Last week’s livestream presented a panel of guests whose political orientations and positions on the Iran War demonstrate the scrambling effect this conflict is already having on domestic political alliances. On the anti-war side, we have historian, foreign policy expert, and man of the left Danny Bessner of the University of Washington and the American Prestige podcast. He’s joined by Andrew Day, senior editor of the American Conservative. I haven’t made a side-by-side comparison of their political views, but I don’t imagine they agree on much. This war is an exception.
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On the other side, we have my friend Larry Kotlikoff, an economist at Boston University, a liberal, and an adamant defender of the war in Iran. His Substack post after the initial bombing runs in Iran effusively praised Donald Trump’s leadership, which might come as a surprise to those who know Larry’s work—he’s had few compliments for the president before now.
The conversation gets heated at times, which is to be expected with so much happening so quickly, and with a war that lacks broad support at home. While I mostly act as a moderator and interviewer in this episode, I confess that I have grave misgivings about military operations in Iran. I worry that we’ve rushed into it without fully considering the consequences or how it will be prosecuted. Updated, longer estimates for the war’s timeframe (now eight weeks rather than four, according to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth) evoke memories of Iraq and Afghanistan. Larry’s claim that the elimination of the regime in Tehran will make all Americans safer strikes me as an exaggeration, to say the least. It certainly will not decrease the risk of a domestic terrorist attack here, at least in the short term.
Nevertheless, I’m going to keep the debate open. In the future, I’ll have other pro- and anti-war voices on the show to make their cases and respond to significant developments when they occur. I’m looking forward to the conversations, even if I’m apprehensive about the events that occasion them.
