It strikes me as axiomatic that President Trump is a poor war-time leader and pretty awful the rest of the time too. Before embarking on the Iran fiasco, he was advised by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and US intelligence, both of which had spent decades exploring this very conflict, not to go ahead with a solely air-based campaign.

There are some good reasons for this. No strategic air campaign in history, not one, has defeated an adversary. The US and Israel have certainly inflicted huge damage on Iranian 'assets' and the like, but the regime, which has deep roots, is intact and showing no signs of going anywhere. Almost daily Trump issues one toothless directive after another. Imagine Churchill declaring victory over the Third Reich following the evacuation of Dunkirk, or Roosevelt announcing the imminent defeat of Japan after Midway.

These were serious people who took their jobs seriously indeed, which the incumbent in the White House clearly does not. If the United States wants to genuinely win the war, which at a minimum involves changing the regime and capturing all of the enriched uranium, then an invasion force of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, supported by tanks, artillery and all the necessary equipment and support required for such a campaign will have to be launched. That will take months to assemble and enormous political will.

Trump's idea of victory, which changes by the day and appears to bear no relationship to reality, may have to do for now. But the hard bit, the really hard bit, is getting the Iranians to quit. In asymmetric terms, they are in the driver's seat.

I completed Episode 70 of Writers from the Vault yesterday. Notwithstanding that the entire enterprise features 35 hours of my waffling on, it is nevertheless an achievement to have come so far. As a fortnightly radio program, I had expected to to get to the one year mark, perhaps the two year, but now as the end of year three hoves into view, I remain astonished at my persistence.

I love it when I discover, or rediscover a poet I have forgotten about. Yesterday's program opened with two poems by Elizabeth Jennings, whose work I recall reading somewhat tangentially about forty years ago. What a find she is! She is regarded as a bit of a traditionalist, less an innovator, using the kind of simpler metre and rhyme that was the hallmark of poets like Larkin, Amis and Gunn.

Here is her little masterpiece, One Flesh.

Lying apart now, each in a separate bed,
He with a book, keeping the light on late,
She like a girl dreaming of childhood,
All men elsewhere - it is as if they wait
Some new event: the book he holds unread,
Her eyes fixed on the shadows overhead.

Tossed up like flotsam from a former passion,
How cool they lie. They hardly ever touch,
Or if they do it is like a confession
Of having little feeling - or too much.
Chastity faces them, a destination
For which their whole lives were a preparation.

Strangely apart, yet strangely close together,
Silence between them like a thread to hold
And not wind in. And time itself's a feather
Touching them gently. Do they know they're old,
These two who are my father and my mother
Whose fire from which I came, has now grown cold?

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, bets were placed in the prediction markets last week over just when the attack on Iran would begin. To be clear, people were betting on when a war would commence and therefore betting on when civilians would start dying. Yes, betting.

Folks have been talking about how 'the days are evil' since Paul first wrote to the Ephesians, and doubtless before that too. Every generation, or at least those people who care to think about it, has seen its own time as being especially bad. Wars, rumours of wars, famines, plagues, natural disasters and the like will always generate pessimistic assessments, especially if one in the the midst of something awful.

But I think the current age is a special case for the award of the most evil of times. Not just because one can place a bet on death and dying, nor the capacity to destroy all life on Earth, nor the rapacious greed that consigns many to poverty and others to obscene luxury, not even the destruction of the natural environment, nor the multitude of wars and real potential for others, not just these things. There is also a decline in human morality, of distinctions between right and wrong, of verities that, even though they were broken, nevertheless informed whole societies.

Well I could go on. And you might like to make a bet that I am wrong, though I think you might lose your money.

The joint Israeli-US attack on Iran yesterday is a colossal risk. Ideally, the regime in Iran will fall, following a battering on the battlefield and a popular uprising, and, in the fullness of time, a new moderate government will be formed. The Iran of the past 50 years, one which sponsored terrorist organisations, demanded an end to the State of Israel and repressed its own people is one which will not be missed.

On the other hand, a situation like that which emerged after the Iraq war earlier this century could create huge instability and regional wars that could go on for decades. This is another possibility. 

All manner of scenarios are possible, some leaning towards greater stability and peace, others away from it. I hope for the best, of course.