At least until you point out that you would then have a battle hardened force of “communists” ready to stage a coup in America.
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Exactly.
If they redefine “Victory” to “Denying the other guy” and don’t care at all about actually taking the ground or if anything is left at all.
While you can’t take control of something with air power only, you can certainly deny the other guy and just keep destroying stuff. It’s even easier if you don’t care about any collateral damage and are willing to go back to something more like carpet bombing entire cities.
As we’ve seen, the cruelty is the point. I wouldn’t put it past them to flatten entire cities to destroy small facilities. With no plan to ever take the ground, and just keep bombing it into rubble again and again.
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But this misses the point. Neither the US nor Iran want an actual full blown war. They want a token exchange of hostilities so each can bolster their respective regimes without endangering themselves.
Iran has been bluffing with its ability to create nukes for several years. (No country which develops nukes advertises its uranium enrichment capacity). The Iran deal of 2015 was essentially calling their bluff.
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Yes, it would be completely insane, foolhardy and futile to start a war with Iran. And there is a very good chance that even the mighty US military would not be able to win in any form. The last time there was a ‘win’ was WWII, and that only after the deaths of many millions.
I have no doubt that much of Iran would be rubble at the end, a horrible atrocity. There is also zero doubt that the US would be a much reduced entity at the end. No global friends, its own troops hostile to the regime, and no convincing ability to scare anyone bigger than Guatemala except with nukes. Sort of like Russia over the last 30 years.
Of course, none of those things matter. If Congress starts an impeachment process we can expect the bombs to start dropping within a couple of days. A ‘person’ like Trump has no concept of the suffering of others, and will do anything and harm anyone - including his country - to avoid being held responsible for his failures and crimes.
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The man that dodged the draft should not have any hand in reinstating it.
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That’s with today’s standards though, which are set fairly high because we aren’t shoving bodies into an armed conflict right now and can afford to be choosy. If the draft were necessary those standards would come down quite a bit.
That said, it’s pretty clear that Iran would be another Vietnam and starting it would be folly. I mean what is even the goal? Preventing terrorist attacks on Americans? The US would shatter the Iranian guard into a thousand terrorist (aka guerrilla) cells to spread all across the region and the world. It’s entirely counterproductive.
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Seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to keep Iran from acquiring 74 year-old weapons technology.
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I personally dislike trump, and pretty much every policy he’s made.
BUT, nothing about his past statements in the 40 years he’s been a public figure has ever seemed like a war monger, in any shape, form, or fashion. I genuinely believe he uses the minimum amount of troops and posturing, and does genuinely think he can make a deal on everything.
He’s a con artist, not a knee breaker.
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He may just be a coward and a con, but unfortunately, what he does have is a history of aligning himself with knee-breakers, - which he has done with Bolton, et.al. - and turning a blind eye when the knee-breaking benefits his con.
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Oddly, many believe that a draft is a sure way to stop war, surely because in the Viet Bam era, the draft was a key train to oppose the war.
Not many, but a few went to prison in WWI. A lot more, more radical, did time in WWII, though the sentences were shortet, two or three years. Even in Vietnam, many refused, but their numbers were dwarfed by the masses who were more likely against the draft.
Even back then, many got out of the draft. My friend Rusty used a previous depression to talk his way out, but as he said, his Board was i n New Jersey, where there were plenty of poor people to fill the quota. But he came to Canada afterwards in protest, staying for twenty years.
Pacifism isn’t the same as being against the draft.
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My dad just joined the Navy. He never told me why, but I figured the Viet Cong not really having a Navy (and he does love the water and fish) being a good reason. Ended up on a mapping vessel. His dad was career Coast Guard from WWII forward.
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The prospect of a draft needs to be brought up more often when discussing military activity. It is a lot easier to wage war when you or your loved ones are safe from direct participation. I am young enough to have missed the Vietnam war but old enough to have the danger of involuntary participation only a few short years away.
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Feel as you will, but I will never complain about throwing an obsolete weapons system away unused. I would rather we have weapons systems that we don’t use than to feel that we need to use a weapons system before we throw it away because otherwise it was a waste…
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This isn’t the logic administration. You can’t realistically apply logic to it. The question is, would a war help or hurt his position? If Fox News is saying it would help it, he will go for it.
He’s also a narcissist. All of the other recent GOP Presidents were allowed to have a war. If he can’t too, it’s not fair.
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This war doesn’t need to be thought out; it just needs to go about two years. THINK about the re-election potential…it ramps up the right, scares the left, bangs the 'Murica drum hard, stays front & center in the media outshouting ‘local’ issues, and creates a unease about putting a “weak” Democrat in the seat to soldier onward. A friend told me no sitting President has lost a re-election bid while at war; I’m not 100% sure, but it feels right.
Convenient, eh?
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And that’s exactly why the US public has such a hard on for its military and waging wars.
Oh they did learn something: That their happy little wars have no consequences - for them and their populace. That’s the other reason why the US public likes wars. Who e.g. had to face the refugee wave after the US lead destabilization of the Middle East? Not the US, that’s for sure.
According to the United States Department of State Refugee Admissions Report dated December 2016, the US admitted 1,682 Syrian refugees in Fiscal Year 2015 (year ending Sept 2015), 12,587 in FY 2016 (15% of total worldwide refugee admissions into the US in FY 2016) and 3,566 Syrian refugees for the period October through December 2016.[306]
(…)
In 2017, the US accepted 3,024 Syrian refugees, but only accepted 11 in the first quarter of 2018
vs
Turkey
3,541,572 (registered July 2018)[3] Lebanon
2.2 million (estimated arrivals as of December 2015) 1,001,051 (registered)[4] Jordan
1,265,000 (census results as of November 2015)[5] 661,114 (registered July 2017)[6] Germany
770,000 (Dec 2018)[7] United Arab Emirates
100,000 (estimated foreign workers and overstays as of 2015)
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There could be other reasons as well. Guess where the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were started in this chart.
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It absolutely is worth it if you’re a narcissistic sociopath with no sense of empathy and have spent the last 70 years believing the howling hole in your psyche is just a lack of money and power.
Don’t be fooled, trump and his cronies would see every last American citizen dead to earn even a penny more.
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I mean, is that actual law or just one of these things like Presidents have to show their taxes?
