This misconceived and wicked attack on Iran is not a war on radical Islam - nor can radical Islam be defeated unless Muslims change their religion en masse

Phelim McAleer: To win the war with Iran, US must have the courage and self-belief to be committed to defeating the enemy - radical Islam

​So, will America win this war? That’s the only question worth asking right now. It seems that since World War II, America has become spectacularly bad at winning wars. From Korea to Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, it can fight with all the shock and awe on the planet but always eventually loses.

....It is lucky in one respect: Iran is not Afghanistan or Iraq. This is not the last war. The people are more open to America and the West. They are an ancient culture that predates Islam. There is no Sunni/Shia split in the country to fuel unrest and a low-level civil war.

America needs to treat Islamist Iran the way it treated Nazi Germany (one of the last wars it won). Germany was deNazified. They were clear - Nazism was evil and its leaders were imprisoned or executed. Do Americans have the courage and self-belief to do that in Iran?

You cannot have a war against an abstract noun. Michael Frayn said that talking about the war on terrorism. You can't have a war against radical Islam and the war in Iran is not one.

Barbara Amiel spoke for me when she said she would never forgive the Ayatollah Khomeini for making her defend Salman Rushdie. I shan't forgive Donald Trump for making me take the side of the Iranian government. What incredible folly and wickedness on Trump's part - what diabolical cunning on Netanyahu's.

It is obvious that America will lose unless Trump stops now and finds some specious reason to declare a victory. Even then Americans will stink in the world's nostrils as mass murderers and aggressors - I hate Hitler analogies but after 80 years of specious ones (Nasser, Saddam, Milosevic) they finally are apposite and even inescapable with both Trump and Netanyahu.

What is the difference between this war and the German invasion of Poland? 

What is the difference between what the Germans did to the Poles and what the Israelis did, financed by Biden and Trump, to the people in the Gaza Strip?

Having written all this I just realised I knew Phelim from when he was the FT's man in Bucharest. He is - as is very clear from the article - a fool (I am being polite) and a malign one. He said to me in January 1999 that the Serbs were justified in the war in Kosovo because although the majority of people in Kosovo wanted to secede the majority of people in Serbia as a whole, Kosovars included, wanted Kosovo to remain in Serbia. I said that's the argument the British used for keeping Ireland in the UK. He looked startled and replied 'But Ireland's an island!'

We looked at one another both knowing he had said something very stupid and he never forgave me.

He published an article in 2003 in the Spectator entitled The Happy Hookers of Eastern Europe arguing, with little evidence, that girls who are sex trafficked know what they are getting into prior to going. To quote him: "According to the International Office of Migration [IOM] which rescues and shelters these women, there are an estimated 400,000 enduring this existence. But as anyone who works closely with prostitutes and who isn’t infected with victimitis knows, the IOM version of events is nonsense."

I knew nothing about sex trafficking and almost believed him till a few days later I read an article in Bucharest's Business Review (I think) going into very sad-making evidence of what trafficking involves. How does Phelim make a living?