[idiotsecant]

Does the F35 do that? Wasn't Iran shooting those down recently? If there's anything Iran has taught us it's that airpower doesn't win wars, allies do. The US will leave the middle east with their tail between their legs. This is the beginning of the end of the American Empire.

For the privilege of spending enormous sums of treasure flying around dropping bombs on brown people what did we get?

I would have rather seen that spent on giving lunch to every school age child or paying graduate students a wage above poverty level. At least something useful would have been accomplished

[T-A]

> Does the F35 do that? Wasn't Iran shooting those down recently?

No. One was damaged by ground fire and landed at a US base.

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/f-35a-lands-after-taking-f...

You may be thinking of the F-15s shot down by Kuwaiti "friendly fire".

[throwaway173738]

> I would have rather seen that spent on giving lunch to every school age child or paying graduate students a wage above poverty level. At least something useful would have been accomplished

Yeah I guess the only thing we’ll give away for free these days is $100,000 bombs.

[hattmall]

I'm sorry, but this is like the most ignorant take ever. The world is essentially one life supported regime away from having a level of stability in the middle east that has quite literally never been achieved. Iran and their regional proxies have been almost the only source of middle eastern discontent in the last two decades. The stability of the region is already vastly improved from any time in the past and the dismantling of the IRGC will create a wave of vastly improved living conditions for hundreds of millions of people.

Iraq has for the first time ever entered in the high category of HDI.

https://www.undp.org/arab-states/press-releases/iraqs-human-...

[fttx_]

Okay so Iran is responsible for the insurgency in Iraq, the Arab Spring, AQAP in Yemen, Islamic State, the ongoing situation in Syria, proxy wars between Saudi Arabia and the UAE and much more…

I think it’s extremely clear that the major contributor to instability in the Middle East over the past two decades has been the United States.

[fc417fc802]

> over the past two decades

1953 was somewhat more than two decades ago.

[bruce511]

I think it's fair to say that pretty much no-one is a fan of the Iranian Regime. (And we'll ignore for the moment that the regime is a a direct by-product of previous US intervention.)

The regime is all kinds of bad, but you cannot change govts from without. Stability comes from people changing govts from within. Every time the US has changed a govt to support themselves it has ended badly.

This latest war has not unseated the IRGC, indeed it has entrenched it further. This is not surprising; they are the largest organised structure in the country. There are no other structures of comparable size or influence in the country.

Unfortunately the US military does not just project power. To justify its existence (far beyond the realm of self defence) it actively creates and enjoys conflicts. And increasingly those conflicts are showing the real limitations of military power projection.

By contrast the soft influence projected by technological leadership, USAid etc are much more influential. It's not surprising that support for these alternatives are the first target of a govt susceptible to being influenced. A trillion $ industry will not go quietly into the night.

Yes, of course, the US could deploy troops into Iran. They could topple the IRGC if desired. But it would be very expensive politically. (And I don't mean to the Republicans, but that also) but to the Military Industry. Because the electorate clearly indicated that after Afghanistan the appetite for foreign wars is dwindling. Another debacle in Iran (even more than the debacle it is now) would be disastrous.

I have no love for the Iranian regime. But no military intervention from outside has the ability to improve it. And the Iranian people will not support a US puppet govt - that influence was burned in 1956.

Govts change when people inside rise up to change them. Recent examples in Afghanistan, South Africa, Romania and even Iran (1979) show this over and over again.

Interestingly the Soviet Union fell because the satellite states broke away. Because the people in Poland, Hungary etc rose up. Not because of outside intervention.

This latest war in Iran follows a long tradition of US and UK meddling in the region, all of which is designed to get oil, not create stability. Indeed this latest foray has created instability in the supply of oil, and that is an unforgivable sin to the US public.

[ta8903]

>The world is essentially one life supported regime away from having a level of stability in the middle east that has quite literally never been achieved.

Agreed, but I wouldn't call Israel a regime.

[idiotsecant]

If the US wants to stop seeing unstable, barbaric regimes in the middle east, maybe it should stop making unstable barbaric regimes in the middle east. We don't get to literally create the problem on Tuesday and then cry that it's an existential threat on Thursday.