The Mission Is Never Accomplished | The American Spectator

The annals of political imagery are replete with disasters, moments when the most carefully crafted public persona dissolves in a moment of ludicrous self-parody. Some of these have become clichés. Pick a Democrat candidate for national office, and the shotgun and camo photo-op becomes unavoidable, Tim Walz’s the latest in a very long and ever-ridiculous line. Sometimes, they come close to single-handedly derailing a presidential campaign.

The 1988 photo of Michael Dukakis riding in a tank, helmeted and wearing a dopey grin, also comes to mind. Running against the man who’d been an actual Navy combat pilot, one shot down after bombing a Japanese target, it cemented a national conviction that Dukakis had no business being our commander-in-chief. The contrast could scarcely have been more stark.

In the annals of regrettable political imagery, however, pride of place most certainly belongs to George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech on May 1, 2003, aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. The speech itself had been scrubbed of any “Mission Accomplished” language by no less a person than Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who’d reviewed the draft and recognized the trap such words would lay for the administration. But the proud banner affixed to the carrier’s island superstructure, dominantly framing Bush as he spoke, became the signature image. (RELATED: Let’s Hope Trump’s ‘Spectacular Military Success’ Is Not Bush’s ‘Mission Accomplished’)

Whatever its intent — and the arguments and blame shifting began almost immediately — the result was to drape the slogan around the president’s neck, where it hung with increasing discomfort, as the masterful demolition of Saddam Hussein’s military gave way to a disastrously misconceived and mishandled essay in democracy building. In the years since, “Mission Accomplished” has become a byword for presidential hubris, for political pretensions brought low by harsh reality, for the yawning gap that opens when disappointment follows triumphalism.

In the wake of last weekend’s astonishingly skillful U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Trump administration has walked the tightest of tightropes between claiming an undoubted success and indulging in even a hint of “Mission Accomplished” self-congratulation. As our own Francis P. Sempa recently noted, the president and other key figures have gone out of their way to avoid “Mission Accomplished” phrasing, while at the same time claiming due credit on behalf of the military personnel involved and for their own willingness to make a manifestly risky decision, the kind of decision most presidents instinctively shrink from making.

None, however, ever did anything worthwhile to prevent this. The most noisome efforts, notably Obama’s thoroughly egregious Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), merely served as fig leaves for U.S. and European inaction, a “Joint” and “Comprehensive” unwillingness to grasp the nettle of a potentially nuclear-armed regime that drooled at any opportunity to destroy us. (RELATED: Obama Trusted Iran — Israel Didn’t)

One might think that the takedown of Iran’s nuclear weapons infrastructure would serve, even briefly, as a unifying bipartisan moment, a point in time where political differences could be put aside in celebration of a notable accomplishment. Instead, we’ve witnessed widespread efforts to denigrate the achievement. One might quite reasonably have urged caution regarding the results of the mission, pointing out that bomb damage assessment takes time, and that the overall results need to be placed in a broader intelligence context. (RELATED: CNN’s Credibility? Totally Obliterated!)

But… Mission Accomplished?

There’s been an almost gleeful willingness on the part of the usual mainstream media suspects to credit Iranian sources, particularly the claim that “we made away with all our enriched uranium” or “we still have tools for enrichment.” Others have questioned the efficacy of the bombing itself, bleeding over into what can only be read as an assault on the competence of the bombing crews themselves — a calumny that both President Trump and Secretary of Defense Hegseth have bluntly condemned. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: The Coming State of Being)

More careful intelligence community analysis — not the now-discounted leaked DIA report relied upon by CNN — suggests that the bombing had a profound effect, inflicting substantial damage on Iranian capabilities. And why should any thoughtful person be surprised by this?

We’ve known for a very long time about Iran’s nuclear facilities, and, regardless of presidential waffling in the past, our military has been preparing for this moment for a long time. According to the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Dan Caine, such preparation began 15 years ago, when the Fordo site was still in the construction stage, and it continued through the development and repeated testing of the MOP bomb, testing specifically designed with Fordo in mind. (RELATED: Ending the Ayatollah’s Nuclear Threat: No Better Time Than Now)

Again, according to General Caine, the actual strike “uncapped” the concrete cover on Fordo’s main exhaust shafts, while the next four bombs were dropped down the shafts, exploiting an inherent weakness in the facility’s design to create massive damage. I know a little bit about enrichment centrifuges from my previous government work, enough to know that they simply aren’t meant to sustain such damage.

Tellingly, the Israelis, who quite likely know more about the Iranian nuclear program than the Ayatollah himself, have agreed to a ceasefire. Given that the whole purpose of the “12 Day War” was to eliminate the looming Iranian nuclear threat — and given the extent of Israeli air superiority over Iran — Israel would likely have continued pounding both known and suspected nuclear sites.

After all, the IDF also has bunker buster bombs, not as capable as the U.S. MOP, but still capable of significant penetration and great precision, sufficient, for example, to take advantage of the deep openings and structural weaknesses created by the U.S. attack at Fordo. The Israelis have already demonstrated an ability to employ their bunker busters as, in effect, giant jackhammers. The very fact that there follow-up raids prior to the ceasefire seem to have been concentrated on other targets, sometimes largely symbolic ones such as the notorious Evin prison in Tehran, strongly suggests that, when Israeli sources say that Iran’s nuclear weapons program has been set back for years, they are confident of their conclusion.

Sadly, we seem to no longer be capable of appreciating success or reaching across the partisan divide to offer, at least for a moment, congratulations on a job well done. Donald Trump had the political courage to order a military strike that, with its plethora of complicated moving parts, could have ended disastrously. The Air Force and Navy executed the mission as near perfectly as such an operation could ever achieve. Once upon a time, our nation might have paused long enough to bask in a remarkable job well done.

I’m unsurprised, but still deeply disappointed. It wasn’t so very long ago, the year 2011, that, with the successful mission to kill Osama bin Laden, Barack Obama was permitted to enjoy his “Mission Accomplished” moment. Of course, Obama was always a media darling, while Trump continues to be despised by the likes of CNN or the New York Times. Still, we should be able to do better. The fundamental issue, after all, is less about commending Trump and more, much more, about national self-respect.

For too long we’ve been subjected to the notion that our national greatness is a sham, that even the greatest accomplishments of our history can be dismissed, that, as the 1619 Project would have it, American history is built upon cruelty and selfishness, obscured by a tissue of lies that deserves to be ripped apart. And it’s past time that we stood up to those who hate the U.S., whether the ayatollahs, Hamas, and their useful idiots on our college campuses.

When our national achievement over nearly 250 years can be so casually and brutally dismissed, the very notion of accomplishment needs resurrection. Perhaps we can start by duly celebrating the Iran mission. At the very least, even those who begrudge any notion of congratulating Donald Trump might be shamed into saluting the airmen and sailors who can genuinely say “mission accomplished.” The rest of us, perhaps, can continue the business of reclaiming our nation.

READ MORE from James H. McGee:

Frederick Forsyth: The Better Craftsman

Ending the Ayatollah’s Nuclear Threat: No Better Time Than Now

The ‘New Warfare’ Comes of Age: Are We Ready?

James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His 2022 novel, Letter of Reprisal, tells the tale of a desperate mission to destroy a Chinese bioweapon facility hidden in the heart of the central African conflict region. A soon-to-be-published sequel, The Zebras from Minsk, finds the Reprisal team fighting against Chinese and Russian-backed terrorists who’ve infiltrated our southern border in a conspiracy that ranges from West Virginia to the forests of Belarus. You can find Letter of Reprisal on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback editions, and on Kindle Unlimited.