Pooter

Anyway sorry for the thread drift. Let me know when this new round of bombing changes literally anything wrt the strategic situation around the SOH, which as a reminder, was completely open and un-tolled before this entire stupid thing started. I dream of a day where we can get back to the status quo we spent 10's of billions to detonate

Turns out you don't need to resort to asymmetric attacks and suicide bombing when you have F-35s and JDAMs and AI to tell you when "daddy's home" so you know when to flatten the whole apartment complex. And no I haven't heard a street rally of Israelis calling for death to all muslims. But I have heard Israeli leaders call the people of Gaza "human animals" who need to be totally eradicated but I'm sure you're about to explain to me how that's totally different. -Yoav Gallant (Former Defense Minister): On October 9, 2023, declared a "complete siege" and referred to Gazans as "human animals". -Benjamin Netanyahu (Prime Minister): Invoked the biblical narrative of Amalek in a October 28, 2023 address, which some interpret as a call for total destruction. -Isaac Herzog (President): Stated on October 13, 2023, that "an entire nation" in Gaza is responsible for the actions of Hamas. -Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian (COGAT): Stated in October 2023 that "human animals" in Gaza would face destruction. -IIRC a viral video just surfaced this week of an IDF soldier flashbanging Gazans inside a car at a traffic stop while holding the doors shut.. -Oh and there's this. "According to United Nations and UNICEF reports, at least 21,000 Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza since the war began, with some figures from humanitarian organizations and local health authorities placing the toll at roughly 20,000." No. No you don't. You judge societies based on immense and crippling pre-conceived biases and ignore the atrocities committed by "the good guys" while constantly pivoting back to "the bad guys" who no one here was defending in the first place.

Not evil and not a conspiracy. They just lobby exclusively for the interests of a foreign government in perfect lockstep with that government's policies, which I think easily rises to the definition codified by FARA requiring agencies to register if: they are acting, quote: "at the order, request, or under the direction or control" of a "foreign principal." No, Israel has massive influence for dozens of reasons, some of which I listed and only two of which you've even attempted to address. And exactly what percentage of foreign aid would be problematic? 10%? 20%? 50%? Because they're getting 1/20th when there are 180+ countries in the world so at the very least it already seems disproportionate. But it's not even just 4.7% because we pay off the other countries in the region to leave Israel alone while they go flattening gaza and starting wars with everyone, so the indirect aid they get through our bribery of everyone else is far higher. When we're 37+ trillion in debt, and devaluing our currency to be able to afford all this foreign aid, yes I am against it. All foreign aid should stop immediately and only resume once we have a solvent domestic budget. And yes I know cutting all foreign aid tomorrow would barely make a dent in the debt. But it's more the principle of spending money outside the US when we can't even fund our own stuff. It's like buying your neighbor a car when you're bankrupt. And it's especially annoying that we're robbing our own citizens to fight wars on the other side of the world on behalf of a country whose technical prowess, espionage, and military capabilities you guys can't stop glazing. Sounds like Israel is shit-hot. I believe you. Maybe they're so shit-hot they could even fight the fights they pick on their own.

Right, they’re just a run of the mill domestic lobby of totally normal Americans whose only priority is a foreign country and whose policy prescriptions are indistinguishable from the government of that country. Got it. Just normal America stuff. If we subbed Israel for any other country on earth in this scenario, your alarm bells would be rightfully going wild. Love this. I knew we were gonna play make believe. Didn’t I call it? Yes the off grid gun toting libertarian, former maga loyalist, retired army general freedom caucus chair, and the two lefty loons are all just “anti conservative.” lol that’s what they have in common and why AIPAC hates them 😂 Edit: also hilarious to describe AIPAC as a conservative group when they contribute almost equally to the left and right and in many years more toward the democrats. Anything to avoid admitting the obvious through line here is that it’s all 100% motivated by who will and won’t fully support Israel

Reading comprehension bud. I said “since its founding” (1948) but yes thank you I’m sure you can cherry pick years where a crisis temporarily spiked our foreign aid to other places more. Go look it up. It’s simply a fact, not some Pepe Silvia conspiracy. This is precisely the problem. It is a lobby thats motivated exclusively by support for a foreign government despite, yes being a “domestic” group on paper. This allows them to contribute to political races—something no other foreign lobby is allowed to do, and that is the root cause of their disproportionate influence. I know I’m slaying the sacred cow here so critical thinking is gonna be hard but let’s put our big boy pants on for a second and ask ourselves what Thomas Massie, Scott Perry, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Cori Bush, and Jamaal Bowman have in common from a policy perspective. And why would a “domestic” political lobby equally go after these people all over the political spectrum with seemingly zero policy overlap. I look forward to us pretending it’s for any reason other than the obvious

For the millionth time it isn’t about “the Jews.” It is about the government of Israel and every time you guys falsely accuse people of racism you dig the hole even deeper for yourselves. But by all means continue and let’s see how far public sentiment for Israel can crater, I doubt we’ve found the bottom yet. Just keep shouting “anti semite” like the right wing doppelgänger of a blue haired smith college student and then ponder, along with the great mysteries of the universe, why your arguments keep losing traction. I have an issue with a government. A foreign government that we give a shit ton of money to. Not a people, not a race, not an ethnic group. Full stop. My claim the government of Israel has outsized influence on our politics is based on: AIPAC not being registered as a foreign lobby, and yes being extremely influential and powerful despite there being a handful of domestic lobbying groups that are bigger Netanyahu visiting DC more than any other head of state in recent years especially in the lead up to the war Sitting US senators quoted as saying the main reason they ran for office is to be a defender of Israel Batshit dispensationalist Christians who believe it is their religious duty to support a foreign government Israel being the largest recipient of US foreign aid since its founding The legislation CURRENTLY being pushed to merge some of the US and Israeli government defense functions The fact that we have attempted to or have toppled the governments of all 7 countries listed in the Israeli clean break strategy That our welfare baby country actively defies us and sabotages our negotiations on a routine basis Campaign donations to Trump in the hundreds of millions from the Adelsons motivated entirely by Israel support (Trump admitted they won’t leave him alone about it) The sitting US ambassador to Israel endorsing the greater Israel project But yeah since the AARP is bigger than one pro Israel lobbying group probably I’m a racist and it’s all just a conspiracy. PS. Saw we’re back to bombing as of last night. I’m sure this one will do the trick

Since I clearly have to spell this out .. it began being drafted in 2020 by mostly democrats (I.e. in no way caused by russias invasion of Ukraine) before being signed into law in 2022 by the Biden admin (I.e. having nothing to do with the Trump admin) Good lord first you’re arguing the chips act was a useless Democrat knee jerk to Russia, then when I clearly disprove that, you latch on to trumps lame duck year of 2020 as the year it was drafted to somehow mentally contort yourself to give him the credit.. for the thing you didn’t even believe was proactive in the first place.. I didn’t mean for this to become a sidebar on the chips act but this is genuinely so dumb I can’t let it go. Not much point in talking about complex foreign policy issues if we can’t even come to a collective understanding on a basic order of events or who is behind a piece of legislation without you shifting your self-contradictory argument multiple times.. We get it done by ending our complete subservience to a foreign government.. I don’t expect anyone in your daughter’s daycare to know about AIPAC but a good start toward a solution might be reducing or eliminating that lobby’s influence in our politics.

Pretty sure the reason the Jan-6ers needed a pardon in the first place is because… …they were also arrested

Googles: When did the chips act start being drafted? June 2020 When did Russia invade Ukraine February 2022. But sure it was probably Covid.. because everyone’s prime concern during Covid was the microchip supply. Couldn’t possibly be that a democrat admin did a proactive domestic thing in alignment with their foreign policy. We’ve already established it’s impossible for anything smart to happen without first punching oneself in the face. More broadly speaking though, I don’t want you to get frustrated with me. I’m asking genuine questions and soaking in your points and calling out the parts I think are silly. I’m here for a friendly and lively debate and yes enjoy being the contrarian in a den of mostly aligned war hawks. I will give you your ideas have a unique flavor and honesty here and it’s not just the predictable Fox News word vomit. I admit I definitely have never heard the #GETHARD (David Goggins ™️) strategy of foreign policy strength through self-sabotage before. Regardless I look forward to monitoring the situation and debating more with you dudes

lol so in order to make smart choices we have to intervene in the hard/soft cycle by intentionally making hard times for ourselves 😂 So just to be clear we have to Intentionally be dumb in the near term to make hard times because we’re just such sober realists we’ll never make a smart choice unless absolutely forced. I’m curious, how far can we take this principle.. does it work like the dumber we are now, the harder the times we’ll create, and therefore we’ll emerge from those even harder men? Then what’s stopping us from being as dumb as possible right now? Why not nuke Kharg island, or Tehran? Why not nuke ourselves? If the goal is creating the hardest times possible so we get SUPER HARD (giggity) I can think of a lot of ways we could do that more severe and immediate than some pinpoint strikes on the other side of the world.. You can pretend we’re all naive idealists but this line of thinking is just plain dumb and falls apart when subjected the most basic critical thought. We didn’t need a global calamity to pass the chips act to revamp domestic chip manufacturing. We didn’t need global calamity for Reagan to build up the military and bankrupt the Soviet Union. In your personal life you don’t need to experience calamity to know you need to make smart decisions and plan for the future. Turns out avoiding calamity is actually a really good incentive too. We can and should expect our government to be proactive and do things that make sense without needing to shoot ourselves in the dick first.

… uh what? yes it absolutely does. What is this argument? If you piss away your stockpile which will take years to replace, you are measurably weaker, right now. Can’t believe I have to actually spell this out, but your current inventory and your ability to produce more… both matter. If current inventory was irrelevant how can we maintain a nuclear deterrent even though we haven’t built a new ICBM since 1978 and we haven’t manufactured a new nuke since 1992. We can literally do all of this without needing to bomb Kharg island 😂 idk why common sense national defense/fiscal policy and bombing Kharg island are suddenly and inextricably linked in your mind. And as I’ve said many times before, I don’t know why you do this weird thing where you say “well if you’re so smart why don’t you run for office and fix everything.” We’re debating in a forum. The onus isn’t on either of us to fix the whole world. But if you do want my policy prescription that badly it’s basically: do all the smart stuff you listed in your comment but don’t do all the really stupid parts.

One saved round: Remember that time I said we were heading down the road of irreversible stupid escalations and everyone called me a TDS libtard pussy? Well now here we are talking about how we need to bomb Kharg island so that WW3 starts on our terms 🤷🏻‍♂️ Can’t make this shit up

Apologies I was not tracking you’ve been advocating for this very very bad idea for as long and as consistently as you have been. Still you haven’t explained one key part. How, in an inevitable total war with a competing power that can out-produce us, is it a good plan to waste munitions on a middle eastern sideshow and then intentionally provoke that power while you are most vulnerable in their region of influence? You’re convinced an inevitable global total war is coming. Sure I guess if we want to pretend mutually assured destruction doctrine just magically stopped existing then yeah I guess we’re gonna go to total war with China at some point. But you just said if you had your way you’d push it off 10-15 years.. so shouldn’t that mean we dont bomb Kharg island right now, since that could possibly set off the exact chain of events you want to delay? Seriously, none of this makes any sense. This is turning into you trying to out-realist everybody with apocalypse fantasies, but the arguments fall flat for two main reasons: No one other than you conceives of this war in this way. Europe isn’t going to magically start producing oil again if we blow up Kharg island. They’re just going to be further weakened. If you do think WW3 is coming, you can just say that and prep for it. Idk why it requires us to step on our own dick first

I’m referring to your assertion that we need to bomb Kharg island to intentionally set off a global energy crisis which will somehow be a good thing in the long run. I don’t remember this war ever being pitched that way (fair enough, you didn’t pitch it) but I also don’t remember you ever making this point before. It seems a lot like you’re starting with your conclusion (we just need to keep bombing and escalating) and working backward from there each week with whatever the new neocon strategy du jour is. This is just a blatant straw man. No one here has ever claimed we figured out eternal world peace or that other countries around the world don’t act aggressively. Quite the opposite actually.. my argument is if we’re serious about deterring Russia and China this war has severely hampered that. We don’t have infinite money or resources and this stupid boondoggle on behalf of a foreign country pulled valuable assets away from other AORs that will take significant time to reconstitute. Rebuilding U.S. Missile Inventory: A Multiyear ProjectHigh expenditure of key munitions in Operation Epic Fury has created a window of vulnerability until inventories return to pre-war levels and then reach levels that war planners desire.Article says TLAM THAAD and Patriot stockpiles will be reconstituted by sometime between 2029 and 2031. We retasked 2 carrier strike groups from PACOM to the Middle East. Bomber task forces to anywhere other than CENTCOM are nonexistent right now. 69% of our tanker fleet is sitting at BG/PSAB. But yeah it’s probably a good idea to bomb Kharg island and risk a possible China confrontation at the exact moment our force posture in PACOM is more on the back foot than at any point in the last decade 👌

.. so we need to escalate in order to.. encourage Europe to recapitalize their energy independence, so that in some future hypothetical war that’s a foregone conclusion (in your head) our allies will be stronger? Guys these justifications are getting more and more convoluted and nonsensical. Talk about a goalpost shift.. I thought this was about an “imminent nuclear threat” to the US homeland

So I guess the obvious follow up question here is.. is Iran such an existential threat to the US that we need to bomb Kharg island, setting off a global economic crisis and potential war with China? You just listed some pretty gnarly side effects of your silver bullet solution to this war so I’m just wondering.. is a world where Kharg island is blown up but now we have a global depression/energy crisis and China wants to go to war with us somehow better?

It’s funny you guys always act like just a little bit more bombing will do the trick without any source to support it whatsoever.. You talk like we tripped 100 yards from the end of a marathon, and we have to just get up and finish the job. Come on guys it’ll be so easy. We’re sooo close. Just finish the job. Cmon bro. Trust me bro. Except you have no idea how close or far we are from the finish line. I saw zero credible intel at any point that the IRGC was about to collapse or some other moderating force was about to take over. We’re not 100 yards from the finish line.. we’ve run a 5k and we don’t even know how long the race is. If I had to bet, the admin probably didn’t think we were close to the finish line either. That’s why they took a ceasefire and are now eating Iranian dick on the global stage. Trump already launched the war.. you think if it was as simple as a few more targets and this thing is game over he wouldn’t have done it? Midnight hammer obliterated them but then we just needed a little more. Then epic fury obliterated them but we just needed a little more. Then the blockade of their blockade was totally gonna bring them down but we just need a little more. And shocker, all of the Israel first neocon war hawks agree! Always just a little bit more

Maybe I’m old fashioned or just naive on the wonders of AI, but the side getting strategic wins here is the one with the massive TBM stockpile and control over a critical global trade route, while the side with all the fancy AI tools is getting humiliated on the global stage. Although.. a slightly smarter version of grok could’ve advised us this war of choice was a shit idea to begin with, in which case I’m all for embracing our robot overlords

Short of a dropping nukes or a full ground invasion, I think this conflict has proven we don’t have the firepower needed for Iran to capitulate. It’s not about what the public will or won’t support, because we already proved we’ll go ahead and launch a super unpopular war. I’m talking about the real world limits of our military power. This might be a tough pill to swallow but we had 3x the fighter squadrons we do now when we took down the far smaller country of Iraq in 1990. And in desert storm, airpower was paired with a ground invasion. The notion that we can ramp up to some previously unseen level of air power just isn’t reality. Almost the entire tanker community is deployed already and run ragged with crew rest waivers. We redirected more carriers to the region than at any point in the last 30 years and one of the CSG’s retasked for this thing just completed the longest carrier deployment since WW2. Idk if you guys follow the meme pages but one of the running jokes right now is that big blue basically took the entire AFFORGEN model and threw it in the trash when this kicked off. They just said fuck it and deployed everybody. Now folks are tired and ready to be done with it. There’s no world where we turn this back up to early March levels of strikes, let alone exceed that intensity. We shot our shot, and it didn’t work. And now we’re taking a crap deal to get out of a crap situation. I think this is a super valuable lesson to learn after Venezuela folding like an house of cards got us high on our own supply. If we’re serious about deterring China we need to learn the actual lesson here: we aren’t all powerful anymore. If you want to sustain operations against a determined opponent, you need volume, and a deep bench. We’ve become insanely good at lighting people up night 1 with all the shiniest most expensive toys. But we’ve become terrible at sustaining that pressure over time.

Well now that we have the text of the MOU and know that it’s garbage, the obvious follow up question to ask is.. why? Why, if Iran was backed into a corner and we had all the leverage, did we just sign an agreement that so heavily favors Iran? A few possible explanations: Our position of leverage was greatly overblown by cheerleaders of this war We are in a position of leverage and our negotiators are just straight up retarded We’re using the MOU as a cover for more surprise attacks We’re taking a temporary L to preserve the midterms and then gonna get down to business for real after that Trump just wants out of this completely and will accept any terms necessary to do so I think it’s a combo of #1 and #5 but would be happy to discuss. At the very least I think this MOU should give pause to anyone who was previously glazing our strategic positioning in this war. Pretty unusual to totally wreck somebody and then sign a deal capitulating to their terms..

we had FON in the strait before the war started our own DNI threat assessment said they weren’t pursuing a nuke before the war started It’s pretty wild to see some of you guys cheerlead the admin talking points verbatim and then say I’m the one blinded by political bias.. Two thirds of your list of “clear war objectives” are this admin claiming the win based on getting back to the status quo we already had. This is like intentionally starting a war with Cuba and then patting yourself on the back for achieving freedom of navigation in the Gulf of Mexico.. like wtf are we even talking about. If I want to hear the admin party line bullshit I can just go listen to the press secretary, why not try presenting an independent thought that actually makes sense

A few thoughts: This deal is going to be ass, but any deal no matter how bad is better than continuing the incoherence we’ve witnessed over the last few months. Any amount of cash given to the Iranians, be it pallets on a c-17 or sanctions relief or a $300B tip option on a square reader, is pennies on the dollar compared to the economic damage this thing was going to cause if we continued through the summer and ran our strategic reserve dry. I am happy to let Trump claim the win if it means we get to stop the abject retardation and putting our folks in danger for little to no strategic gain. The “biggest state sponsor of terror” line is so tired and silly. First of all, with the materiel we left the Taliban, there’s zero chance we aren’t the biggest state sponsor or terror on an absolute monetary level. You can say it wasn’t intentional or it’s all biden’s fault but over the years our blunders and failed interventions have financed and engendered more terrorism than anyone else.. by far. But more generally i just dispute this framing. “#1 state sponsor of terror” implies there have been countless Iranian backed terrorist attacks in our homeland. Except the reality is WE are the occupying force in the Middle East and the Iranians have financed groups that have attacked our troops in THEIR hemisphere. Still fuck Iran and every American service member killed is a tragedy but I think we can be more accurate/mature with our language and say “Iran acts against our interests in the region.” Their sponsorship of militant groups that attack our troops is no different than us attempting to arm Kurds to overthrow them. Just be honest and admit we have opposing interests and neither of us really consider morals when we are deciding who to finance to fuck over the other side. I know this point is bound to get a bunch of pearl clutching over “moral equivalence” but I think it’s more productive to acknowledge that our countries operate in our own (or Israel’s) interest with very little regard for what is morally “right.” Ultimately we’ll have a lot more to discuss once the text of the MOU and the eventual deal go public. Because we can’t be sure what’s in it. But what we can be sure of is the reaction: The left will hate it because it’s just JCPOA but with more money and more steps The zionists and neocons will hate it because it isn’t total war with Iran And the maga loyalists will love it and see our president’s months of unhinged waffling as completely vindicated and a totally brilliant negotiating strategy.

.. looks like we might actually have a deal. Credit where credit is due, Trump seems to be *slightly* less completely controlled by Israel than I previously thought. The jury is still out on if any of this holds. I have a sneaking suspicion Israel is going to start leveling Lebanon or maybe just directly attack Iran again in an effort to spoil this whole thing, but this is at least progress in the right direction. It will also be fun to watch the inevitable Levin/Shapiro/Neocon meltdown. A few weeks back they were telling us what a staggering success this all was, and now you can already see the pivot to the “we need to go back in and finish the job” narrative. I said weeks/months ago I would be happy to be proven wrong if this doesn’t turn into a multi year boondoggle. And at least for the moment it appears I was wrong, and I’m quite happy about that. I’ll still maintain this accomplished virtually nothing of strategic value and even did massive strategic harm by proving to the world Iran can gain huge negotiating power through their ability to close the strait. But at least some progress! Maybe some of our dudes will even get to start coming home.

You might be on to something here. Maybe send Ted Cruz a bottle too so he can learn the population of the country he wants other peoples kids to invade