ViperMan

And I didn't say anything about opening it up. See, everyone is only thinking about one side of this. Iran can close it down and cause the world pain. Us? We'll be fine. We're energy independent. If Iran keeps it closed much longer, they risk alienating themselves further and strangling their partners. So from their perspective, it's not a scalpel which can cause localized pain to the United States. It's a tool of indiscriminate destruction which they can use, but only by causing mass collateral damage to everyone else they hope to win to their side or currently do illicit business with. Or do you think we're going to allow Iran to only "tax" imports to the West? Hmmm. Time is on our side, not Irans. We can easily sit back and let Iran run whatever scheme they want to where it concerns the 40 mile choke point. In turn, we can easily run ours from further afield. Iran can close it. Cool. They can likewise only open it under terms which suit us. That's the bigger picture. I mean even the simplest google search reveals that Iran depends on the straight for more than 90% of their oil exports and import 400,000 barrels (per day) of gasoline - fully half of what they use. So yeah, they're strangling themselves while we can sit back and watch their economy turn to dust.

This conflict is about more than just Iran being able to shut things down. If you think for one second that we can't choke off oil in the straight you're high.

It has to do with the perpetual emphasis (by the left) on things that don't matter in juxtaposition with things that do. You all look at the price of oil - which is not even close to historic highs - and cry the sky is falling. Meanwhile, we destroyed a 1/3rd of our wealth because of "feels" and it's no big deal to you all. Just pointing at the hypocrisy is all. On the notion of Iran being in a stronger position. We'll just have to agree to disagree. And I'll have to laugh. We just made them our bitch in dramatic fashion. They have no long-term ability to project power. And they will be unable (for years) to be a serious maker / supplier of weapons in the middle east or anywhere else. They cannot be the petro supplier-of-last-resort to China. As much as you think Iran controls the straight of Hormuz, we control it more. And as much as China depends on oil flowing through the straight of Malacca, well, let's just say we're in control of that one too. We're 100% in the driver's seat. That you can't see that speaks to how blinkered your worldview is.

And the sky is blue. My point is that you, and others, are doom posting. The price of oil goes up during warfare. This is not a surprise. You can post truisms from where you sit, but they're not making an argument. Yeah there are negative effects from this war. There are also massive positive ones. You have to weigh the margins. "Biden" (his confederacy of dunces) dropped $2T of unnecessary spending on an economy that didn't need it. COVID was largely over by the time that bill hit. But yay, we still pay for it. Total inflation for that boondoggle has been like 30-40%, so in other words, you have about 2/3 of the wealth you had before COVID, thanks in large part due to horrific government policies. Don't get me started on Bitcoin. I hope they do charge tolls for everything in Bitcoin. Joke will be on them. It's going to zero someday. Iran in a stronger geopolitical position? Ha. Did you tell them that?

LOL at the libs on this site lamenting the increase in gas prices as if it means literally anything. What's your position? That we can't go to war because the price of a commodity might increase? Mmmmkaaay. And furthermore that somehow the degree of success in the conflict will be measured by the price of said commodity not rising above an arbitrary threshold that is determined by numerous other factors? LOL. Bottom line: we're crushing it in the foreign policy department. Venezuela? Done. Russia? Completely hemmed in. Cuba? Teetering. Iran? Nearly completely decimated - from the air alone. Numerous other terrorist proxies? On their back feet, at best. Is the world fixed? Nope. But it has been made a lot better than it was - by a TV show host - let that sink in and consider what it says about the rest of our political class. You all are upset about words. You need to look at the state of the world.

If true, and I was a strike eagle pilot (eww), no way I'd let that missile sponge in my back seat (sts)! 😂

As he well should be. Flight discipline is the bedrock of everything we do.

In a word, no. That EO, and the whole series it's part of, don't restrict the DOD. They restrict the intelligence community. Nothing stops the military from targeting a head of state - or literally anyone else - if they are declared a legal target / combatant. Not sure where this whole "the military can't kill certain people" idea has come from. Probably news organizations like CNN, NBC, ABC, et al who just clip one-liners from EOs and use them to promote narratives which support their own motives.

Respect. I have no issue with people asking questions as Americans or whatever. Nor do I have a problem with contrarian opinions so long as they're defended in good faith. If I had my way, Ron Paul would be the President and a lot of other things about the way we conduct ourselves in the world would be different. So as a philosophical matter I agree that in the best of all possible worlds, Congress would not have abdicated its war-making responsibility, and we'd have a functioning government. At some point in my career, though, I looked at the way things actually worked, and began to come to terms with the imperfect way things work. That doesn't make it right, but it does make it above my pay grade. What I would put to you or anyone else out there is the question you seemed to be asking was an important one, but one we as officers don't get to deal with. It's the distinction between jus in bello vs jus ad bellum. We have every right and responsibility to question jus in bello. Questioning jus ad bellum is outside our lane as military officers. We benefit from being and having critical thinkers in the military. I pointed out what I thought was an inconsistency in the approach to the argument and what my thoughts are. Cheers.

@FourFans and @Negat0ry , you guys are going after the "illegal orders" straw man pretty hard. You can let it go. 17D is questioning the legality of the entire operation based on a court-established timeline precedent which has been repeatedly used to side-step and violate the constitution for decades before you, me, or anyone else ever considered joining the military. Vietnam, Korea, Iraq 1, Iraq 2, Afghanistan, and so on. In precisely zero of these 'operations' did Congress ever declare war. Again, you can spare me the refrain to article 8. We can all read. Someone else did a good job drawing out the distinction for you: yes, you have a basis and duty to question the legality of orders like "drop a bomb on this mosque." That's not what 17D was doing. As a line officer, you're on pretty shaky ground the second you start engaging in constitutional lawyership and pontificating about who does or doesn't have the authority to deploy me. My intent was to underscore the hypocrisy of asking questions on this basis now, after swearing an oath rooted in the very precedent he now seems to be trying to overturn. You (we) all looked at the rules of the game before we started playing, decided they were satisfactory, and now that we're on the field, some of us have started questioning the rule book because a few are upset that there's a new head coach. That's what I'm calling out. That's the opposite of the officership I'm talking about. It's rooted in self-service, not service to the country. It points either at the lack of introspection someone had when they swore the oath, or a newly found distaste for the flavor of the month. Neither are very officer-like. Feel free to misread this yet again and continue white knighting for the constitution.

Yeah @FourFans , no one is saying follow illegal orders, but thanks for the re-iteration of the oath. @17D_guy specifically cast this in light of this war being illegal because Congress hasn't authorized it. In other words, he has implied that the operation is de facto illegal since Congress hasn't, what, voted on it? That's what I'm dismissing out of hand. And in any case, if that's the approach he's going to take to this conflict, then my logical follow-up question for him is why didn't he resign at any other point in the last 20 years of wars this country has been fighting which congress didn't authorize? We've all had plenty of time to adjust to the new modern way of war, and if we didn't like it, we could have put our money where our mouth was and quit. Only now we're getting the constitutional scaries??? Put differently, it's the furthest thing from officership I can think of. He stated clearly that he doesn't think this is legal because Congress hasn't authorized it. In no way shape or form does Congress have to authorize military action. That is fully in the President's lane.

Aside from the college-essay-esqe nature of your question and the interesting philosophical debate it could engender: why do you feel you have any legitimacy in questioning the legality of this conflict as an officer? I mean I get the rules of war and not violating clearly illegal bounds ala My Lai massacre, but in sooooooo, soo many cases in the modern era, this is how "war" is fought. WTF is "congressional approval" for anyway? Funding, right? Congress gets to declare war - which they don't do - so you and I know that in the real, modern world, the President has full and complete executive authority to launch whatever type of operation he deems serves our national security, Congress be damned. That's it. ROE is determined by government / military lawyers - not Congress. So, why do you think you have any legitimate basis upon which to question this operation vs any of the others you've been fine carrying out? Congress doesn't get any say whatsoever in what the scope of an operation is, whatever the label is you want to apply to it, be it 'limited,' 'temporary,' no 'boots on ground,' etc. So your question is inherently a red-herring. If you have (or had) a serious personal issue with how military operations have been conducted since WWII and Congress' (lack of) authorization, then you should have resigned your commission and stopped collecting retirement pay a long time ago.

Now do Iran...

You can absolutely be critical of Israel without being an anti-semite. That's not what anyone is saying. But, to your point. October 7th gave Israel (not the Jews) the right to displace every single Palestinian from Gaza forever. That action, supported and enabled by Iran, and undertaken by Hamas foreclosed a two-state solution permanently. And I said as much shortly after October 7th. It also gives them the right to overthrow the government of Iran.

I didn't reference an AI (not chucking spears), but on the right I feel the anti-semetism has more to do with Jesus being "killed by jews," which enables it as an effective wedge. It's also right in line with the conspiracy-addled right which thinks everything is under the control of some ultra-powerful cabal of jews.

The plan is fiscal dominance. The Fed will serve its primary function by allowing the US government to continue to borrow money at below the true inflation rate in order to suck value out of prior labor. This will enable the government to continue spending unencumbered by financial reality. And it will also force workers to continue working. There is no escape.

@Negat0ry, if you know we used to have tax rates that high, then you also know that nearly no one actually paid taxes at those rates. Or if you don't, then you just consumed a "fact" and regurgitated the sound byte. So I don't know why you referenced it other than to imply that you think increasing taxes on billionaires will solve all our woes. I'll spare you the suspense though, it won't. And for many reasons. I'll give you two practical ones. First, mostly because the amount of "money" you think billionaires possess is actually tied up in capital assets - things that produce income or enable other people to be productive (factories, websites, logistics facilities, buildings, digital networks, communication infrastructure, supercomputers, etc). The second reason, and most important one, is there just isn't enough juice to squeeze from them. Meaning, if you confiscated all the wealth of all the billionaires it wouldn't cover the fiscal outlays and promises our government has made. Those are practical reasons. Those are mathematical reasons. Those are logical reasons. Those are reasons you should be able to buy into regardless of your political affiliation. I won't try to convince you that there are additional moral reasons you shouldn't confiscate wealth, but it'd be a waste of time - not only because you come from a different moral and ethical perspective, but because it doesn't matter on a practical basis - we can't get there from where we are. Your suggestion (assumed solution) won't work for practical (mathematical) reasons. Which, by the way, is why I think you promulgate a moral position. Yes dude, I believe that people should be able to stay rich forever. And honestly so do you. You don't think you do though, because you can't (or haven't) conceive of a world in which money keeps it's value and relative wealth means relatively less. I mean seriously dude, do you honestly think that every generation should start from zero? Like what's the point from a humanity-centered perspective to force individuals to have to suffer and grind from square one? I suspect you'd say "fairness" and "opportunity." I want fairness and opportunity in our country for everyone as well. Those are two things I think you and I would agree on, and I'm sure we just disagree about the mechanism, and honestly, that comes from just a different fact-pattern that you and I see. Problem is though, you have a math problem to address. You can moralize about it all you want, but the numbers don't work. You are right in that the $30 (15) million dollar exclusion is a lot of money, and you're also right that the crux of the problem doesn't lie in a few 'outlier' farmers who are able to pass on their $100M dollar farms to their heirs. Rather, the core problem is much broader and more subtle than that. The problems we have are all underneath the surface, and exist in ways most of us never think of or pause to consider - i.e. the wealth transfer mechanism that is social security, wherein it transfers my present day wages to the sons and daughters of people who bought homes in the 1960s and 1970s. Boomers, who are consuming end-of-life care and consuming dollars which my labor produced. These people should be putting their homes on the market in order to generate the 'income' they need to eat and to pay for their medical care. Instead, the government provides them with income and medical care (from me), and then when they die, their kids inherit many millions of dollars - much of it being MY MONEY. So in some cases it functions purely as a pass-thru mechanism from one set of people (produces) to another (consumers). I think you would agree that is an unintended and let's just say, sub-optimal, outcome of SS. I point at something like this because it's but one of an innumerable set of problems and dynamics which when they operate at scale, create all the problems you and I lament. You want a solution, and so do I - I respect that. You just haven't identified the problem yet.

Ooorrrr, we could you know, stop putting all the old-people on welfare. Social security (in certain cases) functions to allow old people to stay in multi-million dollar homes in lieu of selling them. Homes which are then passed on to their heirs largely tax free. So, social security really functions as a wealth transfer vehicle from present-day workers to the descendants of property owners. We're not going to fix that though. So in a case like this, I could see an "estate" tax as being a legitimate recoupment of social security paid out which allowed someone to stay in their home until they died. Oorrrr, we could do the same thing for people who absorb massive medicare dollars in lieu of paying for their own healthcare. Orrrrr, we could stop the infinite deficit spend binge we're on, which will irrevocably result in continued and runaway inflation. Or yeah, I guess we could just take people's property too. I would have zero issue with people's estates owing taxes on income they claimed during their lives which they want their estates to pay after death. I'd have a major issue though, with just confiscating people's inheritance who aren't net minuses. I'd just rather it be characterized as a recoupment tax to identify it as a bill owed for benefits received. Most estate taxes are not "that." Is the article you reference the "Summer Slide" series?

There is an element of the right that is highly susceptible to anti-semetic propaganda. He clearly fell victim to it. Ironically, this aligns people who fall for it with leftist elements. It's an extremely effective attack vector.

@Negat0ry @Pooter @Sua Sponte @gearhog You naysayers are something else, man. I'll tell you what. It doesn't matter if we can't install a democracy in Iran. If we turn them into Afghanistan, we win. Because they don't have nukes. Last time I checked, they already want to destroy us and our friends, so the bit about them becoming jihadis is a red herring. They're already jihadis. They already hate us. We didn't need to bomb them to achieve that. WhAt's ThE pLaN?? The plan is to destroy their government. This is specific, measurable, achievable, and realistic. I'd be far more concerned if I was hearing soothing sounds of "hearts and minds" and "girls' schools" and the like. Do you guys honestly think there was a different path forward? If you do, I'd love to hear it. And ISIS? Yeah, I remember ISIS. The terror group we bombed the shit out of? Yeah, where are they now? Oh that's right. Their caliphate is gone. Finished. Accomplished almost entirely with airpower. You people need to get it through your head that war is the state of human nature. It will never end. There will never be world peace. We will always be at war. Get over it.

Welp, here we are. Seems to me that we're learning better ways to wield our power.

buT tHe sUpReME cOUrt iS cONseRvatIvE

re: Mamdani and NYC Yes, in some ways NY is getting their just deserts, but it's also sad to see, as NY is a great city that much of my family hails from. While some in NY are getting what they deserve, others are merely collateral damage and serve as useful targets in the Left's quest to achieve a communist utopia. I'm mostly just tired of misanthropes running the world, but hey, there's nothing new under the sun.

Dude, @brabus and @Lord Ratner already took you to school over this, but one thing I'll pile on with: that document was signed with a fake name. Now, I understand the necessity to protect underage victims, but you may as well have produced a document that was signed by Bert and Ernie. As others have stated: you will have a lot of us supporting you once these allegations are substantiated. Until then, this is just more political mud-slinging.

What juicy nuggets are in there for us to digest? Give us the download. Is Trump an alien?