Nigeria, May 13 -- On May 10, Robert Kagan, the high priest of neoconservative thought, the bell ringer for muscular interventionism and general American meddlesomeness, lamented in The Atlantic that the United States had suffered a unique defeat in its efforts to subjugate Iran. The article says much about Kagan's own identification with the obvious, some feat given the military fancy and fantasy that continues to blot the current Trump administration.

Be that as it may, he finds the Iran War dishing out a defeat to the United States of unique quality, one that "can neither be repaired nor ignored." No ultimate American triumph could emerge, and nothing would "undo or overcome the harm done" to "return to the status quo ante". The Stra...