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Miscellanea: The War in Iran

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Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#641

Post by andriy_koval »

sysguest wrote: post #541
Der_Einzige wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Saudi and UAE militaries are indeed something to sneeze at. Go read the comments about them from anyone in the US military whose worked with them. https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/19ckc6l/saudi_a... https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/qhmbog/why_i... https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/hqfatn/why_are_... https://www.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/fbd97k/is_...

well you don't expect them to fight bravely -- well, I don't even expect Saudis to even send their own citizens to iran rather, you expect them to pay for the missiles and mercenaries like gurkhans

gurkhans are few and already employed, and there is no much substitution.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#643

Post by jjcc »

niemandhier wrote: post #187

A war continuous until one side has caused the other more suffering than it can take. When dealing with the Middle East we keep underestimating the amount of hardship the people I these countries can endure or be forced to endure.

you miss the asymmetry here: If there's a country goes thousands miles from far away to invade the US, then American can endure much more to fight than the invading country. The balance will be the opposit.

The often missing asymmetry reflects something deep in the mindset of large portion of western population.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#644

Post by nostrademons »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #497
nostrademons wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a huge difference between buying a solar panel once and having it generate energy for the next 30 years vs. buying a barrel of oil now and consuming it by next week. It's the same difference as buying a house now and owning it until it collapses vs. renting a house and being at the mercy of your landlord, or buying a piece of shrink-wrapped software and using it for the next 18 years vs. renting a SaaS subsc…

> buying a piece of shrink-wrapped software and using it for the next 18 years I'm wondering how that works. I have written software that was still being used, 25 years later, but it was pretty much a "Ship of Theseus," by then.

There's someone who posted on HN yesterday about running Kubuntu on the same PC for 18 years:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47502310

He had upgrades, but I was running Kubuntu about 20 years ago, still have a bunch of Red Hat and Mandrake ISOs from the early 2000s, and can confirm they still work.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#645

Post by ranger207 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #356

The blog post said that the Iran war costs the US at least 1 billion USD per day. The US is incredibly rich and can afford the cost. What I don't see being discussed: What if the US (and Israel) does not put troops on the ground in Iran, but continues relentless, daily aerial bombing... forever (1/2/3 years)? I am not saying that you can control a country from air superiority only (this has been widely discussed by m…

The US bombed basically all of the Iraqi military in 1991, yet the war didn't end and Iraq didn't leave Kuwait until troops on the ground went in. Air power alone cannot control territory or compel political change

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#647

Post by coolThingsFirst »

N_Lens wrote: post #592
coolThingsFirst wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why didnt Iran use this earlier to get rich?

Because it would have been an act of aggression to close off the strait. Iran did not want to invite war, the US and Israel have entirely been the aggressors in this recent conflict.

Sanctions were also an act of aggression. Iran could ask for fees for US ships to make up for their losses due to sanctions.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#648

Post by ranger207 »

somenameforme wrote: post #152
khhu2bnn wrote: post #26

The amazing part to me is just the perceived invincibility this small circle within the US administration has. You can find dozens of articles with a search limited to Feb 1~Feb 27, plenty of analysis warning of the risks that have now become reality, everything - the strait, no revolution, further radicalization, critically low US stockpiles, abandoning other US partners, gulf destabilization, etc. In the fantasy im…

It's not just this administration. Everything with the US military has been going clearly downhill since the Millennium Challenge 2002. [1] It was, appropriately enough, a wargame simulating an invasion of Iran. It was a major event involving preparation in years and thousands of individual operators. When it was carried out the invading force was defeated by unexpected resources and resourcefulness from the Iranian…

MC2002 was not primarily a wargame to develop operational plans. You can do that much easier and cheaper with a bunch of generals around a map. MC2002 was a training exercise with an element of competitiveness to pressure people under unexpected situations. As a training exercise its prime goal was not to figure out what plans were best but to just exercise plans and get people to do the plan, period. Given that, events that stopped the training exercise, like missileing all the ships, were retcon'd in order to do what the exercise was supposed to do, train people

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#649

Post by nostrademons »

bossyTeacher wrote: post #554
nostrademons wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a huge difference between buying a solar panel once and having it generate energy for the next 30 years vs. buying a barrel of oil now and consuming it by next week. It's the same difference as buying a house now and owning it until it collapses vs. renting a house and being at the mercy of your landlord, or buying a piece of shrink-wrapped software and using it for the next 18 years vs. renting a SaaS subsc…

>It's the same difference as buying a house now and owning it until it collapses vs. renting a house and being at the mercy of your landlord, I always take issue with the expression "buying a house now" when you actually mean "pay a mortgage for a house now". With a mortgage, you are at the mercy of the bank and whatever contract you signed. With a rent tenancy, you are at the mercy of the landlord and whatever contr…

For some people "buying a house now" actually does mean "buying a house now, with cash". My mom bought her last house with cash - she just rolled over the money from the sale of my childhood home, which they paid off in the 80s. I needed a mortgage for mine, but now that I have it I'm clinging to my 2.75% rate, it's less than I can make with basically every other investment. In Silicon Valley it's not uncommon for people to buy houses (even $4-6M ones) with cash because they're sitting on an 8-figure exit.

Even besides that, there is a dramatic difference between a typical (U.S.) mortgage that locks your payments for 30 years, and a month-to-month rental where your rent can go up next month. It's the same difference as buying a solar panel that fixes your costs for 30 years vs. paying whatever electricity rates the local utility charges this month.

(And there is also a dramatic difference between having 1 boss vs. 10 clients vs. 1000 customers vs. 3 billion users. The amount you can ignore any one of them goes up exponentially, and the risk that they will all stop paying you goes down correspondingly.)

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#650

Post by fblp »

nl wrote: post #632

I think the correct way of viewing this war is around internal White House power games. I don't think Trump himself particularly cares about Iran (or indeed Israel) - as in I don't think he has strong heartfelt views or moral convictions that cause him to act one way or the other in the strategic sense. But there are those in the White House who do. My impression from afar is that JD Vance wouldn't have been very sup…

Of those options I'd guess Hedgseth as he seems to be the one cheering the war and also using Christian rhetoric. Trump has also suggested he may have relied on Hedgseths advice to scapegoats Hedgseth in recent days..
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