Pooter

Fort Collins does have good breweries, I’ll go with ya And if you’re wondering the CGOC is exactly as lame today as it appears it was 20 years ago

Well most admins don’t just randomly fire the CJCS because he’s black as part of some stupid anti-DEI right wing virtue signaling exercise. Especially when Trump nominated the guy to be CSAF in the first place. But broader than that I think this admin just fires generals that tell uncomfortable truths until they can find yes men who tell them what they want to hear. Maybe to you that’s “alignment.” I see it as delusion mixed with some seriously thick knee pads

Ok now play the montage of all the times Trump said the dems were so stupid and bad at negotiating the they’d start a war with Iran Oh wait I forgot quote montages are only interesting when it’s cornering randos on the street not POTUS shamelessly contradicting himself

I actually kinda hate the TACO line of criticism against Trump. Yeah he backed off his red lines and stupid ultimatums, but he did so in the direction of de-escalation. If you don’t like this war, this news was objectively a good thing. It’s like making fun of your friend for “chickening out” of robbing a bank. No, just be happy your friend isn’t doing something stupid. Now granted, we never needed to be in this situation or issue stupid threats and ultimatums in the first place. But I will give credit where it is due and in an absolutely wacky turn of events I’m now in here saying good job to Trump for being the only person involved in this thing who seems even slightly interested in deescalation. We’ll see how long this ends up lasting.. for all I know our foreign policy messaging could have done a 180 just in the time it took me to type this comment. I hope Trump can withstand the external pressure because you can bet Netanyahu and the Mark Levins and Ben Shapiros and Adelsons of the world are working overtime right now to get the war turned back on. Just one more month of bombing guys that’ll get rid of the IRGC 👌👌

Uhh.. I do. I’m no fan of this admin or this war but this isn’t black ops in places we aren’t supposed to be, this is a named operation and lying about casualties in public military ops is not a bridge that we’ve crossed as far as I’m aware. Our military social media ecosystem is also so interconnected it would be pretty tough to keep that stuff secret in this conflict. Dudes are snap chatting their aircraft carrier chow hall dinner rations and filming FPV video of TBMs hitting nearby.. pretty sure if the government was keeping large numbers of casualties secret that would stay secret for a grand total of 5 minutes. There are enough valid reasons this war is dumb let’s not get into actual nonsense conspiracy land

And the people are only half the problem. Even if we had all the guard folks in the world we don’t have the jets for them to fly. Just using open source numbers we went from 4,000+ fighters in 1990 to 1,500-2000 today. Bombers down from 300-400 to just barely over 100. Obviously systems are more capable and precise now but that doesn’t make up for sheer volume if you’re talking about force cuts of 60-75%. A lot of people don’t realize how deep these cuts have been and still think we can throw desert storm 1 volume at problems and absolutely steamroll adversaries. The reality is we can’t come close to that anymore and I think it has created some unrealistic expectations in this conflict

Maybe it’s all a big ploy to win a bunch of money on polymarket and pay down the national debt. Might be the only strategy that makes any of this make any sense

Sorry but I’m not going to re-litigate every foreign policy intervention in modern history in your requested format.. I doubt anyone here wants that anyway. But in general I think just wars are defensive ones. Politicians know this is how most people feel which is probably why every nonsense offensive intervention is sold to the public by invoking “WMDs” or “preventing the spread of communism” or some other “Imminent threat.” Also it’s funny you say I’d make a better politician than soldier because I’m generally anti-war. AFAIK it was our military senior leaders advising Trump against moves on Kharg island while Lindsey Graham was pleasuring himself to the thought of another Iwo Jima. If you think our politicians are against wars, I genuinely don’t know who you’re talking about. But this is the Iran thread and I’m talking about this war, the lies that got us into it, and the chaotic mess our president continues to exacerbate with his nonsense statements and nonexistent strategy. I noticed the strait is closed again.. so when oil spikes and the Dow takes a dump tomorrow will we be admitting the victory declaration was slightly premature? I wonder how many more strait of Hormuz Open-Closed-Open-Closed cycles will need to happen before we realize that Iran isn’t quite as decimated as we’d like to believe and the president is just wishcasting foreign policy by tweet

Your comment actually does bring up an interesting point even despite your framing of internal government fracturing in Iran as an unmitigated win. Who is in charge in Iran right now? Are we even negotiating with the right people? If we agree to something will it be followed? Some of us kooks against more middle eastern regime change boondoggles actually warned about this.. when you create a power vacuum, often the most radical elements fill the void. Gee where have I heard this story before

Mm yes using one pointless boondoggle to justify another. Here’s a prediction: as long as we have troops in the Middle East, they’ll always be targeted periodically and we will inevitably incur casualties. So we’ll never run out of dumb justifications for new interventions

Stock market - up (after the war tanked it) Oil - down (after the war spiked it) Straight - open (after the war closed it) The Dow, oil prices, and commerce in the straight were all humming along just fine before we started this boondoggle and now that we trashed all three and have begun to unf—-k the situation I’m supposed to admit some big win happened? We are slowly progressing to get back to square one. The mullahs and IRGC still run Iran. They still have nuclear material. They still have ballistic missiles that can hold our bases in the region at risk. Now we’re lifting sanctions on Iran to get a fragile ceasefire and commitments that they won’t develop a nuke—which is exactly what the JCPOA was the whole time…

😂 my mistake I didn’t realize you speak for.. the world

Well I know we already disagree about this war but to your broader point I would argue our tolerance for casualties is right where it should be.. in inverse proportion to how stupid the conflict is and the amount of lies used to sell it.

Regime - intact Ballistic missile threat - intact Nuclear material - at large Population - more rallied behind their government than before Regime - pinky promising they won’t make a nuke which you wouldn’t believe last time but will now for some reason Yeah dude so much progress has been made

Obviously I don’t know and couldn’t post it here if I did. But leading up to the ceasefire it seemed like hits on our stuff were increasing — AWACS, PSAB tankers, THAAD radar array etc.. all open source. And this was after a month of attriting their launchers. Also open source reporting from the Israel and US side that interceptor numbers were getting “critically low.” I’m not saying the patriot/thaad/sm-3 aren’t super rad systems. I just don’t think we were winning the volume game or ‘exchange ratio’ @ClearedHot alluded to and that was one of the reasons the desire for a ceasefire seemed urgent on our side

How so? The war was launched based on an “imminent nuclear threat” which none of our intel agencies corroborate and the White House won’t elaborate on. Tulsi Gabbard dodged the question when asked about it and our own counterterrorism director resigned in disgust. As far as having no plan, I think that is made more evident day by day as the goals, strategies, and rhetoric shift constantly. Every time Trump is asked what the plan is he just goes “I think something amazing will happen in the next few days and the war will be over very soon.” And then the war doesn’t end and nothing amazing happens. Just more incoherent tweets and strategy pivots. Whenever I ask you guys what the plan is, all I get is “rEduCe iRaNs iNflUenCe iN the rEgiOn aNd mAKe sUrE thEy cAnT pROjeCt pOwEr” Sick. Has any of that been accomplished? And before you say we blew up their Air Force and Navy for the 69th time, I’ll just nip that in the bud.. at no point ever was the primary power projection concern with Iran their Air Force or Navy. At this point If you believe this administration has a coherent plan, you’re the naive one. Before the last negotiations they said “Iran is desperate for a deal” and then came away with no deal… The “fell for it again” meme could not be more applicable than for some of you in this thread.

Idk how this is anyone’s conclusion watching this conflict. Iran basically had nothing but TBMs and drones and were able to attrit our systems and interceptor numbers to the point they were scoring direct hits on strategic assets up until days before the ceasefire. How can we expect after that result to be able to deal with a real peer threat like China that can throw the entire spectrum of munitions at us including things far more advanced than anything Iran can dream of? The statement (elsewhere in the thread) that we need more interceptors is the understatement of the century. And a variety of systems is key too. The army is lagging insanely behind in counter drone technology despite watching it play out for years in Ukraine. I’ll just say that it’s typical army.. they want their tank and artillery ground war and everything other than that plays second fiddle strategically for them in terms of development and funding priorities. I think this conflict should serve as a huge wake up call. We are shit hot on offense, nights 1-7 but sustaining a war in a contested space where your assets are actually under threat isn’t something we’ve dealt with in a long time.

Woah holy cow Obama and Biden launched a war of choice against Iran with no plan based on pressure from Israel, blatantly lying about an “imminent nuclear threat” our own intel agencies assessed the Iranians weren’t pursuing? I must’ve missed that part of the last decade.. Oh actually none of that happened and they did address the problem like semi-competent politicians. They negotiated the JCPOA which, while imperfect, provided a baseline for enrichment limits, inspection intervals, and further diplomacy. Trump then ripped it up while promising a way better deal, launched a war, and is now floundering to try to get back to some semblance of the diplomatic solution we literally already had.

lol it was pretty heavily implied when not a single person acknowledged there might be downsides to choking off a major global energy supply route. “Why is the US blockading Iran to ramp up economic pressure such an insane concept to you? I’d love to here a critically thought out argument against foreign policy 101, along with how you would have dealt with Iran blocking the strait and attempting to play the one card they had left to influence war outcomes in their favor.” Well that’s the thing about starting a stupid war of choice predicated on lies with no strategic plan.. you might end up painting yourself into a corner with only bad options. Which is where we currently find ourselves. Yes I agree that blockading the straight is the best bad option we have right now. The point is that we never had to be in this situation in the first place. My comment is simply pushback against the trump sycophants in here pretending it’s some genius strategic move with no downsides. Edit: Also the onus also isn’t on me to come up with a better plan. I wasn’t elected president, didn’t start this war, and have been against it the whole time.

Don’t be so negative dog we uno reversed carded their blockade with our own even more dope blockade. It’s a genius move that gives us nothing but leverage and definitely isn’t gonna have a bunch of unintended consequences. I’m tired of people making this whole thing about Trump and his administration. If it feels incoherent and made up as we go that’s just because you’re too blinded by your libtard-ness to see the genius bigger picture

Ok now let’s take your one inch deep analysis (close trade route -> gain leverage -> everything is awesome) and ask the obvious follow up questions: We don’t use much oil from the straight.. cool. So it shouldn’t affect our prices much right? Wrong. We live with something called the global economy and when supply of a commodity drops, effects of that percolate through the whole system. American oil companies will sell to the highest bidder just like anyone else so higher international demand will cause domestic prices to spike. Sorry, we don’t get to go on military adventures around the world and then suddenly pretend our own economy is isolationist. What happens when China is cut off from a huge portion of their oil imports? I guess in the world where we don’t consider follow on effects we’re just gonna ignore that. Are they just gonna sit back and take it? Are they going to put pressure on us to open the straight again? Are they going to raise their export prices to offset increased energy costs? Hmmm I wonder what country imports the most Chinese stuff….. Or What happens when (god forbid) one of our ships, now dicking around much closer to Iran than they were before, gets hit? Or hits a mine? Iran still has a very real missile, mine, and drone threat and now we’re basically just doing the navy version of seizing Kharg island—parking a bunch of juicy targets right off their coast. Again, the escalation ladder is sitting right in front of us and you guys are completely blind to it. What happens with the civilian population when the Iranian economy is fully destroyed by our blockade? I’m sure they’ll come running happily into the open arms of the country that’s doing it to them. It’s definitely not going to cause a rally around the flag effect much like trump’s tweet about killing their whole civilization. Any minute now the populace is going to rise up and turn the country into a flowering democracy…

You know the situation is getting incoherent when the thread goes suddenly quiet aside from grandpa chain email memes and babylon bee links Everything’s going great guys 👌👌👌 trust the process

Still waiting for someone to explain to me why if Iran is totally weak and decimated, we’re using their 10 point plan as the basis for negotiations. 🤷🏻‍♂️ guess I’ll have to keep waiting. Best you’ve got is.. wHaT are U smOkiNg?!??

Maybe you should call the White House and tell them that.. they seem to not have gotten the memo. If I recall correctly, 4 days ago (ancient history I know) Trump tweeted “open the fuckin straight you crazy bastards.” A free and open SOH was also a stated goal of the war, and per Trump it is “key condition” of the temporary ceasefire. This seems to contradict your assertion that we can just sit back and let Iran self-immolate by closing the straight as long as they want.. if it’s no skin off our back why is our president ranting about it?