Cut and pasted from Moon of Alabama blog:
Through out this entire conflict the US political and military leadership have shown a shocking level of incompetence on all levels of decision making, attacking a nation during peace talks, assassinating the other country’s leadership, assassinating the diplomats that were talking to the US’s own diplomats, starting a war without a strategic plan or logistical support for a prolonged conflict, failure to consider counter responses from Iran, failure to consider how other nations (China, Russia) might respond to such an attack. All of these failures are unforgivable, but the worst of all of them is the failure to respect the Iranian capacity to retaliate. Throughout this conflict the US has repeatedly disregarded, downplayed or derided the Iranian’s ability to military defend themselves and inflict pain on American assets. This blithe attuite of the Americans towards the Iranians has resulted in the loss of more than 90 US military aircraft, worth more than 10 billion dollars, the operational destruction of at least 16 of the 20 US military bases in the Middle East built over the last 40 years, the destruction of the 5th fleet’s naval HQ, the destruction of all 8 major radar instillations in the Middle east worth between 5-8 billion dollars, officially at least 18 US military deaths (unofficial numbers that include US private military, US civilian contractors and soldiers who died “later” due to their injuries are over 1500!) and of course the loss of roughly 15% of world wide oil production and oil-related products (fertilizer, sulfur, helium, nitrogen, asphalt, etc..). The Americans have constantly talked about Iran as if it was a rotten house and one good kick would bring down the entire rotten structure, Knowingly or not, in using this phrase, the Americans are harkening back to World War 2 when Hitler made the exact same comment about the Soviet Union in the weeks leading up to Operation Barbarossa and the invasion of the Soviet Union. Although his invasion inflicted massive suffering on the Soviet people, ultimately it was the Germans who were defeated and subjected to a crushing defeat that they still have not recovered from, could it be that the Americans are on the same path as the Germans? If you do not respect your opponent, history has shown time and time again that a crafty opponent can triumph over an enemy who is notionally stronger on paper.
But how did this happen, how did the US political and military elite lose all of these key attributes required for statecraft and war. I propose that these failures are a result of loss of civic virtue within the US institutional elite and that this loss of civic virtue is making it impossible for the state to form logical, function policies. I will not dive deeper into that subject now, so suffice it to say that I believe an oligarchical economic elite has usurped control of the US political process through the 2 major political parties AND has also seized control of US security and governmental agencies thorough the integration of these agencies into non-governmental think tanks and advocacy organizations (NGOs), which form a self-referential, self-reinforcing group think that overrides traditional state interests in favor of oligarchical interests. How does this destroy civic virtue and how does that render the US incapable of planning an effective war? I will explain; since these NGOs are used as influence peddlers by the oligarchical economic elite, they have to disavow rational realpolitik State interest in favor of an ideological framework where NGO policies are morally “good” and on the “right side of history” and realpolitik political and national economic self-interests are morally “bad”, it is simply a happy coincident that the policies these NGOs support also support the economic interests of the oligarchics that fund the NGOs. In doing so, the NGOs act as a middleman carrying the “bribes” of the oligarchics (the bribes in this case being speaking agreements, book deals, awards, travel expenses, board positions, advisory positions, council memberships) to government officials. In doing so the NGOs act as a sort of a cult, “love bombing” government figures with accolades and praise when they follow the NGO line and condemning them when they step out of line. Eventually this process creates a group think where party line and party purity totally supplants rational state policy discussions and this is where the decline of civic virtue becomes an issue. If you’re a 4 star General, why should you plan out a prolonged military engagement, if you’ve been told this victory is a slam dunk, in and out in a single weekend as Trump famously said? Actually, isn’t planning a prolonged military slog over 2-3 years a bad idea, if the political consensus said the war will be over in a SINGLE WEEKEND! Doesn’t that make your realistic plan for a prolonged conflict involving large armies of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, tens of thousands of allied deaths and 100s of billions in additional spending sort of a vote of non confidence in the plan, isn’t that DISLOYALITY? Better not plan that out, instead protect your future career and show your party loyalty by saying you believed in the group think too and no one could have seen this coming. I mean yes, billions of dollars in damages will be done to your own side and thousands of your own people will be killed and wounded that could have been easily avoided. But its’ not like the Iranians will win the war, I mean their bad, evil people who kill thousands of their own people not like when we kill and wound thousands of their people or allow thousands of our own people to be killed and wounded because we fail to take appropriate precautions, those are completely different things because we are good and they are bad.
Here’s a specific example, the Pentagon just fired the entire senior leadership of Stars and Stripes (Editor-in-chief Erik Slavin, publisher Max Lederer, and Middle East reporter Lara Korte), the US military’s newspaper of record. Officially they were fired for insubordination for criticizing Pentagon policies, however the editor believes they were fired for breaking the news story about the multiple attempted suicides of US sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln 2 weeks ago and they had been receiving pressure from the Pentagon over their criticism of Pentagon planning of the war on Iran over the past 2 months. This is an excellent example of how group think and party loyalty destroys civic virtue and eventually destroys the very institutions political consensus is supposed to protect. Stars and Stripes sole point of existence is for members of the US military to discuss relevant issues and concerns affecting service members. Due to their special and unique role within the US military, Stars and Stripes even have journalist independence from the Pentagon written into US law to ensure they are able to do this. The Pentagon in the name of enforcing group think and party loyalty just threw Stars and Stripes into the woodchipper in order to prevent the unforgiveable crime of “constructive criticism”. Every Journalist at Stars and Stripes now knows that if they break a story about embarrassing to military leadershuip, offers suggestions to avoid future errors or crises affecting US troops, their careers will be destroyed. What will that mean? well, it means Stars and Stripes will stop reporting about actual issues negatively impacting US service personal, it may even become an worthless propaganda rag, totally disassociated from the people it is supposed to represent in its writings. Some of the staff “the virtuous” will probably leave because of these firings even though they weren’t targeted but because they don’t want to be part of this new direction. They will be replaced by people who either don’t care about the actual purpose of Stars and Stripes or who actively support the group think message, allowing a lower class of people, who lack such moral integrity, into leadership positions they would not normally be allowed into.
Taking a step back, we can use this same logic to look at how the US military might be impacted at a larger level. I have no doubt that there are “virtuous” US military officers and NCOs who will look at this and say, “this is bullshit; I will not risk the lives of the soldiers under my command because senior leadership is not willing to make realistic military plans and assessments because it will hurt their career, I quit”. They too will be replaced, but they will be replaced by “immoral” people who look at the same situation and say “yes, I’m ok with risking the lives of my soldiers trying to fulfil impossible plans in order to enforce party discipline and advance my career”, this will filter down the ranks into the enlisted personnel and you will get a return of the Vietnam US military, where the enlisted soldiers despised the officers and actively sabotaged missions in order to maximize their personal chances of survival, the frontline officers in turn lied to their superiors about results and the command staff itself eventually ended up with a completely delusional picture of military situation on the ground which caused them to make in more ridiculous plans. It took 20 years for the US military to rebuild after Vietnam (remember George H.W. Bush saying the US had finally “kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all” in 1991, after the Gulf war). By outlawing constructive criticism the US is putting itself on a path to yet another military defeat and perhaps a strategic disaster (so we’ve had Afghanistan, Iraq, Libia, Syria, Ukraine and now Iran)
Posted by: Kadath | Aug 24 2026 11:09 utc | 6
In my mind, the greatest danger would be the need to maintain world domination through the use of nuclear bombs.
Posted by: Menz | Aug 24 2026 11:31 utc | 11
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