PBS NEWSHOUR: David Brooks of The Atlantic and Jonathan Capehart of MS NOW join Amna Nawaz to discuss the week in politics, including the U.S. war on Iran and President Trump’s decision to launch those attacks and the jobs report adding to economic uncertainty in the U.S.

AMNA NAWAZ, PBS NEWSHOUR: We have seen evolving justifications from the administration about why now and what they hope to accomplish. So, David, let’s just start there. What is your understanding of why this war was launched now and whether or not it was justified? DAVID BROOKS, THE ATLANTIC: Well, I hate the way the decision was made, which seems to have been extremely haphazard. I have shared everybody’s reservations and fears that there’s no exit strategy, that there’s no plausible way to change the regime, let alone the deaths that are happening. And so I share everybody’s fears. It’s also true the 1979 Iranian Revolution was one of the worst events of the 20th century. And it began 47 years of terrorism, extremism, theocratic fascism. It started with one to two million people dead in the Iran-Iraq War in 1980. There were 241 Americans killed by Iranian supervision in Beirut. And you go on. And Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, they have destabilized the Middle East. They have killed people in Syria. A couple weeks ago, they killed somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 people in Iran who were protesting. And so this is a destructive and savage regime that has destabilized the Middle East. It’s also a regime that is in an unprecedentedly vulnerable situation. It’s lost the faith of its people. Its economy is in tatters. Its military is destroyed. Its regime is decapitated. So I’m ambivalent. I hope the Iranian regime falls. And that could happen. What bugs me, frankly, is the people who are sure, the people who are sure this is a terrible thing and the people who are sure this is a good thing. We just don’t know. But the people who are ignoring the horrors that Iran has perpetrated on the world for the last 47 years should be hoping this works. And we just don’t know. JONATHAN CAPEHART, MS NOW: If — given what we went through with the second Gulf War, given what we went through in Afghanistan, why on earth are we now at war with Iran? That’s what I’m trying to understand. I would feel better if the United — if the president and his administration would give us, the American people, a consistent rationale. Instead, we have gotten multiple rationales within the first 24, 48 hours. And I still don’t really understand why we’re doing what we’re doing. And, really, what is the endgame? If you are going to go in there and break it, Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn rule, well, then what’s the plan? Don’t know what the plan is. And the thing that’s been bugging me about all of this is the level of disrespect. The president has shown Congress, has shown the American people, has shown the military by doing what he’s doing with no clear plan, talking rather blithely about the potential of loss of life of service members. But then today, in an interview with “TIME” magazine, when he was asked about it, he said — about potential reprisals on American Americans at home, he said, “I guess,” and said this is war, there will be loss of life. No, Mr. President, you owe the American people more than just glib talking points about something so consequential. Yes, the Iranian regime was terrible, and great if it falls, but only great if there’s an actual plan for what comes next if/when it does. NAWAZ: It feels like the American public has a lot of questions about it as well. This is a look at how the war is resonating back home, according to a few questions from our latest PBS News/NPR/Marist poll. Just 44 percent of Americans support U.S. military action in Iran; 56 oppose it. That includes 66 percent of independents. And just 36 percent of Americans approve of how President Trump is dealing with Iran overall. That is down from 42 percent in January of 2020, when the U.S. assassinated the Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani. So, David, the man who ran on no new foreign wars is up against the public that doesn’t want to see this happen. How does this end? BROOKS: Yes, first, I would say the reason we’re at war is because Iran declared war on us 47 years ago. And we have been in a forever war with Iran that has gone up until last week, when they were trying to reconstitute their nuclear weapons. As for the American public, America has learned the lessons that Jonathan mentioned. Even I have learned the lessons of the lessons of the Iraq War and the lessons of imperial overreach. And so it’s good for us that we have learned that lesson. The second thing that causes the low poll ratings for the war is, A, low poll ratings for Donald Trump and distrust in the way the war seems to be run by the civilians, but definitely not the military. But, third, Donald Trump didn’t sell the war. We had a — whether you liked the outcome in the Iraq War debate, we had a yearlong debate before George W. Bush went to war in Iraq. We had nothing. We had a few minutes in the State of the Union that was throwaway. And so, if a president is going to make — spend American treasure and blood he really owes it to the American people to sell them on it. And he did nothing. I’m — it’d be nice to go to Congress, but it’s been decades since Congress declared war on anybody. And that’s for both parties. But he should sell it and explain what the heck he’s doing. And they have not done that, which is why people are so anxious and nervous about it.

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