functor

functor 1mo ago

Then why are they getting through and hitting targets? Hitting something moving in 3D at several hundred km/h is far harder than you think.

Also it is 1000 km from Kuwait to the Indian ocean. That is a lot of ships with machine guns to cover that straight.

Ukraine has after years of building up anti Shahed defences a major issue with shaheds getting through. Often Russia uses saturation attacks with multiple drones against a single target.

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functor 1mo ago · Edited 1mo ago

Again, the US navy failed against the Houthis. The US had better geography in the red sea and a weaker opponent. The US navy runs into a major issue in both places. They can sit off the coast and get shot with no real way of actually winning. They can shoot down drones using several multi million dollar SAM that are in limited supply without achieving much. They are running into the same issues the US army ran into in Afghanistan except on a larger scale.

Besides, we have seen how the US military has failed at defending itself from incoming drones and missiles. The difference here is that there is a 5 billion dollar target on the recieving end.

From Kuwait to the Indian ocean is 1000 km. How many ships will this mission require? What will be the goal apart from having ships pass the same way they passed in January without the tremendous waste.

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functor 1mo ago

Iran hasn't developed nukes despite Israel kvetching about it for 30 years. Just like we needed a war in Iraq because of their WMD they are now selling us another regime change fiasco with the same lie.

The American navy passed ships through yesterday to begin de-mining and is now going to blockade the Strait.

They turned around after threats from the IRGC. The US navy failed to defeat the Houthis in a year of fighting and the US lost that war. This is far, far worse. There isn't going to be a battle with a winner. It is an asymmetric fight in which Iran can launch rockets and drones from hundreds of km inland along a thousand km cost and target ships. There is nothing that stops Iran from keeping to shoot. There is no winning. There is no defeating a decentralized war effort that takes occasional shots from a vast mountain region.

China has other oil sources and large reserves. Their economy is also far less oil intensive than the American one.

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functor 1mo ago

The US is a major oil importer and the US exports oil because it imports oil, refines it and sells the refined oil. The US isn't energy independent because the US doesn't produce enough diesel. The US has more light oil that it consumes but not enough of other grades.

The US isn't dictating terms. The US is desperate to open the straight and has abandoned all its original goals and adopted Iran's demands as a basis for negotiating.

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functor 1mo ago

Iraq doesn't have WMD, neither does Iran. I didn't fall for the first WMD war and I am not going to fall for it this time. In 20 years we will still be two weeks from Iran having nukes. If we don't want countries to develop nukes maybe a working strategy is to not threaten them with complete destruction.

What did The US win? They have lost access to the straight, driven up oil prices and not achieved any of the initial goals. The US is not safer with chaos in the middle east. US trade in the middle east won't improve.

What winning looks like is what China is doing. They are the biggest trading partner with almost every country in the middle east without having to waste trillions on forever wars.

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functor 1mo ago

Negotiations are often slow. Even negotiating a share holder agreement for my startup took months with everyone involved actually being friends. The peace agreement is an enormously complicated agreement and far more difficult to pull together. There are plenty of edge cases, nuances, definitions and to debate. The only treaty that can be signed in a day is an unconditional surrender.

Trump ran into the same issue with Russia. There was no way he could end the war with Russia in one day. There are far too many issues and each issue has a long list of sub issues.

The leading theory on this forum a week ago was that Trump was losing so badly he would accept any peace deal as long as it was face-saving and he could declare victory.

He hasn't lost until he has signed. He is kicking the can down the road and not taking the hit and signing a peace treaty. The US should have pulled out of Afghanistan at least 18 years earlier than it did. It was easier to continue the war than to take the short term loss and accept defeat.

I fear that denying this will have me marked as some kind of rabid Trump fanboy who can’t deal with reality but I have to point out that oil was much higher during the 2008 crisis,

That caused over indebted people to default on their loans which then caused a multi year economic crisis. If the straight is blocked for months this could drive oil prices far higher.

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functor 2mo ago

They levelled Gaza and couldn't win. They failed at fighting Yemen in the red sea for a year despite relentless bombing and couldn't get cargoships through. Epstein fury is a bigger failiure as the straight of Hormuz is closed so we can't have years of crusading for LGBTQXYZ in the middle east and mass immigration into Europe.

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functor 2mo ago

Another war that is supposed to spread woke values to the middle east and flood Europe with migrants. Luckily the refugee waves haven't been significant yet as the US is failing its war. These wars are destroying western civilization and it is a good thing that they turn into fiascos.

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functor 2mo ago

There is a big difference, LRASM is less than 1/3 bomb and the rest is missile. Since the US doesn't have bases near by and because of air defences the US is relying on expensive, difficult to manufacture and limited stockpiles of guided munitions. These are also the weapons the US is basing its plans for a war against Russia or China on. The school with 150 killed girls was hit by two tomahawk missiles. The US only manufactures a bit over 100 per year.

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functor 2mo ago

Hundreds of thousands died in Afghanistan and they completely failed. Bombing countries is far less effective and the bombing is minimal compared to Vietnam or Laos. Bombing barely worked at the scale that it was used during WWII. That scale simply isn't possible today.

The new Ayatollah is 56. He is less likely to suffer from dementia than various other world leaders.

The Gulf states asked us to do this.

Move away air defences, abadon bases and let them fend for themselves?

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functor 2mo ago

If killing leaders was a sign of success the US defeated the taliban 10x over. Loads of vietcong leaders died. The US replaced the Ayatollah with his son.

The air defences in the gulf states and Israel are so degraded that the number of successful strikes by Iran haven't diminished even though they are using less ammunition. Iran is holding 15 million barrels of oil a day hostage while the US can't even come close to doing anything that resembles winning. The US largely abandoned the gulf states and let them fend for themselves.

The Epstein fury has to fire expensive long range munitions that are of limited supply which clearly weakens them against China.

The US operation against China might be 2x the current size of Epstein fury which would be inadequate against China. The US has lost several long range SAM-systems and used an unsustainable amount of interceptors while failing to defend its bases in the region. With Chinese level of level of bombardment these bases would be completely smoked.

Compared to 2003 this invasion is lack luster and clearly shows the US would not be able to take out China.

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functor 2mo ago · Edited 2mo ago

They helped defeat ISIS.

Two of their neighboring countries were occupied for long periods of time with well over a million dead as a result. Why wouldn't they help them?

The big refugee waves from Europe came from US military interventions that Iran helped shut down

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functor 2mo ago

Purity test as in not doing a massive regime change war in Iran?

What is the limit? How low can the republicans sink while the base stays loyal? Americans should do what the British are doing by abandoning the torries en mass

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functor 2mo ago

I am going to laugh quite bitterly if this whole Iranian adventure turns out to have as a promary purpose being the least-PR-unfriendly method of ending the Houthis: by removing their sponsor and letting the Saudis take care of them out of the public eye, as rooting them out via US boots on the ground would create remarkably negative photos for the domestic crowd.

twelve years of bombing Houthis did nothing. The US lost its largest naval operation since world war 2 against houthis that have no navy.

Iran has way more capable systems in far larger numbers when it comes to disturbing shipping and way better geography.

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functor 2mo ago

The US public doesn't want this war and there is a reason why Trump ran on America first and opposition to war rather than neoconservatism.

The republican position is that these wars are a giant waste, lead to massive refugee waves, cost trillions, kill Americans and grow the surveillance state. There is a reason why Matt Walsh, Nick Fuentes, Thomas Massie and Tucker are going hard against this war. It is a war for big government that kills typically red coded voters.

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functor 2mo ago

Israel is currently occupying parts of Syria after bombing Syria and backing jihadists for years. They are currently expanding their territory on the west bank. The few thousands of jews who lived there can stay. The Eastern Europeans can go live somewhere else.

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functor 2mo ago

There have been christians there for 2000 years so why aren't all christians allowed to move there?

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functor 2mo ago

Yet people who haven't lived there for 2000 years are allowed to move to Israel.

Israel is continuing to attack its neighbours, continuing to steal land and continuing to attack christians.

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