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[wierd]

"Exactly how we should be doing our job" indeed.  How else will "business as usual" survive in the face of this organized, conspiratorial attack orchestrated by big science and the liberal left!? We gotta think about employers, the economy, and jobs first and foremost!!  /s

[Trekkin]

And so begins Schrodinger's War. Maybe.

[nenjin]

“Maybe we’ll start an international war today.”

“Mmmmmm yeah go ahead and do it.”

“Mmmmmm yeah you know what, cancel that.”

This is what strong leadership looks like. Or someone playing chicken with the fate of the world.

[wierd]

Orange idiot indecisive about causing international conflict; Pissy about lack of positive press coverage, decides to try wagging the dog, but gets told not to by military advisors.
(Secretly has temper tantrum in the rubber room)

[Folly]

When asked how he would respond to Iran shooting down the drone, Trump answered, 'You're gonna find out.' At that moment, I was pretty certain something exactly like this was about to happen.

[wierd]

Further demonstrating his administration's now characteristic disconnect with reality, Trump Campaign begins "Latinos for Trump" campaign in Miami.

(Of course, this will be radically successful, because there is no possible way that the demographic being wooed will in any way remember being told that immigrants from south america and mexico are unwelcome, that those countries don't send their best [but "some" are good people], and has made an entire campaign around how mexican immigrants and laborers are majorly at fault for america 'not being great', and all that.  No way at all.  Nope. They love Trump.)

[Kagus]

I've got family that were swooped up by the "Women for Trump" movement... Which you'd think would be nearly as unlikely.


There's actually a not-insignificant number of immigrant families here in Norway who firmly support the far right and their sternly anti-immigrant policies. Apparently, the main draw for them seems to be "We're here now and got the best spots, we don't want anyone else coming and ruining it for us"... Which is both hilarious and incredibly compassionate!

That particular demographic and those ideals came to light a couple years ago when a couple right wing politicians set about proving that "We're not racist" by going out to some family's house and eating homemade Pakistani food, whereupon they said "This is really tasty!"; thereby confirming that they cannot possibly be biased against immigrants or brown people in general.

[Karnewarrior]

Meanwhile I'm not accused of being racist at all but to be quite honest with you Arabic food is trash. I hated it.

Almost like food isn't representative of people.

[Telgin]

Iran could absolutely beat the US in a war. It wouldn't be good for Iran, but it sure as shit would get interesting around the time we get to watch a US aircraft carrier burning and sinking into the Strait of Hormuz on CNN.

I recognize that Iran isn't like Iraq, but would Iran realistically have a chance of beating the US?  I would expect us to be able to park ships outside of their range and destroy military targets with relative impunity.  Maybe I'm underestimating how sophisticated Iranian missiles are, since long range missiles are the only way I could see them even striking an aircraft carrier.  Iran has a lot of military tech from Russia, right?  Maybe it is better than I realize.

I'm kind of curious now how effective ship based point defenses are against modern missiles.

Further demonstrating his administration's now characteristic disconnect with reality, Trump Campaign begins "Latinos for Trump" campaign in Miami.

(Of course, this will be radically successful, because there is no possible way that the demographic being wooed will in any way remember being told that immigrants from south america and mexico are unwelcome, that those countries don't send their best [but "some" are good people], and has made an entire campaign around how mexican immigrants and laborers are majorly at fault for america 'not being great', and all that.  No way at all.  Nope. They love Trump.)

Doesn't Trump have a surprising amount of support among Latinos already?  My impression was that many of them are conservative for reasons unrelated to Trump (like religion) and put up with / like him despite everything he says.  That might have been those primarily in Florida, if memory serves.

[scriver]

Iirc, while Latinos have a strong correlation of voting democrat despite being very conservative, Florida Latinos tend to be more republican than the average Latinii does. So unless I'm mistaken, Florida would likely be where to go to if you'd want to start drenching for such a thing.

[Frumple]

I recognize that Iran isn't like Iraq, but would Iran realistically have a chance of beating the US?

Put it this way: If we go into Iran, we lose. They might not "win" by any particular measure, but the US will absolutely lose that conflict. They've largely tooled themselves to turn into a complete quagmire if invaded or otherwise attacked, and if we go in we're eventually going to be pulling out in even more disgrace than our afghan/iraq excursions have brought. It would take a metric fuckton more domestic support than even remotely exists in this country for shit to go well for the US if it starts going hard on Iran. No one comes out better than they started with this one.

And with the relative strength of the countries involved, the US coming out missing a pound of flesh looks a hell of a lot worse. I'unno if beat is the right word, but whatever the right one is it's going to be pretty close to it in meaning.

[Egan_BW]

I believe the right word is "hey, remember Vietnam?"

[Il Palazzo]

pulling out in even more disgrace than our afghan/iraq excursions have brought

Lol wut? What disgrace? That was mission accomplished. A banner on a boat said so, and it was apparently enough to get the goofy man on the dais re-elected.

[PTTG??]

I'm protesting today. I encourage you all to drop what you're doing and protest right now, even if it's just standing in front of the post office and telling people how bad an idea this is.

As for me, I'm buying a huge banner and putting it over the freeway. Going to talk to anyone who comes by, too.

[Madman198237]

Iran could absolutely beat the US in a war. It wouldn't be good for Iran, but it sure as shit would get interesting around the time we get to watch a US aircraft carrier burning and sinking into the Strait of Hormuz on CNN.

I recognize that Iran isn't like Iraq, but would Iran realistically have a chance of beating the US?  I would expect us to be able to park ships outside of their range and destroy military targets with relative impunity.  Maybe I'm underestimating how sophisticated Iranian missiles are, since long range missiles are the only way I could see them even striking an aircraft carrier.  Iran has a lot of military tech from Russia, right?  Maybe it is better than I realize.

I'm kind of curious now how effective ship based point defenses are against modern missiles.

No, Iran does not. Not in the conventional military sense. Certainly invading Iran is going to likely lead to the same insurgency/I-don't-want-soldiers-parked-on-my-street-setting-up-checkpoints type of rebellion problems that we had in Iraq, but in the conventional sense Iran isn't remotely a threat. We have antimissile defenses and have been working on them for years because missiles are the best way to destroy a carrier group and our military isn't made of idiots, we have missiles of our own with better range and guidance and warheads, we've got better aircraft capable of getting in and destroying their military defensive infrastructure (including the radar sets that would allow them to find targets to launch those missiles at and the missile launch sites they need to actually, y'know, launch the missiles) without even getting spotted, etc.

In short: No, Iran has no chance. It would be a campaign likely on par with the initial coalition invasion of Iraq in terms of swiftness and casualty rates. There's just no way for a third-world country relying on old Soviet-era exports and a few modern weapons (if Russia has been providing them modern equipment, I don't know one way or the other) to feasibly pose a threat to a competently run first-world military in a meaningful way.

As for the resultant insurgency, massive changes in the way the following occupation and rebuilding efforts would be required to avoid and/or mitigate that, otherwise we end up right back where we started---losing a small number of troops overall but in ways that make it impossible to find a simple and easy solution, making continued involvement politically untenable.