http://rt.com/news/us-military-presence-iran-419/
Fuck quotes just click the link.
And then they will greet us as Liberators.
Unless we've got an army of Voltrons in our back pocket somewhere, I doubt it.
Quote from: Anpanman on May 04, 2012, 03:01:26 PM
http://rt.com/news/us-military-presence-iran-419/
Fuck quotes just click the link.
The Arabs were never able to pacify all of Iran for over 100 years; what makes these jag-offs think they can do any better??
some people need psychological assistance. and I do not mean the Iranians.
Quote from: Ibrahim90 on May 04, 2012, 06:44:08 PM
The Arabs were never able to pacify all of Iran for over 100 years; what makes these jag-offs think they can do any better??
some people need psychological assistance. and I do not mean the Iranians.
You and Virgil are both not talking about the article.
If the US were to go to war with Iran, they would be able to defeat the Iranian military in quite short order (likely a bit longer than Iraq, since Iran hasn't been cut off from external spares for equipment that needs them a long time). Pacifying the population is an entirely different matter.
Quote from: evensgrey on May 05, 2012, 08:18:09 PM
You and Virgil are both not talking about the article.
If the US were to go to war with Iran, they would be able to defeat the Iranian military in quite short order (likely a bit longer than Iraq, since Iran hasn't been cut off from external spares for equipment that needs them a long time). Pacifying the population is an entirely different matter.
that's actually what I was really referring to: yeah, the US military will easily trounce the Iranian Army--but then what? What difference will that make if the Iranians are just going to keep fighting, with or without a regular army? after-all, as mentioned, the Arabs took over a century to completely pacify the Iranians, having themselves trounced the Sassanid Army in less than a decade. And herein lay the question: what makes the US army think it can do any better than the Arabs?
so yeah, my comment didn't directly talk about the article: it was however a question raised by it.
Deja vu all over again.
Quote from: Ibrahim90 on May 05, 2012, 09:38:49 PM
that's actually what I was really referring to: yeah, the US military will easily trounce the Iranian Army--but then what? What difference will that make if the Iranians are just going to keep fighting, with or without a regular army? after-all, as mentioned, the Arabs took over a century to completely pacify the Iranians, having themselves trounced the Sassanid Army in less than a decade. And herein lay the question: what makes the US army think it can do any better than the Arabs?
so yeah, my comment didn't directly talk about the article: it was however a question raised by it.
Yeah, I pretty much thought the conventional military question had an obvious answer. Then again, if we just went about decimating the standing armies of the countries we attack and leaving, that might lead to an improvement. The big problem is always how you pacify/control the population and any resistance. You'd think the Brass would know that by now. I mean, even if we limited this to a question of results & resources (i.e., no morality question), occupying a territory and reforming the government spends lots of resources with little to no discernable results. Continued resistance means a continued drain on resources. I don't understand how anyone could think that all of this is a good idea. Maybe I'm missing something.
Quote from: Virgil0211 on May 07, 2012, 09:16:26 AMThe big problem is always how you pacify/control the population and any resistance. You'd think the Brass would know that by now.
here's the scary thing: they think they know. problem is, the lessons they are using are all the wrong ones, from an event that happened 67 years ago, under different circumstances.
Quote from: Virgil0211 on May 07, 2012, 09:16:26 AMI mean, even if we limited this to a question of results & resources (i.e., no morality question), occupying a territory and reforming the government spends lots of resources with little to no discernible results.
And it need not require that. problem is, the US believes in some sort of retarded idea called "Nation building", where they think reforming a country is like training a Marine: break it down, and then somehow build it back up again.
Quote from: Virgil0211 on May 07, 2012, 09:16:26 AMContinued resistance means a continued drain on resources. I don't understand how anyone could think that all of this is a good idea. Maybe I'm missing something.
I personally think of it as a modern day version of "bread and circuses"...that and sheer greed.
of course, the latter might do the political equivalent of this to the US:
(http://www.oceansofkansas.com/Sternbrg/xiphact2.jpg)
The other thing is while the military thinks it has learned from their mistakes they aren't figuring that the Iranians have been able to use the Iraq and Afghanistan incursions to learn their weaknesses.
Sure, they can destroy Iran's army in short order, but what about blowback? I'm pretty sure that Russia and China (somewhat major trading partners with Iran, if I'm remembering correctly) would not be very tolerant of america attacking Iran?
What about the current rulers and their supporters? To them, history will be repeating itself, with a US installed government that they will have to overthrow again?
From what I'm hearing, your military leadership has not factored in all possible variables... just like with Afghanistan... just like with Iraq
Quote from: ebalosus on May 08, 2012, 12:57:08 AM
Sure, they can destroy Iran's army in short order, but what about blowback? I'm pretty sure that Russia and China (somewhat major trading partners with Iran, if I'm remembering correctly) would not be very tolerant of america attacking Iran?
What about the current rulers and their supporters? To them, history will be repeating itself, with a US installed government that they will have to overthrow again?
From what I'm hearing, your military leadership has not factored in all possible variables... just like with Afghanistan... just like with Iraq
We have military leadership? When did this happen? =P
Quote from: Virgil0211 on May 08, 2012, 05:30:28 AM
We have military leadership? When did this happen? =P
Touché :P
Quote from: ebalosus on May 08, 2012, 06:24:18 AM
Touché :P
Guess I still got it. :-P
Funnily enough, I just read a story about how the F-22 in actuality was a rather substandard aircraft with a horrible service record (something like an average 1.7 hours of flight time before a catastrophic hardware failure that needs to be repaired, which impairs its range and potential use in long-term campaigns or extended flight/dogfights), excessive cost (something like close to $50k per flight hour of maintenance, a maintenance cost that's actually increasing as opposed to decreasing like other aircraft), minimal current use (it was more or less designed to combat advanced Russian fighter jets that they have yet to actually develop. Apart from that, it's not much more effective than other potential aircraft with lower maintenance requirements, which has resulted in it not seeing a single combat mission.), defective parts (the radar-absorbent coating, software, among other things, have been found defective and corrected once the aircraft was ordered), and a convoluted cost estimate that essentially led to the plane being only half-developed, with everything else being fixed or corrected later "in the field" (hence the defective parts).
And that's sad, because I kinda liked the F-22 from a conceptual/10-year-old-thinking-"Wow!-That-looks-cool!" standpoint. Yet one more military excess in a long, sad history of military excess. It's kinda funny, because they'll retire the SR-71 Blackbird* to cut costs while pulling crap like this. What sense does that make?
[spoiler]*In case you don't know, the SR-71 Blackbird was an old spy plane from the Cold War days, though it's unique for setting several world records in altitude and flight speed that remain unbroken to this day (http://web.archive.org/web/20100729111021/http://records.fai.org/general_aviation/aircraft.asp?id=779). Apparently, it was so fast that simply accelerating was enough to counter anti-air missile fire as it could simply outrun the missile. The ability to climb to such high altitudes already made it difficult to target anyway, and it utilized some of the first "anti-radar" construction methods & technologies. They retired the plane in 1989, though there was some push to bring it back in 1993. At least at the time (I don't know if this is still the case, though my smartphone's map/location tracking might lead me to believe it might be. :-P), spy satellites weren't capable of detailed observations over a period of time in the same way the pilot of an SR-71 would be able to. I could personally hypothesize that certain situations where satellite coverage is unfeasible, it may be easier to just send up a plane. Granted, we have drones and other unmanned vehicles which could perform these jobs (fun fact: the pressure against the reactivation of the SR-71 in '93 came in part from the manufacturers of UAVs), but I'm willing to bet that these weren't quite up to modern specifications in 1993. Even so, the US military doesn't seem to have had problems retaining other aircraft with apparently outdated construction (the AC-130 from the Vietnam War comes to mind, to name a popular example). Plus, I can imagine that there might be some advantages to a plane operated directly rather than remotely. There could also be some symbolic reasons for keeping around the plane that broke and maintained world records for several decades. Or maybe I'm just biased in favor of the SR-71. Because it's a cool plane. And that's why I'd never let myself run for a position in government. I'd make decisions on what military projects to fund based on 10-year-old logic, and we'd end up spending millions in the pursuit of developing the Metal Gear Gekko.
[yt]aqCmX5dMYHg[/yt]
Huh... Then again, it might not make much of a difference. :-P [/spoiler]
Quote from: Virgil0211 on May 07, 2012, 09:16:26 AM
Then again, if we just went about decimating the standing armies of the countries we attack and leaving, that might lead to an improvement.
Isn't that more or less what the US did in Libya? Didn't that end up working out about as well as I predicted it would?
Quote from: evensgrey on May 08, 2012, 12:14:56 PM
Isn't that more or less what the US did in Libya? Didn't that end up working out about as well as I predicted it would?
I meant an improvement over trying the whole nation-building thing, like with Iraq and Afghanistan. Not that this would actually be desirable. One might compare it to choosing between having a 20 lbs weight dropped on your foot and having your foot amputated. They both suck, but one might not be as bad as the other.
Also, in my defense, I was rambling/hypothesizing. Keep in mind that it IS finals week and I have a tendency to just freetype during this period. :-P
Of course if the weight hits your foot in a bad way and the foot gets the wrong treatment afterwards it might as well mean amputation anyway.
Quote from: Gumba Masta on May 09, 2012, 01:49:42 AM
Of course if the weight hits your foot in a bad way and the foot gets the wrong treatment afterwards it might as well mean amputation anyway.
Even so, you're talking about guaranteed amputation versus potential amputation. Which one would you pick? :-P
Quote from: Virgil0211 on May 09, 2012, 07:42:32 AM
Even so, you're talking about guaranteed amputation versus potential amputation. Which one would you pick? :-P
I'm not sure if trying what they're calling 'nation building' is better or worse than what was tried in Libya. I didn't see any chance at all that Libya was going to turn out well. The odds of the US managing to actually make matters better with 'nation building' aren't good (yes, they do know what they need to do to win against insurgents, they just find it very hard to actually do) but if you're going to go and overthrow a state, it seems to me to be worse to just let the whole thing collapse into anarchy than to try and set up a new state that you at least TRY to make better than the old one.
Quote from: Virgil0211 on May 09, 2012, 07:42:32 AM
Even so, you're talking about guaranteed amputation versus potential amputation. Which one would you pick? :-P
If you'd put the choice down to me I'd pick fuck you and the horse you rode in too.