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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   26039 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026

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https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/more-marines-heading-to-middle-east-as-u-s-continues-relentless-strikes-on-iran

Around 2,500 U.S. Marines are heading for the Middle East, along with a Navy amphibious warship. Their mission is not yet clear, but it signals a marked increase in U.S. forces in the region.

To my knowledge, US ground forces have not been meaningfully involved in the Iran conflict. It appears that this might be changing.

What strategic objectives would 2,500 marines be able to achieve in the context of this conflict? Are the islands in the strait important enough to capture but far enough from the Iranian mainland to actually hold? I'll admit that I am no expert in this. At the moment all I can do is hope none of my relatives get deployed and hope for the best.

So US is coming for real.

Can they win despite all? According to our former mottizen @KulakRevolt, yes.

See CatGirl Plan for Epic Furry Victory.

If I can nitpick, CG overestimates the need for draft - Russian experience shows that big country can recruit rather large forces voluntarily just for cash.

Why drafting people when you can rev up printing press once more and promise millions in cash for signing up. Lots of disadvantaged Americans would take the offer as eagerly as Russians from rural areas.

Realistically, if there is any plan, it will will involve Azerbaijan moving from the north. The Azeri army was built up in the last 30 years by NATO and Israel exactly for this purpose, it was never about holy rocks of Artsakh/Karabakh.

KulakRevolt has a long history of outlandish failed geopolitical predictions and should be read more as entertainment than as prophecy.

My personal favorite being a strong prediction that Egypt would invade Israel after Oct 6th in support of Hamas

Yeah his predictions are real 'alternate timeline' stuff. Deliberately or not, his predictions are things he would like to see (or more cynically, things his followers want to see and will spike engagement).

I remember his flameout post here seemed designed to be as polarising and ostentatious as possible.

CG overestimates the need for draft

Most Americans, including those in the 18-35 age range, cannot join the Army because they're too fat and/or they smoke weed or take other illegal drugs and/or they've declared bankruptcy and/or they've been found guilty of a crime and/or they're not smart enough and/or they have a medical condition.

The uniformed services raise and lower their standards slightly in order to make recruitment goals, but most people still can't join the military when they're at their lowest. And the DoD has been on record for decades that the worst thing that could happen to the organization would be to suffer under Vietnam-era style draft again. It makes for far worse combat units.

If the military services were forced by the politicians to accept people via a draft, I suspect they'd create units specifically to sequester those people so they'd never get in the way of the professional force.

I think Kulak severely overestimates the offensive capabilities of the Iranians. They can't bring millions of human wave tactics against the US Army. Any attempt to mass such forces and they'll be flattened in short order by the US Airforce. Also given the fragility of the Iranian regime I question their ability to give millions of unvetted conscripts guns. If going against the Americans means certain death and going against the Mullahs means that airforce fights for you... well I expect any mass conscription to end it short order. And speaking of conscription the Gulf states lack the population base for his proposed cannon fodder, they have a tiny population of citizens and those citizens are fat and happy they aren't going to go die in the Iranian mountains for Israel nor will their monarchs send them to.

We don't need a draft anyway though because America could conquer the two provinces he mentions with just the national guard. He whole analysis assumes they Iranians will be able to fling millions of men at the US which they won't because of America's overwhelming airpower.

Bribes won't work in a prosperous capitalist economy, you can't just pump money into the demand for young workers without driving the price up prohibitively.

If pure manpower is a concern for the USA, the best route would obviously be the Roman one: we've got millions of able bodied men dying to become American citizens at the border.

The problem for the American military is that the all volunteer army is what makes the army so damn effective. Once you start impressing low human capital into the army, you lose effectiveness in a hurry.

without driving the price up prohibitively.

Why would that be a limiting factor? If the economic-political situation gets so screwed up we're considering a draft or mass service-for-citizenship scheme, it would be entirely feasible for the government to redirect american economic productivity from old-age healthcare to military power. It wouldn't exactly be very popular, but nothing about this is anyway.

Because we have 4% unemployment, so every soldier payed to go overseas vacates a job in America, which will then need to increase wages to attract workers, which will then lead to increased bribes to attract soldiers. I suppose in the short term one can outrun the wheel of inflation, but not in the long term.

Disadvantaged Americans aren't as desperate as disadvantaged Russians, nor are they fit for military service. You could force the probation roster into the Army without too much fuss from other people, probably, but the US army wouldn't be exactly thrilled to have them.

We basically give every citizen free health care, food stamps, and section 8 free housing. The middle class is squeezed but all the people you could bribe to get drafted are already getting paid.

You would need to gut the free stuff program to get people to take money to enter the military.

Well, the poorest of the poor don't tend to join the army very often- the working class and middle classes dominate enlistment. These people might be on CHIP or something but they're not getting huge welfare assistance, nor do they need it. The military is attractive out of economic necessity to the recently shotgun married and that's about it, and they're also mostly already in the army.

Kulak clearly says that the US will fuck it up somehow, that the actual plan will be way more shambolic and half-cocked and sure to fail.

I agree. Also, Azerbaijan is probably weak to drones/missiles. They don't want to lose their oil do they? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to profit off the price spike than potentially get wrecked?

Kushner is shaping Trump’s behavior as you would a child or a dog. “Command the Marines over, that will scare Iran into capitulation. What, they didn’t capitulate? They don’t respect you at all! Get the marines on the boat, that will make them surrender. It didn’t work? Then we have to launch one tiny landing, otherwise America appears weak. You know Kharg Island doesn’t even count as Iran...”

This smells like cope.

Trump has been a public figure for over three decades and over the course of those three decades he has remarkably consistent. I think that you are just salty that your team is not on top.

search “go to war”, second result https://www.c-span.org/program/campaign-2024/former-president-trump-campaigns-with-tucker-carlson-in-glendale-arizona/651374

I was referring to spectacle of AWLs trying to paint Trump as some sort of senescent meat-puppet after having spent 4 years running interference for president autopen.

Trump's been talking about Iran for decades and if you thought this administration was going to sit quietly by and let Iranian regime and their proxies take potshots at our allies and ignore clearly stated red-lines without a response, After all the drama with DOGE, After all the drama with ICE, After snatching Maduro, you have not been paying attention.

Trump in 1988:

I'd be harsh on Iran. They've been beating us psychologically, making us look a bunch of fools. One bullet shot at one of our men or ships and I’d do a number on Kharg Island. I'd go in and take it. Iran can't even beat Iraq, yet they push the United States around. It'd be good for the world to take them on.

1988 Iran is not 2026 Iran. Drones + their ballistic program.

Yes, obviously.

Mu.

Can you account for the Donald having the idea of whacking Kharg Island 40 years Before Kushner? Or was I taking you too literally?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis

It’s definitely a parallel to the current conflict, it’s just the drones and missiles make it no longer rational to take Kharg. It’s no longer the rational thing to do, so someone is telling him to do it. Even John Bolton (!) is skeptical of how prepared we are.

My pessimistic prediction is: small landing; American soldiers die by drones; American news reports rumors that Iran will release the drone videos (they would not because they’re not that retarded); together this propaganda promotes further action by Trump + public; somewhere along there is an Israeli false flag in America; greater ground troops; many Americans die and trillions wasted because of Israeli by 2030

2500 is about the size of crew, pilots, and troops for either an LHA or LHD. Per USNI'S Fleet Tracker there's currently one near Japan, and one in the Caribbean. Would provide a bit of added firepower (F-35s, Harriers, Ospreys, etc., plus more anti-sub capabilities), and the threat of some shore/harbor activities.

Edit: word is that it's the TRIPOLI & strike group. So in addition to the TRIPOLI, that's one Tico and one Burke coming from the area of Japan.

No, don't ask about why ship sizes don't seem to match up with what you'd think based on their "Frigate vs. Destroyer vs. Cruiser" classification.

No, don't ask about why ship sizes don't seem to match up with what you'd think based on their "Frigate vs. Destroyer vs. Cruiser" classification.

Isn't classification about what they do and not how big they are. Same as with tanks - which could lead to heavy tank sometimes being lighter than medium ones.

I think there's also a habit in some places to classify larger ships that would generally be termed "destroyer" due to their anti-air and/or anti-submarine capabilities as "frigates" because that sounds less scary.

At the risk of dramatic oversimplification, I think in modern parlance (at least in the west) there's been a tendency to use "frigate, destroyer" and perhaps "cruiser" to mean "small, medium, and large" because the trend is for ~all ships to have at least limited multirole capabilities. Unless someone was calling something a "frigate" to be politically correct, I cannot think of any ships in the recent past labeled frigates that were designed to be larger than the contemporary destroyers in their own fleet, and likewise the cruisers have always been larger than contemporary destroyers.

I think there's also a habit in some places to classify larger ships that would generally be termed "destroyer" due to their anti-air and/or anti-submarine capabilities as "frigates" because that sounds less scary.

Japan goes even further - they call their aircraft carriers destroyers!

EDIT: Though apparently they've been upgraded to cruisers.

That's because of something something "defensive weapons only" in their constitution, right?

The Russians also designated their carriers "aircraft carrying cruisers" due to the Montreux Convention, which is pretty funny, although in fairness the Soviets put substantial anti-ship armament on said ships.

Unless someone was calling something a "frigate" to be politically correct, I cannot think of any ships in the recent past labeled frigates that were designed to be larger than the contemporary destroyers in their own fleet, and likewise the cruisers have always been larger than contemporary destroyers.

Although sometimes a "destroyer will be larger than the current "cruisers" (but not any cruisers in production, granted, since there are none atm, and CG(X) would have been larger than the Zumwalts). A lot of it is political, as you said -- people have different reactions to different ship "classes" (see also: the Trump-class "Battleship" which, granted, is designed to be f-off huge).

the Trump-class "Battleship"

It is big, but isn't this thing a bit light on the firepower?

I've seen a lot of discussion about that, with various ideas tossed around, but this is all just aimless speculation so far.

Some people say they just made it big to appeal to Trump's ego, with no real thought behind it. In that line of thinking, the extra tonnage is just a mistake.

Some people say, it's a work in progress. The extra size can easily be filled up with more missiles like the old "arsenal ship" concepts with 500 missiles.

Some people say, it's a political maneuver to get Congress to fund what they really want, which is a future Cruiser/Destroyer. So just take that armament, but away the excess tons, and call it a destroyer/cruiser.

Some people say, it's not necessarily a bad thing to have some extra tonnage. It's relatively cheap to build extra steel with nothing fancy inside of it, and it adds room for future improvements to the ship. It's proposed with three untested weapons systems (high energy lasers, railgun, and hypersonic missiles), and maybe nukes, so they might as well wait a bit to see how those shake up before committing to any one big weapon system. Some extra tonnage also helps a bit with survivability, which makes it a bit more of a real "battleship."

Some people say, it's not necessarily a bad thing to have some extra tonnage. It's relatively cheap to build extra steel with nothing fancy inside of it, and it adds room for future improvements to the ship.

My understanding that an issue we are currently hitting with the Burke class is that we basically kept throwing new systems on there (we also increased the size of the ship over time, the first ships in the class didn't even have a helicopter hangar) until we basically tapped out the potential.

Yeah, it makes sense. Reading Bean's blog, i got the sense that the reason the Burke class was so successful was that they designed it with enough space to handle decades of future upgrades, but that's really tapped out now.

I think a lot of people were claiming it had fewer VLS per tonnage than anticipated, but I wouldn't be surprised if we saw some degree of "right-sizing" before it's executed.

If the Navy can get a railgun to really work the firepower will be terrifying.

Nuclear-powered warships with banks of railguns is my personal dream.

The Navy hasn't returned my calls in a very long time.

Yeah I am disappointed that they don't seem interested in putting reactors in. I guess there are good reasons, with the new propulsion methods, not to do that, but it makes sense to me to have a class of nuclear-powered cruiser escorts designed to accompany carriers. And if railguns and/or lasers Become Real, it would be simple enough to reload their munitions at sea.

(You can reload VLS cells at sea anyway, it's just painful, but a larger ship would probably be able to do that regardless if you wanted it to.)

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Zumwalt

Man I always complete forget that the Zumwalt exists. Pretty fair to compare them to the Tico, I think, so that is at least a halfway good counterexample and probably a decent illustration of @Lizzardspawn's point.

Although it kinda seems like we should class them as a monitor, given their intended function.

Man I always complete forget that the Zumwalt exists

Yeah, it's a stealth ship, that's how it works.

Lockheed Martin be like "okay but how do we market...what kind of countermeasure was it again?"

"Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, seriously, what the hell is it?"

It's like they started out with a submarine then forgot what they were doing half-way through.

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It might be useful to have marines around if intelligence identifies a coastal town being used as a hub for minelaying/drone strikes. You want those assets in the area if you try forcing the strait open and then discover you need to do an amphibious landing.

Trump just announced they destroyed all military targets on Kharg Island, so, presumably they'll conquer that?

Kharg Island, I have learned through situation monitoring, is the way Iran processes 90% or so if its oil for export.

I have no idea how sane this is. Maybe it'll be fine?

Sounds like more bad news for oil prices.

At worst we are seeing a slow but emerging strategy of just running Iran into the ground like with Syria and all the rest. Where sub par targets get selected due to a lack of better options. The decision makers have to make decisions, after all.

Iran deserves it way more than Syria did. They are one power I would not mind being run into the ground. If Europe decides to let all their retaliatory terrorists in, that's their fault.

This sounds like genocidal lunacy. What on earth did the average Iranian or Syrian do to deserve any of this? What should Europe do in the face of a giant refugee crisis? Create a humanitarian disaster in Jordan and Turkey? Let them starve at the border? Shoot them if they do anything else?

Maybe I'm being to hasty and my instinctive revulsion to your point of view is just a matter of ignorance on my part. Why do you say such things?

What on earth did the average Iranian or Syrian do to deserve any of this?

The average nobody did anything. I don't know of any nation ever where, from top to bottom, every single person was wicked. You can say they voted for it, they tacitly supported it, whatever. Germany, Japan, the Serbs, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, none of these countries were filled with vile people who "deserved" carpet bombing, starvation, embargoes, displacement, whatever. It's the nature of nations that when they get involved on the world stage, war is often the only way to get what you want.

The question is what you want, and how badly.

People roll out the World War 2 examples because they're pretty cut and dry, and the closest example in a western, developed sense we have to the present. "We want you to stop invading and conquering others, and our roughly evenly matched forces will make a push all the way into your country to make you stop." Superpowers with precision munitions (remember this part) did not exist. A global economy, such as we have now, did not exist. Cheap travel and the resultant mass migration did not exist!

Oh, and live broadcasting of the war didn't exist either.

But to the point, people will defend those wars as just - and I agree with them - despite the fact that the civilian tolls are so staggering they don't even register even with an aid. The lasting debate of civilian casualties from that war, the nuclear bombings of Japan, often dies in its throat when many of the people who consider it an atrocity don't even know that the firebombing of Tokyo produced around as many casualties as a nuclear bombing in a single night (I would much rather die to a nuclear blast than an incendiary firestorm, for what it's worth). This is to say nothing of the bombing campaigns across Germany, which were specifically designed - given the failure of precision bombing promised by the Norden bombsight and massive air casualties the Allies endured as a result - to reduce a city to being ineffective. They didn't want to kill civilians. Okay, maybe Harris did after the Battle of Britain. But generally, the purpose was not to inflict needless and horrifying casualties. It was all they could do to prosecute the war until the Germans and Japanese capitulated. Note that in Germany's case the bombing alone did not do this and it took massive ground movements to do so all the way into Berlin itself, but the bombing made those ground advances easier.

Did those civilians deserve it? It's a rhetorical question, because of course they didn't. But it's just irrelevant once you are the citizen of a nation that another nation has determined it has just cause to prosecute war against you. No amount of justification of geopolitics will make it okay to the people who die in the crossfire. They suffer and die and all their dreams are lost for something impossibly bigger than they are, that they could have not possibly changed on an individual level.

This is the reason I brought up superpowers with precision munitions, global economies, cheap travel, and the media. Because by Vietnam we lost the stomach for the same type of campaign pretty much overnight. I will find the source, but there has been a lot of talk about how North Vietnam was desperate by the early 70s. Bombings of Hanoi were driving their nation, not the guerillas, but the nation, into disaster. Had the US bombed them as mercilessly as Japan or Germany, they likely would have caused the nation of North Vietnam to fail. Whether that's enough to have killed communism in Vietnam is up to debate, and I'd say it's unlikely, but it would have prevented the immediate rolling of the conventional NVA over South Vietnam after the US withdrawal. But at this point, the war was broadcast, and things like napalm girl and the Saigon Execution photos made people see how awful geopolitics is on a micro level. Weapons were becoming actually precise, and people were asking if such things were necessary. I'd say they're only necessary if you want to actually defeat the nation you're fighting.

This is not, by the way, a defense of the Vietnam war or that it was a good idea from the outset. But once you're in the fight, and you have the objective to defeat one nation and preserve another, there's a cost. The US, via politics and bad strategy (read up on William Westmoreland if you're interested) did not do what needed to be done, so all that happened was South Vietnam fell anyway and the US took a huge hit to its credibility on the world stage.

This debate persists to now, and is even more pointed. Everything is livestreamed, and weapons are so precise that we now expect zero civilian casualties, and anything more is a massive scandal. To the point that Obama is considered a maniac because he killed an estimate of 116 civilians with drone strikes. Tell that to the average American from 1945 and they'd call him a genius on no other level.

This is, again, not a justification for untargeted mass bombardment. This is also not a defense of bad intel, or misusing precision weapons in a way that kills innocent bystanders. Again, even down to one person, what difference does the geopolitical or military targeting situation make? They're dead. They've lost everything for nothing. But I ask what a nation is supposed to do if it has determined that another nation is an enemy, and diplomacy has failed, and it has determined that it must proceed militarily to, put coldly, get what what it wants. If the idea that a civilian death is a tragedy that invalidates the righteousness of the cause, then in a sense I am happy that the average person who thinks these things is so far removed from the idea of war being an existential threat. Certainly it is not for someone living in the US or most of Europe at this point in time (the situation is different for Israel, regardless of your position; it's a fact that they have enemies within and without that are in striking distance and I suspect it's a large reason that the population wasn't clamoring for the war to slow down after October 7th). I don't mean this as a jab, either; it's a miracle we live in the world we do. But at the end of the day, going to war is going to kill a fair bit of people who have nothing to do with it in any meaningful way, because you won't achieve your objectives otherwise.

Make your accusations of Israeli excesses and I'm going to agree. Denounce bad US intel for strikes, or a bad overall strategy, and I'm game there. But this is an argument that is rolled up in more practical criticisms of wars in general and I don't find it compelling, horrible as it may sound. At the outset we know a war is going to kill innocents. But if there's an objective that can only be achieved militarily - and given the constant abuse of diplomatic agreements and funding of militias throughout the Middle East, I'm going to say there's a fair argument for Iran - that's the price.

As to your other questions, I don't have an answer. It's up to Europe to decide what its border and refugee policies are, though if I lived there I'd definitely be in "turn them back no matter what" mode no matter what. I also don't find the idea of Iran splitting into a bunch of ISIS-style warlords very plausible. It's a country that is much more united in religious and racial demographics. You aren't going to have Sunni paramilitary groups gobble up the country, nor are you going to have massive racial violence (and if you did, the Persians would just win). Syria was the last gasp of Ba'ath/pan-arab/secular dictatorship against the tribal infighting and Wahhabism that is inherent to Arab nations. I don't see them collapsing the same way.

Again, it all falls onto whether Iran is a valid target, and if it's worth the squeeze. The comment you're replying to does, and I'd be pretty happy to see the regime fall too. Civilian casualties (let me edit this and say civilian casualties on any sort of normal scale) just aren't a reason not to do it. Call it cold, but geopolitics is fuckin' cold.

The US, via politics and bad strategy (read up on William Westmoreland if you're interested)

That wikipedia article was an interesting read, thanks. The most fascinating thing to me is how he jumped around in rank. He went from O2 -> O4, O6 -> O3, O4->O7->O5->O8. I can't fathom a military career like that these days.

Military promotions used to be absolutely insane, especially in World War 2 with rapid replacements and battlefield commissions. Vietnam was less, to my knowledge, but chosen ones like Westmoreland still existed. For the life of me I can't understand why he was a chosen one, though.

I saw some really good talks about Westmoreland. The one that really opened my eyes is here.

It says (temporary) under a lot of those. Temporary because he was demoted later on, or temporary by initial intention?

After all the temporary ranks he goes back to the "normal" rank. These read like wartime field promotions to me where they need someone to fill the spot and he's the only one available. I just never heard of anyone getting demoted after those. Going from colonel to captain, or general to major is mind blowing.

We have established two important things that we agree on:

  • Civilian casualties bad, but will happen in war.

  • We need a good reason to go to war, partly because civilian casualties bad.

The two points of contention were:

  • Why do the Iranians and Syrians deserve civilian casualties.

  • What will be the result of Europe turning the refugees away.

Neither of these were answered.

What I'm looking for is a distinction between the good and the bad. Why, for instance, was Oct. 7 bad? Or 9/11? If genocide is a militarily winning strategy, was the holocaust bad?

You might want to stop me here and mention that these questions don't need to have moral answers. Things happen. The causal chain of events that drives us towards our next disaster is too vast and complex for such simple terms. And I'm perfectly willing to recognize the salience of that position. But until that is done consistently, is there any reason for me to do so? Because the mainstream line has been that all of the above were bad, Iran also bad and that America is morally good. It is especially when America is doing morally bad that geopolitical realism is trudged out, claiming that, in reality, America needs to do bad to ultimately do good!

But even then. If we set morals aside, this Iran incursion can hardly be considered a positive move on the geopolitical side of things. If worst come to wear and there is a big refugee crisis, everyone knows Europe wont say no. They will let them in. Nations that are in a very precarious position demographically. Economies facing all manner of crises. This is practically every single modern ally the US has. How can this be justified?

Why do the Iranians and Syrians deserve civilian casualties.

I touched on it a bit for Iran, but in short:

  1. Funded/armed/directed Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraqi Shia militias (a very large part of why Iraq is dangerous), and the Houthis, as in basically every major destabilizing group except ISIS/Syrian variants.
  2. Killed US servicemembers with those Shia militias even when we were not militarily involved in Iran
  3. Nominally aligned with China and Russia, receiving arms from them and lining their pockets (I think this is A Bad Thing because I do not like China and Russia as adversaries)
  4. Fucked around with nuclear capabilities while making "death to America" an official slogan
  5. Is a brutally repressive regime. Not a good enough reason on its own, but usually a given in these situations and also a reason that the civilian casualties caused by military action may be offset by a regime change. This is more likely true for Iran than Syria.

Points 1, 3, and 5 also applied to Syria, and back to geopolitics I like for there to be less nations that are economically and militarily aligned and supported by Russia and China. I am explicitly for American dominance on the world stage because that means I am more likely to keep enjoying the benefits of a giant and very defensible united land mass that is far from war in all its forms.

What will be the result of Europe turning the refugees away.

Presupposes a tide of refugees which I am not inclined to think will happen (I touched on this in my first comment). I'd also mention that even if it did happen, overall Iranians are a good bit more westernized, less Wahhabist (that's a Sunni thing!), less tribal, and less teen-rapey than the current stock in Europe (to oversimplify, Syrian in the mainland, Pakistani in the UK), so a few refugees from there are more likely to integrate unless they do the whole "we'll just import young and pissed off men" thing again. Even then, I doubt they're nearly as bad as what we see now.

Persians are not Arabs, and will proudly tell you so, and that's for the better.

Funded/armed/directed Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraqi Shia militias (a very large part of why Iraq is dangerous), and the Houthis, as in basically every major destabilizing group except ISIS/Syrian variants.

Killed US servicemembers with those Shia militias even when we were not militarily involved in Iran

To be clear you only oppose this on the grounds that this is harmful to US interest in the region, which you support based on personal prosperity, not that these attacks were unjustified or unrelated to US provocation that might have caused them.

To that extent I'm having a hard time aligning myself with your position from a geopolitical point of view. Iran, and tell me if our history does not match up here, wanted the same thing you want for yourself. Peace and prosperity. To that end they wanted control over their natural resources. Resources that the US and UK were making use of. This leads to a very clear incursion into Iran by these nations. Which ties into reason 3, 4 and 5. What else is a nation to do when foreign entities so clearly disrupt their process of self determination?

I get it, 'aw shucks, sucks to suck, now give us the oil' but given the cost, past failures and losses, and how far the US has moved forward, and how quickly and drastically technology has bettered our standard of living, can any of this be rationally justified anymore? It feels like a giant sunk cost fallacy. Where a list of old grievances gets trudged out to justify an evergoing tit for tat that is of no tangible benefit to American or Iran.

Presupposes a tide of refugees which I am not inclined to think will happen

I don't think it will happen either. Which is why I said it would be a worst case scenario. But even then, we are comparing potential cost and benefit. The cost being overloading Europe with refugees. And there is no contingency or plan. Americas allies in Europe will be weighted down even more. Further carrying the indirect cost of American incursions in the middle east. I ask, how can this be rationally justified? I get that personal prosperity is important, but at some point the calculus stops adding up. I have a genuinely hard time believing that you believe that America is having its interest served by risking their already weak allies and their precarious position for whatever it is you think is being gained by this campaign into Iran.

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If genocide is a militarily winning strategy, was the holocaust bad?

Are you comparing the holocaust to "deaths caused by military bombing/heavy weapons"?

I'm comparing things generally considered to be bad by Americans with the morally neutral geopolitical framework supplied by LazyLongposter. Which I think he is using to selectively justify Americans doing things we all known are morally bad.

As he stated, the US could have won the war in Vietnam had they just intentionally bombed the civilians harder. But because doing such things is too awful in the eyes of the public, the US stopped. Using that morally neutral standard, what is the problem with the holocaust? Killing your enemy is a winning strategy. Is it better to starve to death in camp than it is to be burned alive in a firestorm that was intentionally created by dropping incendiary bombs on wooden residential areas?

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Sub par targets? Kharg Island is one of the most important targets in any Iranian scenario because it’s where all the oil gets processed. Please stop thinking in hour-long news cycles and imagine what an Iranian operation would look like if it was planned to take five weeks and we were only halfway into it.

imagine what an Iranian operation would look like if it was planned to take five weeks and we were only halfway into it.

I like this game we're playing where there's definitely a plan that's been clearly communicated, if you ignore half of what POTUS says, a third of what the SecState says, and two thirds of what the SecWar says.

Why do you think that press releases are a reflection of the true plan? I'd argue the opposite - that the Trump admin uses deliberate strategic ambiguity in their public statements. To quote 2016 candidate Trump: "I don't want to broadcast to the enemy exactly what my plan is."

Why do you think that press releases are a reflection of the true plan?

Because that's been the expectation of every American president in wartime basically forever. That the president and his administration would clearly communicate the causes of the war, the motivations behind the actions of the war, the aims of the war. To do otherwise is morally unacceptable to me.

To accept that Trump has a plan but is lying to us about it repeatedly is to accept the status of subject rather than citizen, to be a slave rather than a man. "L'etat? C'est lui!" You seem to draw some line that Trump is lying to the press, he isn't lying to the press, he's lying to us.

I'm not anti-Trump or against regime change in Iran in principle, but I'm not going to "trust the plan." That's un-American.

Congress has the power to declare war (a point I agree on), but do the people? Should we hold a referendum before we attack our enemies?

I consider this perspective naive to the reality of military conflict. Apparently a big reason we struck when we did is because we had accurate intelligence that multiple Iranian leaders were in one place, and we had to act quickly to take advantage of the opportunity. There's a reason the executive is in charge of this - because it requires decisive action.

I'm sorry, but the expectation that the military explain its goals to you during the conflict is inane. Not just military goals, but diplomatic ones too, are closely held secrets. Why? Because we are in conflict with an adversary and denying them information is the obviously correct thing to do. Trump is refreshing in this aspect.

Too many of our Presidents are afraid to take action because of their fear of poll numbers. Talk to me in a few months when we actually know the results.

What comment are you replying to exactly? It sure ain't mine. Either that or you're truly arguing for a system of periodic slavery. Nowhere did I ask that the president share targeting information or war plans, just

clearly communicate the causes of the war, the motivations behind the actions of the war, the aims of the war.

That's not a big lift, if you have clear justifications for the war.

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Congress has the power to declare war (a point I agree on), but do the people? Should we hold a referendum before we attack our enemies?

This is exactly what "democracy" meant, when it was meant seriously.

Current breaking news arrive that Athens and Sparta are at war again. The men of the city gather at the agora, debate the recent habbening, and vote whether the city joins with Athens against Sparta or the other way around.

Democracy requires informed citizenry with skin in the game, which was the case in these times. Everyone knew basic geography and political situation, everyone roughly knew where is Athens, where is Sparta and where is their city, and how strong they are. Everyone knew from direct experience how war looks like, and what will happen to you and your loved ones if you pick the wrong side.

Now, pollsters asking populace "Should we bomb Iraq, Iran, both or neither?" is akin asking five years old "When you grow up, do you want to be astronaut, accountant or garbage truck driver?"

Two more weeks, trust the plan? Short term pain, long term gain? It feels like I'm tuned in to the news cycle alright.

The US bombs or captures Kharg Island, halting 90% of Iran's oil processing and then what? The Iranians throw in the towel? Strike a peace with the US and Israel and we can all go home to for peace and prosperity? Genuinely, maybe that can happen. One can hope. But it sounds silly.

Or will it be another slow grinding down of conditions for human life in Iran, just like in Syria? Or will we repeat Iraq? How many women and children did those sanctions under Albright kill? Half a million? We're not even counting the invasions yet. How many refugees did Syria net the world?

I'll reserve me some pessimism, if based on nothing other than the cavalier attitude people can have toward human life and the future of their own allies.

This has been going around on Twitter so forgive the link to the slop account:

https://x.com/sethjlevy/status/2032516317866029535?s=46

Contrary to a lot of discussion here Trump has been aware of Kharg Island for 40 years (it would be hard not to be, it’s one of the central points in any war game over Iran)

You are welcome to still be skeptical or pessimistic or believe whatever you want… but clearly details about what to do with Iran are not news either to Trump or to the people running the military.

Given that the number floated recently by Trump was “five weeks” I’m willing to wait that long at least before proclaiming that Kharg Island constitutes some kind of spiraling out of control when — it was probably always going to be targeted. Because it has to be, because it’s one of the most important chokepoints on the map.

And like it or not there actually is a capital-P “Plan” that the 24-second news cycle isn’t really capable of judging.

Trump has known about Kharg Island for 40 years so therefor I should not be skeptical or pessimistic about the still undetermined goal of a plan that would be drawn together by the same institutions that brought us Iraq one and two, Afghanistan, Lybia and Syria.

I'm willing to wait five weeks and be proven wrong. As I said before, worst case scenario they are throwing shit at a wall hoping that it sticks. That doesn't change the underlying contention here. Which is that there is no stated goal with regards to this invasion. So how would one be able to judge the strategic salience of any action?

I think you mean the same institutions that brought us Venezuela. Iraq and Afghanistan began over two decades ago, which is a complete replacement cycle for the US military. Literally thousands of people have no other job than to analyze those conflicts and figure out what went wrong and how to do better.

No, it's the same institutions that brought us Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. Made obvious by how vague and obscure everything about this conflict is. Which is one of the problems highlighted in the Afghanistan Papers, but was also intuitively obvious regarding Iraq. Why invade Iraq? Because of 9/11. Except they had nothing to do with 9/11. Well, the WMD's! Except there were none and Saddam had already accepted investigators to confirm they had gotten rid of all of those. Well, the oil! Saddam was already providing regional stability and selling it internationally. I could go on.

The US was using the exact same tactic back then as they are now, except the Venezuelans allow themselves to be bought, whilst the Taliban did not. Iranian officials seem to not be accepting any bribes at a broad scale. So what alternatives do US strategists possess?

We are still waiting on the results of this conflict, but as it stands I see no reason to believe there is anything different going on. A thousand people can analyze a hammer, that won't make it any better at screwing. All we've seen so far is the hammer. I'm still waiting to see the screwdriver.

Given that the number floated recently by Trump was “five weeks” I’m willing to wait that long at least before proclaiming that Kharg Island constitutes some kind of spiraling out of control when — it was probably always going to be targeted. Because it has to be, because it’s one of the most important chokepoints on the map.

It's a chokepoint for oil I guess, but I haven't seen anyone claim that it's a chokepoint for e.g. maritime traffic.

Let's say another three weeks go by. What kind of situation will make you say that you were wrong about everything going according to some reasonable plan? What are the strategic objectives that are supposed to be accomplished in the next three weeks, the failure of which will indicate that things are going off the rails?

I'd imagine if the plan was always to seize islands in the Gulf that you wouldn't wait two weeks after the beginning of your air campaign to start transferring Marines in from out of theater.

Conversely, we have a lot of reason to think the current administration thinks in terms of short news cycles and poasting.

Trump has been aware of Kharg Island for 40 years:

https://x.com/sethjlevy/status/2032516317866029535?s=46

Again and politely: I think this is a form of TDS. Every reasonable expectation of how a war works is thrown out the window because Donald Trump is in charge. How long is it supposed to take to invade Kharg Island? Did they wait to destroy Iranian air capabilities first? Were they waiting on other intelligence? Did the Americans already have war plans for this contingency? The Israelis? The Saudis?

Well, since Donald Trump is the one in charge all these questions disappear. We know from our vaunted backseat driver theoreticians’ armchairs that the invasion of Kharg Island was unexpected, or should have happened sooner, or later, or has unimaginable consequences, or can’t possibly be a good idea. Or whatever. I heard the war plans were drawn up in crayon and Trump had to have explained to him what “oil” is. Hegseth is so evil he made the plans worse, but he was also too drunk to make them effective. If only we had General Milley back he would have saved everything

So our argument in favor of sane war planning is that it incorporates an idea our 80 year old president first fixated on 40 years ago, when he had no military experience or advice. Gotcha.

If you’re not aware of the obvious importance of Kharg Island and the fact it would trivially be in any war plan with Iran you are actually displaying a disqualifying level of ignorance here. I don’t even mean this as a personal attack: you clearly do not know the first thing about which you speak.

Acquiring the site where Iran processes 90% of its oil is just a weird fixation of Trump’s? I don’t know how to parse this except as another form of TDS.

That fact that Trump is and has been aware of Kharg Island demonstrates that he does know what he’s talking about, that US military plans were not made up in the 24-second news cycle, and that the hyper-cynical take pursued by ultra-skeptics is more based in emotion than anything else. You’re wrong, the US military does have a war plan and denying that is a conspiracy on par with denying the landing on the moon.

Why risk ground forces' lives by taking them earlier?

Because they're not significantly at risk and they're actually ready to go.

Aren't they at greater risk at the beginning when Iran's ejaculation capabilities were not yet degraded and they could reasonably overload whatever temporary AA the marines were able to build at the island?

I think you misunderstand me. If the plan was to have the Marines seize Kharg Island, you probably wouldn't send them in right away. But you'd have them staged nearby; you wouldn't wait two weeks then move them in from the Pacific.

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Iran's ejaculation capabilities

wat

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Do you have a conception of what the original US plan might have been; and how it might have changed due to events thus far? Just curious.

That's something that's bothering me about this entire enterprise. I'm not the most plugged-in person when it comes to geopolitical events, but I like to think I can read and understand the news, at least.

As it stands, I don't know quite why we're there, or what we want to accomplish, or how we plan to do it, or what our win condition is.

It makes me long for the days of desert storm, when that was all clearly laid out before lead started flying.

I think this piece from Ross Douthat is the most likely explanation. Trump is a bully, and while he's obviously no military expert, he has an uncanny sense for knowing when someone is weak. Iran was weaker than they'd been in a long time, so he seized the chance.

Why?

Look what Iran is doing - shutting down the global economy, launching missiles at and deliberately attacking civilian infrastructure and the economy (oil, travel, etc etc) of its neighbors. They've always been interested in doing this in all likelihood, but didn't think they could get away with it. They also had their civilian terror networks temporarily defanged.

What happens if they get the bomb? What happens if they rebuild the missile capacity and expand the drone capacity?

What if two years from now they wanted to close Hormuz and were a nuclear state? We'd have to just accept it or much riskier things.

The U.S. and Israel absolutely have classified timelines on missile production, they may have timelines on the nuclear stuff.

Iran can't be allowed to do what it wants to do, because it would do this. We know this, we can see now exactly why that is.

It just happened Trump was sitting in the chair instead of a cowardly president who might end up just waiting and praying.

Why now, specifically?

Trump made his threats and it was clear something was going to happen eventually, it appears to have gone off a bit half cocked but I imagine that's because the Iranians foolishly put enough of the government in one room together.

Why don't people understand this?

The government has been very explicit with stated public war aims and reasons, and has a number of private elements that are easily guessable. The media has landed on a meme to criticize this conflict as "they weren't clear" so people think it isn't clear when it is.

The government has been very explicit with stated public war aims and reasons, and has a number of private elements that are easily guessable.

Which time were they extremely clear?

Was it when Rubio said we didn't really want to do this but we had to because the Israelis were doing it either way? Was it when Trump said their nuclear program was completely eliminated a few months ago? Was it when Hegseth said there would be no ground troops involved? Was it when Trump said that the whole thing was pretty much wrapped up last week?

what Iran is doing - shutting down the global economy

Iran can’t be blamed for defending themselves from an unjust attack by Israel. I would hope Americans would do the same if they were in Iran’s place; if they wouldn’t, I think they lack courage and a moral compass. If Israel decided to start targeting the homes of every American service member, and our only hope was to shut it down, then that’s what America should do. This is the proper response to an Israeli attempt at your national annihilation, something they have a track record of doing in the past 80 years.

launching missiles at and deliberately attacking civilian infrastructure

Israel does this

They've always been interested in doing this in all likelihood

This applies to Israel

What happens if they get the bomb

Israel has the bomb. Every accusation is an admission when it comes to Israel. The Israelis, with a straight face, will tell you we should “help the Iranian people have their voices heard” while they keep three million Palestinians under a military occupation and prevent them from voting and moving freely in violation of international law.

Can you point out the inciting incident of which Israel was the aggressor - and thereby justifies the characterization of a 'unjust attack', rather than a series of mutually aggressive tensions and accumulated causus belli between Iran and Israel that have flamed into war? Has Israel ever made 'justified' attacks? Can you name a single one, or is this another case of selective demands of rigor?

Or is everything Israel does illegal by definition, and we're playing wordcel games?

Iran can’t be blamed for defending themselves from an unjust attack by Israel.

Iran has been waging proxy war against Israel for 44 years via Hezbollah, Hamas and their other paramilitaries. it has a literal doomsday clock counting down the days until Israel's destruction. If the regime didn't want a war with Israel, they've been going about it a funny way.

And it's not as if Israel is a threat to Iran. They're seperated by two countries and hundreds of miles. If Iran wanted peaceful relations with Israel, all they would need to do is stop funding Hezbollah and Hamas and stop threatening to nuke Israel.

There is a lot to criticise Israel about regarding Gaza and the West Bank, but Iran's conflict with Israel is one of Iran's making.

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I appreciate your response but I won't be engaging with you on this. I've personally found the anti-Israel/anti-Jewish posters to be too laser focused on that end of the conflict to the point where it makes the conclusions questionable and discussion unrewarding.

My apologies if I have you pegged incorrectly on the Jewish front.

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A shattered Iran in civil war would have to be terrible for sea traffic right? I mean there's always going to be one faction shooting at tankers.

And the gulf countries have enough money to have couple of airplanes and many drones patrolling 24/7

It remains to be seen whether the IRGC are actually capable of guerilla warfare. Iran isn’t Yemen or Afghanistan or even Iraq. Iran fell below replacement level tfr 25 years ago. Iran is more developed and educated than those nations. It lacks the strong tribal loyalty upon which the Taliban and Houthis rely. IRGC officers are used to creature comforts, not living in caves.

It is still a very high risk, of course, but it’s not guaranteed that a collapse leads to a Houthi style Shia Islamist insurgency.

I can't understand what the point is of seizing Kharg island. The US could just bomb it to leave it unusable for as long as they want? Or just steal the tankers at sea? It's not like it would be hard to blow up some oil storage terminals.

Landing troops there would just make them a juicy target and difficult to resupply. Iran can launch all kinds of things from inland at them.

No one wants to start tit for tat bombings of oil infrastructure. We're in the interesting situation of both bombing the hell out of them and letting them export more oil than usual. Seizing their oil infrastructure and holding it hostage could be valid in a way just blowing it up is not.

There's already been a good deal of bombing of oil infrastructure. Take a breath of fresh air in Tehran, you can smell it. Haifa too. Oil infrastructure in Oman got bombed.

Much easier and safer to just counter-blockade from afar I think.

Israel did that and we allegedly told them to chill.

If you size it there is a possibility that you will give it back. I suspect that if they just destroyed it Iran would retaliate by destroying gulf oil infrastructure, which the us certainly does not want…

Maximally cynically: brave dead Marines coming to grips with the enemy will produce a greater rally round the flag effect than high oil prices and the occasional air accident. The scenario where we bomb Iran and kill 14 copies of Muhammad Al Unpronounceable while Iran blows up oil tankers will produce few of the political benefits of a war; the scenario where Iranians are killing American soldiers will have some purchase with the public.

Controlling the island gives you leverage in negotiations. You want your oil refineries back? Then play ball. Or in the best case scenario you can hand it over to a new friendly regime.

And yeah, Iran can launch all kinds of things, if they’re fine up blowing up their own refineries in the process.

I don't think the Iranians have any intention of 'playing ball.' They're very angry. The guy in charge just had his father, wife, kids get blown up by US/Israel. I don't think he gives a damn, he is out for blood.

The people who might've been doing the 'friendly regime' are eating bombs and perhaps changing their political stance. Why would some random person in Tehran think more positively about Israel or America after getting their apartment blown up or coated in a thick layer of toxic petrochemicals from all the oil fires?

I really don't see the benefit here, karg is just their oil export terminal. All of kargs oil has to go through the strait, which iran has closed anyway. They've already determined they can last without oil exports from karg. Karg is useless without the ability to export oil from there and iran already isn't. This logic has real "we're taking kursk as a bargining chip in negotiations" energy. How did that work out?

They are still sending their own oil out of the Strait. Mainly to China.

No they aren't, they're sending it out their port just outside the strait at chabahar.

No, the Jask port does not have sufficient capacity. They are still also loading at Kharg Island.

Yes, I know that port doesn't have capacity for all of irans oil. No, that doesn't mean they're sending it through the strait, it's just not getting out. You can look up transits of the strait, theres barely anything going through and mostly not oil tankers.

The benefit is leverage in peace negotiations, and if there is peace the strait won’t be closed anymore. The Karg island facilities are extremely valuable to Iran in peacetime, which makes them worth taking in times of war.

Alternatively, the conflict never really ends and it's gitmo east.

Alternatively, the conflict never really ends and it's gitmo east.

Yeah, I think Trump likes the idea of territorial expansion. Is it feasible to build a naval base there? And if so, does that reduce the need of the United States to locate facilities in places like Bahrain?

For a while during the Ukraine conflict, Ukraine was still getting royalties on Russian pipelines running through Ukrainian territory.

Imagine a goof-ass future where the United States occupies Iran's export terminals and charges Iran royalties to export oil, while the Gulf states pay bribes to Iran to keep Hormuz open. Everyone hates each other but can't afford a war anymore. Trump gets a nobel peace prize, but whines that it should be called the Donald Strait.

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Iran has not "closed" the strait in normal terms. They have apparently not mined it, despite some claims that they would. Thet can still get their own oil through. What they're doing is taking shots, with drones, at other ships which transit it.

So it's not closed but they'll attack anything that goes through it? Sounds closed to me.

It's probably the case that in a military conflict shipping could pass through it. What won't go through is ordinary commercial shipping, because it isn't worth it. It's the difference between "Iran can get almost every single ship passing through" and "I'm not risking my oil tanker for no real reason."

So it's for all intents and purposes closed to shipping?

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They'll attack anything not theirs going through it. (That they can see, anyway, and I'm not convinced that applies to much more than "ships broadcasting their location") That's a rather big difference.

Again, just look at the chart I posted, not even their own ships are going through. Unless you think iran only exported 1 tanker a day of oil?

Yes, per international blockade rules (unless applied to the Germans in WWI), it's "closed" (although the blockade rules may have changed, I recall Russia/Ukraine being a bit odd compared to what I remember, but that may have just been dumb takes on the internet). Now, it could be more effectively closed, by mines, in the same way building a giant sea wall, having 52 Reaper drones permanently hovering, or having 18 Iowa-classes moored stem-to-stern across it would more effectively close it, but it's still "closed" without that.

It seems like a bargaining chip. Taking it away from Iran and offering to give it back gives them more of a positive motivation to end the war than just bombing it.

Also, getting them to fixate on whacking Marines on Kharg would redirect their munitions away from more high-value targets.

Finally, it would allow them to test some of the tactics the Marines have been pivoting towards which focus on the need for the Marines to be able to operate within hostile missile range.

Escalate to deescalate perhaps?

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