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What does the anti-war side in the US want in the Iran conflict? I'm woefully ignorant on this point of view, so I'm wondering if I can get some steelmans here.
The special military operation has not necessarily turned in the US's favor. And I understand why a majority of people were against getting into this absolute mess in the first place. But now that this mess has happened, it doesn't seem so easy to just pack up and go home. Assuming that the US passed a war powers vote, or otherwise just decided just to drop everything and go home, what next? It's a total capitulation, and to me it seems braindead obvious that Iran isn't going to stop harassing and extorting nearby shipping. I mean, what have they got to lose, meanwhile the more they extort the more money they get. So it seems like the only way that the shipment of oil can return to a normal state is if Iran is backed into a corner and is forced to stop what they are doing.
So I don't really understand the point of view of the anti-war side, such as the Democrat establishment
If their vote actually succeeded wouldn't this be pretty much the worst possible outcome? Iran commits piracy and extortion and the rest of the word twiddles their thumbs and just lets Iran do it? I can see a few hypotheses, but none of them seem to be a principled anti-war stance:
I'm sure I'm missing something here. What are the strongest ideas that make the anti-war side's case in terms of what should be done about the situation?
The situation is unwinnable and the lesson from Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan is get out fast. The war should never have happened and it was a giant mistake to let Israel suck the US in.
Wars are easy to start but difficult to end. There are only a few paths forward:
Land invasion. Trying to clear the straight y occupying sizeable area of Iran. This is not going to be easy. It took Israel 40 days and dozens of dead and wounded to take a town 10 km from Israel. The US will have a nasty logistics situation with soldiers having to be resupplied by air. Medical evacuation will be difficult and heavy equipment is hard to amass for an airborne invasion.
Naval blockade. This would effectively be what the US had against the Houthis with both sides blockading each other for a year in Yemen. Not only will this blockade be a black hole for the US navy sucking in most of its resources it would also mean potentially years of fertilizer, oil, and gas shortages.
More bombing. Not only a horrific humanitarian crisis to bomb a country to submission but air wars are inefficient. North Vietnam and Laos were bombed relentlessly and they held out. Yemen was bombed for years and held out. To make matters worse the US has burned roughly half their missiles in the first phase of the war. US munitions stockpiles are too depleted for this to be a viable strategy. To make matters worse Iran could bomb oil infrastructure in neighbouring countries causing a long term shortage.
Realize that the war was fiasco and that the US lost this war. If you start a fight and lose you can't set the terms at the end of it. The US is not energy independent. The US needs to import millions of barrels a day to keep its refineries open. Oil prices in the US will be roughly the same in the US as in the rest of the world. Americans consume twice as much oil per capita as Germans. This war will also cause global food shortages as a sizeable chunk of fertilizers come from the region.
For the average American screwing over the global economy for Israel isn't worth it.
This is often repeated, but not necessarily true. Even in the context of Middle-East, you had six day war of 1967 that was predominantly about air attack and that resulted in Israel victory. First Gulf War can also be recognized as such - it was a military operation conceived and brought to action within 6 month of Iraq occupying Kuwait, so between August 1990 - January 1991. The air campaign was so decisive that it took only 100 hours for land forces to bring Iraq and its fourth largest army in the world at the time to their knees. First Gulf War was considered as unmitigated success, even most optimists did not conceive of so few casualties and such a smooth ride. General Schwarzkopf projected 5,000 casualties, Pentagon expected up to 30k. The actual number was 292 dead (145 of those were nonhostile deaths mostly vehicle accidents, plane crashes and even 30 heart attacks) and 776 wounded (467 wounded in action).
There were also other precedents, such as bombing of Serbia which resulted in peace from Milosevic or operations in Libya, which resulted in its narrow goal of removing Gaddafi regime from power. There is also Operation Inherent Resolve that resulted in defeat of ISIS without boots on the ground just by using local forces and strategically helping them with air strikes, economic blockades, intelligence operations etc.
Yes but wars like 1967 and the US invasions of Iraq had lots of backing and land grabbing on the ground to go along with the heavy air campaign.
I don't see how the US can put enough men and tanks etc into Iran to provide that necessary compliment to bombing.
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