>The era of carrier-dominated airpower is fading, as cheap, unmanned anti-ship weapons reshape naval warfare, whether US planners are ready for it or not. is not really backed up by reality. Pretty much the whole US operation so far, destroying much of Iran's military and leadership was done from US carriers. If anything it demonstrates how powerful they are. Also straits being closed to shipping by whatever power co…
>destroying much of Iran's military and leadership was done from US carriers. If anything it demonstrates how powerful they are. When you have a hammer that costs billions of dollars in budget you tend to find excuses to use it lest you lose that budget. Imagine if their were no carriers. US airpower just takes off from gulf state airbases and same thing happens to iran. Unless the US is fighting an air battle in the…
Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
951–960 of 1001 posts
Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
#952Earlier quoted context omitted.
All this does in the long run is set the stage for another 9/11.
With respect, this is such a terrible position. This view basically says that we should accept terrorists regimes to do what they want because if they don’t, they will commit terrorisk against us. That is not the right way to deal with bad actors.
Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
#953Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US no longer uses its army for defense. Nobody in their immediate region dares attack them, they're too powerful ("Godzilla", in the words of John Mearsheimer). All the wars that the US has fought since WWII are nothing to do with defense. Just look at the Wikipedia article on "power projection": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_projection The leader image is ... a US aircraft carrier (the USS Nimitz). That's…
>The whole of US society seems to be extremely tired with those "forever wars", This is the main thing I would disagree with, as an American who rubs elbows with conservatives quite a bit. A large amount of Republican and conservative Americans want war. They're primed for a war they haven't had this generation. There are a lot of relatively young conservatives who are eager for war. A weird number of Republicans don…
Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
#954Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you think the number of people in Iran matters? I think most of what you said is just speculation, not founded on reality. The only thing that would stop the US from invading Iran in under 3 months is political will. Russia doesn't have the scale and power of the US airforce, or the ability to project that power using the US navy and all the bases in the middle-east. Any comparison with russia at all makes me…
Ufff, just to be clear: Are you saying that invading and conquering Iran won't be much more difficult than doing the same for Afghanistan? I want some of the good stuff you are using!
Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
#955Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ufff, just to be clear: Are you saying that invading and conquering Iran won't be much more difficult than doing the same for Afghanistan? I want some of the good stuff you are using!
The non-war obsessed normies are something to behold, that's for sure. Most probably the GP has never looked at the FPV videos coming out of Ukraine, or maybe he somehow thinks that US soldiers are Terminator-like machines who would have nothing to fear from aerial drones.
I'm sure US troops will be plenty terrified, and there will be lots of casualties, you just made that argument on my behalf so you could have something to win. The amount of fear or the level of sheer human carnage on either side does not affect the outcome. Like I said in my post, if these factors affect political will in the US, Iran will win, if not then US military will not take very long, despite the costs, to achieve victory. It will not be defeated on grounds of "drones", terrain, Iran being well prepared, or oil prices.
Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
#956Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you think the number of people in Iran matters? I think most of what you said is just speculation, not founded on reality. The only thing that would stop the US from invading Iran in under 3 months is political will. Russia doesn't have the scale and power of the US airforce, or the ability to project that power using the US navy and all the bases in the middle-east. Any comparison with russia at all makes me…
> Iran can threaten just about any US interest in the region but not the US homeland itself. Much thanks to the impenetrable Mexico border, through which no foul thing has ever slipped past... /s Iran can very much sneak drones into the US and do an Operation Spiderweb-style attack. Won't happen next week, but Russia thought they were done in 3 weeks.
Read what i said again, even with Russia, the one thing that can defeat them the most is loss of political will, just like with the US. If Iran attacks even one civilian US target, that's the ammunition Trump needs to keep fighting, and to get his war fund approved all he wants. Why would Iran want that? If you said Ramestien (within their reach), that would be more reasonable, but even then, that draws in NATO. Ukraine is attacking Russian soldiers and military targets by drones, Iran doesn't have much US military targets other than the ones that are specifically there to engage with it as part of the conflict. If a serious enough attack on US soil took place, that is the exact worst scenario where the circus in the whitehouse will be talking about nukes (and that's why I suppose the WHO is preparing for a nuclear disaster).
Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
#957Earlier quoted context omitted.
All this does in the long run is set the stage for another 9/11.
With respect, this is such a terrible position. This view basically says that we should accept terrorists regimes to do what they want because if they don’t, they will commit terrorisk against us. That is not the right way to deal with bad actors.
You don't deal with bad actors by becoming a bad actor yourself. If the US really wanted to deal with 'the terrorists' (by your definition) then they should start with ensuring that there is no risk of increasing their numbers as a result of the operations performed. Failing at that is an automatic own goal because now you've turned a problem into a larger problem.
Terrorism is the typical response of any group that isn't able to wage war in the preferred manner of the perceived enemy. But nicely declared wars between nation states are an imaginary thing, every nation that ever went to war pretended they had the moral high ground, brought a suitcase full of fig leaves and usually some holy scripture or some other book to prove that theirs was the just cause. Solving that takes unity, time, massive amounts of money and the ability to introspect. If you don't bring all of those (or even none of those) to the table then the only thing you will achieve is that you will end up in a (possibly much) worse place than where you were before.
Lumping everybody in Iran under the 'terrorists' banner is just as stupid as lumping everybody in Israel under the 'zionists' banner. Neither is going to lead to a resolution, all you will end up achieving is more war, more people dead and another century or so added to this conflict. But I'm not surprised. Trump & Co are categorically incapable of planning anything that takes longer than a news cycle, whether it is making changes to the White House or trying to grab some more oil.
Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
#958Earlier quoted context omitted.
"After 9/11, there's no world in which any attack on the US homeland, however small or local, is met with anything other than overwhelming retribution." Ok, just follow through with the logic. If the US 'flatteNed' Cuba (like Gaza) in response to a few drones - it would 100% make the US 'The Evil Empire' and turn the world 100% against America as a neo fascist entity. The costs would be unthinkable, and probably the…
The whole thing is stupid. The US wouldn’t flatten Cuba. Only leftists think the Cuban people support the communists. It’s like that Hasab Piker saying “the good Cubans are still in Cuba but the ones in the US that don’t like communism are crazy.” The reality is we would decapitate their regime, kill all their top brass, blow up their military installations, probably gave some collateral damages, and then in a year t…
I couldn't imagine a delusional statement, considering we are literally at the moment, failing to 'change a regime' in an active war, once again!
The lack of self awareness here is ... scary.
Iran? Afghanistan? Iraq? Vietnam? Venezuela?
How many more lessons do you need, beyond than the one literally on your TV set right now ?
Here are some historical realities:
Nobody thinks of 'Castro Inc' as 'Communist' other than young folks on Reddit, or people listening to Joe Rogan.
Every adult - those living there, here, and elsewhere - know that Castro Inc. are ruthless authoritarians - their 'nominal communism' is barely relevant. Ideology is barely cover for anything as it is with all regimes.
If they have any residual popularity at all - it's for 'Standing up to America!' and those who held up the ancien regime in Cuba that 'Kept the people down!' - which has at least some historic resonance.
Nobody liked Saddam, nobody likes the Taliban, and the Communists in Vietnam were not popular in the South, and unlikely in the North as well.
Chavizmo had popular support, but that waned, and nobody likes the current regime.
And yet - where is all of this 'modern vehicles and commerce' in all these places?
The lack of self awareness is shocking.
The US ended up killing 100's of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Almost 1 million peopled died in Saddam's US-supported invasion of Iran.
The Israeli government has now admitted that up to 70K Arabs were killed in Gaza.
Many in the US have no problem bombing the smithereens out of civilians, so long as there can be some kind of populist cover for it even if it's totally disproportional.
If Castro Inc. were so irresponsible that they sent drones into a US base, it's entirely plausible that Trump Inc. bombs Cuba with enormous civilian collateral damage.
Whatever happens, the regime will not fall, thinking as much is a dangerous insult to reality.
The only way Cuba could be liberated by force is a 'full invasion', which is technically very feasible but completely unlikely, or, a long, protracted movement towards detente. That's it.
Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
#959Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is in large part because the US relies on their bases in allied countries at their grace.
We can remove them and do the isolationist thing as many have been clamoring for. Then we have no need for bases in Europe or the Middle East. Gulf States can figure out how to live with a nuclear armed Iran or one that has a repository of thousands of missiles to blow up gulf state infrastructure when they misbehave. We can remove the bases in Europe too, and when Russia invades Lithuania the Spanish and Germans can…
Honestly the US as a strategic partner is just a joke. its nothing but sigint.
Lets not even start on AUKUS.
Re: Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
#960Earlier quoted context omitted.
All this does in the long run is set the stage for another 9/11.
With respect, this is such a terrible position. This view basically says that we should accept terrorists regimes to do what they want because if they don’t, they will commit terrorisk against us. That is not the right way to deal with bad actors.