The people conducting the war are, for a change, very smart people. I know it’s automatic for fifty plus percent of the country right now to immediately lapse into screaming fits over that assertion, including a fitful smattering of MAGA folk, but my focus here is to give a bit of advice. My opening salvo here is to contrast with the know-nothing author writing this piece. No credentials of course, opinions are free to all but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one that thinks a couple of these ideas about the war. It’s for sure that everyone wants it wrapped up quick, I certainly want it. Very possibly, either before or within hours of my hitting ‘publish’, Trump will choose his course and execute what everyone hopes will be the last push to close the matter. Still, I have ideas and observations; in no particular order:
It should be evident to all that there’s a national and cultural glitch with the Iranians. They have huge egos along with uncontrollable rage issues or at least that’s how they want it to come across. The ‘Loonie Tunes’ Tasmanian Devil comes to mind. Then add to that, their bottomless appetite for punishment. The legless and armless black knight in ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ also comes to mind. I can’t really improve on that picture. But under and reinforcing all of that is an absolute nature to lie, just as natural and accepted as breathing. If perchance you’re a Persian reading this, know that you are likely to have had these tendencies diluted relative to your exposure to Western values so just chill rather than be offended.
There were two components to the war; 1) take out the military, all of it, yes all of it. Based on the latest news, that’ll be complete in a matter of days. 2) The second was regime change. Technically, done, in that more or less all the whole top flight is gone. On the other hand, it’s never done when there is an unending supply of theocrat radicals that are made according to the above stated specs. In that regard, we have to leave that on Israel, frankly. They’ll have to be the night crew when we’re done and locked up.
Now, we have to add a third objective, control their cash flow and spending habits. I think we can easily find the right pressure points and incentives to open Hormuz and other places. How far and how fast will we need to kill down your leadership roster before you open it which btw, benefits all the peoples that you’d wish were allies? But once its open, what’s to keep them running straight back to the mud pit of being a psycho-homicidal nut cases, short of absolute regime change? I’ve never heard anyone explain this – adequately, to me – the aberrant basis for their whole existence: annihilate Isreal and the US. That’s basically it. With the petrol dollars, they could have had and become a Saudi prosperous kingdom twice over but nah, lets buy nukes and missiles and proxy armies and try to take out the two of the most successful societies the world has ever seen. Being Shiites has something to do with their inferiority complex and all, but still, these are supposedly smart people.
As for the average oppressed people of Iran, I really do feel for them. Even today, they’re pawns held hostage. I’ve often wondered why we don’t give them the gift of Second Amendment mentality and hardware. We don’t want boots on the ground obviously but what if we could get a million guns into the hands of the alternate classes of people. It would certainly be cheaper than some of our current munition expenses in a month-long war. They could easily take care of business themselves. It worked for us! If we assume the logistics of importation and distribution are surmountable and I think they are, probably the biggest worry I think people assume is, they will fall into the wrong hands. So what? If you gave ever man of military age a gun, good and bad, secular and theocrat, what would happen? You have what you have in the United States, just one huge mega grassroots MAD, mutually assured destruction. No side has the means to finish off the other side without being killed themselves, = Peace. The theocrats missiles are no good against neighborhoods of their own people. Their government thugs are currently armed 100%, the people armed 0%. We can fix that. The only problem with this proposal is that we’ve already farmed out this side of operations to Isreal, mostly, especially Mossad. Israel, as I shockingly learned, doesn’t believe in arming civilians. That’s why the whole October 7 thing went down the way it did. No one was armed to defend themselves. There’s a whole lot to explore here in the future. If it were not for 2A, law and culture, America as we know it would not exist today. And here we are wondering why the EU largely sits on the sidelines like a bunch of pussies while we fight a war for them that they desperately need the benefit from.
And speaking of Europe…
I’ll abstain for the moment from the tragedy of which they hardly share the values of freedom with us anymore, and just a note of the military component, NATO. I think we need a new NATO. There is nothing that says we can’t have more than one. Think of it like an insurance policy. High premiums, high benefits. Low premiums, low benefits. I see the arguments for have a strong NATO and also for having none at all. Both of those have serious flaws. Making two, makes a lot more sense. Some countries, ie Hungary, Poland, the Baltics (?) act like they take our mutual defense seriously. Even Ukraine has thrown us some interesting overtures and they aren’t even covered. Our traditional G7 allies have largely said ‘screw you’ when called upon to make quick work of Iran (and their own energy security). Instead, we had to shame them into me-too-ism on the back end. So lets divie things up. For the high loyalty, high premiums, high benefits crowd, they get boots on the ground if need be. For the low loyalty, low premiums, low benefits crowd, they get a golden dome, that’s it. Thank you for your service. Cost of admittance to the latter, is just air and naval base space, otherwise, keep your $ money and prepare to put as many of your own boots on the ground as you like when Vladimir Putin takes a fancy for your geography. That’s all.
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A helpful introduction to the author in my ABOUT