Outside the Beltway

SaturTabs

· Saturday, March 7, 2026 · 6 comments

The fantasy that we are always offered at the beginning is that we can choose what it is we are going to do — that we can control the situation we are going to create.

And as we have developed even more precision weapons and more air power and more drones and more ability to wage war at a distance, the seduction of that control for leaders and for others has become all the more potent.

But the history of this is: We do not control it. As you mentioned, with Libya, with Afghanistan, with Iraq, we might think we are helping the people, but if we set off a civil war, you could easily have 70,000 or 100,000 or 200,000 or 300,000 people die in that war.

And we have shown no interest in saying that we will occupy the country to make sure that doesn’t happen. And as we learned in Iraq: Even if we do decide to occupy the country, can we keep that from happening?

Donald Trump was one of the people who started our withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was then completed in the Biden administration. Again, that was the inability over a very long time to control the outcome of something like this, even when we were willing to put much more of our blood and treasure into controlling it.

So to me, the great lie of war is that you will get what you want out of it. Among the many things that scare me so much about Trump is how blithe he is with that. You don’t feel like this has cost him any sleep at all.

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Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter and/or BlueSky.

Comments

  1. charontwo says:
    Saturday, 7 March 2026 at 07:08

    Following some links in the TNR piece:

    “TNR Gift”

    Donald Trump really doesn’t have an Iran war plan, he told Congress on Monday.

    In a letter to Congress regarding the War Powers Resolution for Iran, Trump wrote, “Although the United States desires a quick and enduring peace, it is not possible at this time to know the full scope and duration of military operations that may be necessary.” This means that he has no idea how long the war will last and whether ground troops will be necessary.

    “TNR Gift”

    The State Department has urged all Americans in the Middle East to leave immediately, but U.S. embassies in the region are telling people trying to flee that they are on their own.

    U.S. allies within the region are at high risk of being targeted by Iranian missiles, with Iran strikes already occurring across Israel, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, after the joint attack by the United States and Israel last weekend. Meanwhile, Israel has bombed Lebanon. American civilians currently in those areas are being told that they’ll need to figure out their own evacuation plans without any help from their home country.

    On Tuesday, the U.S. shut down its embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait after Iranian attacks.

    “The U.S. Embassy is not in a position at this time to evacuate or directly assist Americans in departing Israel,” the U.S. Embassy in Israel posted Tuesday on X, instead telling them to check out the Israeli Ministry of Tourism’s shuttle. “The U.S. Embassy cannot make any recommendation (for or against) the Ministry of Tourism’s shuttle. If you choose to avail yourself of this option to depart, the U.S. government cannot guarantee your safety. The information is provided as a courtesy to those wishing to leave Israel.”

    The U.S. Embassy in Qatar said the same, stating that Americans there “not rely on the U.S. government for assisted departure or evacuation.” This has only increased the frantic nature of these evacuations, as demand for transportation skyrockets, prioritizing only those with enough funds and/or status to get out.

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  2. charontwo says:
    Saturday, 7 March 2026 at 07:46

    I note that all of these “SaturTabs” relate to the Iran war. Which, as I interpret it, makes the Iran war the post’s real topic.

    So, some more Iran linkies:

    “Phillips O’Brien”

    The Rot Is Real And There Is More To It
    … My latest piece came out in the Atlantic yesterday evening and it has caused a little stir and also some push back. The central point of the piece is to argue that under Trump we can already see some early signs of rot in US military and diplomatic capabilities, which have been highlighted by the ongoing decision by Trump to bomb Iran.

    ..

    e

    Reasons For The Rot
    These are primarily two fold; corruption and the replacement/loss of competent people for incompetent loyalists and fanatics. Corruption is now endemic at the top of US government, to the point that even Trump backing publications are becoming nervous about it. Corruption at the top always rolls downhill. Once it becomes open and acknowledged, it leads to corrupt and slovenly acts throughout a system. Kristi Noem’s admission that she gave a massive, no bid contract worth hundreds of millions to an associate is just one example from the last few days.

    You want an example of what happens over time with corruption and a military? Take a look at Vladimir Putin’s armed forces when he launched them at Ukraine in the 2022 full scale invasion. Though the analytical community have laughably been telling us that corruption in the Russian armed forces had been eradicated, this was nonsense. Corruption was everywhere, from rotting food to logistics to explosive armor protection that lacked explosives.

    etc.

    “Peter Wehner”

    Pete Hegseth’s Moral Unseriousness

    The defense secretary appears unable to approach matters of life and death with even the slightest bit of reverence or humility

    CERTAIN MOMENTS are worth paying attention to because they reveal something essential about a person. They act as windows into an individual’s psychological state, their ethics, the orders of their loves and their hates. Such occasions are crystallizing.

    That’s been true of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon briefings since the war against Iran began. We haven’t learned anything we didn’t already know about Hegseth in these briefings. But the press conferences have reminded the world why he is exactly the wrong person to hold the position he does.

    Wednesday’s briefing, for example, featured the usual Hegseth hubris, strutting, and cockiness. “I stand before you today with one unmistakable message about Operation Epic Fury: America is winning decisively, devastatingly, and without mercy,” he said. He declared that, four days into the mission, Iran is “toast, and they know it. Or at least soon enough they will know it.” He compared the Persian nation’s predicament to that of a football team: “They don’t know what plays to call, let alone how to get in the huddle and call those plays.” There was not even a hint of the challenges that might lie ahead in the conflict with Iran, a nation of 90 million people that borders seven countries—challenges that might include internal fragmentation and chaos, a dangerous insurgency, humanitarian crises, regional destabilization, and global economic disruption.

    Hegseth displayed the prickliness and defensiveness we’ve come to expect, along with his resentment against “fake news.” Hegseth complained that the war-related deaths of six Americans were front-page news. The press, he claimed, “only wants to make the president look bad.” There were also the requisite shots at Democrats, who he said are “rooting against the country.”

    “Tom Nichols”

    The United States is at war. Americans, at such a time, might expect their government to speak to them regularly and report on U.S. goals—and casualties—but so far, they have gotten little beyond prerecorded videos of the president and some sound bites from various officials. Even Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has held only a few briefings.

    Perhaps the Pentagon chief’s reluctance to speak to the press is just as well, because many Americans would be alarmed to realize that their sons and daughters in combat are being overseen by a person as callous as Pete Hegseth.

    This morning, the defense secretary gave a briefing on the war that quickly degenerated into Trumplike bombast. (Wisely, the Pentagon scheduled this at 8 a.m. eastern time, when most of the country is either sleeping or busy starting their day.) Hegseth apparently prefers to sound more like a Call of Duty player leading a raid than a sober and judicious secretary of defense: “Death and destruction from the sky all day,” he said, along with other empty phrases such as “We’re playing for keeps.” (As opposed to what, exactly?)

    Most reporters are now accustomed to Hegseth’s drama-laden antics. But even by the low standards he has set, he managed to shock many of them when he cynically used the deaths of U.S. military personnel to air his own grievances with the press.

    On Sunday morning (local time), an Iranian drone hit a makeshift operations center in Kuwait. The Pentagon says that six Americans are dead. Not only is this event a tragedy, but it also requires an explanation: The drone reportedly snuck through U.S. defenses without setting off any alerts, and struck a target that now seems to have been unduly vulnerable to aerial attack.

    The defense secretary, the man who is supposed to carry this news to the American public and mourn with them, instead whined about the unfairness of it all. “When a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front-page news. I get it,” Hegseth told the reporters, military personnel, and civilians gathered this morning in the Pentagon. “The press only wants to make the president look bad, but try for once to report the reality. The terms of this war will be set by us at every step. As I said Monday, the mission is laser-focused.”

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  3. Ken_L says:
    Saturday, 7 March 2026 at 19:59

    So to me, the great lie of war is that you will get what you want out of it. Among the many things that scare me so much about Trump is how blithe he is with that. You don’t feel like this has cost him any sleep at all.

    Ah, but the genius of Trump’s system is that he hasn’t decided what he wants, let alone articulated it. That leaves him free to gloat, however it turns out in the end, that he got exactly what he had always planned.

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  4. JohnSF says:
    Saturday, 7 March 2026 at 20:46

    @charontwo:
    Hegseth is a disgrace to his office on a level almost without precedent in modern Western polities.
    I do not say this lightly.

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  5. Jay L. Gischer says:
    Saturday, 7 March 2026 at 23:08

    That story about Kash Patel firing counterintelligence people charged with the Middle East, including Iran kind of terrifies me.

    Yes, it demonstrates how poorly coordinated they are. A friend said to me, “Nobody tells Kash Patel anything”. Which seems likely.

    And also, he says it’s because of their part in the documents case.

    Say what?

    How did counterintelligence agents get involved in that prosecution? None of that was on the record, as I recall. And I followed that case fairly closely.

    Part of the terror is that cointel people use means that are not necessarily kosher, and gather intelligence, which is not at all the same as evidence. It may not be admissible. It may involve wiretaps. Though I suppose that if they had dirt on Trump, firing is not making them more likely to keep the secrets that they possess. And yeah, do they possess secrets.

    What the blue blazes? Maybe there’s a simple explanation for this. It’s right there with making Tulsi Gabbard the top Intel person for the US. Say what?

    There’s stuff going on in Washington that is weird and twisted, one way or another.

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  6. JohnSF says:
    Saturday, 7 March 2026 at 23:35

    @Jay L. Gischer:
    Gabbard was perhaps the most insane appointment of all in the Trump adminstration.
    Even compared to Hegseth, Miller, Patel, Noem, and Kennedy.
    I suspect Patel is firing people just because they are connected to the Trump documents investigations, and that Iran was likely to be interested in said documents is a second-order connection
    Gabbard otoh is insane enough to compromise intelligence directly.

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