Imagine how little you would have to have learned over the last two decades to think sending 120,000 American troops to the Middle East is a good idea. Forget taking lessons from Vietnam—we already spurned that opportunity. There will soon be American kids fighting in Afghanistan who were not yet born on September 11, 2001. More than 2,300 American troops have died in the sand and rock over nearly 18 years, and what do we have to show for all that sacrifice? We're currently in "peace talks" with the Taliban while they wage terror attacks on humanitarian aid groups. In May 2019.

And let's not even get started on Iraq, a country we invaded on a platform of George W. Bush administration lies only to see more than 4,400 Americans die in the bloody street battles of the factionalized civil war that inevitably followed. Oh, and there's the whole ISIS thing, which wasn't a thing beforehand. Also, by some counts, it lead to the deaths of 1 million Iraqis. Also, they told us it'd be quick, we'd be greeted as liberators, and weapons of mass destruction would be found. None of this is to mention all the men and women scarred or mutilated, physically and mentally, by their experiences over there. Thousands of Americans made it home, but will endure sleepless nights for the rest of their lives—or will never again play football in the backyard with their kids.

None of this giant aggregate of human tragedy seems to have affected the calculus of senior-level members of the Trump administration at all. Neither have the estimates from some corners that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost up to $6 trillion already, and will get to $7 trillion if this continues into the early 2020s. (It's here where you insert the snipe about how we can't afford free public college or universal healthcare or a massive infrastructure overhaul or the Green New Deal.) That's probably because the president tapped John Bolton—the bloodthirsty warmonger who worked his tail off to engineer a War in Iran during the Bush administration—as his national security adviser.

John Bolton never met a war he didn’t like. The Washington Post Getty Images

Like any good neocon, there's scarcely a war Bolton doesn't like or a delusion about American Democracy Transplantation he doesn't harbor, but he's got a unique hunger to engage Iran. (Well, he won't be doing the engaging. He'll be sitting in the White House. American kids from Boise and the Bronx will be fighting and dying.) As a reminder, Iran is not Afghanistan, or even Iraq. It is a country of 83 million people, and its military has more than half a million active-duty personnel—some of whom, like the Revolutionary Guard and particularly the Quds Force, are trained at a high level. It would be a more formidable engagement on the front end than either of the two we already remain engaged with right now, and then, if the United States "won," it would be stuck occupying the territory of a population that has hated us for decades—ever since the CIA overthrew the democratically elected leader of Iran in 1953 and re-installed the Shah, a king.

No matter. The New York Times reported Monday night that we're well on our way.

At a meeting of President Trump’s top national security aides last Thursday, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented an updated military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons, administration officials said.

Any report out of this administration claiming Iran intends to "accelerate work on nuclear weapons" should be treated with extreme skepticism. Iran halted its nuclear program as part of the Iran Deal the Obama administration worked to broker in concert with the European powers. Iran did not violate the deal, the United States did, because Donald Trump, American president, had promised to dismantle Barack Obama's legacy regardless of the merits.

The deal put in place verification measures for the West to ensure Iran was complying, but it relieved sanctions on Iran's economy, so it had to go. Never mind that the whole purpose of sanctions is to force a country to the table to make a deal that involves relieving the sanctions in exchange for concessions. The Times notes Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said last week that "Iran would walk away from parts of the 2015 nuclear deal it reached with world powers," but again: the United States violated the deal last year and has started to reinstitute sanctions. When the U.S. withdrew—with zero alternative plan besides saber-rattling—the agreement became unworkable.

Patrick Shanahan, left, is a 30-year veteran of a major defense contractor with zero military experience. He leads the Department of Defense. NICHOLAS KAMM Getty Images

Oh, and Shanahan is a former Boeing executive with no military or diplomatic experience prior to the job of Acting Secretary of Defense, which he has not secured Senate approval to fill. Trump has abused the "acting" designation to shirk the Constitution's mandate that the higher body of Congress should advise and consent on major appointments like the Secretary of Goddamn Defense. Instead, we're stuck with a guy Trump has described as "a good buyer" of military equipment, because all that's required to serve in this administration now is a healthy taste for crony capitalism—in this case, the military-industrial complex. No prizes will be awarded for guessing whether Shanahan's former employer is interested in a conflict that could necessitate the U.S. government buying more Boeing equipment.

Anyway, from The Times:

The revisions were ordered by hard-liners led by John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser. They do not call for a land invasion of Iran, which would require vastly more troops, officials said.

The development reflects the influence of Mr. Bolton, one of the administration’s most virulent Iran hawks, whose push for confrontation with Tehran was ignored more than a decade ago by President George W. Bush.

Yeah, sure they're not interested in an invasion. Bolton would invade a phone booth if he thought there were brown people with oil inside. But it certainly would require more than 120,000 troops to take on Iran, which, again, is the major regional power alongside Saudi Arabia. (We have chosen the Saudis, despite their abysmal human-rights record and brazen political murder of journalists, as our allies. While previous presidents also backed the House of Saud, Trump's outstanding support certainly has nothing to do with the fact they're putting money in his pocket through his hotels. Ethics and conflict-of-interest concerns are for suckers.)

While Trump campaigned on a kind of new isolationism, Bolton is a relentless interventionist. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI Getty Images

The Times then traced how this all directly contradicts the non-interventionism of Trump's campaign, in which he lashed his opponents for supporting the Iraq War while lying about his own support. He pledged to disentangle the U.S. from conflicts in Afghanistan and Syria, but now he's not—a stunning indication that maybe, perhaps, the president's word is not bond. "It is also unclear whether the president has been briefed on the number of troops or other details in the plans," the Times says, a nice reminder of the Weekend at Bernie's vibe that sometimes comes spilling out of this administration. Maybe Trump is involved and thinks this is a good re-election strategy. Or maybe they're keeping him in the dark. Or maybe he really, truly doesn't give a shit.

But then there's this.

European allies who met with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday said that they worry that tensions between Washington and Tehran could boil over, possibly inadvertently...The size of the force involved has shocked some who have been briefed on them. The 120,000 troops would approach the size of the American force that invaded Iraq in 2003.

Deploying such a robust air, land and naval force would give Tehran more targets to strike, and potentially more reason to do so, risking entangling the United States in a drawn out conflict. It also would reverse years of retrenching by the American military in the Middle East that began with President Barack Obama’s withdrawal of troops from Iraq in 2011.

But two of the American national security officials said Mr. Trump’s announced drawdown in December of American forces in Syria, and the diminished naval presence in the region, appear to have emboldened some leaders in Tehran and convinced the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that the United States has no appetite for a fight with Iran.

Several oil tankers were reportedly attacked or sabotaged off the coast of the United Arab Emirates over the weekend, raising fears that shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf could become flash points. “It’s going to be a bad problem for Iran if something happens,” Mr. Trump said on Monday, asked about the episode.

This has Tonkin Gulf written all over it. They are looking for an excuse, and considering deploying more forces over there to gin one up.

Ah, but how can you be so sure?

The high-level review of the Pentagon’s plans was presented during a meeting about broader Iran policy. It was held days after what the Trump administration described, without evidence, as new intelligence indicating that Iran was mobilizing proxy groups in Iraq and Syria to attack American forces.

Without evidence. That is the defining phrase of this administration, which just this week rolled out a State Department security advisory for Iraq on the basis of "escalating tensions" between the United States and Iran. If the government will not learn the lessons of the Iraq War, our best hope is that the media will. The New York Times played a major role in fomenting support for that world-historical boondoggle, and they would do well not to take the word of an administration that makes the Bush folks look like the Truth Squad.

Every word that comes out of the pit of fraud and deceit the Trumpists have dug should be treated with the utmost suspicion, but that impulse should shift into overdrive once they start talking about what the Iranians are supposedly up to in the Gulf. These times are perilous enough already without another war in the Middle East that will dwarf Iraq in terms of the scale of the task—and the human misery that will flow freely in its wake. Sometimes, "the Forever War" doesn't seem to do it justice.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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