[mothballed]

The US could/can, they're just not willing to undergo the mass casualties it would take to put boots on the ground and put those boots up the ass of the people controlling Hormuz. Which absolutely cannot be achieved purely by air.

[helsinkiandrew]

> The US could/can, they're just not willing to undergo the mass casualties it would take to put boots on the ground

It doesn’t matter what the reason, if you can’t do something you can’t do it.

[mothballed]

I'm not interested in a lengthy semantic debate about what "can" means but I'd hope we could agree at least one possible interpretation includes things you're unwilling but able to do.

[runako]

Generously, what difference does it make to any person if you technically achieve some result but in practice are not able to realize that end state?

[urams]

Is it the case that if someone doesn't do something some time then they can't do that thing? Like, if you were playing basketball and Lebron James walked by and you threw the ball to him and said "dunk this!' and Lebron said "no, I'm not willing to" does this mean Lebron can't dunk?

Because personally, I'd still take Lebron on a basketball team even if he wasn't willing to dunk the ball that one time.

[runako]

> if you were playing basketball and Lebron James walked by and you threw the ball to him

Yes, this is a terrible analogy for the war in Iran. Hugely unpopular, costing Americans vast sums of money daily, headed for possible catastrophe. Very much not a low-stakes "Lebron walks by" situation.

Better analogy with Lebron would be: championship game with a title on the line. He gets possession as time runs down and the team needs him to score or make a play that scores. It's not okay for him to then say he's fully capable of scoring but doesn't want to at just that moment for reasons.

NB: this is not to say the US military couldn't cause untold damage on the region. This is obvious, anybody can look at recent history to see that the US military is more than capable of destroying a country in the region.

Rather, this is an object lesson that war is politics by other means, and here we tried to do war without any politics and it has not gone well for us.

[urams]

I will remember from now on that you can compare war to Lebron playing in a championship game but not to him playing in a pickup game.

But to be clear, the comment I replied to was one in which you made an abstract point that it doesn't make a difference to someone if you can do something but in practice don't/aren't willing to and I think that this is obviously wrong (just because Lebron didn't dunk doesn't mean he can't or is a bad ball player). You don't like the Lebron analogy, that's fine. Let's use a war analogy: in 2025 Pakistan and India, two nuclear armed countries, exchanged significant fire. Neither was willing to use their nuclear arsenals. Should we now conclude from this that they can't use their nuclear arsenals and are therefore equivalent to being non-nuclear countries? I mean who cares if they have nuclear weapons which can (can't?) kill millions if this one time their political will wasn't there for them to use them in their defense?

> Rather, this is an object lesson that war is politics by other means, and here we tried to do war without any politics and it has not gone well for us.

Be careful not to trip over your rhetoric in an attempt do display profundity. If war is politics by other means, then doing war is always done with politics. This whole statement is word salad nonsense.

[tardedmeme]

It's more like you ask a paralyzed person to lift his arm and he says he doesn't want to.

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/science/discovering-that-...

[kakacik]

US military ain't some unstoppable force in all possible scenarios, it was stopped and won over quite a few times, last time I recall by taliban sheepherders. In some cases like first Iraq war yes, but they don't wage those wars anymore. And all mental limits re casualties are very real limits just like other.

Its like saying russia could/can conquer whole Europe, if only X, Y and Z. That effectively means they can't, as we see playing out right now despite them trying desperately to achieve this very thing.

[dotancohen]

  > last time I recall by taliban sheepherders

Part of the reason that Americans prefer to lose that war is because the enemy is called "sheepherders", implying innocent civilians, when the military is winning. The blurring of when a militant is referred to as a civilian has proven to be a very effective tactic to reduce the American population's tolerance for war.

[anonymars]

I'm confused, are you insinuating that the Taliban essentially ran a PR campaign to portray themselves as sheepherders to garner sympathy from the US population to reduce its appetite for fighting them?

[dotancohen]

No, I am stating that there are strong elements in popular media, news providers chief among them, who seek to weaken US influence and use US public opinion to drive that change.

[anonymars]

Why would the US news media seek to weaken US influence (or stop war)? Seems much simpler to assume that "sensationalism sells"

[dotancohen]

I suggest that you query for "Qatari influence in US media" in your favourite search engine or LLM. Many media bodies operating in the land of the free do not represent the interests of the people of that land.

[amunozo]

If you cannot afford doing it, then you cannot do it. What's the purpose of having the capability to do something if you cannot afford the losses of doing it?

[_dark_matter_]

This is just a different way if saying that we can't.