This Is Bad

 Pete Hegseth's little war with Iran has consumed most of our advanced stand-off munitions. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to create these missiles that can be safely fired outside the range of defensive batteries. Cruise missiles and the like are very effective...and very expensive and very hard to make.

Hegseth is a preening idiot whose qualifications to lead the world's most expensive and professional military is that he was a Fox News blowhard. His macho posturing worked...ok...when dealing with alleged drug boats that he could simply blow out of the water. Even the raid on Venezuela worked well, because it was so limited in scope.

Iran has been preparing for this moment since 1979. We know this, but Hegseth ignored the warnings. Now, we have degraded our advanced weaponry to the point we have degraded our overall national security. He should lose his job, but he never should have had it in the first place.

His ridiculous emphasis on cartoon masculinity does not inspire confidence in making wise decisions. The overall corruption of the administration is also not inspiring confidence in making good decisions in the face of this legitimate crisis. The great strength of a functioning democracy is course correction. During the Civil War, both sides struggled early in the war with "political generals" who earned their stars by being political figures who could raise a regiment of volunteers. The rise of actual competent generals like Grant, Sherman and Sheridan happened because feedback was assimilated in ways that doesn't happen in an authoritarian system. Apparently Trump didn't know about the munitions shortages, because no one wanted to be the one to tell him.

The solution to this emerging crisis is actually fairly simple. We should partner with Ukraine to mass produce drones. They could get 33% of the drones we build in return for their knowledge. Drones do not have the range of a cruise missile or an ATCM, but they could move to immediately repair the hole in our munitions.

However, we do not have competent people running the Defense Department and the Executive Branch. Hegseth is mewling about testosterone and there are unlikely to be enough corrupt kickbacks in a drone program to make it worth Trump's while.

We are a weaker country because a bunch of insecure men in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin didn't like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris' laughs. We have a president whose admiration of Putin has replicated Putin's disastrous defense posture.