Comment by ericmay
25 days ago
The best course of action now is to spend less time criticizing the United States and more time working with the United States, sending assets, military capabilities (if able), or at least providing political and diplomatic support &c. to stop the Iranians.
The world let this disease (IRGC) fester in the region for too long, and now because of that the fix is going to require significant pain. The IRGC in its current form has run its course and will not be allowed to threaten American interests, allied interests (whether that's Israel, UAE, Saudi Arabia, or otherwise), and they will not be permitted to build a nuclear weapon or threaten global trade.
So the best thing the rest of the world could do is send their own people to die because the US keeps bashing its head against a wall here since the 50s?
What's your sales pitch exactly for how that's the best thing for the non-US rest-of-the-world? What's the US's post-WWII track record, success-wise, in regime-change foreign wars, how much would you trust the US on this one?
Well they don’t have to, but we aren’t going to let Iran obtain a nuclear weapon or build up such a missile and drone stockpile that they could then threaten and attack their Gulf neighbors and implement restrictions maritime trade, which they were likely to do, hence the build up.
> What's your sales pitch exactly for how that's the best thing for the non-US rest-of-the-world? What's the US's post-WWII track record, success-wise, in regime-change foreign wars, how much would you trust the US on this one?
Honestly not all that bad for the US.
Korea - we stopped the North Koreans from taking over the entire peninsula. It’s China and Russia’s fault that the hell hole we know as North Korea exists today.
Vietnam - unnecessary war, but we won the peace.
Panama - took out Noriega
Desert Storm - stopped Saddam and kicked his thugs out of Iraq.
Serbia and Bosnia - NATO campaign. I’m personally a little unsure if the results were good or not but I understand we collectively stopped a genocide.
Afghanistan - we tried our best and made some mistakes along the way. Eventually got Bin Laden though. Too bad the rest of the world didn’t help. Now we’re seeing a massive regression in women’s rights there.
Iraq - probably not worth the money, but Iraq went from a brutal dictatorship under Saddam to a much more stable and peaceful country with a Parliament.
Venezuela - Took out Maduro with no losses.
Iran - TBD on the long term but we’ve stopped the IRGC buildup and at least bought time to figure out what to do.
The rest of the world stands on the sidelines and complains and complains yet the United States actually has the balls and will to do things. We aren’t perfect, but without US military action or at least the threat the world would be much more dangerous and much worse off. China sure as hell isn’t going to send troops to liberate Kuwait. Europe doesn’t have the military capability to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons and exerting a stranglehold on a large chunk of global oil supply.
I’m struggling to understand what this spin is even supposed to mean?
Why are you lying about this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Security_Assista...
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There's a reason I mentioned regime change in there. It's a FAR more difficult operation than a war of defense or a tactical campaign. And it's why I think none of these support your "not all that bad" conclusion. You listed 9 things, 2 are far too recent to evaluate, and of the remaining 7 these 5 are regime-change failures (or simply not-regime-change-attempts):
> Korea - we stopped the North Koreans from taking over the entire peninsula. It’s China and Russia’s fault that the hell hole we know as North Korea exists today.
The regime still existed, and wasn't prevented by that restriction from nuke/missile development like you are so worried about in Iran. "It's other countries fault" isn't an excuse here, it's something that should be taken into consideration more generally in advance.
> Vietnam - unnecessary war, but we won the peace.
But no regime change accomplished with the war itself, yes?
> Desert Storm - stopped Saddam and kicked his thugs out of Iraq.
I think you mean "kicked his thugs out of Kuwait". And let's keep that in mind: a defensive operation worked well.
> Serbia and Bosnia - NATO campaign. I’m personally a little unsure if the results were good or not but I understand we collectively stopped a genocide.
I don't really think this qualifies as "regime change" vs intervention campaign in a "traditional" existing conflict?
> Afghanistan - we tried our best and made some mistakes along the way. Eventually got Bin Laden though. Too bad the rest of the world didn’t help. Now we’re seeing a massive regression in women’s rights there.
"Got Bin Laden" isn't a regime change, and now obviously the regime is not good. What was the rest of the world supposed to do to make it better? Occupy every square mile of the country with soldiers for a couple generations?
And then this one:
> Iraq - probably not worth the money, but Iraq went from a brutal dictatorship under Saddam to a much more stable and peaceful country with a Parliament.
There's no face of a dictator like Saddam anymore but I think "stable and peaceful" oversells it. But yeah, this is the most direct not-yet-imploded regime change in the area on the list.
Notably left off your list regime-change-wise here is Iran in the 50s. That one seems to have backfired. (And that's a great example of why Venezuela, Afghanistan, this-iteration of Iran, even Iraq all are still open-books with potential unforeseen consequences left to come.) The biggest direct threat to date from the Middle East to the US itself hasn't been from nation states, it's been terror groups that have festered post-intervention attempts.
The calculus for this attack on Iran assumes that they were going to escalate imminently in a new, more direct, way and that it would directly threaten the US itself; both of these seem a bit far-fetched after decades of the status quo. It's also an area where the US seems to not have much credibility because there was that whole less-than-a-year-ago "we knocked back the nuclear program" post-bombing claim.
And in particular:
> we aren’t going to let Iran obtain a nuclear weapon or build up such a missile and drone stockpile that they could then threaten and attack their Gulf neighbors and implement restrictions maritime trade, which they were likely to do
seems like that actually did happen, and maritime trade is already impacted? Seems a bit silly to say "the US must act to prevent the very thing that the action will provoke."
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Hate to break it to you, but the IRGC isn't going anywhere.
The reason nobody was dumb enough to attack them before is that it's an unwinnable conflict. They don't need a lot to close the Strait of Hormuz, a few guys rolling mines off a beach would do that. And they have a lot more, like missiles and drones to do damage at a distance too.
And it's a regime that has at least a million loyal fanatics ready to fight for it (the Basij, the org that did unarmed meat waves against Iraq to defend the regime). So any invasion is an absurd proposition.
So what, the hope is that the theocratic kleptocracy will give up? Not even a child could be so naive. They literally believe in martyrdom, whacking a few of the top dogs means nothing.
It's like the Kims, nobody can unseat them. Only this is far worse, because Iran has the leverage of Hormuz, and it knows it can wait - because they don't care about the people - while the US and global economy suffer until they fold. Especially with midterm elections coming, the US will fold.
Watch and see.
> Especially with midterm elections coming, the US will fold.
These are the kinds of misunderstandings that are disappointing to see. There is no disagreement here amongst the political class. It is political theater for votes. Apparently you’re susceptible to the marketing.
We don’t need to invade Iran. We just keep the Strait closed since we control it and then Iran’s economy simply fails and the worst thing that happens for America is higher prices. But we can handle that.
> These are the kinds of misunderstandings that are disappointing to see. There is no disagreement here amongst the political class. It is political theater for votes. Apparently you’re susceptible to the marketing
The political class answers, in a way, to the population. The American population is extremely sensitive to the price they get at the gas station (because of the complete lack of alternatives in driving in most places, and the average car having bad fuel economy). If by election time the prices are the same, the ruling party will get punished. And the ruling party doesn't want that.
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The festering disease is the United States of America, not the IRGC.
Countries should be sanctioning the warmongers that caused this. Confiscating trumps golf courses would be a start.
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