OPINION: The war we lost before it began – Homer News

A president can declare victory. He cannot make it true.

Wars are won when military force achieves a political objective, not when a president announces that the enemy has been defeated.

America has repeatedly forgotten that distinction. It loses wars not because its soldiers lack courage, weapons or skill, but because political leaders replace professional judgment with loyalty, confuse destruction with strategy and mistake confidence for competence.

Washington has repeated that mistake for generations. It wraps interventions in urgency, defines victory vaguely, and marginalizes anyone who asks the questions that matter most: What are we trying to achieve? What will it cost? How will we know we have succeeded? What happens after the bombing stops?

A nation cannot bomb its way to a political settlement.

Vietnam demonstrated the danger of escalation without a credible path to political success, as bombing and a widening ground war chased goals military force alone could not achieve. Iraq demonstrated something worse: a war justified by prewar claims about weapons of mass destruction that proved unfounded, and alleged ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and al Qaeda that intelligence never substantiated. Afghanistan showed how an initial counterterrorism mission expanded into a two-decade conflict marked by state-building ambitions, corruption and shifting objectives.

The United States did not lack brave troops, advanced weapons or money.

It lacked strategic discipline.

The lesson from those wars was not that American military power is useless. It was that military power has limits. A missile can destroy a target. It cannot build a government. An aircraft can destroy a weapons depot. It cannot decide what political order will replace it.

That distinction matters now in Iran.

President Trump campaigned against endless wars. Yet in 2026, his administration joined Israel in a military campaign against Iran. In June, Trump announced what he called a great settlement, canceling planned strikes even though the agreement was unfinished and the ceasefire fragile.

That is not what victory was supposed to look like.

Iran is not a defenseless target. It retains a major ballistic missile program and regional partners whose capabilities, though weakened in places, remain central to the conflict and to negotiations ahead. It can absorb punishment while imposing costs of its own.

Military superiority does not guarantee political control.

That should be obvious. Yet the administration's decision-making raises a more fundamental question: Who is in the room when the president decides to go to war?

A functioning national security system depends on people willing to challenge assumptions, present unwelcome intelligence and identify risks before they become casualties. That requires experienced diplomats, military professionals and intelligence analysts who are empowered to speak candidly.

It also requires a president willing to hear them.

When any administration sidelines experienced officials, weakens institutions or treats dissent as disloyalty, loyalty can substitute for independent judgment.

Expertise exists because reality is complex.

When expertise is treated as disloyalty, complexity disappears from the briefing room. Confidence replaces competence. Dissent becomes betrayal. Victory becomes whatever the president declares from the podium.

But presidents can announce targets destroyed. They cannot declare adversaries defeated.

The financial consequences are no less real. Brown University's Costs of War project estimates that the post-9/11 wars have cost the United States about $8 trillion, including future obligations for veterans. Brown estimates that the cost of caring for those veterans could reach $2.2 trillion to $2.5 trillion by 2050.

Those figures do not capture the opportunity cost of money that could have strengthened infrastructure, education, health care or other national priorities.

War spending is not free simply because Congress borrows the money.

Republicans who routinely warn about federal debt should confront that contradiction. If government cannot afford to invest more in Americans at home, it cannot pretend military spending has no trade-offs. If national security requires expertise everywhere else, it cannot suddenly become a matter of personal loyalty when war is on the table.

War can be necessary. But necessity demands more than presidential confidence.

It demands evidence, clear objectives, lawful authority, competent planning, honest debate and a credible path to an end.

Without those constraints, security becomes performance.

And performance cannot win wars.

America has learned this before. Vietnam taught it. Iraq confirmed it. Afghanistan prolonged it. Iran is testing whether we have forgotten it.

The country should not wait for another escalation, another funeral or another trillion-dollar bill to remember.

Before the next missile is launched, Americans should demand what political loyalty cannot produce: truth. A president can declare victory as many times as he likes. Only the truth can make it real.

Van Abbott is a 36-year resident of Alaska having worked in Ketchikan, Fairbanks and Anchorage as a municipal, financial and utility manager. He resides in Ketchikan and is currently a freelance writer. He served as a Peace Corps teacher in the 1960s. See his website: politicalwinds.org.