As the New York Times reports, the U.S. has withdrawn twelve B-1 bombers from a Royal Air Force (RAF) base in southern England as a result of concerns that Iran was plotting to attack the base with drones. The Times describes the withdrawal as “rushed,” and notes that “[t]he withdrawal was highly unusual: Such moves are rarely made so quickly from an allied air base in a peacetime country thousands of miles from a combat zone.”
The Times goes on to explain, “The need to move the bombers out of the base, R.A.F. Fairford, was deemed so urgent that some of the planes and their flight crews left while aerial refueling aircraft were still being scrambled to support their flights to the United States.”
It’s easy to make fun of Trump, Hegseth, and their band of incompetents as “bravely running away” like “Brave Sir Robin,” the cowardly knight celebrated in song in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In fact, I just did that.
And it’s easy to wonder about the “planning” for the entire Iran fiasco. Was there any planning? If the war between Russia and Ukraine has shown us anything, it’s that drone warfare has changed the face of war, allowing powers that, on paper, are significantly weaker than their opponents to bring the war to the enemy over great distances, even in the absence of viable air power or missile capabilities. Was anyone in the Pentagon watching what was going on between Russia and Ukraine?
Did anyone warn Trump and Hegseth about the possibility that Iran might resort to drone warfare aimed at U.S. bases in the region and even threatening U.S. assets thousands of miles away (including in the good old US of A)? Or did Trump and Hegseth wave off the warnings because this Administration isn’t about to let a little thing like reality interfere with Trump’s desires?
Of course, none of this is funny. U.S. military lives were lost at bases that apparently were not prepared for Iranian counter-strikes at the beginning of the war. Allies in the region suffered attacks, resulting in deaths and damage. The movements of oil, liquified natural gas, and other commodities have been disrupted. And the ability of the U.S. to project its power has been seriously diminished, though that last point may not be such a bad thing, since the ability to project power could also be described as “U.S. power to intimidate people around the world.”
Oh, and let’s not forget the inflation of prices on a vast range of goods resulting from the war.
All this for a war-of-choice to massage the egos of King Trump and Tough-Guy Hegseth. Of course, as Trump has proclaimed numerous times, we won the war right out of the gate and it’ll be over in no time flat. (If you have difficulty understanding how someone could keep saying those things at the same time, congratulations, you are neither as big a liar nor as cognitively impaired as Trump.)
We are paying the price for the incompetence of Trump and Hegseth, and for the cravenness of the Republicans who continue to support them. Perhaps in November, they’ll realize that it’s time for them to pay the bill.