I Don't Know How the War Is Going

"In the absence of hard data, the kind that become available years or decades after a war, the temptation is to reach for analogies or proverbial wisdom, or any of the other heuristic shortcuts that the psychologist Daniel Kahneman thoroughly described in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow."

"The most simpleminded of these expressions is "This is Iraq all over again!"-an interpretation that the Trump administration has clumsily reinforced by comparing the initial bombing campaign to the opening moments of the Gulf War and the Iraq War. In this case, the Iraq analogy is shorthand for saying, "Yes, the opening phase is going swimmingly, but before you know it, the United States will be caught in the middle of a protracted land campaign against multiple insurgents.""

"If there is one thing of which we can be fairly confident, however, it is that the Trump administration has no desire to repeat what it views as the mistakes of its predecessors; it seems determined to make its own mistakes. Raids, particularly to secure nuclear sites or destroy missile launchers, are conceivable. But no plausible scenarios in which we send an expeditionary force to Iran could make sense."

During the early phases of conflict, particularly regarding Iran, observers should exercise epistemic humility rather than making confident predictions based on incomplete information. The tendency to rely on historical analogies, such as comparing current events to the Iraq War, represents a cognitive shortcut that can distort understanding. While the "Iraq all over again" comparison suggests fears of prolonged conflict and casualties, the Trump administration's stated determination to avoid predecessors' mistakes suggests different strategic approaches. Though military actions like raids on nuclear sites remain possible, large-scale expeditionary forces appear implausible. Any resulting disaster would likely differ fundamentally from previous conflicts, making direct historical comparisons unreliable guides for current analysis.

Read at The Atlantic