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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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I was wondering when they'd get around to trying this. It fits with everything else this administration has done.
I guess we're going to find out. As we've seen before, what Trump thinks he can do as POTUS and what he can actually do as POTUS don't always match.
Edited by M84 on May 15th 2019 at 6:38:14 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised"I'm only against illegal immigration, but I will make all immigration illegal. Tokugawa, just you wait, I'm gonna give ya a run for your money."
Some of my best friends are Persian. They are smart, cultured, hard-working, way more open-minded and friendly and generous than people give them credit for, and their country is being railroaded into the Haiti model at best.
Much more importantly, it's gonna be a completely unnecessary, counterproductive, monstrous, sensless waste of human life, and taxpayer money, which also strongly correlates with human life. Iraq will be retroactively considered a cakewalk. This National Interest article goes into detail as to how difficult Iran would be to both invade and occupy.
This PBS article shows how they've been getting ready for the US specifically.
Edited by Oruka on May 15th 2019 at 4:27:13 AM
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Both of those are badly overestimating the Iranian military and badly underestimating the US military.
The actual invasion part in Iraq was a total cakewalk. The hard part didn’t come until after. Iran wouldn’t be nearly as easy but it would follow the same basic pattern, a decisive war and then a crippling decades-long insurgency.
They should have sent a poet.![]()
The 2003 Iraq invasion took around a month. Even factoring in all possible difficulties I can’t see Iran taking more than 3 or 4, and then you’ve just got the same shit you had in Iraq, just in a different country.
Iran’s military is very much a paper tiger, it’s good for saber rattling around the ME and internal security and not much else. I mean, just look at how they did in the Iran-Iraq war.
They should have sent a poet.Three to four months. Where'd you get that number from?
It's not gonna be the same shit that we got in Iraq, though, because the unemployed Baath officials who went on to join the insurgency weren't specifically trained or planning to do that. Irani military are specifically planning to fight in insurgency. They're not planning to win the conventional war, they're planning to let the US win in the most Pyrrhic way possible, and then move underground.
As for their performance against Iraq, or lack thereof, well, it shows one thing; they have reserves, they're willing to throw them at the enemy, they held their ground, and they successfully exported revolution and irregular warfare across the region, building movements that remain active to this day.
Edited by Oruka on May 15th 2019 at 5:07:44 AM
The 2003 Iraq invasion took around a month. Even factoring in all possible difficulties I can’t see Iran taking more than 3 or 4, and then you’ve just got the same shit you had in Iraq, just in a different country.
Given how invading Iraq worked out, saying that we can expect "same shit you had in Iraq" strikes me as a strong argument against invading Iran?
Edited by Hylarn on May 15th 2019 at 5:19:07 AM
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Best guesstimate based on military strength projections.
If you really think the Iranians have any meaningful ability to resist the US you’re kidding yourself. The issue, as it was in Iraq, is that rapidly knocking out the government creates a power vacuum which leads to all the former movers and shakers finding new roles as insurgents and revolutionaries.
Iran’s conventional army simply couldn’t hold out for long. Even unconventional forces can be routed quite easily, as we saw in Iraq. Iran’s unconventional forces rely on an uninterrupted command and control network like what they’d have in a war against another regional power, but against an opponent with overwhelming air and naval superiority like the US that wouldn’t last long. We Have Reserves isn’t worth shit if your reserves suck.
It should be a strong argument against invading Iran, given how Iraq turned out.
Edited by archonspeaks on May 15th 2019 at 5:27:57 AM
They should have sent a poet.Apparently they're already planning what those roles will be and what kinds of moves and shakes they'll make.
I see once again that we agree on the fundamentals.
That too. "Stratgic depth" is the buzzword.
Edited by Oruka on May 15th 2019 at 6:06:16 AM
It does, but that’s a double edged sword and the US has significantly better cross-country mobility. Not to mention with the state of their forces terrain is about all they’ve got going for them here.
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I don’t doubt it, but keep in mind what comes next isn’t the Iranian government’s doing, it’s just good old fashioned chaos.
Edited by archonspeaks on May 15th 2019 at 6:19:44 AM
They should have sent a poet.Trump Jr. agrees to meet with Senate Intelligence Committee after being subpoenaed
Good. But who wants to bet he'll just plead the 5th?
I'm ready to shut down because this is all so horrific.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Don't. It'll still be horrible with or without you. The only thing that shutting down changes is the removal of your ability to affect events, however small. And that, in turn, empowers the cruel.
The situation is exactly as terrible as we knew in 2016 it would be. It's definitely living down to my expectations when Trump beat the Mueller Probe; I said that we'd see a shift for the worse as Trump is now emboldened. Since nobody can or will stand up to him, he has nothing left to be hesitant about and strongly believes he can bring down the iron fist to his heart's content. And that is exactly what is happening.
A cruel Authoritarian controls the White House. The only check and balance that remains is unwilling to do its job.
Doesn't matter. Never stop fighting. Fight as though actual human lives depend on it. Because they literally do.
Because that seems like the most likely outcome - it's mostly just a matter of time.
Trump's response to that will be to appeal until it hits the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court will then declare on a 5/4 party-line vote that Trump can do it.
Time, however, may be a factor. Simply put, there might not be enough time to get all the way through the lengthy appeals process before the 2020 election. There's a possibility that the Supreme Court ultimately rules in his favor but by then we have a new Democratic President who's like "Thanks but Imma take a hard pass on doing that."
So. Y'know. Make sure to vote in 2020.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Maine's citizens have passed legislation that puts the electoral college to the winner of the national popular vote.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on May 15th 2019 at 7:20:47 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Also, in Iraq, a majority of the population was, if not happy with the US, certainly happy to see the back of Saddam Hussein and his regime, and we bought off a significant portion of the Ba'athists (until al-Maliki committed national suicide by refusing to pay them). Iranians by and large accept the legitimacy of their government - they may not be happy with the deep state, but "the US comes in and ousts the Supreme Leader" is not going to fly with the people, especially when Iran is already ahead of parts of the US when it comes to democracy and human rights.
Fighting a counterinsurgency campaign when the people of the area won't cooperate and are firmly against you doesn't work, at least not without industrial-scale crimes against humanity. (Yes, Trump would be happy to order them. No, the US military would not obey such an order.)
Edited by Ramidel on May 15th 2019 at 6:33:54 AM
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I wouldn’t really say that was the case in Iraq. It was basically a “devil we know” situation with Saddam, they weren’t sad to see him leave but they weren’t happy with the US either. It’s telling that the stiffest pockets of resistance in Iraq were from irregulars and armed civilian areas.
It’s not really the case in Iran either. Iranian opinion on their government is heavily mixed, and their record on democracy and human rights under the current regime is abysmal. You can count on a similarly confused situation like the one in Iraq.
The big difference is that Iran has a much more modern military, and much more favorable terrain. It won’t make a difference in the end, it’ll just make it take longer.
I’ll also point out that the Iranians are fully attempting to fight a conventional war, they just want to fight it on their terms.
Edited by archonspeaks on May 15th 2019 at 7:44:42 AM
They should have sent a poet.Eh, there's a yes and a no and a maybe there because history is complicated even in relatively recent and compact areas. The Kurds who were living in an independent state because of the USA certainly were fully supportive (and rather annoyed they couldn't flat out join). Many victims of Saddam's regime had been hoping for US intervention since the war and there were a lot of them. Ironically, many of the Baathist regime were fully ready to cooperate.
It's just George W. Bush eliminated the Iraqi Army and suddenly there was a 200K+ number of soldiers and military trained guard who suddenly had no livelihood and were being treated as indistinguishable from terrorists—so they effectively became terrorists.
Many radicalizing and becoming the basis for ISIS, turning the local chapters of Al-Qaeda from being poorly trained zealots into the monster we would later loathe.
Throw in many other mistakes, corruption in rebuilding efforts (which caused dead children and no likes dead children—particularly in an occupation), and horrific racism—well, you get a situation that could have been contained turned into the shitstorm it became.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on May 15th 2019 at 7:53:09 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

Can they even do that?
i'm tired, my friend