Can We Be Persuaded

What Does It Mean Not to Fight?

I am turning to Abe Greenwald again, whom I consistently quote, because he keeps returning to a question that feels more urgent than the details of any particular war: can America still be convinced of the necessity of war? In his latest piece on the Iran conflict, he sympathizes with the growing chorus lamenting Donald Trump’s failure to make his war aims clear and thereby win the public’s understanding. I concur.

Trump likes to treat strategy as entertainment, to say that war is “fun,” as if it were a board game or a high‑definition computer simulation. Wars are not games, and his words and unwillingness to be transparent are worrisome.

Yet, Greenwald also suggests that even if Trump were to present a strong, lucid argument for the necessity of war, it might make little difference in public opinion. If Americans can look at the “stunning success” of the war so far and still proclaim it a failure, he writes, we are not, at this moment, a people who can be convinced of the necessity of war—except, perhaps, after a direct attack on the homeland. We no longer trust the evidence of our senses, let alone the pleadings of Donald Trump. America, in his telling, suffers from a set of stubborn comorbidities: Vietnam Syndrome compounded by Iraq and Afghanistan Syndrome, and further complicated by what he calls “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” “TDS” makes it impossible to argue about military matters on a rational, even‑keeled basis.

Greenwald then turns to the left and the right, whose sentiments, in my view, mirror each other, as if they are trapped in a broken‑mirror setup. On the left, he says, the anti‑colonialists treat every U.S. military action as a prima facie war crime; over decades, this worldview has conquered and colonized the liberal mainstream. On the right, patriotism has been eaten up by nationalism, which recognizes only the narrowest definition of the nation’s interest. Both sides live in their own narratives, each blaming the other for the country’s confusion and each refusing to share a single language for what it means to act responsibly abroad.

And what about the independents? Greenwald argues that Trump lost them on the Iran war, or at least did not win them. They dislike war, distrust Trump’s rhetoric, and do not see the crisis as a clear‑cut moral case. They are the swing voters of persuadability, and if “victory” cannot reach them, can it be said to have reached anyone at all?

Perhaps, as in Israel after October 7th, the United States has already lost the PR war. Greenwald believes the U.S. still needs to steadily communicate one core idea: that Iran, and other adversaries, cannot indefinitely threaten us or our allies with the world’s most dangerous weapons. They cannot blackmail or deter us from destroying their capacity to attack us before they have the chance to destroy us. Or, as Trump himself puts it, “I don’t care about polling. I have to do the right thing. I have to do the right thing. This should have been done a long time ago.” But can he do it on his own when no one wants to hear? When the very act of arguing for the war is drowned out by partisan rage, trauma‑induced skepticism, and ideological caricature?

Optimistically, Greenwald suggests that, if the war is done successfully—“God willing”—it might reopen a space for persuadability in our doubtful and dug‑in culture. “Victory is Trump’s strongest argument,” he writes. But what victory would that be?

Abe Greenwald’s phrase—“victory is Trump’s strongest argument”—presumes that if the Iran war were to succeed, the public might finally be persuaded that the use of force was necessary and morally justified. Yet the problem is not merely whether the war can be won, but whether America today can still recognize what winning looks like—and whether it wants to be convinced at all.

Greenwald’s hope rests on an older idea of victory: that Iran can no longer credibly threaten the United States or its allies with nuclear or conventional aggression; that the strategic balance in the region shifts in favor of stability; and that the public sees this as a relief, not a prelude to the next endless entanglement. It would also mean that the war’s aims have been translated into language Americans can understand, not just slogans about “doing the right thing” or “making America safe.” But we appear to lose a shared vocabulary for what “necessary” and “right” mean in war.

The parallel to Israel after October 7th is not incidental. Public opinion, media framing, and activist discourse often override tactical outcomes. In today’s America, the hardest question may not be whether the war can be won, but whether the country can still be convinced that winning, properly understood, is something worth striving for. We have become so accustomed to the language of condemnation and the language of blind triumphalism that there is little room left for the middle ground: the argument that force can be both necessary and regrettable, effective and still morally heavy.

And yet, as I ask myself, what does it mean not to fight?

Not to fight means that hostile powers may be allowed to grow stronger, more emboldened, more confident that they can threaten the United States and its allies without consequence. It means that deterrence might fray, that alliances might weaken, and that the long‑term security of regions on which a great power depends may quietly erode. It may look, at first, like prudence or restraint, but it can also become a kind of cowardice dressed as wisdom.

At the same time, not to fight also means avoiding the moral and political costs of war: the innocent lives that will be lost, the alliances that will be strained, and the institutions that will be strained by the pressures of prolonged conflict. It means refusing to become the kind of nation that treats war as a routine instrument of policy, and that loses touch with the sacred seriousness of taking life on such a scale.

Does the question boil down to the existential? More than the price of gasoline? Though I do not want to be flip about possible lost lives.