When I say "we" I mean about 1/3 of us who voted for this, and about 1/3 who decided that either way was good for them. That includes a bunch of people who are diametrically opposed but for whom the main alternative wasn't quite good enough.

That's roughly two-thirds of us. Those of us who took even the trivial effort to oppose this are a distinct minority.

I don't think there's any that minority could have done differently. We are merely complicit in the suicide pact that is the Constitution, whereby we go with the majority and hope the majority would let us try again in a few years. That's an increasingly dubious proposition, and now we have to decide if this social contract hasn't already been broken.

They do indeed have eyes. This is what they voted for and they are getting what they want.

Honestly, as little respect as I have for them, I have even less for those who used to support him and no longer do. They had bad judgement then and I don't think their skills have improved. They're temporarily leaning away from the direct consequences of their bad choices but remain incapable of learning why that choice was bad, and will make more bad choices in the future.

We elected them. A lot of us are vociferously defending them.

What does that say about us?

I suspect that was deliberate. DoW is the preferred nomenclature but DoD is still technically correct.

The article is phrased in a way to imply that the author would rather the publication maintain independence. It is probably the last time she will be permitted to say "department of defense".

Maybe. But the Iran conflict also ties in with the Ukraine war, which is an assertion of Russian power into that US-Europe/China duopoly. And it's happening at the same time as the former alliance is breaking.

It's possible that it will be a regional conflict the way the Serbian/Austro-Hungarian conflict was regional. Or the way people pretended that the Germany/Sudetenland conflict was regional.

I don't wish to catastophize. But I also think it's important to realize that this does have the potential to become much worse very suddenly. That doesn't make the decisions easy, but they shouldn't be easy.