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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 will make an argument by analogy.
Suppose that if, in the opening days of the war, Russia's special forces and air wings assassinated Zelensky - with standoff munitions, ballistic missiles, FSB agents, what have you - as well as all the senior generals of the Ukrainian armed forces and many members of the Rada. That all of the Western aid was blown up in its arsenals, and Russian biplanes were flying freely over Ukrainian airspace with impunity.
This is, by all accounts, a Russian nationalist wet dream. If it actually happened, it would have been a crushing defeat for Ukraine even if not a single Russian soldier took a step further south. Ukraine would no longer be a threat to Russia in any military sense. Similarly, Iran is no longer a threat to the United States. They may try to return to that state, but such measures are expensive and long in the making. And the Americans can always come in with the Israelis again. It's a little sad that the regime did not change, but that was a nice to have, not an explicit war goal.
The Iranians can continue to hate the West, but they can do so impotently. If that is all this operation accomplished, then it was a worthwhile investment.
Okay. So if the Russians did all that, and Ukraine was still threatening to join NATO, Russians would credibly ask "What was the point of all that?"
Of course, if Russia did all that, they could literally walk into Ukraine and annex it with barely a whimper. This is manifestly not the case for Iran.
So again, if we are back here again in a couple of years, then what was the point?
Have we destroyed their nuclear program? Have we really?
Are ships sailing through the Strait of Hormuz without any concerns about Iran?
I would like the answers to these questions to be "yes." Instead, the answers to these questions are carefully hedged.
Why is periodic warfare not an acceptable outcome here?
I'm not even particularly interested in this question because of this whole Iran War thing (IMHO it's too soon to tell, I will probably have more opinions when the dust settles but right now I think I have a lot of the exact same concerns you do about this specific conflict) but I see this very common way of thinking everywhere, as if wars are pointless unless you forever and always solve all of the problems that led them to begin. Perhaps that is a bit of an exaggeration, and it's not what you said, but I think you see my point.
I am wary of this thinking because it seems to me it was part of what drove GWOT-era maximalism. Now, maybe that's true! But it seems like an unconsidered assumption and I am interested in why it exists and if it is defensible.
Because it's expensive and kills people and destroys things. In other words: war is bad.
At the risk of repeating myself for the slow kids in the back, that doesn't mean I am always against all wars. But I am against fighting wars just because we can.
I especially don't want American lives lost and American property destroyed, but as little as I think of the Iranian regime, I would also prefer not be killing Iranians and wrecking their shit without a good reason, one that benefits me and my fellow Americans.
You've gone from "We totally won, Iran is over, this was worth it!" to "What's the big deal if periodically bombing Iran is just something we do now?"
Sure, agreed.
But historically winning a war permanently is much more costly than fighting a war and then hammering out a peace that ends up being a breather. Periodic warfare is a historical norm. And the last time we decided "you know what, we're not doing that again" we (or at least our allies, if you want a narrower definition of "we") ethnically cleansed the losers and then we militarily occupied them for an indefinite period of time. And it's paid off for seventy years and counting.
So are you saying that should be our victory condition in all wars? Or do you think fighting smaller wars that kick the can down the road is acceptable ever?
Are you confusing me with my twin?
Whoops. Yes, apologies.
Flashback to when @ZorbaTHut banned somebody for having a confusing username.
Woah woah woah woah woah, let's all be reasonable here, I've taken steps to prevent this from happening again.
(I mean I got a new pfp, not that I cut Shakes' internet cables.)
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