Marshall/TPM: No one on the inside of US foreign policy has any foreign policy or military crisis experience

[BeyondGeography]

…in the last 48 hours or so, we’ve gone from the U.S. being pretty clear it will not get involved beyond defensive assistance to Israel in blocking missiles and drones to the situation this morning, in which it seems like the U.S. may be very close to joining the Israeli bombing campaign. And this isn’t just a case of “the more, the merrier.” Only the U.S. has the combination of bunker-busting bombs and strategic bombers that make it plausible to destroy or disable all the key facilities that make up Iran’s nuclear program.

It is important to note that the U.S. has very good reason to make Iran think it may be about to do that. So it may be a ruse. We don’t know. But I think it’s very possible that the U.S. is on the verge of a major, major military campaign that it wasn’t considering at all just a few days ago and that we may be doing that more or less solely because Donald Trump is jazzed about and attracted by the idea of “winning.” And Israel is now “winning.” So he wants in.

It’s important to step back and recognize that there is really, literally no one in the inner discussion of U.S. foreign policy today who has any level of foreign policy or military crisis experience at all. That’s a big statement. But I think it bears out. The two heads of the U.S. intelligence apparatus have zero experience in intelligence work. The head of the Pentagon is Pete Hegseth and he appears to have surrounded himself with lackeys. Marco Rubio is both Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. He did focus to a degree on foreign policy in the Senate. But he’s never been involved in any national security crisis. He’s never worked in the executive branch. Even the people who are hardcore Trumpers but had some real level of foreign policy experience, like Keith Kellogg, now have other assignments. Kellogg is envoy to Ukraine. The current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs isn’t a career Army Officer. He spent a significant amount of his career in the Reserves. (I don’t think at least — but not certain on this point — that he ever served on the Joint Staff.) The point is that there’s really no one in the room, as it were, who is in a position to keep the President from just riffing. And I think there’s a decent chance that’s exactly what’s happening.

More at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/thoughts-on-israels-iran-campaign-and-donald-trump#more-1521443