4 hours ago, Negat0ry said:

You’re just reiterating talking points that mean nothing.

pK miss. I gave the succinct, accurate answer that can be written on an Internet forum. You have no clue what’s actually going on, but by all means, continue to run your mouth and make an ass out of yourself.

21 minutes ago, ClearedHot said:

All good now>

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26 minutes ago, ClearedHot said:

All good now>

Updated

2 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

They would. I would consider it materially the same as parking a bunch of warships around Iran. At a certain point you have to accept the semantic limitations, and get to the point. And for me, the point is we should not take over Iran and attempt to transform it in the way we did Afghanistan or Iraq. Taking Kharg Island is about taking resources with strategic geopolitical consequences and applying pressure. Kind of like taking Maduro. Outside of starving the regime of money, it does nothing to give the Iranian people a better future, something that I consider their obligation, not ours.

And what happens when a few thousand marines are on Kharg island and then Iran, having now lost access to their own fossil fuel infrastructure, just says fuck it and starts lobbing TBMs at the place? Missiles are already getting through in PSAB and Tel Aviv, how do you think this is gonna go when we have ground troops on Iran’s doorstep as sitting ducks holding some shithole oil depot? God forbid a bunch of marines are injured or killed holding this stupid island, and then what happens? We just take our ball and go home? LOL you and I both know that’ll just be the excuse for the next incremental boots on the ground good idea fairy.

Do you guys not see the escalation ladder clearly laid out in front of us?

You guys keep saying you won’t support a 20 year nation building boondoggles. Great, thanks for that. Super easy to say in hindsight. But you all seem completely blind to (or supportive of) the incremental escalations sitting right in front of us, that are leading us down this path.

@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.

1 hour ago, Pooter said:

And what happens when a few thousand marines are on Kharg island and then Iran, having now lost access to their own fossil fuel infrastructure, just says fuck it and starts lobbing TBMs at the place?

You mean like the missiles they've been lobbing all over the place for a few years now?

1 hour ago, Pooter said:

God forbid a bunch of marines are injured or killed holding this stupid island, and then what happens? We just take our ball and go home? LOL you and I both know that’ll just be the excuse for the next incremental boots on the ground good idea fairy.

Pointless hypothetical. We're obviously capable of holding the island. Casualties are part of the job. A shitty part, but not a surprising one. We've already found out that the Iranians have a much longer range missile capability than previously believed, what other secrets do we wait to find out until our cities getting hit? Marines die so the civilians don't have to. This is nothing new.

1 hour ago, Pooter said:

Do you guys not see the escalation ladder clearly laid out in front of us?

Yup. And at the end, Iran has no nuclear program. We've already discussed how that's not worth it to you. It's absolutely worth it to me.

1 hour ago, Pooter said:

You guys keep saying you won’t support a 20 year nation building boondoggles. Great, thanks for that. Super easy to say in hindsight. But you all seem completely blind to (or supportive of) the incremental escalations sitting right in front of us, that are leading us down this path.

Absolutely no part of this has to escalate into nation building. You just don't see any other way because that's been our reality for decades.

But we are perfectly capable of murdering Iranian politicians, sanctioning their economy, and blowing up their factories, especially with the Israelis providing the Intel, for the next hundred years. And there's no way that they can have a nuclear program if we keep doing that. It's not just unlikely, it's impossible.

We were not escalated into Iraq or Afghanistan. We proudly marched into that Quagmire, still furious from 9/11. This is not then.

-this isn’t gonna be some 20 year boondoggle

-look we might have to spend the next 100 years playing whack-a-mole bombing Iran into submission

Even better! A 100 year boondoggle where we don’t even have the moral high ground of being able to claim we’re trying to bring democracy to a backward country. At least now we’re saying the quiet part out loud.

1 hour ago, Pooter said:

-this isn’t gonna be some 20 year boondoggle

-look we might have to spend the next 100 years playing whack-a-mole bombing Iran into submission

Even better! A 100 year boondoggle where we don’t even have the moral high ground of being able to claim we’re trying to bring democracy to a backward country. At least now we’re saying the quiet part out loud.

You're not actually this... simple, are you?

- It's already a 20 year boondoggle. This is the regime that made our misery in the middle east 10x worse. They have terrorized our allies and slaughtered our servicemen. This is the end of the boondoggle.

- I said we could, not we would. It's merely an honest assessment of our economic and military capabilities. You know, define what's possible before you decide on what to do.

- Preventing the most fanatical, violent regime on Earth from getting nuclear weapons is all the moral high ground I need.

Jesus, as far as bad-faith arguments go, you're worse than my ex wife.

On 3/29/2026 at 2:05 PM, ViperMan said:

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.

It's an internet forum dude. While I have had some/many antagonistic posts on here, this wasn't one and I really tried to frame it that way. I know we don't all agree, even among you guys that are for the Iran engagement. But I ain't trying to live in a echo chamber, so that's why I phrased the question that way and put in my 2 cents. I'm thought it was pretty clear I was asking for everyone's opinion, I guess not.

Easy way out of your answer for Iraq and Afghanistan - we had a AUMF and allies that fought along side us. But, I thought about it all the time in the end it was a big contributor to me retiring when I did. I legit prayed a lot about it.

Finally, I'm an American so I can and will question everything. I'm sure some of you gents/ladies think I lap up everything the DNC drops outta its ass, but I don't. I thought questioning the government was the whole point of this country?

Thanks for the responses, enjoyed the reading.

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by 17D_guy

38 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

You're not actually this... simple, are you?

- It's already a 20 year boondoggle. This is the regime that made our misery in the middle east 10x worse. They have terrorized our allies and slaughtered our servicemen. This is the end of the boondoggle.

- I said we could, not we would. It's merely an honest assessment of our economic and military capabilities. You know, define what's possible before you decide on what to do.

- Preventing the most fanatical, violent regime on Earth from getting nuclear weapons is all the moral high ground I need.

Jesus, as far as bad-faith arguments go, you're worse than my ex wife.

Delusions about our capabilities and influence are the first step toward getting into these kinds of disastrous long haul slogs. That you would even bring it up signals a level of hubris that I think seriously clouds your strategic thinking.