Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran?

Former Ambassador John Bolton seems to have never met a war in which he didn’t want the United States involved, but Wikipedia noted his opinions during the War in Vietnam:

Bolton was a supporter of the Vietnam War, but avoided combat through a student deferment followed by enlistment in the Maryland Air National Guard. During the 1969 Vietnam War draft lottery, Bolton drew number 185. (Draft numbers were assigned by birth date. Numbers 1 to 195 were eventually called up.) As a result of the Johnson and Nixon administrations’ decisions to rely largely on the draft rather than on the reserve forces, joining a Guard or Reserve unit became a way to reduce the chances of service in Vietnam.

Before graduating from Yale College in 1970, Bolton enlisted in the Maryland Army National Guard rather than waiting to find out if his draft number would be called. He attended Active Duty for Training (ADT) at Fort Polk, Louisiana, from July to November 1970. After serving in the National Guard for four years, he served in the United States Army Reserve until the end of his enlistment two years later.

He wrote in his Yale 25th reunion book: “I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy. I considered the war in Vietnam already lost.” In a 2007 interview, Bolton explained his comment in the reunion book saying his decision to avoid service in Vietnam was because “by the time I was about to graduate in 1970, it was clear to me that opponents of the Vietnam War had made it certain we could not prevail, and that I had no great interest in going there to have Teddy Kennedy give it back to the people I might die to take it away from.”

So, he supported the war, but didn’t support it enough to go and fight in Vietnam himself. Here we have yet another potential war, and Mr Bolton is all for it!

Trump’s Work in Iran Has Only Begun

by John Bolton | Thursday, July 3, 2025

Satisfaction and frustration most accurately capture what should be America’s reaction to last month’s Israeli-U.S. military strikes on Iran.

Satisfaction because the raids, particularly against the nuclear weapons program, may have achieved what decades of illusion, naïveté, misguided diplomacy and inadequate economic sanctions failed to achieve, and frustration because the strikes were terminated early and unnecessarily.

It remains to be seen whether Washington has learned enough of a lesson to complete the destruction of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, by military means if necessary. As on many previous occasions, Iran has announced that it will cease cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, demonstrating that there is currently no serious chance of a satisfactory diplomatic solution.

The early signs are mixed and opaque. Much depends on the stability of the ayatollahs’ regime and its internal divisions, and whether Iran’s population will publicly express its discontent.

The bombastic Mr Bolton continues to tell readers that not only is Iran weaker, but the allies with which the mad mullahs surrounded Israel — Hamas among the ‘Palestinians,’ Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the foreign militias in Syria — have been seriously weakened. Then he tells us:

There is zero evidence the ayatollahs are prepared to abandon their nuclear dreams, and this is certainly not the moment for Washington to throw Tehran political or economic lifelines, particularly not a “new” nuclear deal with the United States.

After several more paragraphs, we come to his conclusion:

The all-purpose answer from those who prefer wringing their hands to accomplishing anything: Remember Iraq. The critics of the U.S. strike on Iran are fighting the last war. The worldwide terrorist proxies Iran deployed and its advanced nuclear programs are orders of magnitude more threatening than Mr. Hussein’s Iraq. Moreover, no boots on the ground need be involved. The short answer is that Iran is not Iraq, which the Israelis and Washington have already partly demonstrated.

Israel most likely has the resolve to do what is necessary to ensure its survival. The real question for America’s survival is whether the same can be said for the current U.S. administration.

Really? In a large country, with 92 million people, the former Ambassador tells us that we can, through military strikes, completely destroy whatever remains of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and that no American soldiers need to be involved on the ground. Now, how does that work? If our largest and most powerful ground-penetrating conventional weapons failed to completely destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities, what options are left? Either troops on the ground, to enter and destroy all of Iran’s nuclear facilities, or nuclear weapons to destroy what our largest conventional weapons could not.

I can actually see some merit to Mr Bolton’s argument, but I have to consider the source as well. When I read a man who loves him some military action, at least military action in which he’s not on the front lines himself, I see a man whose opinions are always suspect.