For the record I fully support an armed intervention in North Korea. In my opinion the US has tried every other option and all of them have failed. Bill Clinton tried complete and total submission. Offering a yearly tribute in oil to North Korea as well as offering to build their nuclear program with American aid. Undisclosed provisions in the deal suggest that the North Korean leaders could have personally gotten something as well. It did not work. Bush Jr tried belligerence with economic sanctions. Stopping the tribute provided by the Clintons and then using the UN to contain North Korea. The regime did not care. Obama tried ignoring North Korea. That did not work. Now it is very likely that they have nuclear weapons as well as the means to deliver them.

Equally important is that I am confident Trump is the best man for the job. In my opinion Bush made two very critical mistakes in the Iraq war which could have changed the flow of history.

Preparation

This is the first mistake. When Bush was making his case for the war in Iraq he led the public to believe that it would have been an easy task. The US military would overwhelm the Iraqi army and their resistance would crumble. Even if this was the case he should not have said so. One of the most important strategies to managing expectations is to underpromise and overdeliver. This allows you to have a margin of error in case things turn out worse than you expect. In case things work out better than you expect then you can always congratulate the troops for doing a good job and keeping casualties to a minimum.

At this point I would like to direct you to the tweets of President Trump during hurricane Harvey. At all times he was pointing out how big and terrible the storm was while praising the capability of Texas and the American people to get through the disaster. If you think that the storm is huge then you mentally prepare yourself for lots of damage and suffering. When things turn out to be less damaging than you expect then you can always give credit and praise the first responders.

When we finally go into North Korea Trump will be using this tactic.

Nation Building

This is the second and most critical mistake from Iraq. The US army is actually very good at conventional warfare. I divide the Iraq adventure into two episodes. The first is when we actually had an Iraqi army to fight and the second was when we were fighting the insurgency. The US was actually very successful during the first phase. In fact it was so successful and so widely covered that the entire thing felt like a video game instead of an actual invasion.

Things went south went we stayed instead of pulling out right after. As a nation the US is not equipped to handle insurgencies. We just do not have the moral fortitude to do the things required to defeat an insurgency or to sustain a campaign of attrition. Part of being able to implement successful operations is understanding your own limitations. If we pulled out right after unseating the Iraqi then we would have been able to declare victory. What ever happened to Iraq after would have been a thing for the foreign section of the nightly news instead of a national concern.

I am very confident that President Trump will not make this mistake. Nation building seems to be the last thing in his mind nor is sacrificing military efficiency for humanitarian concerns which is another good thing.

I am fully aware that leaving Iraq or in this case North Korea right away may cause a humanitarian crisis. I would rather the world deal with a humanitarian crisis there, after having achieved the downfall of the Kim regime, than have the United States deal with a humanitarian crisis here after LA gets nuked.