I understand the concept of tit for tat retaliation, the problem is American foreign policy for these instances is tit for tat tat. America makes sure its retaliatory responses are overwhelming making a tit for tat deterrence useless against them, this is the advantage of having the largest stick in the world. This is also why America’s rivals engage in asymmetric warfare with layers of plausible deniability.
This also assumes Iran is dealing with a rational actor acting logically, there is no evidence Trump is one in this case. This strike has no logical beneficial outcome for the American people, it will be interesting to see if Congress allows America to continue. Trumps reasons for doing Netenyahus bidding to the detriment of the American people is certainly a choice that we can all speculate on.
I disagree with your comparing Iran Vs US to the Brits Vs the Zulu’s. It is almost as if you have slept through the last 110 years of insurgency warfare and how effective it can be. Iran is a huge country with a population of 90 million. The USA can bomb with impunity sure but Iran has more people than Afghanistan and Iraq combined with greater military capabilities. Boots on the ground will be needed, you can’t win a war with stand off munitions alone. America was entirely unsuccessful with their previous two attempts at regime change by force this century, why would they do better against a bigger and better armed country? Look at the bunch of clowns in charge in America currently, I would not trust them to mind my plants for a week away let alone regime change in Iran.
This is not the point where US intervention fails. The boots on the ground do their job quite well initially. Where the US fails is long term, they have no long term strategy for these nations they defeat beyond sitting around with their thumbs up their arses for several expensive decades while their opponents simply wait them out.
In terms of retaliation, I still do not believe Iran can do enough to deter the US and the US policy of overwhelming retaliation would just lead to their own destruction by following this path.
In terms of your might is right point on imperialism I would again refer you back to the last century and a bit where all of the great empires collapsed one by one, starting with the Ottoman’s, followed by the Germans, British, French and Russian. This was the century of the insurgent, TE Lawrence, Michael Collins, Vo Nguyen Giap amongst others.
The USA is one case where the president is actually Commander in Chief of the armed forces. Provided the order is not illegal, the army have to follow the order of their superior. Trump and the republican party have been going down the state capture route a long time now and there is no one left who will say no to him, as we have seen since he has come to office. Even if someone was brave enough to dissent the would be removed from their position without much thought.
To me it looks like Trump is going to get America dragged into another expensive forever war that with their current debt levels they cannot afford. The attempted decapitation looks like it will not lead to a quick end as Iran entrenches. The American people should rightly be asking the question of why are we striking Iran when Iran has not now or ever posed a real threat to the USA. This is Trump’s war, he never even asked for congressional approval. If he’s going to bankrupt the American people he should at least have a damn good explanation of why. We are all scratching our heads trying to figure this out.