Comment by godwinson__4-8
2 hours ago
> We don't commit precisely because we are so dominant there is no need.
> Just look at public opinion at the start of Afghanistan. It's a shame Bush and Obama bungled it so badly.
This seems contradictory. The first seems like wishful thinking/unclear rationalization. The second implies a contradiction. Why are the polls relevant unless you mean to suggest this war involved more commitment? Yet it also ended in failure?
What was the last war America won against an adversary like today's China? Who is signing up for such a war today? If all these other wars have been a "war of choice" why would war with China be any different? Are you under the impression a Chinese move on say Taiwan will be preceded by an attack on the US homeland?
Anyway we'll have to agree to disagree on most of the rest. I don't know what metric your using to define "MAGA" but I don't think I share it. 80 million people roughly voted for the Jan 6th guy. His coalition is (or at least was) pretty wide. He will probably lose the midterms like most presidents. It's not clear he really cares or that it will really matter.
Anyway, I hope you are right and I appreciate the back and forth. Thanks!
> This seems contradictory. The first seems like wishful thinking/unclear rationalization. The second implies a contradiction. Why are the polls relevant unless you mean to suggest this war involved more commitment? Yet it also ended in failure?
I'm saying that America was not really all that motivated for Afghanistan (aside from the start), Iraq, Vietnam, or any major conflict since Korea. We can lose and life goes on. The stock market stays up, businesses keep doing business, the government stays in power, the conflict isn't existential in even the most minor sense except for that tiny minority that's directly involved. And those conflicts were largely insurgencies and attempts at nation-building.
A kinetic war at sea with a nation state like China is what America was built to fight, although perhaps less so now that the Trump admin has wasted most of our advanced munitions on Iran. They have a navy for us to sink and fighters and bombers to shoot down, and if we do that well enough we win! There's no caves to hide in, no religious insurgencies to plant IEDs, no land to occupy, no nation-building.
I'm not saying we wouldn't have casualties, but I think in a conventional war we'd do better against China than Iran.
> Anyway we'll have to agree to disagree on most of the rest. I don't know what metric your using to define "MAGA" but I don't think I share it. 80 million people roughly voted for the Jan 6th guy. His coalition is (or at least was) pretty wide. He will probably lose the midterms like most presidents. It's not clear he really cares or that it will really matter.
Most of those 80 million were not hardcore MAGA, just uninformed and pissed at Biden for whatever reason. Plenty of them have fallen off the train in the last year and a half. Between DOGE, ICE, Epstein, Iran and stepping the corruption into overdrive, there's at least one major thing that will keep many of them from voting for him again. Even the MAGA base started to turn on him after the MOU with Iran came out, he had to backtrack on that quickly
But yeah, good talk!