The Rise of the Punitive Expedition & the Repudiation of the Era of Errors

punishment and pruning are perfectly valid...and often the best option

As we are at D+2 and spent a full hour yesterday discussing Operation Epic Fury on the Midrats Podcast, I’m not going to review what we know so far—if you’d like Mark and my take, give the episode a listen.

What I would like to do is dive into a topic that I hinted at in the show: my historical support for the punitive expedition.

The target is valid, and the method has been underused for way too long.

I support the strikes on Iran because it firmly fits into a view I have held on the use of national military power for decades, based on thousands of years of military practice. If you are not up to speed with the thousands of Americans dead and maimed by the Islamic Republic and its proxies over the last 47 years, then I have nothing more to discuss with you.

While I understand the academic argument of many that before any action takes place, there is a whole series of hoops, barriers, and puzzles of our own creation that we need to go through—I firmly believe that not only are those Constitutionally unnecessary for punitive expeditions in 2026, if done, needed and deserved strikes like we have seen in Iran could not take place without

Fortunes were made, institutions funded, and employment justified for legions under the old and failed post-WWII process swamp and GWOT nomenklatura that gave us unending and stillborn conflicts. To go that route again wouldn’t just be folly, it would be a self-destructive folly to refuse to change in the face of evidence.

I’ve seen older versions of OPLANS for Iran. Huge, bloody, and frankly undoable. They were only that way because they met the requirements of an old system that everyone nodded their heads to because all the smart people from Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Princeton and all the usual places said we had to do it this way.

Enough. Bollocks to all that. They have been measured the last quarter century and have been found wanting.

A series of events since October 7, 2023, including the 2024 election, has opened a window to do what we have not been able to do for a whole host of reasons—and there is a debt waiting to be paid.

We’ve been here before with Iran. In the modern context, we sank two warships and three speedboats of the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy in 1988 during Operation Praying Mantis as punishment for damaging USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG 58) and Iran’s mining international waters in the Persian Gulf. We’ve played slap-n-tickle with them here and there while they have brutalized us at every turn when they are not brutalizing their own people.

Yes, it’s personal—but part of the reason we have been hesitant is that our national security intellectuals have been stuck in a world view that prevented action, by design.

Though not exclusive, the Powell Doctrine’s “Pottery Barn Rule” (that it appears he got from one of Thomas Frack’n Friedman’s columns), made it appear that we could only take action if we took the entire country and then remade it in our image.

We know how that operationalized over the last couple of decades.

We’ve done plenty of punitive expeditions in our nation’s history—but in the last few decades as a certain pedigree of policy maker held sway over our national security doctrine, it fell out of favor.

They failed the nation. Their institutions failed the nation. Their worldview was little more than a self-licking ice cream cone of self-regard.

Let me be clear as I was on yesterday’s podcast: we have been lucky we have had so few casualties so far. We are one mechanical failure or magical BB away from having an American held prisoner or worse. Make no mistake, there are worse things that can be done to a living person in that part of the world than simply being a prisoner. I want us to make our point, and then go home as soon as practical.

I would be exactly here if it were the Biden Administration or the Harris Administration doing the exact same thing (though they wouldn’t).

As mentioned above, I spent enough time in CENTCOM back in the day to know how hard the nut of Iran would be to crack.

Big, ugly, bloody.

It did not matter how much Iran deserved to be checked, it was just too costly to try.

Nation building OPLANS again? No. Not any more. Breaking their things and killing their worst leadership that endangered the USA and her allies? I’m in.

Always have been.

Let’s go back to something I wrote about in November, 2007 in my Renouncing Empire post on the OG Blog almost 19 years ago while we were still ear-deep in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve repeated this on a regular basis through the years, as members of the Front Porch know.

Just for full disclosure, regular readers will know that I am not a fan of having hundreds of thousands of military personnel garrisoned all over the world on a permanent basis. As the Europeans and Japanese with their sub-2% and sub-1% military spending shows - it is a bargain for them and a graveyard for the Americans that provide their security. We also have to ask though, will this nation support punitive expeditions? On line with this?

No patchwork scheme—and all our present recent schemes…are mere patchwork—will settle the Waziristan problem. Not until the military steam-roller has passed over the country from end to end, will there be peace. But I do not want to be the person to start that machine.

(NB: that quote by Lord Curzon, the British viceroy of India at the turn of the last century, is about 100 years old). Perhaps not - perhaps so - but we are not that Roman I am afraid, at least not yet. On the other hand, do we really think we can save the world from itself - chase all the dragons? I don’t think the American people want that either.

“At least not yet.” We’re closer in 2026.

Look at what I end up describing at an early detailed explanation of Plan Salamander back in December, 2010. Yes, ~16 years ago.

In summary: WWII and the Cold War are over; the European Union and economic powerhouses Japan and Korea do not need to be defended mostly by the world’s largest debtor.

Return all maneuver forces from overseas, starting with Europe, then Korea, and then Japan. Retain a few Joint/Combined training and logistics facilities. Build and maintain an expeditionary mindset based on our geographic location, global realities, and economic necessity. A bit of the speak softly but carry a big stick approach - without the Imperial decorations. Domestic Base, Global Reach.

Reduce the standing Army and focus on the Army Reserve and National Guard with realistic plans for activation as needed (the way this nation was founded and acted most of its existence, natch).

Focus majority of expeditionary and first reaction ground forces to Marine Corps as is fitting for a Maritime Power. Heavy, big, fat, and mean on the ground will mostly be in the Army Reserve and National Guard. Have substantial logistics, replenishment, and strategic sea and air lift in the Navy and Air Force reserve.

Space, Air, and Sea should be our first and most capable assets. Light, quick, and deadly on first-responder ground forces with a bias towards consequence management and punitive expeditions as needed - a holding force until relieved as required.

In July of 2013, you can see the pattern of what I support today.

When we do not have a declaration of war with the goal of unconditional surrender, then we need to be clear what our real options are; punitive expedition, targeted assassination (drones seem to do this well), consequence management, etc. Our operations should be nasty, brutish, and short. "No better friend, no worse enemy"; that works for me. If the locals can't take advantage of a chance to improve their lot; not our problem. Leave a calling card that if they irritate us again, the next time we hit harder.

Again in June of 2014.

If there is another large scale attack on the USA, the American people will only have time for the most punitive of expeditions - one that is exceptionally nasty, brutish, and short.

In 2020, I again lamented the path not taken…the path those of us in theater in the months after 9/11/01 thought we were going on.

…in early 2002 … we simply could have realized what we were looking at in Afghanistan - something any reader of Hopkirk could tell you - and then with a reasonable cold eye said, "We're just doing a punitive expedition. We don't need to stay here to kill Bin Laden. We have a $10 billion in gold bounty on his head ... and yes we require his head ... or $5 billion for the information leading to his capture by us. There will be double that bounty if either happens in the next 90 days." ... and then just left to the boos and hisses of the internationalists who would never put their life or the lives of their children on the line for Afghanistan. But no, we had the Bonn Agreement and all that followed instead.

This is a punitive expedition against a deserving bad-faith actor behaving badly. I support it.

I think well meaning people can disagree on our actions. I believe they are wrong, but that is OK. A few years from now it may prove that I am wrong.

What I have issues with are those who are all of a sudden 180 degrees off from where they were a few years ago, lack any explanation for their lack of consistency over the years in spite of the argument for their prior position being stronger as Iran has not become more benign, but more malignant.

That switch as hard to stomach as those who all of a sudden are “yea war” after years of “not our fight.”

One side’s hate of the Trump Administration and the other’s blind love of it seems to have been the primary steering mechanism for their changing opinion of a strike against Iran—regardless of what their previous positions may have been.

George Will, as ardent anti-DJT as anyone, is consistent on Iran. Good for him. Not everyone is. It shouldn’t bother me, but it does. Inconsistency without explanation smells wrong for all the reasons you think it does.

While I approve of what we’ve done so far, I am going to put a marker down.

My support is based on what we see this beautiful March 2nd, 2026. If this degenerates into another long, drawn-out conflict where we put boots on the ground, my opinion will change. If it drags on for weeks of diminishing returns, my opinion will change.

The sooner we state, “We’ve made our point. Don’t make us come back.” the better.

If the Iranian people want to take this opportunity to change their government, then fine. That’s for them to make their move. We opened the door, but they have to walk through it.

We need to be steadfast on this one point: we won’t wait for them.

BT BT BT

I would be remiss if I did not give a hearty Bravo Zulu to everyone involved in the strikes so far. No other nation’s military could do this. None. Some of that is size and sophistication, but most of it is the quality of our personnel.