Kellogg: Afghanistan-Era Thinking Won’t Work Against Iran, Obliterate It As We Would Have In World War II
Ret. Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg argues that the United States has been conditioned by the protracted limited-war strategies used in Afghanistan and Iraq and should instead adopt an approach similar to World War II.
RET LT. GEN. KEITH KELLOGG: I think the President’s had the patience of Job. He’s really done a wonderful job in keeping the patience and extending the negotiations. I think we’ve reached the point where we’re just going to say we’re done with these guys. And politically, we say stop the negotiations. Have our team come home, say, you know, our phone number, give us a call. Economically, I’ve said this repeatedly, you take things like the Rock Island, which is the command and control facility in the Strait, you take the island of Karg Island, which is their economic lifeline, so you’ve got the economic piece, you tell the rest of the world you’re not going to get any oil, because we now control the oil. We’re not the oil barons. We’ve talked about it politically. We’ve talked about it economically, politically, the negotiations economically. There’s Karg Island, and militarily, I mean, the Secretary of War and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs have got this one really well, really down very well, and every time they stick their head up, just keep pounding them. I would reach a point right now, Sean, of saying we’re just done with you guys. We’re going to go in. We’re going to finish the job. Having a protracted war is not the American way of war. It’s a war we’ve been conditioned to in the last few decades, where we’ve done things in Afghanistan or Iraq. We ought to go back to the way we did it in, like, World War II or World War I, and we just finish the job, total war, obliterate them, and say, when you need to come to the table and you want to talk to us, you got our phone number, but until then, we’re done. Because right now, we’re playing their game, not our game. Let’s play our game and force them to come to us… They’re playing their game plan right now. You can’t trust them. They’re going to delay, delay, delay, because they think the American people are going to run out of patience. The American people do not like a protracted war. We don’t like a protracted war. Finish it now. The president has done great things. He knows what he’s doing. And the fact is, he’s now given them plenty of options to come to the table. They haven’t done it. Finish them off.
