A ground war with Iran risks another Vietnam for America

Washington has a favourite word for moments like this: options. It sounds sober. Responsible, even. It suggests prudence, flexibility, a commander-in-chief keeping every door open. But in practice, “options” is often just the polite way this town avoids saying what it is really doing. It is preparing itself, step by step, to go further than it said it would. That is what makes the talk around Iran so unsettling. The administration keeps insisting that it does not need a ground war. Senior officials have said the United States can achieve its aims in Iran without ground troops, even as thousands more U.S. forces are being moved into the region to preserve “maximum optionality.” Read that sentence twice. If ground troops […]