This kind of feedback's how you know you're generating effects on target, and not, you know, just ineffectually dropping a bunch of critical munitions on an island without degrading the enemy at all.
Outlaw this mess right now. I cannot understand how bets on geopolitical events are legal
I think it was JFK who said victory is a girl
younger than 18, but defeat is a wife older than 35.
234 days until the midterms.
This is like if Casino Royale had a scene after Bond foils the airport bombing where Le Chiffre frantically calls other Bond villains trying to sell them his puts.
Great, now we're going to need a thread explaining the difference between preventive and preemptive ass-covering.
Even the HOI4 racism mods model oil!
To be honest, despite all the criticism that these guys think war is a video game, I have the feeling a lot of their dumb nonsense could have been avoided by playing other, better games that could have educated them.
This won't stop until Democrats start pushing back by telling Pentagon officials and senior military leaders that war crimes committed during this administration will be prosecuted during the next administration.
Before today, if you'd asked me what it looked like for a belligerent to try to end a war by declaring bankruptcy, I couldn't have told you.
*blinks*
I have walked into more than one SCIF that had a sign on the wall like "Do NOT brief the commander on the weather without first looking outside!"
I have not found any group that is generally immune to this. Even the ones you'd think would know too much to believe this think we have a second cooler DoD hidden away somewhere (or they think this is what SOCOM is), and that the rest of the DoD is like a front for the Men in Black.
It's like we're sitting on a bus cleaning rifles with CLP we bought out of pocket, we get off for a formation because the roster is wrong and we can't count off, and half these guys...who have secret clearances at a minimum...still believe there's a secret plan to seize all the guns in the US.
The most important career milestone of a US military planner is when you realize that everyone (our allies, our enemies, politicians, civilians, other servicemembers, etc) believes the US military is omnipotent, omniscient, and ten steps ahead, EVEN IF THEY ALSO BELIEVE IT IS CRAZY, EVIL, OR STUPID.
Technically Mardi Gras counts as a religious holiday since it only exists because of Lent.
DC 2026, Moscow 2022, Beijing 2027.
I guess reflecting on this I'd argue against the criticism that our entire COA is just bombing. It's more like our COA is just hope.
TLDR: "We've destroyed the Iranian military except for the parts we haven't, which continue to hold the world at risk. I hope other countries send more forces because our plan is just to keep doing the same thing hoping for a different result. The Strait of Hormuz is currently not open or safe."
This entire concept is just Drunk History.
By "everyone" I don't just mean the Army. Bob Hope beat us to the beach.
We haven't ATTEMPTED one since Wonsan, a month after Incheon. We said "This is stupid, let's just walk across the peninsula, MacArthur said "No, it will be cool!" There were mines, the Navy didn't have the mineclearing for it, so we sat offshore while everyone else walked across the peninsula.
What do we think that would end up being? $200B? $300B? Someone let me know if this Houthi side quest goes beyond that so I can act obnoxious about being right.
My pitch to resolve this as cheaply as possible is to create an international fund to offer each Houthi $1,000,000. I think we'll have enough donations to do it after the first phone call.
I assumed all the aviation would go ashore in Kuwait and any naval resupply would be done periodically via UNREP in the Gulf of Oman.
My guess is resupply is some incredibly inefficient way for OPLOG, like everything via air to Kuwait, then TACLOG is something incredibly dangerous.
Yeah, the forces to take Bandar Abbas aren't there. Even if they were, Bandar Abbas doesn't buy you much in terms of preventing Iran from denying the strait.
As long as this has come up, reminder that a policy of refusing to accept enemy surrenders even if you aren't killing them, like, say, just for a hypothetical example, to reduce your logistical burden, is also a war crime (stares at Mattis, USFK, and like everyone else in the DoD).
Just having them ashore needing resupply is like a self-writing Iranian CONOPS. And it's unclear they can affect you in any way from there, so maybe just let them sit there, lob missiles at them, and let them risk lightly protected low density capabilities trying to get supplies in and remains out.
