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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8786 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026

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US can end the Iran War in 36 hours if we wanted to. We choose not to because of stupid liberal war ethics. And that’s without using nukes. A few key hits on infrastructure and Iran surrenders.

Yes, 36 hours. A few well-placed hits, and they surrender. They're just not realizing how they're outmatched, they think the US is bluffing, the "whole civilization will die tonight" stuff was a joke, but no, it's totally serious. If only liberals weren't in the way…
Sure.
It is edifying to reread the posts around the start of the war, when it was actually measured in hours. I suggest this one. I'll even quote it in full, it's so amazing.

Are we in a new age of hyperpower?

OK, this war in Iran is only 2 days old, and as we all know "truth is the first casualty of war." So this is very much a hot take, and we'll need a lot more time and thoughtful analysis to see how this plays out.

But right now, as an American watching the news, I'm feeling a bit drunk on national power. I can only imagine how Trump and other leaders must be feeling, let alone the actual soldiers who drop the bombs. Already this year we've fought and- it seems- won two wars! The first one with absolutely no losses, and this one also seems quite low casualty. This was done purely with American military (and help from Israel), no NATO help necessary. Iran has spent the last 40 years building up a gigantic military, and now it all just looks like an absolute joke. All their leadership is dead within the first day, and the US has massive air superiority over most of the country. It's now basically just a choice of what targets we want to bomb.

I took this chance to go check back in on Venezuela. I couldn't find many good sources there, but so far it seems... basically fine? There's no civil war or hardline Maduro loyalists fighting to the death. The new president has taken over with basically no issues, and she seems to be cooperating quite well with the US. Lots of Venezuelans are happy that this happened. Of course there are still many problems with the country, but it's fair to chalk that war up as a win.

But what about China? We're supposed to be in a new "multipolar" age, right? The US can't just go throwing its weight around wherever it wants because there are other powers to stop us. Iran was heavily involved in selling oil to China, and was a military ally of them through the Shanghai Cooperative Organization. Well, so far all China has done is say mean things about us. They can't even say it openly, they have to do it in phone calls to Russia. So apparently they're not much of a counter at all.

I think we've reached a tipping point where US air power just crushes all of its adversaries with no counter. It's not any one weapon, but a combination of factors- more satellites, better human intelligence, more stealth aircraft, better radar, more JDAMs and stand off munitions, cyberattacks, and now AI to help us identify targets. The US can completely devastate most countries, even large ones like Iran, without putting a single boot on the ground, unless we want to send special forces to arrest someone like we did to Maduro. And we've got 100 next-gen stealth bombers currently in production, plus... whatever the hell the F47 next-gen fighter can do, so I expect this dominance to increase over the next decade.

But what about nukes? Soviet nukes held the US in check throughout the cold war, surely those also put a break on US imperial ambitions? Well, to some extent they still do, but the US has made some very impressive progress in missile defense lately. THAAD is now hitting its targets with an impressively high success rate, and was recently used to help defend Israel against Iran's missile barage. The main limiting factor there is just building more interceptors, and Trump is pushing for massive funding there as part of his Golden Dome project. That also opens up some intriguing options in space- and, oh hey, would you look at that, the US also has SpaceX utterly dominating LEO launch, and it will likely get even more dominant there if/when Starship becomes practical. Meanwhile China has a relatively small nuclear arsenal, and Russia's is just leftover Soviet junk that might not even work anymore. I think we are rapidly reaching a point where the US has overwhelming nuclear dominance.

The question then becomes- what do we do with this power? Trump used to always preach the merits of isolationism, and he made a big splash early in the Republican primary by being the only candidate who strongly denounced the Iraq war. He clashed heavily with Marco Rubio over that issue. But now he has Rubio as his Secretary of State, and he seems to have rapidly "evolved" to favor military interventions. But, being Trump, he still makes speeches about "taking Venezuela's oil" and other me-first boasting. So far no such boasts about Iran, but I can only assume there will be some.

My guess? He keeps doing this. Cuba is an obvious target, they're pretty much falling apart already. Next would be Panama, where he always talked about wanting the Canal back. After that... I have no idea. Colombia? Mexico? Somalia? Cambodia? He could potentially attack all of those places, if each one is as fast and decisive as this current Iran war seems. I... don't think Trump would actually invade Greenland, or attack China, but... who can say? If he chose to do those things, who could stop him?

Anyone ready for Colombia? Mexico? Somalia? Cambodia? Salivating at the thought of more hyperpower dominance?

Was Operation Rough Rider a great demonstration of American invincibility too? They brought in multiple carrier groups, bombed Yemen endlessly and assassinated plenty of Houthi leaders even up to the Houthi Prime Minister but the Houthi missile/drone capabilities were basically untouched and Trump effectively gave up after a month when stockpiles started running low.

So if this goes the same way and Iran is still firing missiles and drones a month at every country hosting American military assets, shutting down the Strait of Hormuz and possibly obliterating all of the soft oil infrastructure between the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea would you still consider it to be a great victory for Trump?

For some reason the warmongers can get it wrong literally every time but they never lose their confidence in predicting how easy the next war will be

That strikes me as wishful thinking. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan surrendered, they had to be taken, and each of them took more than 36 hours, as would Iran, due to their geography and population, if nothing else.

I am specifically saying “Not if you do war crimes”. We clearly can’t do regime change etc with just air strikes on military targets. But we do have the ability to bomb basically anything in the country. We can nearly completely cut power/water in Iran.

The regime will shoot protestors to maintain power. If we credibly threatened civilian infrastructure and it became topple the regime or die I think we could succeed.

I am specifically saying “Not if you do war crimes”. We clearly can’t do regime change etc with just air strikes on military targets. But we do have the ability to bomb basically anything in the country. We can nearly completely cut power/water in Iran.

You said you can "end the Iran War", how do you propose cutting power, and ruining their infrastructure will do that? They have stockpiles, underground bases, and a fanatically devoted military. They'll keep shooting at ships until you mop them all up. I'm not saying you're unable to do that, but thinking you can do that in 36 hours is delusional.

How well can a modern army operate without electricity? Can you make drones in the dark? Do starving populations riot for regime change? Do starving soldiers still fight?

There are good reasons to not do things that lead to a large loss of civilian human life. But let’s not act like it wouldn’t be effective.

They can't even get the Palestinians to riot for regime change, and compared to Iran that's shooting fish in a barrel (the barrel being Gaza).

Can you make drones in the dark?

No, but you can store them.

Do starving populations riot for regime change?

Who cares? Are they going to stop you from shooting at ships from your secret underground bases?

Do starving soldiers still fight?

Who says they're starving?

“Can store them” - eventually run out.

  • if you don’t control your own country and hinterland then the underground missile launch points you propose eventually run out of supplies

  • “who says their starving” That is why you take out civilian infrastructure. Cut electricity, power, key bridges and suddenly your farms don’t have irrigation and the food disappears.

So all you did was ignore the entire point I made of taking out civilian infrastructure. You just ignored it. You didn’t even counter that it would fail for x,y,z reason. Which it may.

How long would America last if a country had air superiority and bombed every power plant and oil refinery?

“Can store them” - eventually run out.

But certainly after much more than 36 hours.

“who says their starving” That is why you take out civilian infrastructure. Cut electricity, power, key bridges and suddenly your farms don’t have irrigation and the food disappears.

You can also easily store years worth of food.

So all you did was ignore the entire point I made of taking out civilian infrastructure. You just ignored it. You didn’t even counter that it would fail for x,y,z reason.

Your point is moot. Taking out the civilian infrastructure will not help you end the war.

How long would America last if a country had air superiority and bombed every power plant and oil refinery?

Depends on the war objectives. If the goal was to get America to retreat from some distant part of the world, that would work. If the goal was to conquer and occupy America, it would have been a nightmare for anyone that tried.

The current American goal of opening the Strait of Hormuz is closer to the latter scenario than the former.

Saddam Hussein fired chemical weapons directly into Iranian cities and killed hundreds of thousands of people yet the Iranians kept fighting for years in the hope that they could seize some territory in compensation.

It seems pretty doubtful that blowing up some civilian infrastructure would achieve much of anything

Grok say this never happened. And from what I know about the US military they tend to find chemical weapons as not effective but I’m no expert.

And from what I know about the US military they tend to find chemical weapons as not effective but I’m no expert.

My point wasn't that chemical weapons are effective, it's that Saddam was willing to cross all moral red lines against the Iranians and it didn't work. Where is the evidence that your strategy works?

Grok say this never happened

Perhaps you should think and research with your own brain instead of replacing it with a machine

Dude. You 100% used a machine to research whatever you said occurred in Iran. You used either Wikipedia, Google, or maybe some podcast bro. AI can just scan more data points than google.

You didn’t go to Iran and interview villagers and do soil samples.

FWIW chemical weapons have never been effective in war. History is filled with stories of high civilian casualties and destroying civilian infrastructure led to victory. Roman salted the earth. Mongols slaughtered entire towns who fought to well so other towns would just agree to be slaves. America carpet bombed Europe and nuked Japan. Sherman marched thru Georgia.

Wikipedia indicates a few tens of thousands of civilian injuries from Iraqi chemical weapons, some Iranian and some Kurdish in an Iraqi city recently captured by Iran.

Just to be clear you quoted sources that indicated “0” recorded instances of Iranian civilian deaths.

(1) My intent was to point out that both you and VIM were making overbroad claims. Iraq did "fire chemical weapons directly into an Iranian town" (not a city), though those weapons did not "kill hundreds of thousands of people".

(2) The second linked article indicates 100 Iranian civilian deaths.

to be clear, those were intended as separate statements, as in "Saddam used chemical weapons on Iranian civilians and he killed hundreds of thousands", not "Saddam's chemical weapons killed hundreds of thousands"

If I meant "Saddam killed hundreds of thousands specifically with chemical weapons" then I wouldn't have separated the statements with an "and" but I suppose I was too imprecise. My bad

Not some civilian infra, it would need to be nearly all of it. Full shutdown of roads, industry, oil, etc. Any building that makes other things. If production is mixed into residential then the residential has to be hit too to hit the production.

This would of course be a genocide but if nobody can move an inch without being cluster bombed with artillery surely Iran would collapse if only to starvation and looting. The strait would probably be open in this case.

Trump hesitates because he fears the inevitable war crimes tribunal this would cause from democrats. He is not confident republicans can hold the executive for the remainder of his lifespan, or that some other republican president would throw him under the bus in an act of bipartisan goodwill.

The strait would probably be open in this case.

Why? Has everybody forgotten that partisan / guerrilla warfare exists?

Partisans can exist only within a living civilian population. Guerrillas can't exist for very long without civilian support.

There are plenty of examples of guerrillas fighting for decades without much or any real civilian support.

The latin and african guerrillas finance themselves without civilian support through the drug trade. I doubt Shia guerrillas representing the last bastion of Iranian revolutionary struggle would debase themselves to that level, unless they wanted to lose significant legitimacy in the islamic world.

Sure they can. You can stockpile supplies that will last you months, or even years, very easily.

Decentralized cells of IRGC units could certainly survive and threaten the strait. I believe most could be convinced to surrender by remaining IRGC leadership if Tehran and other major cities are flattened by fuel-air bombs, cluster munitions, or whatever the modern equivalent is. Perhaps Trump also shares your doubts about a civilian infra-bombing escalation. To me though, it might be his only way out of the mess.

I want to clarify that I was totally against starting any military conflict with Iran to begin with. However, now that direct hostilities have started, we have to decisively finish any conflict with countries whose official slogan is "Death to America", or we will be leaving yet another problem for future generations to clean up.

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