Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 7:09 pm Post subject: Re: Carrier groups headed toward Iran?
ALBY wrote:
we have 150,000 combat hardened troops and all their gear in the ME.
If you want to conduct total war on Iran, you are going to need a lot more than 150,000 troops. You can't use any WMD, because of prevailing wind patterns.
That means you are going to have to go house to house and cave to cave, wiping out every man, woman and child you encounter. That takes balls. Balls which, frankly, Americans don't have any more.
You might think your countrymen are ready to commit a million troops to a century-long campaign of real, hands-on genocide, but you would be wrong. Maybe after a decade or so of real poverty, but not now.
ALBY wrote:
Since nobody has ever attacked, much less sunk a super carrier, I'd like to suggest to you all that the news of their demise is perhaps, a wee bit premature.
You're right, they haven't been attacked. That means your claims of invincibility are equally premature.
ALBY wrote:
we can project force and nobody else can. don't think for a minute that is not a huge advantage.
There's a big difference between projecting force, and sustaining force. And don't think for a moment that nobody else can. Most capable is not the same as only one who is capable. Maybe you should pay a quick little visit to globalsecurity.org before making your grandiose claims of exclusivity.
ALBY wrote:
also, the hand wringers have severly overstimated the capabilities of the persians. and underestimated ours.
I see nobody underestimating the US military capabilities. As for overestimating the persians, overestimation in this context is certainly a wiser position than underestimation.
ALBY wrote:
this has been expressed to me by lifelong friends who are called 'chief' and 'colonel' by their subordinates.
We're all very impressed that you know some senior officers (or at least claim to).
However
If I recall correctly, senior officers claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction as well. You'll forgive me if I choose to forego taking your second-hand assurances as gospel and evaluate the available evidence myself. _________________ The whole of human history is a refutation by experiment of the concept of "moral world order". - Friedrich Nietzsche
Joined: Sep 30, 2005 Posts: 449 Location: Baltimore County, Md
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 7:25 pm Post subject: Re: Carrier groups headed toward Iran?
Quote:
Balls which, frankly, Americans don't have any more.
You might think your countrymen are ready to commit a million troops to a century-long campaign of real, hands-on genocide, but you would be wrong. Maybe after a decade or so of real poverty, but not now.
well that is the question isn't it.
frankly, im terrified at just how close to a facisism we have veered since 9/11. might not seem so 'over there', but over here, america is a different place.
Last edited by ALBY on Fri May 16, 2008 7:27 pm; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 7:26 pm Post subject: Re: Carrier groups headed toward Iran?
When a military victory cannot produce the desired result, it is not a victory. Frankly it does not matter what the US thinks of its capabilities when they are no longer a viable means to the desired end. All that military crap is just that. State vs state shooting wars are no longer how conflicts are fought and won. The Soviet Union made a similar error of hubris, believing all that metal and its recent history to be worth a damn while it got economically outmaneuvered and its opponents got into the habit of never interrupting it while it was making a mistake.
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 8:15 pm Post subject: Re: Carrier groups headed toward Iran?
ALBY wrote:
let me know when you are coming to america tittytwister. i'll make it a special point to show you my balls.
1. What makes you think I'm not here already?
2. You acknowlege that America has decended into fascism, and you are clearly disgusted by it. You want to show me your balls, go do something about it. All enemies, foriegn and domestic, remember? Start the revolution, then I'll be impressed by your balls. _________________ The whole of human history is a refutation by experiment of the concept of "moral world order". - Friedrich Nietzsche
Joined: Sep 25, 2004 Posts: 4526 Location: Boston, MA
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 9:22 pm Post subject: Re: Carrier groups headed toward Iran?
Ferretlover wrote:
Tyler_JC wrote:
I am bookmarking this thread.
On January 21, the day after our next president is inaugurated and Iran remains invasion-free, reading this thread will be a good laugh.
I SO hope you are right, Tyler!
I've been on this forum since 2004. People have been calling for war with Iran since at least the spring of 2005. I could merge all "War With Iran Coming Soon!!!" threads into one giant 500 page thread. The same dozen people create every one of these threads and each thread has the same basic premise. A battle group moves to the Persian Gulf or a retired general speculates on CNN and it becomes front page news on peakoil.com
But we haven't gotten any new information that indicates that we are any closer to war than we were in 2005. I know people who have been waiting for war with Iran since 1979!
So far, nothing has happened and I believe nothing will happen, especially in the time frame given.
I am willing to bet all of my IKEA furniture (I don't own anything of any real value, sorry) that the US election will continue as scheduled and that the Bush administration will not launch an attack on Iran.
Bush and his administration might be ideologically misguided. They might be incompetent and corrupt. But they are not suicidal.
If Bush tried to trump up charges against Iran, Congress and the Joint Chiefs would revolt. It worked with Iraq because Congress was still reeling from the fallout of 9/11. But it's been nearly 7 years and the public has lost its appetite for foreign wars. _________________ "www.peakoil.com is the Myspace of the Apocalypse."
Joined: Aug 03, 2006 Posts: 4261 Location: Graceland
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 10:52 pm Post subject: Re: Carrier groups headed toward Iran?
Twilight wrote:
When a military victory cannot produce the desired result, it is not a victory. Frankly it does not matter what the US thinks of its capabilities when they are no longer a viable means to the desired end. All that military crap is just that. State vs state shooting wars are no longer how conflicts are fought and won. The Soviet Union made a similar error of hubris, believing all that metal and its recent history to be worth a damn while it got economically outmaneuvered and its opponents got into the habit of never interrupting it while it was making a mistake.
Once the US figures out what and where the conflict is, maybe it will stand a chance. Clearly it is not a war, nor can the outcome be changed by war.
Twilight, this is a great point, and I think it is one of the legacies of leaving our troops engaged with guerrilla fighters for too long. A modern military force must achieve its ends quickly and then retreat, otherwise it might as well be a defeat, since the cost of a protracted conflict (both financial and political) overwhelmingly favors the guerrilla fighters.
PLUS, and this is what really sucks, the longer a modern force engages a guerrilla force, the guerrilla force learns more about the modern enemy than the modern enemy learns about it. The IEDs in Iraq are a great example of guerrillas using protracted fighting to study the modern well-equipped enemy and systematically exposing its flaws.
Fighting guerrillas on their home soil is usually a bad idea unless you have (1) an absolutely overwhelming advantage (I mean like 40 to 1) and (2) you have absolutely no qualms about killing civilians and destroying infrastructure. Even if you are willing to do these two things, you still may lose. Never mind how difficult it is to define what it means to "win" in a setting like that in the first place.
Twilight, I know you are a student of history, can you or anyone else think of a conflict between a modern military force fighting a guerrilla enemy on their home turf and prevailing without absolutely destroying the country and killing civilians indiscriminately?
The U.S. Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 each taught Britain this lesson, I think.
Sherman's campaign through the South during the Civil War was a success, but he did (1) and (2) above.
The U.S. occupation of the Philippines after the Spanish American War was somewhat successful, but I think the U.S. probably killed a lot of civilians and I don't know how successful the U.S. really was in that effort.
The U.S. was so concerned with having to invade Japan and fight the kind of conflict I am describing that we dropped two atomic bombs slaughtering an enormous number of civilians.
Obviously, the French and U.S. experience in Vietnam was a disaster.
Soviet Union in Afghanistan was not successful.
U.S. in Somalia was not successful.
U.S. in Iraq has not been successful the second time around (2003-present)
Israel has struggled to stop the guerrilla activity in Lebanon. _________________
Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 3:09 am Post subject: Re: Carrier groups headed toward Iran?
BigTex wrote:
Twilight, this is a great point, and I think it is one of the legacies of leaving our troops engaged with guerrilla fighters for too long. A modern military force must achieve its ends quickly and then retreat, otherwise it might as well be a defeat, since the cost of a protracted conflict (both financial and political) overwhelmingly favors the guerrilla fighters..
Ah but the United Kingdom armed forces in the Nothern Ireland theater of operations from 1971 to present. Today the IRA has decomissioned its weapons and now sits in the democratic process. Costly yes, but goals achieved.
One could also argue Morrocan army vs Polisarion in the Western Sahara and Algeria vs the Islamists and Turkey vs Kurdish seperatists in Turkey are all examples of modern armies overcomming highly popular local insurgencies.
Another older but good example is the British army vs the Maoists in the Malaysia crisis.
There are far more defeats than victories for conventional armies but it can be done.
Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 4:52 am Post subject: Re: Carrier groups headed toward Iran?
BigTex wrote:
can you or anyone else think of a conflict between a modern military force fighting a guerrilla enemy on their home turf and prevailing without absolutely destroying the country and killing civilians indiscriminately?
The Kenyan and Malayan Emergencies are two examples, although the former resulted in a political and economic defeat. Colonial interests must be revenue-generating assets to make sense, and war is not helpful. The subjects got what they wanted.
The French experience in Algeria was similar - brutal military victory followed by political and economic capitulation. Although the US could attempt a repeat in Iraq, the effects would be no different and they know it. It is inevitable that some disorder is tolerated and unsatisfactory conditions remain so that the wealth keeps flowing.
The Malayan Emergency is a curious example actually, unlike the Vietnam wars to which it is often compared, the insurgents never enjoyed much popular support.
The final years of European colonial history are full of situations where a military victory killed the golden goose and resulted in defeat. This is what informs my thinking, the understanding that the military aspect is meaningless if it undermines one's goals.
But the heart of the issue is not armed conflict.
What I see happening with the US today is a one-man arms race - similar to the one that killed the USSR, yet all the more absurd for lack of a competitor. A similar flavour of ideological hubris is spouted regarding ideological supremacy, the growing arsenal of heavy metal and fighting methods at its disposal, military superiority over opponents and so on. Yet in the arenas that matter, matters of politics and economy, this growth is slowly but surely becoming a life-threatening drain, no longer the means by which survival is ensured. The US is economically hollowing itself out attempting to secure oil supplies, the consumption of which is also hollowing it out. The US is bleeding wealth away as it wastes as much oil as it does, and it multiplies that damage through the taxes it imposes on its people in order to maintain the military strength necessary to maintain the supplies to which it is accustomed.
That is where the conflict is, the domestic economic front. Like the USSR before it, the US will give its wealth away and tax its producers to death.
And everyone else knows it.
There are many hostile participants too, and the peculiar way in which their hostilities manifest themselves is in watching, waiting and not interrupting.
The world is pulling a USSR on the USA and it does not realise it, instead it lashes out at shadows.
The world builds another bunch of railways while the US builds another carrier, more aircraft, more trucks, just like the world did while the USSR built tanks. It is happy to watch that money spent on equipment which will end its days parked in the desert rather than invested into something useful.
The world will not be happy to watch one of its number given a beating, but it will welcome the irreversible destruction of the victor's wealth in the act.
Joined: Jun 18, 2004 Posts: 750 Location: Western North Carolina
Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 7:29 am Post subject: Re: Carrier groups headed toward Iran?
Twilight, your arguments are difficult to refute. I appreciate your more objective perspective.
Very astute analysis in the above post in my opinion. Eye opening and thought provoking.
I think Alby is right in a way. Americans are capable of cruelty and military excess far beyond what you're seeing now. I've often said the same things in discussions with other folks, and referenced the native Americans and Japanese as proof of that.
I disagree with him on the invincibility of our military. Sure, if we were facing the Soviet Union's navy, then I have no doubt we would prevail. But as you said, asymmetrical warfare changes the rules.
I forget who wrote it but the comparison of super-carriers to battleships is a good one, and the point that it took the Navy decades to catch on is also correct.
The US is going broke, inflicting us less-than-rich Americans with inflation to pay for the 'war effort'. Another war effort will either break the bank or send inflation upward even faster. The last thing we need here is more destructive consumption. Malinvestment of the worst type, at a key moment when we should be investing in things that generate returns at home and that would improve our standard of living or at least lessen the coming decline peak oil is going to bring.
I wonder if one of these times the alarmists (I was once one too) will be right and the US will actually do the unthinkable and strike Iran. Honestly for the sake of all oil importing countries, I hope it never happens.
TEHRAN, May 17 (Reuters) - Iran's Intelligence Ministry said on Saturday U.S. agents had armed and trained those behind a deadly blast in a mosque last month and that pipelines in the country's oil-rich south were also among the planned targets.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday Iran had evidence the United States, Britain and Israel were involved in the April 12 blast in the southern city of Shiraz that killed 14 people and wounded 200.
J'accuse! Suspected targets included a book fair!
It would be more like 3 200 page threads, owing to code limitations. _________________ Cogito, ergo non satis bibivi
I will not abide another toe.
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