If they had been smart, they would have been learning from Ukraine, because we've found ourselves in basically the same position as Russia is with Ukraine, but with no appetite to puts boots on the ground (not that we should, but it's the only way to "win").
This administration seems to have neither the required skills nor an interest to learn from mistakes. Even if they were filled with smart people, they would still fail because of their lack of skill and learning attitude.
This is just a personal opinion, but lines up with Ukraine (burning refineries), EU (seizing sanctioned tankers FINALLY), VZ (cutting exports to China and moving to USA), and Iran (close the strait every so often). The unifying thread seems to be applying consistent pressure around China.
Germany plays Russian anthem like you've never heard it before (Dec 12, 2021)
(did he cry ?)
The fact they unironically used Star Wars in their war memes was an amazing self-own.
Even the most extreme case of the nuclear bombs in Japan - had Russia not also invaded from the North with 1.5 million troops, there's a chance they would not have surrendered (and even then it was after a multi-year bombing campaign that eviscerated every other city).
The only realistic scenario for regime change is boots on the ground. The Iran "experts" who suggested a bombing campaign were never serious people.
The Japanese had already moved all of their experienced troops from Manchuria before the Soviet invasion. They were maybe surprised that the USSR would break the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact, but the defense of the home islands was their main concern at that point.
The Japanese knew the USSR was not a threat to the main islands as the Soviets could never have done a large invasion of Japan. The Soviets had a few ships that the USA had given them as part of Project Hula, but that is nothing compared to what would be needed for a full scale invasion of Japan. The Soviets did have plans to possibly attack Hokkaido, but as the wikipedia entry says "...Historians have generally considered it unlikely that an invasion of Hokkaido would have succeeded. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Soviet_invasion_of_Ho...
In comparison, the proposed allied invasion was planned to have 42 aircraft carriers, 24 battleships, and 400 destroyers and destroyer escorts. Even that wasn't considered enough:
>...Ken Nichols, the District Engineer of the Manhattan Engineer District, wrote that at the beginning of August 1945, "[p]lanning for the invasion of the main Japanese home islands had reached its final stages, and if the landings actually took place, we might supply about fifteen atomic bombs to support the troops."
There were plans to increase the A-bomb production rate. After November 1945 U.S. would produce a atomic bomb every 10 days. The production rate for year 1946 was planned to be 6 bombs every month.
https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/1...
So after 1946 there would be not much of Japan left to invade.
The bombing of Iran is nowhere the scale of bombing of Japan, see for example the fire bombing of Tokyo.
Had they not, the carpet bombings would have continued - not just the fire bombing of Tokyo, another 71 cities had also been bombed flat. With H&N that made a total of 74 cities down and a list of targets for future bombing still ready to work through.
FWiW the HE+incendiaries bombings used more planes but were cheaper overall than (at that time) atomic weapons - and (at that time) caused much the same amount of damage, injury, and death.
The US (well Israel) saw this as the stars aligning. Trump even called on Iranians early in the engagement to seize the opportunity.
But the ground swell didn't happen, and the US got played. Trump rolled a critical fail.
How it could be a surprise more riots didn't happen?
It's almost like you can't paint an entire country with one brush?
A.) Would you be happy if the government changed? (85% approval)
B.) Are you willing to potentially sacrifice your life and the lives of your sons to change the government? (3% approval)
No one in Iran wants their children bombed for US to "free them". US and Israel don't care about Iran.
They just want to destroy our country and take our wealth. Like they have been doing all over the world.
Source: Iranian who doesn't support the Islamic Republic, but have some family members who do.
We can resolve our internal issues with discourse (and sometimes violence if it comes to it).
One of the few exceptions was the Battlestar Galactica reboot, in which the entire chain of command was killed and the Agriculture Secretary ends up as the leader of the refugee humans.
The USA Military was quite aware that killing Irans Leadership is not 'it'.
But Trump saw how well venezuela worked so that was it.
Yeah USA politics is not 4D Chess.
Isreals only power to doing so, was knowing USA was behind it.
They knew already that Iran might not belly up just because their leadership gets killed. And they knew very well how Iran is fighting (in the mountains) and that they will close the strait of hormuz
Trump overruled it. He thought it was as easy as venezuela and he might have assumed that the civil unrest helps.
Adelson Family as donor to Trump and Bibi.
Other donors might have motivated him too: Bernard Marcus and Paul Singer
I can't collect though a list of sources to read through for my statements. But i don't think my view is very controversal at all.
First, despite the Millennium challenge being "debunked", it still played out in the same direction.
Second, and this is a big one, after the Church committee when the CIA was put under congressional oversight, a big majority of the clandestine work was put under Special Ops type groups, ie the Army Rangers, Navy Seals, etc.
When we were in Afghanistan, we would do the "target the leader" game, but it was far more dark in reality. Since we were going against a distributed insurgent force, we would send the special ops guys to targets intelligence deemed important. There'd be an op tempo of 2-3 a week. Years passed, and we didn't make any headway, so the op tempo was increased.
A target would be chosen, and the operators sent out. They'd kill the target, and look for any papers/documentation with other names. If you were this guy's dentist, you could be caught up in this. Since a majority of the operators didn't speak the language, they had no context to the names. It was more like the metadata network of connections exposed by Snowden.
Since we needed more operations(2-3 a night instead of a week), we'd go after less and less important targets, tangentially related to another target. We effectively turned the special ops groups into clandestine death squads with nearly zero accountability.
In addition, we were supporting warlords in the area that were pro-poppy cultivation and anti-Taliban. We'd protect the poppy plants that would go on to supply a large majority of the world's Heroin supply.
Where is this going? Well the cynic in me says it's simply a scam. We spend more on fancy military hardware that allows us to kill more effectively while barely pushing the needle on our goals. The mass amount of death we drop on populations creates new generations of "terrorist/freedom fighters" who rightfully have a grudge against the US war machine.
The money spent doesn't move the needle materially, but it provides propaganda in the form of "look at our death machines, we have the most in the world", which is a double edged sword of "hoorah" at home and "don't fuck with the crazy guy holding the gun" outside of home. The expensive weapons taxpayers buy from defense contractors are too expensive and complicated to build in bulk, so we run out quickly the second we have an enemy that can shoot back with more than an AK.
We're still trying to fight the war of 2-3 wars ago. We also learned from Vietnam that by no means should the general public easily learn the reality of the war. That worked until recently when the victim of a proxy war was able to upload daily videos onto tiktok and break the decades long good will between the US and an unnamed vassal.
Anyway, tl;dr, the ole military industrial complex is still at it, lobbying our government to spend money we don't have on wars we cannot afford as a public works program that only excels in death, rather than public works in healthcare, infrastructure, science, etc.
Yes we do, it is called imperialism. Now with a sprinkle of senile Fascism.
This is the same problem that doomed us in Vietnam, in Korea, in Iraq, and will doom us in Iran. It's also the same problem that fucked over South Africa and Rhodesia and seems to be a common problem for white supremacists, but that's just my editorializing.
In any case, showing up and killing shitloads of people and then leaving does not win wars, it just LOOKS kinda like it does if you have no idea how to win wars, and assures you promotions in your organization. As soon as your military leadership starts citing that instead of actual progress on the conflict and the objectives at hand, it's a safe bet they are on their way to loss via attrition.
And that's not the ONLY factor of course, our military is too expensive and relies too much on fancy tech as opposed to solid strategy, everything we use is hideously expensive so any losses we take tend to hit harder, etc. But I think this is the most important thing to cite when discussing America's inability to actually wage war in a way that does anything besides get service people killed and enrich the MIC.
I have only read the first book, and it was nice and humbling experience to me as an American.
https://www.amazon.com/Disintegration-Indicators-Coming-Amer...
Blog:
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/
Review:
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2022/08/how-russia-views-...
1. Flatten Kharg
2. Flatten a dozen roads critical to transportation infrastructure
3. Continue the blockade
4. Stonewall peace attempts
5. Wait 5-6 weeks and win
The Trump administration isn't doing that because they're trying to avoid another generation unconditionally hating the US again. Having enemies that blindly hate you is how you get into Russia's situation where even an outright victory will result in IRA-style Ukrainian terrorist groups.
The reason the trump administration is suing for peace is because the midterms are coming up, and the situation for Republicans looks dire.
I thought this at first, but I’m not sure at this point.
The republican establishment has slaughtered the more populist anti-war wing of the party in primaries across the country. The democratic establishment has begun to do the same against their populist candidates. Politicians go on TV and brag about how they’re going to be eating lobster when asked about the state of the economy on their constituents. Every election post I see in a state with a couple contentious ones coming up is filled to the brim with boomers explaining how they’ll always vote on party loyalty, to the point of completely ignoring any of a candidates positions or motives.
These are not the actions of groups who are concerned about upcoming elections.
The same with the other stuff, they have super important radar and super important ships that need to be defended and a failure creates irreplaceable loses. Iran on the other hand, just like with their super important leaders lost all its “super weapons” like destroyers and the drone ships and yet again brought USA to its knees.
Maybe USA has more fundamental problems, not just drones. Maybe the problem is the obsession of wonderweapons for destroying wondertargets.
It is fascinating that there are so many movies revolving around the US president, as if he has some ability that no one has and you can’t simply elect a new one if the enemy gets him.
Maybe the desire for concentration of power and seeing everything through that lens is the issue?