In American Greatness, Roger Kimball makes the case that, unlike Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, President Donald Trump is fighting a war to win. According to Kimball, Trump has streamlined the rules of engagement, making victory a possibility. Kimball writes:

Trump understands, as so many “experts” have failed to understand, that the object of armed conflict is to win. So often in recent decades, the United States has embarked on war, or warlike activity, with no plan for victory. Early on in the War on Terror, for example, the U.S. located Mullah Omar, the Taliban head honcho who coddled al-Qaeda, in Afghanistan. The American forces were not, however, allowed simply to take him out. Restrictive rules of engagement required them to wire back to Washington to ask permission. By the time the proper authorities could answer, it was too late. Omar had vanished back into some unknown cave.

There is nothing like that happening now. Within just four or five days, virtually all of Iran’s senior leadership has been eliminated. Then its replacements were eliminated. “Their army is gone,” President Trump said a few days ago. “Their navy is gone. Their communications are gone. Their leaders are gone. . . . Their Air Force is wiped out. . . . They have 32 ships. All 32 are at the bottom of the ocean. Other than that,” he quipped, “they’re doing very well!”

The assault is not just continuing; it is ramping up. Just a few days ago, Israel destroyed a massive underground complex in the center of Tehran from which the (late) Supreme Leader Khamenei had planned to conduct the war. As retired Lt. General Keith Kellogg told Fox News, President Trump is “going after everything. . . . There’s a huge target list out there, and there’s no restrictions.” Kellogg, noting that he had never seen an operation like this, said that it’s not “whack a mole” but “whack a mullah. . . . This is a massive win for the United States.”

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