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I was waiting to read your take from God-Emperor Trump's Naruto-world.
So look- it was never in doubt that the US could inflict massive amounts of destruction on Iran, and that any military conflict would be one-sided in our favor. This is not news. Of course we can bomb Iran's infrastructure to rubble. We've always had that capability. No one thought Iran was going to pull a rabbit out of its hat and clear the skies of US planes or take out a carrier group.
Hell, we could invade, conquer, and occupy Iran if we really wanted to. It would be enormously costly, but I don't think anyone doubts that the US could do that if we were willing to pay the cost.
Your definitions of "victory" seem limited to "We hurt them worse than they could possibly hurt us," along with a lot of wild predictions that the Iranians are so completely cowed now that they will be good boys and do none of the things they've been doing for the last 50 years that have so aggravated us. No more sponsoring of terrorist groups, no more inflaming regional conflicts, no more threatening oil shipping, no more trying to build nukes.
The problem with your triumphal narrative about how Iran got totally recked is this: yes, they did. We have totally recked countries before. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. (I'm not reaching back for WWII, because those countries we actually occupied and changed regimes and turned into the good boys they are today.) The US is very good at wrecking countries.
As events play out even today, we know that Iran can and will rebuild, even after losing most of its military capability. And it's still capable of firing missiles at its neighbors, it's still got oil money which will still go to Hezballah and the Houthis, et al, and as for tolling the Strait of Hormuz, let's just say it seems that what the US is saying and what Iran is saying are two very different stories.
I know you do not believe it's possible to doubt Trump's glorious divinity without suffering from TDS, and that no one who does not bask in his aura will ever do anything glorious, not even sit in a hot tub contemplating fucking another man's wife. But I just read your confident predictions about how Iran will totally no longer be in the nuclear or terrorism or troublemaking game at all, followed by you denying that any continued conflict with Iran could possibly be evidence that perhaps they have not been brought to heel quite as throughly as you insist they have, and all I can say is -
What the fuck? Seriously. What the fuck.
What did we accomplish? Yeah, we kicked the shit out of Iran. Whoo-wee. Never doubted we could do that. It's ridiculous in one sense to say the US "lost" the war when Iran is the one with a bunch of dead leaders and sunk ships. But what was our objective? What was our win condition? All the things you say we have already achieved, which Iran is denying we have achieved at all, and which you are tacitly admitting we will still have to fight them again in the future to prevent them from achieving. Spending all this money, causing all this destruction, for an end-state that appears to me to put us in no better a position than we were before it started, at great economic cost, if not "losing," certain does not look like "winning" to me.
We "won" in the same sense that we "won" in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan. No one would argue those countries scored any kind of military or economic or political defeat against the US. And yet. Does anyone really think we "won" those conflicts? That we achieved our objectives and it was so worth it that we'd do it again if we had it to do over? That we couldn't have spent national treasure on better purposes?
When the war started, I was not enthused, but, well, I also do not like Iran. So if we actually toppled their regime, or at least crushed them so thoroughly that they became a non-player in the region, and we will never, ever have to worry about an Iranian nuclear program again, I'd have considered it a questionable but at least definable victory.
Instead, right now I see a Trump TACO and you still insisting he's the greatest thing ever with the fervor of a Maoist admiring mangos.
You are right. You cannot make other people see reality. What do you even want me to say?
!remind me 1-3-5 years
(And don't think I don't notice how much weasel-room "unilateral" gives you.)
I was so flabbergasted after the first three certain predictions that I missed that. Truly, wow.
It's probably on the order of weeks until Iran starts funding Hamas/Hezbollah again, if it ever stopped.
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Just a point, but X is full of third worlders and third worldists who claim to not only believe that Iran can do this, but that they already have, and they have the AI generated videos to prove it.
Okay, but I don't count third worldist AI bots as people. Are there real people who believe this? Eh, there is someone who believes any proposition you can verbalize.
As Iconochasm said there are lots of people who believed this not just bots. Anywhere that was part of the "Anti-imperialist west" Or thrid worldist sphere was convinced the US would lose thousands of soldiers and likely even a carrier. But if you don't look places those types hang out you wouldn't see it and they are naturally a lot quieter now.
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I am honestly unsure how much of the net is bots anymore, but I am hesitant to disregard the possibility that the lizardman constant for conspiracy theories is booming in less savvy populations with access to instant AI video generation.
This world has billions of people who believe in the silliest peasant magic, who record street clashes fought with bows and arrows on iPhones that have built in translation software. How many of them would see a short of an arrow taking down an F35 and feel doubt?
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