Whew!

So apparently all Hell did not rain down on Iran last night.

Hegseth: “Iran suffered a devastating military defeat.”

It is déjà vu for me. Another “body count” victory, like the one in Vietnam. We killed more of the Vietcong than they killed of us, as if that meant we were on the path to victory.

Let me explainm”body count” to young readers:

In the 1968-1970 era the U.S. attempted to measure our progress in the Vietnam War by reporting the number of Vietnamese soldiers we killed compared the the smaller number of U.S. soldiers killed. Body counts were reported on the nightly news, perhaps 500 Vietnamese killed, only 50 of us, typically a ten-to-one ratio. Any Asian body counted as an enemy soldier.

The macabre information was presented as interim success toward ultimate victory. In 1970 junior officers began complaining that the numbers were inflated and that measuring bodycounts distorted our military operations toward a goal without military or strategic purpose. Eventually the top generals stopped announcing bodycounts; the public didn’t like them and it wasn’t leading to victory. The irony is that we didn’t achieve our strategic aims until we lost the war and left.

At a personal level, sitting safely in my dorm room, reading history and writing papers and thankful for a student deferment from the draft, I thought that the idea that my purpose as a soldier was to be traded as a pawn for 10 Vietnamese pawns, was a very, very bad deal.

Iran was getting pummelled, but it isn’t helpless. It had quickly set up a triage-and-toll system for the Strait of Hormuz. Its friends got through; others did not. The system enriched and empowered Iran, rewarded Russia and China and other countries allied with Iran, and punished the U.S., Middle East, and European countries that supported us. Meanwhile Russia, China, and North Korea were tightening bonds with Iran, supplying Iran with intelligence and weapons. Ukraine was being disadvantaged. The countries of the Middle East were discovering that the U.S. could not protect them. Our long-established allies were being hurt by the oil price disruption and pulling away from the U.S., angry that we had let Israel push us into a war of choice. I had to pay $6.50 a gallon for diesel for my tractor, and gasoline prices in California were above $7.50.

Moreover, as a requirement of getting a ship past the Strait, Iran insisted that oil shipments be settled in a currency other than the U.S. dollar, which is speeding up the erosion of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The fact that the world needs to hold U.S. Treasuries to buy and sell oil is what allows us to carry a huge budget deficit at a lower-than-market interest rate.

So much winning.

A viewer of Fox News will hear repeatedly that worthy war aims have been achieved and that Trump is a courageous, visionary hero who achieved a total and complete victory. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters our credible threats worked:

President Trump had the power to cripple Iran’s entire economy in minutes. But he chose mercy. He spared those targets because Iran accepted the ceasefire under overwhelming pressure.

Possibly my Vietnam bodycount analogy is misplaced. Maybe Iran is different, and the tool we are willing to use -- destroying things from the air -- will turn Iran into an oil-rich Switzerland, with no hostile intent to anyone, or failing that, into a whimpering loser of a country, unable to hurt others. Or perhaps, more likely, it creates the basis for a durable new status quo, a deal.

Netanyahu wants the extinction of Iran as a threat. Trump wants something else. He wants personal glory, admiration as a peacemaker, distraction from the Epstein mess, and plunder. Why go to war if there isn’t plunder?

Iran has a powerful card to play: passage through the Strait secure enough that ships can get insurance to make the passage. Trump wants free oil, and maybe a share of the income from passage. A $200 million supertanker carries $200 million in oil on each trip. Surely such a ship can bear a $4 million toll, just two percent of the cargo’s value, and surely the U.S. deserves some of that.

Trump may prefer a deal with a distressed partner and desperate ship owners to crowing over having created more rubble. Something might work out.

But the early news isn’t promising.