PREFACE: Andrew Miller is a senior fellow focused on the Middle East in the National Security and International Policy department at the Center for American Progress. Emily Gee, Leo Banks, Bobby Kogan, and Allison McManus are contributors. Mr. Miller's 02JUN26 Center for American Progress article, "Trump’s Failed War in Iran Echoes Bush’s Iraq Blunder", disparages President Trump and Operation Epic Fury by misrepresenting Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for Iran. I corrected Mr. Miller's misrepresentation of OIF and the JCPOA and explained that clarifying the Iraq issue is needed to correct our course with Iran.
Mr. Miller didn't respond to my e-mail, so I don't know whether he's read it.
from: [Eric LC]
to: [Allison McManus]; [Sam Hananel], [Doug Molof]
date: Aug 17, 2026, 8:20 PM
subject: Solution for Andrew Miller's "Trump’s Failed War in Iran Echoes Bush’s Iraq Blunder"
To Andrew Miller, Emily Gee, Leo Banks, Bobby Kogan, Allison McManus, and the Center for American Progress,
I clarify and relitigate the Iraq issue at Operation Iraqi Freedom FAQ using the law and facts that define the Iraq issue.
I am writing to you to correct Mr. Miller's misrepresentation of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 02JUN26 Center for American Progress article, Trump’s Failed War in Iran Echoes Bush’s Iraq Blunder. As the bard said, what's past is prologue. Clarifying the Iraq issue, including the actual "strategic blunder" that placed us on our current course with Iran, is needed to correct our course with Iran.
Mr. Miller is incorrect about Operation Iraqi Freedom. According to the law and facts that define the Iraq issue, President Trump's Operation Epic Fury cannot echo "Bush's Iraq Blunder" because Operation Iraqi Freedom was not a "strategic blunder" under President Bush. President Obama inherited OIF as a strategic victory. Rather, President Obama's radical deviation with Iraq is the "disastrous", "devastating", and still compounding strategic blunder that placed us on our current course with Iran.
To clarify, Operation Iraqi Freedom was correctly decided on law and fact pursuant to UNSCR 678, a war of necessity according to Richard Haass's taxonomy, and a vital strategic corrective for 'pax Americana' liberal international order. The counterinsurgency "surge" in particular is an invaluable contemporary case study of principled resolute presidential leadership, resilient mission, and adaptation in competition that constitute the gold standard for ethical and competitively sufficient American leadership of the free world. Operation Iraqi Freedom holds the necessary precedent for a sufficient human rights element in the Iran intervention. (See my 28JUL26 recommendation to Iranian human rights advocate Lisa Daftari, Apply the Saddam precedent to "finish the job and free Iran".)
Mr. Miller should not say, "hopefully the Iran war will not last as long as those in Iraq or Afghanistan." Instead, he should say that hopefully President Trump has relearned from President Obama and President Biden's fundamental error of prematurely withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan that American forces should stay as long as needed to build and secure the peace like the United States has done with Germany, Japan, and Korea since World War Two.
The keystone premise of Mr. Miller's article is a quote from President Obama defending the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), “The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war.” Yet Mr. Miller omits that President Obama's radical deviation with Iraq began a cascade of "disastrous" and "devastating" errors that undermined America's diplomacy with Iran and eventually compelled President Trump to attempt to solve the Iran problem with war.
America's best opportunity to solve the Iran problem with "diplomacy" and without "some form of war" was wasted by President Obama when he chose to not stay the course with Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Freedom Agenda, and radically deviated instead in obedience to the degenerative Iraq Syndrome and its misguiding "forever wars" talking point. With that pivotal choice, President Obama fatally tilted the JCPOA negotiation by undermining America's position and concomitantly improving Iran's position.
To solve the Iran problem with diplomacy without war, President Obama needed to stay the course with Iraq like President Eisenhower stayed the course with Korea. President Obama inherited an improved situation with Iraq that, coupled with the Bush Freedom Agenda, set up the opportunity for a stronger Clinton dual containment of Iran, which would have been a better basis to diplomatically pursue a categorical and sufficient resolution of the Iran problem as it stood when Obama entered office in 2009.
As Peter Rodman explains, Operation Iraqi Freedom set up a better stable and ethical path to deal with Iran that relied on three prongs: stabilize Iraq as an American ally, increase sanctions pressure, and support civil reform in Iran. With the nation-building progress and regional political promise of post-Saddam Iraq (indeed, neighboring promise for Iran) that followed the COIN "surge" and Sahwa "awakening", Congress's support for strong sanctions against Iran, and the Green Revolution and Freedom Agenda, the three prongs were well within reach for President Obama when he entered office. Instead, as Michael Doran explains, President Obama's "diplomacy" with Iran did the opposite of all three.
Worse, President Obama's very premature exit from Iraq in 2011, belated return to Iraq in 2014 only after Iraq was ravaged by Saddamist ISIS and rendered vulnerable to Iran, circumscription of the 2014 return to counterterrorism without restoring the essential nation-building mission, and the retraction of Obama's own pledge of American leadership in the Syria crisis specifically and the Arab Spring generally were a stack of gift invitations that Iran accepted to take over the vital gap in Iraq that President Obama left behind.
Freed from the Clinton dual containment, funded by profit from the JCPOA, and exploiting Iraq's wounded vulnerability while the urgently needed American support was withheld by the White House, Iran seized the gift opportunity of President Obama's "diplomacy". Iran's heightened manifold threat in the region, including the growth of Iran's proxies in Iraq, broke out from there.
Our reactive efforts to address the greater Iranian danger that followed the JCPOA, such as the Countering Iran's Destabilizing Activities Act of 2017 (incorporated in Public Law 115-44), have been inadequate to repair the compounding harm that resulted from President Obama's radical deviation with Iraq and misguided pursuit of the fundamentally flawed JCPOA.
Setting aside Iran's manifold threat, strictly in terms of Iranian nuclear disarmament, Mr. Miller's characterization of the JCPOA as "constraining Iranian nuclear activities" and "successfully capped the Iranian nuclear program" is misleading. As the 14MAR25 Foundation for Defense of Democracies monograph, Iran’s Nuclear Disarmament: The Only Deal That Protects U.S. and Allied Security, explains, the JCPOA's design is fundamentally flawed. Any constraint of Iranian nuclear activities or capping of the Iranian nuclear program is itself constrained, checked by weak verification, and temporary at best due to the JCPOA's sunset provisions. Moreover, WMD watchdog Iran Watch catalogs Iranian violations since the inception of the JCPOA in spite (or because) of its permissive character.
After President Trump withdrew from the fundamentally flawed JCPOA in 2018, Iran did not return to the JCPOA and instead escalated its proscribed nuclear activities in the face of President Biden's diplomatic attempt to entice Iran back to the JCPOA. Following his reelection, President Trump's diplomatic attempt to replace the JCPOA with an adequate threat-resolution agreement on par with the Gulf War ceasefire also failed.
Mr. Miller wonders at "the Trump administration’s inexplicable failure to prepare for—and prevent—the closure of the Strait of Hormuz". The reason is explicable. President Trump's "some form of war" with Iran is corrupted by the same malignant premise that corrupted President Obama's "diplomacy" with Iran: both Presidents obey the degenerative Iraq Syndrome and its misguiding "forever wars" talking point.
Again, what's past is prologue. Correcting our current course with Iran necessitates relitigating the Iraq Syndrome's demonstrably false narrative and clarifying the Iraq issue to the public because the Iran problem and its manifold threat have grown enough since the JCPOA to become analogous to the Saddam problem and its manifold threat, which required Operation Iraqi Freedom to solve.
To that end, "German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the United States was “being humiliated by the Iranian leadership”; lamented he had not conveyed his skepticism of the war “more emphatically” to Trump; and drew comparisons to the U.S. “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan" should be taken with a grain of salt until Chancellor Merz formally apologizes to the United Nations, United States, United Kingdom, and other faithful UNSCR 678 enforcers for the German complicity with Iraq's "continued violations of its obligations" (UNSCR 1441) that was instrumental in Saddam's choice to breach the Gulf War ceasefire rather than comply at Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441). When Germany apologizes to its NATO partners and the international community for the German culpability in OIF's casus belli, then they can be viewed as a reliable part of the solution with Iran instead of the German precedent of being part of the problem with Saddam.
To bring to bear the real constructive lessons of Iraq that are needed to solve the Iran problem, the Iraq Syndrome and its "forever wars" talking point need to be discredited and replaced by the operative premise that America got it right on Iraq until President Obama's radical deviation. To help Mr. Miller and the Center for American Progress relitigate the Iraq Syndrome's false narrative to the public, see for example my Critical notes on the UK Iraq Inquiry Chilcot report. The Chilcot report is a primary embodiment of the Iraq Syndrome in America as well as in Britain, and it is based on readily correctable false premises. For more examples, take your pick.
Because the real lessons of Iraq have been displaced by the Iraq Syndrome, President Obama repeated President HW Bush's fundamental error of prematurely removing American ground forces from Iraq, which enabled the Saddam regime's atrocities after Operation Desert Storm, the extreme expansion of Saddam's terrorism after ODS that preconfigured the Saddamist AQI insurgency, and Saddamist ISIS's atrocities after OIF (or technically, Operation New Dawn). And, because of the Iraq Syndrome, President Trump repeated President Clinton's fundamental error with Operation Desert Fox of an air-limited bombing campaign that lacked a credible ground element. Predictably, Iran's emboldened, belligerent, and aggressive reaction to Operation Epic Fury has been similar to Saddam's reaction to ODF.
We know the credible ground element of Operation Desert Storm was necessary to coerce Iraq's submission to the categorical and sufficient Gulf War ceasefire "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441), which addressed Iraqi WMD and conventional disarmament (UNSCRs 687 and 707 etc.), aggression (UNSCR 949), terrorism (UNSCR 687), and human rights (UNSCR 688). The Gulf War ceasefire formula of the Saddam precedent comprises the rules and standards needed to solve Iran's analogous manifold threat.
We know Saddam reacted to President HW Bush's fundamental error of prematurely removing the coercive leverage of ODS's ground element by immediately breaching the Gulf War ceasefire.
We know Saddam reacted to President Clinton's fundamental error of limiting Operation Desert Fox to aerial bombing by assessing that the United States lacked the requisite will to adequately enforce Iraq's mandated compliance. As a result, Iraq's intensified "continued violations of its obligations" (UNSCR 1441) that followed Operation Desert Fox compelled Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441).
We know that restoring a credible ground element with Operation Iraqi Freedom was needed to belatedly "bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations" (Public Law 105-235) and "enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq" (Public Law 107-243).
We know that allowing the noncompliant Saddam problem to fester for twelve years was extremely harmful to the Iraqi people who bore the brunt of our sanctions and Saddam's genocidal terrorist rule, which also violated UNSCR 687 and UNSCR 688 for casus belli.
And we know the wounded Saddam regime adapted in ways that were increasingly dangerous to the world and drove up the cost and difficulty of solving the Saddam problem. The real lessons of Iraq tell us that the United States and the international community need to solve the Iran problem today with either a regime change or a sufficient regime revision, and not allow the wounded Iran regime to fester like we allowed the wounded Saddam regime to fester.
In contrast to the Gulf War ceasefire mandates that were purpose-designed to solve Iraq's Gulf War-established manifold threat, the Obama joint comprehensive plan of action and Trump memorandum of understanding are both inadequate on their face to solve Iran's analogous manifold threat. And, in contrast to the practical sufficiency of Operation Iraqi Freedom, which achieved Iraq's mandated compliance, the predictable inadequacy of Operation Epic Fury has exacerbated the Iran problem like Operation Desert Fox exacerbated the Saddam problem.
At this point, our best chance to achieve a categorical and sufficient resolution of the Iran problem with "diplomacy" and not "some form of war" requires Mr. Miller and the Center for American Progress to establish OIF's successful resolution of the Saddam problem under President Bush as the necessary precedent for solving the analogous Iran problem. Mr. Miller and CAP need to reform the predominant political frame by discrediting the Iraq Syndrome and its "forever wars" talking point. They need to convince the Trump administration, Congress, and the public that America got it right on Iraq until President Obama's radical deviation. The fundamental political correction begins by relitigating the Iraq Syndrome's demonstrably false narrative to the public.
Just as importantly, Mr. Miller and the Center for American Progress need to convince Iran's leadership that the American nation is altogether willing to solve the Iran problem in the same way that we solved the analogous Saddam problem with Operation Iraqi Freedom. Convincing Iranian leaders that they realistically face an OIF-equivalent threat is our best chance for Iran to submit to threat-resolution rules and standards on par with the Gulf War ceasefire—and comply with them—without actually repeating OIF for Iran.
Right now, President Trump needs to correct our course with Iran (and Iraq) by rising to the leadership example of President Bush's course correction with Iraq.
It behooves Mr. Miller and the Center for American Progress to help President Trump correct our course by discrediting the degenerative Iraq Syndrome and its misguiding "forever wars" talking point and upholding Operation Iraqi Freedom to the public. If the Iraq Syndrome and its "forever wars" talking point continue to predominate our political frame and handicap our strategy for coercive leverage, then the Iran regime will predictably repeat the Saddam regime's emboldened, belligerent, and aggressive reaction to the American paper tiger. And the Iran problem will fester like the Saddam problem festered until eventually we are compelled to "some form of war" that is sufficient to resolve Iran's manifold threat, unlike Operation Epic Fury, but with a higher cost and greater difficulty than the solution would have required today.
I invite your critical feedback. If you have questions about my work, please ask.
Related: The Iraq solution for Nahal Toosi's "The Iran War Is a Whole New Level of Quagmire for the US", Apply the Saddam precedent to "finish the job and free Iran" (Lisa Daftari), Correct the Iraq War "story" to constructively "shape American foreign policy for years to come" (Jonah Goldberg), Answer and solutions for Mark Hertling's "Tell Me How the Iran War Ends: What are we fighting for?", Cure the Iraq Syndrome to win America back from postliberals and leftists (Thomas Howes), The facts show Edward Feser was right on Iraq in the first place and changed his mind based on misinformation, Jakub Grygiel's "The Iran War and the Coming Global Struggle" comes of the Iraq Syndrome, The apt UN-based international law solution for Iran is the Gulf War ceasefire formula of the Saddam precedent (Richard Epstein, John Yoo), The apt Iraq comparison for the Iran intervention is the Gulf War ceasefire enforcement, not Desert Storm (Jonathan Allen), The Forward Party should reconceive the Iran issue with the premise that we were right on Iraq, which is the truth, and The Constitutional rule of law for war was skirted by President Clinton, reinforced by President Bush, and degraded by President Obama.
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