RE: https://infosec.exchange/@bontchev/116271481696841313
Oh good grief, this summary is both farcical and tragic: also, Trump has fucked air travel for at least the next two years, never mind automobiles and logistics. The supply chain shock will get as bad as 2022 within a couple of months—then keep getting worse.
@cstross Trump and the people around him are absolute morons, yes, but there is a weird motivated thinking desire among many to breathlessly claim US military hardware - which Trump had no hand in the development of - somehow sucks.
The F-35, for all its infamous flaws, is working better than experts expected. It was never designed to be fully stealthy - it emits radar so it can see and shoot at enemy aircraft.
And SM-3 continues to be phenomenal.
But the awesome performance of some systems
@cstross really does not change the fact that there never was any way to "win" this Iran War. You just have to look at this size, terrain, population layout of Iran compared to Iraq 2003 to get an idea of what sort of invasion force would have been necessary.
And there aren't any neighbors to Iran eager to become an invasion staging area.
So ... Iran will win. Period. They'll get bombed and stuff, and then ... they'll win.
@isaackuo Yep.
For people who've never looked at a map (most Americans, apparently), my synopsis is, "Iran is Mordor". Big-ass empire surrounded on all sides by water or mountains. Also, it's on the other side of the world from the USA. Also-also, the littoral approaches are all naval death-traps. There's a REASON the Persian Empire didn't get conquered very often, and it's geopolitics!
@blotosmetek @caesarologia @isaackuo Iran is very nearly as large as Mexico (90% of the area), 75% of the population (with a LONG history of resisting invaders), surrounded by mountains, and the closest points in CONUS and Iran are 7500km apart. (Unlike Mexico, where there's a land border.)
US folks who think "Iraq, Iran, what's the difference?" need to think in terms of "one is Ukraine (only crappier), the other is Russia (minus Siberia)" to get anywhere close to the scale of the problem.
@cstross @isaackuo From where I’m sitting Iran has won the gulf by logistics - there’s no reason to hide under the American shield when Paedopotus Rex (the leading light in Just Stop Oil apparently) will stomp hard on you anyway and Iran has the biggest supply of drones and missiles.
I expect Iran to demand withdrawal of US forces from these protectorates and I suspect they’ll get it because you want to deal with a organisation that is reliable and consistent. The USA is neither.
@cstross @isaackuo I think its even simpler - Iranian leadership has been planning for this for 50 years and are clearly prepared to extract maximum pain from the world until the us is stopped.
Meanwhile us leadership appears to have thrown out 50 years of knowledge about Iran, strategic alliances, soft economic power, and every other advantage they had that wasn't "more expensive weapons" and started a war with about 5 seconds of thought
More planning went into the Iraq War for fucks sake
@elricofmelnibone the only thing that will stop the Trump admin at this point is pressure from the international billionaire class and running out of ammo. Even Congress failing to fund the war won't stop them - they'll just keep spending money without authorization
The fuel crisis causing the ai bubble to pop and a stock market crash might stop him, since the stock market legit seems to be the thing he cares about the most
@fazalmajid During the first Gulf War, my asthma medication was suddenly hard to get, because it was supposedly being stockpiled by the US military as a precaution against chemical weapons.
While I don't need missiles to stay alive, I suspect their military will fuck up the supply chain of a bunch of unexpected goods.
@otmar @cstross @isaackuo I mean, religious fanatics whose fetish is martyrdom (for others) riddle the Trump administration. The us secretary of "war" belongs to a Christian apocalypse cult. The us military- especially the Air Force - is completely overrun with them at all levels
Too many people think they can trigger the End Times by starting the right kind of wars and that coloring all of this too
US leadership appears to have gotten to the point where "The USA might not be able to control the course of events" counts as an Outside Context Problem.
I don't think any of our legislators realize how the next couple years are going to go, nor that their only chance to affect that was 3 weeks ago. They seem to believe they can observe events and if, in the future, things will go too far, they'll be able to call it all off at that point.
@Kathmandu @Jer @cstross @isaackuo
War is one of the most irreversible bad decisions. Not only does it destroy a huge amount of what's irreplaceable very quickly, it can't be "called off" unilaterally by any of the participants, so even after everyone knows it was a bad decision, it grinds on and on and the good decision to stop doing it is held out of reach by uncontrollable events.
@Kathmandu @Jer @cstross @isaackuo
A real danger is he does something big and wildly stupid, to either try and regain momentum or to dead-cat the Iran disaster off the news.
There is a real danger now that Trump will do something nuclear level stupid, maybe with actual nukes.
A grown up politician who got themselves this deep into a mess would push back from the table and quit or make their peace with just coasting into electoral oblivion at the next election and not compound things.
@cstross @Kathmandu @Jer @isaackuo
The explanation I've come up with is they've given him one of those toys which are a button that lights up when pushed, and just told him it is the nuclear button.
@CrypticMirror @cstross @Kathmandu @Jer @isaackuo
Probably this one.
@Kathmandu @Jer @cstross @isaackuo
Or that it won’t affect them. It couldn’t possibly affect them. They are members of the managerial caste/business idiots.
@cstross @qhstone @isaackuo his entire worldview is stuck in the 19th century- his views on power, race, economics - all of them are pre-ww2 viewpoints
I suspect that, like many failsons of rich abusive fathers, mostly just internalized Fred's rants on the world and has never thought more deeply than that
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