The High Cost of Trump’s War With Iran and How You Will Pay The Price — Meidas Defense
By Joe Plenzler In the windowless offices of the Pentagon, there was once a quiet understanding: politics stops at the water’s edge. I remember sitting down for lunch in 2011 with Rosa Brooks—then a senior counselor to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy—to navigate complex Marine Corps issues. We didn’t talk about parties; we talked about the law, strategic stability, and the gravity of American leadership. Today, that gravity has been replaced by a terrifying lightness. In a recent conversation with Brooks, now a Georgetown law professor and veteran of two administrations, the diagnosis of our current national security posture was grim. We are no longer the stabilizing force the world once relied upon. Instead, under the exceptionally poor leadership of Secretary Pete Hegseth, the United States is increasingly viewed by allies and adversaries alike as a rogue state—an erratic, predatory power governed not by law, but by the whims of a capricious, short-sighted, and self-indulgant president. The Purge of ExpertiseThe most visible damage is the decapitation of institutional memory. Hegseth has overseen a purge of the senior officer corps, targeting those who dare to ask legal questions or offer sapient pushback. Brooks aptly describes Hegseth as the ultimate DEI candidate of a different sort: qualified not by experience or temperament, but by his status as a “nice-looking guy on Fox News” who mirrors the President’s ideology. Just like the corrupt Nixon administration, Trump values loyalty far above expertise. Hegseth was hired because he is a toady, and also an expendable rube - soon to be thrown under the bus for the failure of the Iran war. Tick tock. Previously, the Office of the Secretary of Defense had adults in the room like Marshall or Gates or Mattis - or even Rumsfeld. Now, we have a supremely unqualified partisan hack and this has real consequences. As Hegseth has fired the people who understand the mechanics of the law, he has lost the ability to navigate the world without breaking it, repeatedly. The “Porcupine” and the Platinum BulletNowhere is this amateurism more evident than in our escalating fiasco with Iran. The administration’s paucity of coherent strategy is failing the most basic test of sustainability. We are witnessing a logistical nightmare where the U.S. is spending gold and platinum (THAAD and Patriot) to shoot down tin (Iranian drones). Our Navy and Air Force are using multi-million dollar interceptors in limited supply to down $10,000 drones. Under Hegseth, the American military is fighting a conventional, limited war - winning tactically and failing strategically - while the Iranians are fighting an asymmetric total war where they only need to survive to win. While the defense contractors make bank, America is depleting our munitions at an unsustainable rate. Brooks notes the tragic irony: while our Ukrainian allies have spent years innovating low-cost drone defense, this administration has largely ignored those lessons, seemingly believing that “God is on our side” is a sufficient substitute for technical know-how in the material universe. A Rogue State in the Eyes of AlliesPerhaps the most enduring damage is the total collapse of trust. Trust is the currency of international relations; once lost, it takes generations to earn back. In 2003, even the flawed invasion of Iraq was preceded by a year of diplomatic coalition-building. Today, we launch strikes from Mar-a-Lago, initiated by a 3:00 AM video of an old man in a MAGA ball cap, without UN resolutions, a military coalition of the willing, or Congressional consultation. The president has repeatedly given our NATO allies the finger and now expresses total sulky surprise when they decline to join our dangerously incoherent war. As Stephen Miller recently stated, this administration believes the “strong do what they want.” But as Brooks pointed out, that isn’t how the modern world works. Global interconnectedness means no nation can truly go it alone. By acting erratically, we have surrendered the one thing every nation needs to engage in successful diplomacy: predictability. It seems Trump and Hegseth are intent on dragging the world back to the “bad old days” of empire, where the emperor is Nero fiddling while Rome burns and the costs are measured in the lives of America’s working people’s children. If we continue to treat leadership of the Department of Defense like a high school football locker room, America will soon find ourselves alone in a very dangerous world.
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