US Strikes on Iran (Operation Epic Fury)

[The Grand Nudger]

We don’t really know what’s happening there. But in Iraq they gradually weakened the regime for decades with many bombing campaigns. Than they conquered the country in a week. Than they faced city guerrillas. Most US casualties resulted from these guerilla warfare phase.
 
I think this is still the only way to end whatever it is that is happening with Iran. But with Donald Trump we just don’t know. Why is it that we never know anything with this guy? Is it just a pure form of advanced narcissism or is there another unseen factor in this equation?

Incorrect.  Ground forces had no trouble whatsoever with indigenous resistance, even...and perhaps especially... in the MOUT environment.  Foreign mercenaries were the problem we struggled with...and mostly for reasons of our own legal structures - not that I would say we shouldn't have stuck to them...just as a point of clarity. The guerilla warfare phase of indigenous resistance was so marginal that our ROE did not allow us to shoot back at them even if they were shooting at us. It was the foreign mercenary phase that came later in which..while still adhereing to that restrictive indigenous ROE, caused us leadership to entertain extra-legal action....and, coincidentally, that's when joe sentiment turned sour.

Truth is, Mohamed J Urbanite doesn't even know how to begin to resist professional operators. If the thought to do so even crosses their mind...which it doesn't, btw, for better and for worse. At any rate, you never know anything with our mad king because his brain is fucking mush, and he was fundamentally unsuitable for the position before his brain became mush. If and insomuch as we have trouble in iran it's not because of the everyday citizen...it's the shahed drone program that matured over the course of the russo ukranian war (after the capture of one of our predators by iran back in the day) which we have not as of yet fully incorporated into our military doctrine. That's not guerrilla war, it's asymmetric state sanctioned. In the longer view of military history it's an improvement over g-war...because g-fighters can be heart-and-minded by sufficiently analogous, permissive, lethal, and indoctrinated operators....whereas a drone will never empathize with the OPFOR no matter how good a buddy we might be to the prospective guerrillas. As a quick reference for this dynamic look up how often russia uses Geran drones to kill russians on the front.

As a sideline/1000ftview comment....we may have reached the point in warfare and propagande where it's legitimately difficult to get people to kill other people for the usual reasons of states. Just like we've had to replace humans for robots on productions lines because people no longer give a shit about big business explanations for intentionally impoverishing them....... Every time I hear we've struck Iran..in the back of my mind, I realize we probably killed some guy who has a similar life experience to my own and who I would want to connect with to go out into the woods and get some rare fir seeds with. In another world, we'd be sharing a tent and a canteen. But we live in this world, the shittiest timeline.

[Leonardo17]

I still have my doubts with his brain being a mush. I simply don’t know what’s going on in that brain of his. Is it just a distraction from the Epstein files? Does he have plans on a grander / international scale? Could he have miscalculated the drone + missile capacities of Iran? (…)
 
My objection to whatever he is doing is on a more practical level. When he decided to withdraw from Afghanistan he gave a message to the Taliban and everyone else: “All you have to do when we arrive is wait. We may have lost 2,500 of our own and have worked for 20 years to create something that looks like a sovereign nation, but if at some point we decide that there is no economic benefit in doing so, we will just let you build whatever barbaric and inhumane society it is that you are longing for. All you have to do is wait”
 
Now he is doing the same with Iranians. He is basically saying “Do murder your own population, do Bomb your neighbors and hold them hostage against us. Do not respect international rules and regulations, You can take hostage international trade and energy market by targeting non-military international ships with drones and missiles, do not respect us, In fact, do not even respect Israel if you don’t want to, whatever you can take by threatening and bullying whoever you can is yours and we simply don’t care”
 
I mean: a Super-power needs to assert itself as a moral entity too. There is no such world order. What world are we living in if the Qataris and Omanis are already offering money to Iran in return for not bombing their oil and liquid gas refineries with Geran drones? This cannot be the 21 century. This is the Caribbeans in the 1600’s.

[The Grand Nudger]

Just watch him speak sometime. Don't read about what he says. The stenographers of power have been sanewashing him since he stumbled down the escalator. His whole life has been a distraction that's -in- the epstein files. He has delusions of grandeuer. He doesn't calculate such things so he can't really miscalculate them. Person woman man tv camera. CAMEL!

He wasn't thinking about any of that in afghanistan. He thinks brown people are subhumans with bad genetics who would inevitably do all that shit anyway, even if we tried to stop them. All he was doing with the pullout was setting a bomb under the desk for the next guy, jilted as he was by america deciding we didn't want to be his boyfriend anymore.

He's saying HE doesn't care...but then again he never did. The only thing about any of that that bothers him is when he isn't getting his chunk of the proceeds.

I'm right there with you. Power for powers own sake is not healthy..and fwiw, the world order that us leadership and diplomacy built is why we ever built up power...in the soft and hard senses. In that context he's just shitting on america again. The very things that allowed for him to have the petulant and spoiled existence he's been enjoying are damaged by his actions. It used to be, even cynically speaking, that our pitch was something like "collaborate with us and become wealthy or don't and be destroyed". Now it's all stick no carrot...and the man wielding the stick is the oldest and frailest man that ever lived. The mad king was born old. Trumpism is a suicide pact concocted for the exclusive benefit of a person who the party is over for..and since it's over for him, it's gonna be over for everyone else too.

[Belacqua]

I mean: a Super-power needs to assert itself as a moral entity too. There is no such world order. What world are we living in if the Qataris and Omanis are already offering money to Iran in return for not bombing their oil and liquid gas refineries with Geran drones? This cannot be the 21 century. This is the Caribbeans in the 1600’s.

Yep, and the US has exactly zero moral credibility at the moment. 

Some people fantasize that once Trump is gone the US will once again bloom as a moral exemplar for the ages. Ha. America's support for Israel is bi-partisan and increasing. It doesn't matter that more and more citizens have a negative view of Israel -- the government and the media are still rock solid. A lot of Americans are still in denial about this. They somehow think that Israel is a rogue nation that America would like to leash. But that's not going to happen with anything like our current government. 

So with America as the bi-partisan weapons supplier to genocide, the idea of its government ever asserting moral authority again is laughable. Iran is currently doing better than America in that regard, since it's the only country standing up to Israel's expansion of the genocide into Lebanon. 

For a while there you could just shout Hezbollah!!! and it would justify any kind of violence in Lebanon. People forget that Hezbollah was created after a previous invasion of Lebanon by Israel, in which over 6000 people were killed. You can see the photos of Israeli tanks in the streets of Lebanon, before Hezbollah existed. The macho men like to say it's better to die on your feet than live on your knees, which is what Hamas and Hezbollah decided to do. Since the US media is pro-Israel all day every day, we were told that was bad.

And Iran didn't demand money to use the Strait of Hormuz before America tried to take it from them. America's habit of piracy is well established. If Iran wants to charge a fee it's no surprise. 

Currently Chevron and a few others are raking in cash. The US is India's #1 supplier of liquid natural gas at the moment, because the US has skillfully messed up every other access point. But that won't last forever. 

In the long run China is the winner here, as in nearly everything else.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@Leonardo17

I mean: a Super-power needs to assert itself as a moral entity too.

LOL, since when? Morality seems like it would actually be inimical to achieving or maintaining superpower status.

Boru

[Fake Messiah]

Some people fantasize that once Trump is gone the US will once again bloom as a moral exemplar for the ages. Ha.

It will be different because it was different. Netanyahu was coaxing American presidents to attack Iran for decades and no one took him seriously until Trump. Obama even had a very good deal with Iran.