The thing that bugs me about Trump and the administration is how little planning and forethought seems to go into things of worldwide significance. Ready-Fire-Aim is a joke it should not be how the nation (formerly) leading the free world operates. And worse is the mindset it represents. Our government employs a great many experts on Islamic extremism, and I can promise you that not one of them is too busy to meet with the Secretary of Defense.

To a large extent it has been like that since the start of the global war on terror (which they will never abandon. It will remain until some massive worldwide revolution happens (which it won't) that declares all anti-terrorism what they truly are: state repression of normal people, and then repeals them. All of them). The invasion of Afghanistan and the long-term implications and control of the country were not very well thought up. Then they chose to invade Iraq (which I should mention was a Neocon and Israeli plan since the late 90s and NOT the direct result of 9/11. The WMDs and connections to Al-Qaeda were just made up excuses) which also ended in a quagmire that they had NO IDEA how to resolve either. Based on the talk of the time, they also seemed to want to attack Iran back then, too. Looking at the situation, with both Afghanistan and Iraq occupied, you now had Iran surrounded on 3 sides. Afghanistan in the east, Iraq in the west, and the friendly gulf nations in the south. But the quagmire got in the way and organizing an invasion (and even in 2003 invading Iran would have been suicide) and instead the Taliban slowly and steadily rebuilt and the insurgency in Iraq got worse and worse and eventually resulted in the rise of ISIS and the Syrian civil war and other destabilizing effects in the Middle East.

This, combined with Iran basically building their entire defense plan on a US/Israeli invasion, had decades to make one and make sure their government and command structure is resilient to attack, which is why you can kill off a shitload of their leadership and still have them function as a defense. All of this makes the current attempt even stupider and more foolish than you can possibly imagine.

And your statement that the US government employs lots of experts on Islam is both correct and incorrect at the same time. You are correct in that they do, but incorrect in that many of them are (or at least were) anti-Islam internet polemicists and 'ex-Muslim experts' (most of them were Christian converts, and I had the displeasure of meeting some face-to-face... holy shit these guys are insufferable) like Ali Sina (not his real name) or Ibn Warraq (also not his real name) and absolutely hateful bigots like Robert Spencer, with some other guys like Daniel Pipes, more of whom were neocons and purveyors of islamophobia and very pro-Israeli expansion that lead me to believe they are far less historians or religious experts but more lobbyists and pundits. Ali Sina is INTENSELY anti-Arab and his talking points, all the way from 2001 (pre 9/11 2001) until his most recent articles are hateful, vuglar, poorly written and thought up, and sound like they were regurgitated from a Hasbara manual than anything else. Ibn Warraq is a man who is absolutely desperate to be seen as a classical intellectual in the same vein as Bertrand Russell, but even looking at the first few pages of his any of his books are rife with so many basic factual and research errors and bizarre leaps of logic and leaps to conclusions that, like Ali Sina, I believe he was basically briefed on what to write in his books by Israeli intelligence and just using the veneer of being an 'Ex-Muslim telling the truth' to avoid direct and immediate dismissal on racism grounds (and he is a very anti-Arab guy, too).

When you hear white supremacists and Pete Hegseth talk about Islam, you are hearing the arguments that those guys I mentioned above fomented. They're not actually concerned with reality. In a way this is what people like Ibn Warraq wanted: They wanted to end all discussion into the matter of Islam and discussions of Islamic society and religion and everything... Ibn Warraq believed his earlier works (pre 9/11) answered all questions and all professors need to shut up and listen to him without question. BTW, we have no idea as to Ibn Warraq's real identity and credentials except for what he wrote about himself. I do not even know if the guy is still alive since he hasn't written anything in many years.

Then there is just the plain racism angle that has been in US policy from day 1 (and I mean that literally). If you look at US policy towards any non-white country, their assumptions are rooted in one idea: Non-whites are terrible soldiers and warriors and cannot fight. Prior to WW2, Britain and the US assumed the Japanese were a bunch of chumps and racially inferior. They refused to believe that Japanese aviators could ever inflict any damage and that any war in East Asia between the Japanese and the US and UK would be a 100% defensive war, that the Japanese would try, be defeated, and eventually give up. WW2 really, REALLY changed that perspective. The Japanese might have been seriously underequipped, especially after 1942, but they didn't give up one inch of land without making the allies pay in blood.

After WW2, Korea happened... and one again, "Chinamen cannot fight" was their mentality. They couldn't see Korean troops and their Chinese allies putting up a fight... until they did. They almost beat NATO in the beginning, then NATO forces pushed them back up, but then the joint Chinese and North Korean forces pushed them back. This was not expected from them.

Vietnam is... Vietnam. I don't need to tell you about that. They legit started thinking they just needed a few advisors and special forces and a small occupying force, and then Vietnam became THE symbol of 20th century military quagmire for not just the US, but all countries involved.

The assumption against Arab militaries is the same. This was done as a result of the colonial era restructuring of Arab militaries to make them more like glorified police forces with no coherent strategy. The defeat of Saddam's forces in 1991, in retrospect, was almost a miracle and gave the US a lot of false optimism for the future Iraq war. They didn't count on the fact that Iraq, like Iran, spent the next 10 years building up a resistance plan against US invasion because they knew they would not be able to hold them off, so they would make occupation as painful as possible.

But this brings us back to the current thing they're doing in Iran... these people came in in the stupidest manner imaginable. So yes, while the US often neglected long-term planning. The sheer stupidity of Trump and his goons is baffling even the standards of previous presidents. Basically there is no way, NO WAY of defeating Iran. They might have stood a chance in 2004 if, and only if, Iraq and Afghanistan were pacified, but that is not the case.

I could go on forever (as you have probably seen), but Trump and Hegseth are working this 'war' in the same of a publicity stunt. It is like how Trump demolished part of the White House and just left it, or started a few companies in the 80s and 90s that all went bankrupt. Pete also acts like war is a video game where you drop some bombs here and there and blow up this and that and then you win... also their policy toward assassination and murder and somehow expecting people not to treat it for the monstrousness that it is is very, VERY telling about their mentality. The Israeli policy of kill everyone and exterminate their families but still expect themselves to be seen as saviors and holding the moral high ground is by far the most disgusting part of it, and that mentality has spread to the Republicans fully. Did you know that Hamas's leader had 60 members of his family killed by Israel? In the 19th and 20th century (even maybe before) as rule, they kept the leader's family out of the picture. Even the Nazis didn't purposefully target the families of the leaders of their rival nations, and the allies didn't bother Hitler or Mussolini's relatives or the relatives of any of the leadership. Hell, did you know that several of Hitler's relatives served in the US military during WW2? Even Herman Goering's nephew served as a bomber pilot over Europe! No one had a witch hunt for Hitler's relatives. Mussolini's family have never gotten out of politics in Italy, and the families of Japanese war criminals were never barred from politics, even executed ones. Shinzo Abe's materal grandfather was a war criminal (but his paternal grandfather was a pacifist), but that shit didn't matter.

With this? They think they can kill anyone they want left and right because 'they are evil, we are good'. This is the mentality that is seriously unprecedented and they act like it was the norm.