In a world tied inextricably to social media, there’s something deeply and spectacularly unserious about the way modern commentators talk about war. Anyone who has scrolled through online platforms following the outbreak of war with Iran will find the same childish questions of why the war isn’t over yet, as if military conflict is supposed to function like an Amazon Prime delivery — putting in an order from your couch and waking up to find it gift-wrapped on your doorstep the following day.

Sorry, but this is all a fundamental misunderstanding of reality.

War is not a precision-guided overnight event, and it’s certainly not a cinematic montage of well-timed explosions followed by an epic resolution before the credits roll. But for some reason, that’s exactly how people seem to think it works. The expectation isn’t just that wars should end quickly, but that they must end quickly, or else something has gone wrong.

Let’s be clear: The duration of a war says nothing in isolation about whether it is justified. A war can be both necessary and prolonged, and/or reckless and brief. Time is not a moral metric, but merely a logistical one.

World War I dragged on from 1914 to 1918, and World War II from 1939 to 1945. Even conflicts that Americans tend to view as comparatively more limited were anything but short, with the Korean War stretching across three brutal years and the Vietnam War spanning nearly two decades of escalation, stalemate and eventual withdrawal. In the modern era, we were in Afghanistan for decades, and the Iraq War extended far beyond its initial invasion phase.

Chaos and uncertainty — including when it comes to timelines — are exactly what war actually looks like.

Somewhat ironically, the brevity of the shortest wars fought by Western powers — such as the Six Day War — can only be achieved through a level of ruthless decisiveness that these same impatient keyboard warriors are also entirely allergic to.

The idea that a serious military engagement — particularly one involving a regional power such as Iran — could be resolved overnight is not just wrong, but detached from the most basic lessons of history.

Part of this problem is cultural, thanks to living in an era of shameless instant gratification. It’s hardly surprising that this mindset bleeds into how people think about geopolitics. There’s also a political dimension, with the desire to declare that a war be over “immediately” acting more as an easy applause line than a serious policy proposal. It sounds humane and signals urgency, but it directly sidesteps the harder questions: What are the objectives? What would “ending” the war actually look like? What are the consequences of a rushed withdrawal or a half-finished campaign?

Sure, these might not be comfortable questions, but they are certainly necessary ones. Demanding that a war end overnight doesn’t make you morally superior. All it means is that you’re ignoring reality, and reality has a way of asserting itself, whether we like it or not.

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