Federalist contributors continue their ambiguous view of how to conduct a war against evil entities

So now the Federalist writer/editor Hayden Daniel's the next contributor to the site to make an unclear argument on how the USA should conduct a war in areas like Iran and other parts of the middle east. He's no better than the aforementioned editor, mainly because he slurs Mark Levin as a "neocon", more on which anon. There may be, oddly enough, some valid points made about Ronald Reagan here, but the op-ed still falters badly:

But, for now, the economically vital Strait of Hormuz remains shut, and over the past few weeks, the U.S. has transferred thousands of ground troops to the region. Given the administration’s shifting goalposts and unclear messaging over the last few weeks, escalation is still not outside the realm of possibility. And any further escalation of the conflict would probably mean boots on the ground.

And that's unacceptable to Mr. Daniel, right? Seriously, why should we buy the notion he even wants to defend his own country's borders then? After all, rounding up violent illegal immigrants is tough too, and there are serious dangers involved. If we don't have the courage to defeat tyrants and demand they stop using Islam as an educational tool, then how will we be able to do anything about it back on home turf? Already, there's disturbing signs of some individual states selling out to the Religion of Peace, the aforementioned Utah included, and Daniel's not making any improvement when it comes to the troubles with dhimmitude.

But after decades of costly, ultimately futile wars in the same part of the globe, the prospect of another ground conflict in the region is deeply unpopular with most Americans. Such a move, if taken, would almost certainly tank President Donald Trump’s already wavering approval rating, sink Republican prospects for the midterms and even 2028, and mar his legacy with a long Middle East war he promised to avoid.

And that's solely Trump's fault, not that of the jihadists, huh? Mr. Daniel's just as appalling as his fellow editor John Daniel Davidson, and whatever merit the Federalist had when they first began about a dozen years ago has evaporated since. As for the issue of Levin, while there's obviously cause for disagreement, what Daniel says next is bizarre:

In light of that, our other options are to continue the air and naval war alone without a ground element, or, as some have suggested, to begin arming the Iranian people (or other groups like the Kurds and Azerbaijanis) so they can overthrow the regime themselves. Even if the U.S. stops its direct military actions against Iran in the coming weeks as Trump suggested, the administration could still arm and train Iranians to destabilize the regime from the inside.

Reagan admin veteran (as if he’d ever let you forget it) and neocon political commentator Mark Levin emphatically endorsed the latter option Tuesday.

Wow, this is the 2nd time somebody at the Federalist makes the claim Levin's a "neocon", even though his record shows he's anything but that, no matter his flaws. I just don't know what they expect to accomplish from such an all-too-easy putdown. That said, here's what they seemingly dissent with him about:

“ARM THE IRANIAN PEOPLE IMMEDIATELY!” he posted on X. “I’ve been calling for this for weeks on radio. One thing we can do, which Reagan did in Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua, is ARM THE PEOPLE in Iran so they are no longer butchered by these monsters without the ability to fight back! They will rise up as a real fighting force, but they need weapons! And it must be done IMMEDIATELY, especially if we are talking about ending our military operation in a few weeks!”

In 2015, the Pentagon set out to train up to 15,000 rebels to help take on ISIS and topple Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. Five hundred million dollars later, we had only managed to train a few dozen men, and those who actually made it to the battlefield were quickly killed, captured, or fled. Some of them even surrendered their equipment over to terrorists in return for safe passage out of the country. A separate CIA effort to train rebels also met a dismal end and was thankfully cancelled by Trump in his first term.

Meanwhile, the Iraqis and Afghans we spent untold resources and man-hours on training to defend their own homelands cut and ran at the first sight of major combat against ISIS and the Taliban, respectively. Their cowardice left mountains of U.S.-provided equipment in the hands of terrorists, who subsequently distributed them to other militant groups.

In all this argument, it's missing a vital point: nobody tried to persuade the Afghans or Syrians to stop practicing Islam. If they don't have the courage to make the point, then why do they think these missions were a failure overall? Have they also forgotten their 2021 reports on how Dubya's administration did nothing at the time to stop sexual violence against children in Afghanistan? Let's be clear: if there's no courage in the press to confront bad ideologies in any shape or form, then no wonder even a government/military won't do anything about it in turn.

“But that was during the incompetent Bush 43 and Obama years. Reagan knew how to do it right!” Levin might respond. But, as it turns out, the exact three examples Levin cited also turned into fiascos for the United States.

The Reagan administration provided support to the anti-communist militant group UNITA against the communist MPLA during the Angolan Civil War. From the mid-80s to early-90s, the U.S. provided tens of millions of dollars in aid to UNITA, including state-of-the-art Stinger missiles, in an attempt to curtail Soviet and Cuban influence in Angola. This aid turned out to be for naught, as the MPLA eventually won the civil war. The MPLA, though it has shed some of its communist tenets, still rules Angola to this day. In recent years, Angola has cozied up to China, negotiating lucrative deals for its substantial oil and mineral reserves.

Levin, in an extremely puzzling move, cited Nicaragua as a positive example of the United States supporting rebels against a hostile regime. The Reagan administration helped fund the Contras, anti-communist guerrillas who opposed the Marxist Sandinista movement, which had just taken control of the government of Nicaragua. The catch came with how the U.S. was funding the Contras. In 1984, Congress had passed legislation cutting off aid to the Contras, but the Reagan administration was still determined to prop up the rebels.

So, the Reagan administration raised funds to funnel to the Contras by selling weapons to … Iran. The U.S. government sold tens of millions of dollars worth of weapons to the same Iranian regime we’re currently at war with and then used proceeds from those sales to fund rebel bands in Nicaragua.

The resulting Iran-Contra affair was a massive scandal during the Reagan era. And, much like in Angola, it didn’t change much. The Sandinistas negotiated peace with the Contras in 1990, and free elections saw the ousting of the Sandinistas from power. However, the party returned to power in 2006 and has ruled the country ever since.

While this is disturbing, and makes for a valid argument about why Levin's approaching this from a naive viewpoint that overlooks infuriarating details, including how the USA government naively made use of Islamofascists to fight against the USSR, Daniel still doesn't sound altruistic, and that's the problem, which continues here:

As we’ve seen, the strategy of arming the locals can be simply ineffective or can spiral into era-defining disaster. Providing guns and training to the Iranian people so that they can take on the regime themselves *might* work, but the best you’re going to get out of that is a long civil war and an uncertain future. But the potential second-and third-order consequences, especially involving a state with over 90 million people and access to the building blocks of a nuclear weapon, are too great to risk it.

If this is implying the USA military shouldn't track down and secure any nuclear materials still around, then what's the point of this article? Wars aren't won by leaving dangerous tools lying around that barbarians could one day make use of again if given even remotely the chance. Yet Daniel seems disinterested in demanding something be done to ensure they won't be given one. And if Daniel's not interested in finishing the job to prevent the enemies from having access to any kind of nuclear research, then his blabber is pointless. There are valid reasons to disagree with Levin about Nicuragua, but if Daniel doesn't think even the USA military should do the job itself, then he's perpetuated the same defeatist stealth tactics his fellow writers at the Federalist seem to be advocating now. Granted, they do make a point Reagan wasn't the genius some claim he was, but since they don't raise any alternatives that could be better, their argument still falls flat.

The Federalist staff aren't the only ones who're trying to damage morale. There's also podcaster Joe Rogan, and comedian Theo Von:

Podcasters Joe Rogan and Theo Von, who both hosted President Trump during the 2024 election, have strongly criticized military action in Iran.

[...] Both Rogan and Von seemed to reject the tactics made to “stop the terrorists.”

“Supposedly, they’re trying to stop the terrorists,” Rogan said.

“That’s crazy though if you’re the fucking terrorist,” Von laughed. “You know what I’m saying? Like, if you want to stop them, fucking stand in front of the fucking mirror. Just start there.”

The interview with Theo Von comes days after Rogan said “nobody thinks it’s a good idea” for the U.S. to engage in a military conflict in Iran.

Nobody needs somebody like Rogan to comment on the news, that's for sure. He wore out his welcome pretty fast, as did the Federalist as a news site. Von sounds just as bad. And these sites are all examples of how uncreative minds are ruining the right, assuming they really do represent it. If anything, they're just embarrassments to the cause, and it'd be best to avoid them. If commentators like these had been running the store during WW2, it never would've been won.