1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

When the strikes on Iran began in late February, Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine were among the loudest voices promising a fast, decisive win. Trump was happy to believe them. I mean, this is a man who said he could have won Vietnam in a week. We’ll have to take his word on Vietnam, since the bone spurs kept him home. But his war with Iran has been raging for eight months, with no end in sight. Trump has tried to declare victory a few times but we’re essentially right where we started. It has cost taxpayers 47 billion dollars. And it has cost the lives of 20 service members. According to The Atlantic, Trump is now trying to shift the blame. He believes that the war is part of the reason Republicans are about to get stomped in the midterms. Go figure. So he’s been asking advisers how Hegseth and Caine are performing. One of them, maybe both, could take the fall as he weighs a new round of strikes. Hegseth is making sure it’s not him. One adviser said, “Hegseth is good at telling the president what he wants to hear.” He’s also good at passing the buck, just like his boss. He has fired or pushed out more than two dozen generals and admirals. Earlier this year, he reportedly blamed his own deputy for the munitions shortage. Not once has he owned a single failure of this war. We’ve seen this movie before. In 2006, voters punished George W. Bush over Iraq. He fired Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld right after the election. Two months later, he ordered the surge. One of the deadliest stretches of the war followed. Firing a defense secretary didn’t end that war. A bad night for Republicans won’t end this one either. But a new Congress can ask the hard questions nobody in this administration has been willing to answer. Which is more important now than ever.