Osler's Razor

Yesterday, I had a piece about the grand jury in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. You can read that here.  But... that's not what I want to talk about today.

Things have been a little crazy lately, huh? The escalation of the conflict with Iran has the nation on edge, and rightfully so. As I write this, though, it looks like things are calming, and the non-fatal Iranian missile attack on US bases in Iraq may be the end of the conflict, at least in terms of open retaliation. If so, that would be a great thing.

I'm going to do something here that might surprise some people: agree with Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard. But I am, because I very much believe that both of them are right to assert that the United States needs to avoid foreign military entanglements, and in particular regime-change wars in the Middle East. I'm with them 100% on that. In declining to respond to the latest Iranian move, Trump is living up to that assertion. I am glad that he is. We have nothing to gain through further armed aggression on the other side of the world.

We need to learn from the last Iraq War and our endless involvement in Afghanistan: these conflicts aren't good for the host countries, and they aren't good for us.

Instead of complaining that Trump didn't live up to his blustering, we should all be glad that he did not, and hope he pursues the deeper value of avoiding useless armed conflict in the future.