Crepitus
Diamond Member
- Mar 28, 2018
- 106,331
- 157,021
- 3,615
The reality of the Iran war. Remebemr, there was no war before tRump. The strait was open, our fuel prices were low, our defensive stockpiles were high.
Now everything has changed.
Let's look at "project freedom", a weak attempt a rebranding an offensive naval engagement as a humanitarian operation. They managed to move 2 ship yesterday. Two. That took maybe a billion dollars worth of budget because they were only able to do it under a financially unsustainable umbrella of military support.
Then they proclaimed "the strait is open!"
It's not.
The Iranians have the terrain/tactical advantage here. It's called "asymmetric warfare" and the pentagon under Hegseth seems to have forgotten it exists. The coastline they have to traverse is a 600 mile mountain fortress of tunnels , secluded coves, and stark ravines. It's utterly impossible to clean out the whole thing. Iran is not fighting ship to ship naval engagements in the style of WWII. They don't have do destroy everything in the strait, all they have to do is tag my one freighter a week and the shipping companies will continue to take other routs for cargo and leave the oil sitting there.
Hardware.
Yes, we has it. We have a massive advantage in hardware. Hardware doesn't win wars, people do, but lets talk about it anyway. Specifically the cost. You wanna talk about asymmetry? We are shooting down $20,000.oo drones with $4,300,000.00 missiles. Missiles we have a limited supply of. This is a war of financial attrition we cannot win. Then there's the fact that we are overextended. These ship require maintenance. Many are long overdue for it an getting worse... That's why we are seeing things like laundry room fires that can disable an aircraft carrier and ships with no working plumbing or short on food/fuel.
And our high tech weapons. We are depleting them at unheard of rates. approximately 50% of our anti missile capability is gone and will take years to replace.
That, in addition to exhausted troops and broken equipment leaves us vulnerable to our real enemies, Russia and China. They are probably cackling with anticipation.
Now lets look at the political situation.
The current administration ran on "no new wars". They have alienated a significant portion of their base with this. The nation as a group is nearly universally against this war. That's a massive at-home moral problem. Everyone can see we just spent beillion of dollars to accomplish little more than send our gas prices through the roof.
Abroad it's even worse. We have alienated almost every ally we ever had. tRump is begging for help to reopen the strait, but most are saying "you started this, you need to finish it.
At home this will likely be redressed by the midterms and the next presidential election.
Abroad this may never be repaired.
This whole thing is a massive boondoggle.
Now everything has changed.
Let's look at "project freedom", a weak attempt a rebranding an offensive naval engagement as a humanitarian operation. They managed to move 2 ship yesterday. Two. That took maybe a billion dollars worth of budget because they were only able to do it under a financially unsustainable umbrella of military support.
Then they proclaimed "the strait is open!"
It's not.
The Iranians have the terrain/tactical advantage here. It's called "asymmetric warfare" and the pentagon under Hegseth seems to have forgotten it exists. The coastline they have to traverse is a 600 mile mountain fortress of tunnels , secluded coves, and stark ravines. It's utterly impossible to clean out the whole thing. Iran is not fighting ship to ship naval engagements in the style of WWII. They don't have do destroy everything in the strait, all they have to do is tag my one freighter a week and the shipping companies will continue to take other routs for cargo and leave the oil sitting there.
Hardware.
Yes, we has it. We have a massive advantage in hardware. Hardware doesn't win wars, people do, but lets talk about it anyway. Specifically the cost. You wanna talk about asymmetry? We are shooting down $20,000.oo drones with $4,300,000.00 missiles. Missiles we have a limited supply of. This is a war of financial attrition we cannot win. Then there's the fact that we are overextended. These ship require maintenance. Many are long overdue for it an getting worse... That's why we are seeing things like laundry room fires that can disable an aircraft carrier and ships with no working plumbing or short on food/fuel.
And our high tech weapons. We are depleting them at unheard of rates. approximately 50% of our anti missile capability is gone and will take years to replace.
That, in addition to exhausted troops and broken equipment leaves us vulnerable to our real enemies, Russia and China. They are probably cackling with anticipation.
Now lets look at the political situation.
The current administration ran on "no new wars". They have alienated a significant portion of their base with this. The nation as a group is nearly universally against this war. That's a massive at-home moral problem. Everyone can see we just spent beillion of dollars to accomplish little more than send our gas prices through the roof.
Abroad it's even worse. We have alienated almost every ally we ever had. tRump is begging for help to reopen the strait, but most are saying "you started this, you need to finish it.
At home this will likely be redressed by the midterms and the next presidential election.
Abroad this may never be repaired.
This whole thing is a massive boondoggle.
