this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2026
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You don't think the US army would be enough to conquer Iran if they actually started puttng boots on the ground?
You mean the same army that spent 20 years replacing the Taliban with the Taliban? And is now under new, significantly dumber management? No, no I don't.
As an Afghan friend of mine says, it was not the fault of the US. The Afghan people is not ready to form a western-style government, as it's a land of a hundred tribes where most just think of themselves. This is why the government fell so quickly when the US left. Few are motivated to defend the country, corruption is immense.
In her words, it was totally understandable for them to leave, as they saw this and realized they would be fighting a losing battle for decades by staying.
Shouldn't have started started a war without intending to 'win the peace', in a Marshall Plan sort of way.
Pretty much spot on; the only way for Afghanistan to have succeeded as a democracy would have required multiple generations of occupation, in order to permanently impact the culture through ideological immersion.
Only once the pre-occupation population dies out (or at least severely diminished due to old age) - and are replaced by successive generations that grew up in that environment - would it become self-sustaining.
It’s very easy to dismiss the Afghan people have “always been like that” - all the while forgetting that the current religious ferver is mostly due to a power vacuum following the failed Soviet invasion of the late ‘80s.
Prior to that, the metropolitan areas weren’t all that different to pre-revolution Iran.
So America can at max half ass all their decisions without thinking of the long term aside from the money the private military contractors made during 20 years? Got it make sure the USA stays the fuck out of the middle east
Oh, absolutely. My point is more that the US shouldn't have been there to begin with, just like the US shouldn't be bombing Iranian children now.
Perhaps. The same friend is thankful that the US did try to save them from the Taliban, at least.
Winning a war and installing a lasting regime are two very different things. The US crushed the war part and fumbled the regime building.
So they won the battle but lost the war?
They won the war but failed at installing a lasting regime that aligns with their interests. A decades-long occupation is not generally counted as part of a war.
It really is. War means you crush your enemies. We absolutely did not.
So... they lost the war?
That is correct, and don't let anybody tell you you are wrong.
Genuinely no
This combined with the domestic unpopularity of such a decision would make a full ground invasion a very desperate choice.
Also American infantry is just not that good tbh
He could launch the invasion and use it as an excuse to declare state of emergency and postpone the mid-terms to... never.
He made several comments about how convenient it is for Zelensky that Ukraine holds no elections during the war.
He might want to do that but it's not very likely to succeed; the U. S. doesn't suspend elections during wartime. They didn't during their own civil war: no way a foreign war would have any precedent or sway anyone.
The US didn't do a lot of things until he decided they were doing it.
Who's gonna stop him?
That is correct; as I already said, I think this particular thing is very unlikely.
I think they can open the strait. Conquering a mountainous country with an intentionally fragmented and cellular command structure, not a chance.
I have been told repeatedly that the mountainous country overlooks the strait with lots of places to hide small rockets and people to fire those rockets.
The domestic unpopularity is most likely the stopping point really. If the US were to ignore a lot of laws and treaties, we could turn Iran into 90 million starving people, then walk away and offer food for drone locations.
The world doesn't really have the time or stomach for that kind of campaign, both here and abroad. People are going to be starving this winter as it is, just because of the delays that have already happened. All we're doing now is debating how many.
Tbh I disagree. Domestic unrest won't come from the immense horror of starving millions of people into submission. We've been doing that for decades and it has never been a significant issue. It will come from the frustration of feeling the detoriation of our quality of life while we all watch hundreds of billions be spent on a war that doesn't benefit the public at all.
I wish I thought Americans would act out of moral concern but palestine alone has shown this to be untrue.
World citizens don't bat an eyelash at US/Israel starving Palestinians, Cubans, Free Korea, Somalia, or anywhere else they please.
Given how well they did in Afghanistan and Iraq, sure.
And Vietnam. Our military isn't great with boots on the ground because that's not the point. This is for making military money and that's it.
That isn't quite accurate. The US military is very good at killing people and destroying things. To win you need a strategy that goes beyond those things. It involves aspects outside the military. You need diplomats to coordinate and negotiate with allies, diplomats to meet and negotiate with the opposition in conflicts where that is feasible, a strategy that has end goals and a reasonable way to get to those goals, political entities to explain to the US citizenry and the world at large why the conflict is necessary, and a bunch more. The military doesn't really do most of that, and the US hasn't bothered with having any of those things for a long time. The problem is the US government keeps just saying to 'conquer' some country and giving no real sense of what that even means.
Pretty sure at this point we know what it means.
And making Petrobarons* spelling richer and maintaining USD hegemony through petrodollar. We invaded Iraq because Hussein was trying to convert Iraq's UN Food-for-Oil account from petrodollar to petroeuro.
That's kind of my point. The US military is pretty good at doing what militaries are for. Its other parts of the government that decide where to point them. And where they have been pointed has been stupid/destructive/dictated by oligarchs for a long time.
It's an attempt to distract from the Epstein files.
They conquere Iraq and Afghanistan quite fast, what they half-heartedly tried and failed at was building a lasting regime that they didn't directly control.
Fuckall.
Trump has fired a lot of our best generals, alienated NATO, and screwed over the young men he'd need to join up.
One thing that people overlook is that FDR had been helping Americans for almost a decade when WW2 broke out. And there was still a memory of the draft from WW1. Trump's already having to reduce military standards and the War hasn't gotten out of first gear yet.
Considering how bad Afghanistan was with half population and no stranglehold on critical shortcut... yeah not a chance. USA population is what 300mil+? Iran is about 90+.
How bad what was? America took that entire country in two months. Iraq was just one.
America took parts of it and camped out in the cities for 20 years. The rest of it ebbed and flowed depending on the date.
I'm all in favor of getting rid of the US military, I'm not sure I support doing so by sending American troops to die