There’s been some talk of war with Iran of late – personally, I don’t think it will come to that. The Iranians don’t really want a stand up fight with us, and Trump is just not a war guy. Oh, I’m sure he’d hammer an enemy hard if they attack us, but it seems pretty clear to me that, given his ‘druthers, Trump doesn’t want to have a war, and so will do all he can to avoid one. Iran will continue to use proxies against us, maintaining plausible deniability among their bribed politicians and pundits in the US and Europe, but I can’t see them directly opposing US forces with regular Iranian forces. But, still, things like this do have a way of getting out of hand: both sides might not want to fight, but they might find themselves landed in one.
I keep rolling this around in my head – this risk of war with Iran – and that article about MacArthur and Korea I linked the other day. First, lets run over some facts and figures:
Iran Population: 82.5 million
US Population: 327 million
Iran GDP: $1.5 trillion
US GDP: $20.9 trillion
Iran Available for Military Service: 47.3 million
US Available for Military Service: 144.9 million
Active Iran Military: 523,000
Active US Military: 1.4 million
Iran Reserve Personnel: 350,000
US Reserve Personnel: 811,000
Iran Nuclear Weapons: working on it
US Nuclear Weapons: 4,018
So, the United States is not just stronger than Iran – we are overwhelmingly stronger. Short term and long term, Iran has zero chance of successfully fighting the United States. This is unlike Germany and Japan at the start of WWII who at least had more forces in-being when war began and could hope for victory before we were able to fully mobilize. This is also not like, say, Serbia challenging Austria-Hungary at the start of WWI because they knew they had Great Power backing in Russia. Iran is alone, poor and weak. And yet they still talk tough and commit serial acts of war against us – via proxies – and don’t seem to have the slightest fear of us. Why?
Because all experience since WWII has shown the Iranians – and the world – that the United States simply will not apply its full might against an armed enemy. As that article I linked to the other day points out, we started tying our hands in Korea. After a short while where we were permitted to go to town on the North Koreans, the political leadership of the United States started putting the brakes on American power…essentially surrendering our overwhelming advantage vis a vis the enemy and so turning what would have been a quick and overwhelming defeat of the Chinese into a long slugging match which cost far more lives than we lost utterly destroying the North Korean military.
We refused to let Chiang make a try at invading China – placing our fleet between his army on Taiwan and the Chinese mainland, thus assuring Mao that he could send all this best troops to fight and kill Americans in Korea. We didn’t bomb the Chinese supply and concentration areas…thus allowing the Chinese to build up forces to move into Korea. And it went on and on like that, through all the fights we’ve had since WWII. Don’t hit too hard! Be nice! Maybe they’ll be nice to us if we don’t destroy them! Hey, let’s pretend that if we go all out, other Powers will fight us to the death…as if. 100,000 or so dead in America’s wars since WWII and all we’ve done is be defeated.
Iran shouldn’t be bragging and insulting us. They should live in deathly fear of offending us in the slightest. They should have whole teams of staffers editing official speeches and documents to ensure that nothing but kind words are said about the United States. On the world stage, they should from time to time be backing a US foreign policy initiative to build a bit of good will with us – for fear that if we perceive them as an enemy, we’ll destroy them. The power relationship between the two nations can’t be interpreted any other way – absent a firm alliance with another Great Power willing to go to war with us on their behalf, Iran should be quiet and respectful of us. But it isn’t that way – because they know what will happen. We’ll attack, devastate them and then quit after a while. Its all we’ve done since WWII.
This must end – and those in our military and foreign policy Establishment who still want us to hold back have to be removed. If we go to war, we go all the way to war. Nothing is off the table. Yes, not even nukes. Why in heck, for instance, should we allow a non-nuclear power to concentrate, say, a 100,000 man army against us if we’ve got a nuke handy to wipe it out? No, you wouldn’t use nukes to clear out a town infested with terrorists…but an army is a legitimate target. Why not destroy it, easy? And getting back to that town – if it is infested with terrorists, we can’t be too finicky about how we clear them out. Anyone blood shed in such a situation is the moral responsibility of those who placed terrorists in a town…and its stupid to send our guys house to house to be clay pigeons for a couple guys with AK’s hiding in the building when a bit of artillery takes care of the building and the terrorists.
War is a serious, deadly business. It is cruelty and it cannot be refined. The American way of war is to hammer the enemy mercilessly until he quits, and then offer him a hand up. We don’t seek conquest. We aren’t in this for glory. But if we have to fight, we don’t propose to drag it out, nor to have a re-match. It is one and done and we do whatever it takes to finish it as fast as possible. And here’s the thing: we’d only have to do it once. Make an object lesson of the next country to attack us, and all of a sudden those who are thinking these days that you can fight America risk-free will reconsider.
Blogs For Victory 
We’re all a bunch of racists …. hahahahahaha. This from John Heilemann at MSNBC:
Well, I don’t have a grand unified field theory of the Trump psyche to the extent that it’s comprehensible, but I will say when Trump decided to become a political figure, the first thing he did was he ran a racist campaign to delegitimize the first African-American President. That was his calling card in Republican politics. He got convinced that the Donald Trump who was a pragmatic deal maker who gave money to Democrats, that was not going to get him a ticket in the Republican nomination fight. The way to get a ticket in was to ride in on the coat tails of people who wanted him to be run on racial resentment primarily, and that’s how he got into the political fray.
They still don’t get it. Simon proves that everyday. I might also suggest that Heilemann doesn’t have a cogent thought in his head … “at least to the extent that it’s comprehensible”
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/gregory-price/2019/06/19/john-heilemann-morning-joe-trump-won-running-racist-campaign
The Left is so deeply embedded in Identity Politics they simply cannot comprehend the idea that someone might object to a president for any reason other than his identity—in Obama’s case, his identity as a black man.
And isn’t it the core of racism to give a man a pass on every mistake, every sin, every horrible decision, just because he is black? Heilemann seems to be saying that because Obama was our “first African-American president” that identity was supposed to make him above any criticism for anything he did.
I think it is UN-racist, if that is a word, to call a man out on his mistakes and bad decisions and absolutely despicable political allegiance without any consideration at all for the color of his skin. And I think Heilemann is showing abject racism for not being able to see past that skin color.
To the people inside the beltway bubble, the presidency has no real world impact on their lives so it’s just a matter of who is “head of the class”. Issues like immigration are just concepts to them to be debated and to take the moral high ground on only because none of them ever feel the impact of the issues they espouse. The president’s policies are simply issues to be discussed on talk shows and at cocktail parties because their lives never change – same job, same salary, same benefits, same cocktail parties, so all they are looking for is someone who is “well spoken”, “presents themselves well”, and is congenial. To them that is how “America” should act.
There is also zero accountability inside the bubble. Pundits can and have been wrong on nearly every issue over the last decade or more and yet none of them are in any danger of losing their position and prestige. They can say whatever they want with impunity.
And of course the other thing Heillmann is saying is that Americans are racist which explains Trumps victory and Trump knew that so he ran on it. That’s just a convenient and “beltway bubble approved” excuse to take their favorite club member Obama off the hook from his failure as a President. It’s also intellectually lazy … but why work when you don’t have to?
Issues like immigration are just concepts to them to be debated and to take the moral high ground on only because none of them ever feel the impact of the issues they espouse.
I’ll bet you’d be shocked at the number of them who employ nannies, maids, gardners, pool boys, etc., who are illegals. Laws shmaws — laws are for the little people.
The Shaw was our friend. I remember an airshow we put on for him, while I served aboard the USS Saratoga CV-60. We should of taken them out then in their infancy. Carter had no stomach for it. Reagan, greatest president ever, maybe Trumps not done yet, should of taken them out like Dubya wanted to before the Dems went all sixties on us. He should of said, thanks for our hostages, now here’s you payment for their lodging over the past 400+ days. We’ll be dropping bombs over the entire country for next couple of week, months or years depending on how long it takes for you hang that angry breaded guy and publicly apologize at the UN to the hostages, their families, friends, my dog on your knees, the US, and the rest of the world.
It’s spelled “Shah,” but your point is well taken. They’ve been laughing at us since 1979. I wouldn’t be surprised if they see just how far they can push the envelope, and my guess is that those arrogant bastards will push it too far. Big difference now is that we’re not only energy independent, we’ve become a net exporter of oil and gas thanks in no small part to Trump.
War can be delayed, but never really stopped…if one side wants it, it will happen. We’re just pretending that it won’t.
Remember waaaaaaay back a couple weeks ago when Democrats were rubbing their hands with glee as the stock market was in free fall because of tariff worries — the DOW was off a couple thousand points? Fast forward to this morning, S&P500 is at a new high, and the DOW and NASDAQ are within less than 100 points of their all time highs.
Quote of the Day: (Seems especially appropriate in this thread)
Jackie Fisher – in response to the Hauge Conventions – said something along the lines of “humanize war? You might as well try to humanize hell”. That, right there, spells out the different ways people look at things. There are those who think they can bottle the Genie…and then there are those who know you can’t. Those who think you can concentrate on Conventions and Treaties…those who know you can’t concentrate on ways and means of killing the enemy…killing him so fast and so unfairly that it almost seems a crime, but it really isn’t as long as the enemy started it. That’s the thing a lot of people – Establishment types – forget, or simply don’t want to know: those who start the war are fully responsible for every death resulting from it.