget.
On Feb. 23, five days before the fighting began, the national average price for regular gasoline was $2.93 per gallon. By Sept. 21, it had reached $4.47 per gallon. Diesel went from $3.81 to $6.53 over the same period. This week, the Energy Information Administration reported the price of regular gasoline at $4.46 and diesel at $6.38.
Trump acknowledged the connection when he said Monday that gasoline prices would fall substantially once the war ends. The administration announced Tuesday that it will release an additional 40 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as part of an international effort to address the energy disruption caused by the conflict.
It’s a difficult situation heading into midterm elections, especially for a president who returned to office promising lower prices.
Naturally, voters have taken notice. A Fox News poll released this month found 71% believe the administration lacks a clear strategy for ending the conflict, while 60% said U.S. military action against Iran was the wrong decision. Only 37% said military action was the right call.
“Forever war” was always more a political slogan than anything having to do with the military. There is no number of days after which a military operation officially becomes one. The phrase worked because it transformed a complicated argument about American interests, objectives, and military commitments into a much easier argument about “ignoring” interests at home to focus on issues abroad.
Trump and Vance benefited from that simplification when someone else was responsible for the fighting. As is often the case, once someone is in office, they find it very difficult to match their rhetoric to reality.
The length of a war has never been a particularly useful measure of whether it should be fought. Setting an arbitrary deadline substitutes politics for strategy and tells the enemy how long it has to wait.
A president can tell the country what the objective is. The case for a military commitment should be straightforward: Here is what we are trying to accomplish. We do not know how long it will take or precisely what it will cost, but this is the goal, and this is why achieving it is in the American interest.
Trump and Vance made that argument harder for themselves by spending years talking about “forever wars” as though the timeline was the problem. Now they are seven months into a conflict Trump suggested would take four to six weeks, and Vance is reduced to arguing over whether it technically qualifies as a “war.”
That kind of rhetoric makes it easier for political opponents to find an opening. Joe Biden repeatedly promised American support for Ukraine would last “as long as it takes.” The phrase was an unnecessary gift to critics because it made the commitment sound unlimited or like a “blank check,” as critics alleged. The better way to frame it was sticking to the objective: helping Ukraine end a Russian invasion. Congress could then debate the cost and means without pretending anyone knew how long it would take.
Trump and Vance could make the same case for Iran. Instead, after years of using “forever war” as an indictment of their predecessors, including other Republicans, they now have to explain why a conflict entering its eighth month, with tens of billions spent and American casualties mounting, somehow doesn’t deserve the same scrutiny.
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The fact is, they boxed themselves in. The question was never whether the war would last four weeks, seven months, or several years. It was always about the objective and whether it justified the commitment required to achieve it.
That is the argument Trump and Vance should have been making all along. Their own rhetoric made it much harder to do that now.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
