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> I think sooner or later, Iran will succeed in sinking a big US ship Sinking or even just seriously damaging a U.S. aircraft carrier — approx. 5K people in cr
by dctoedt 2mo ago
> I think sooner or later, Iran will succeed in sinking a big US ship
Sinking or even just seriously damaging a U.S. aircraft carrier — approx. 5K people in crew + airwing, billions of dollars in ship and aircraft — might trigger a Pearl-Harbor or 9/11 fury among the American public. No U.S. president could get away with even a "proportionate" response, let alone doing nothing.
Think of the Tonkin Gulf incident in 1965, which led to the U.S.'s widened involvement in Vietnam on the basis of grossly-distorted reports about alleged attacks — which never happened — on U.S. destroyers (which are comparatively small ships). [0] If Iran were to actually sink a U.S. aircraft carrier, then Trump-Hegseth-Miller might well nuke Tehran in response.
We sure as hell don't need anything like the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 by a terrorist. It triggered a cascade of some of the stupidest and costliest government decisions in history. Belgrade, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, London, they all effed it up almost beyond belief. WWI cost millions of lives and untold billions in resources that could have been put to far better use. Iran sinking a U.S. carrier could be a similar trigger.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident
- bad_haircut72 2mo agoYeah exactly, thats how you win wars, you force the enemy to do things they dont really want to do.
- m000 2mo agoWin the war, lose the empire.
- colechristensen 2mo ago>It triggered a cascade of some of the stupidest and costliest government decisions in history. Eh. WWI wasn't an accident, a series of unfortunate incidents, or something that just got out of hand. Countries and people WANTED the war, war was still thought about as a general benefit to the country, almost sporting. Everybody was feeling powerful with the new capabilities industrialization gave them and they wanted to use that to gain influence. (of course not literally everybody, but this was a prevailing force)
- dctoedt 2mo agoSo you agree with me — stupid decisions, catastrophic fuckups.
- colechristensen 2mo ago>stupid decisions, catastrophic fuckups The implication here I'm disagreeing with is that the war was the unintended consequence of mistakes. Instead of mistakes leading the continent down a dark path it was intentional, just waiting for an excuse to start fighting.
- dctoedt 2mo agoI have to differ. I don’t think anyone on either side even imagined, let alone intended, that the Western Front would get bogged down in four years of trench warfare or (on the Allied side) that Russia would fight so suboptimally. There was a lot of catastrophically-naive optimism at work.
- dctoedt 2mo ago> Countries and people WANTED the war, war was still thought about as a general benefit to the country That was true among some of the players in various governments — Kaiser Wilhelm being a prime example. Can you cite any (reputable) historians who think that was a general attitude?
- kergonath 2mo agoIt is well documented in France as well. It was seen as a revenge for 1870. There was quite a bit of enthusiasm. At least initially, before the killing started in earnest and people got stuck in the trenches.
- dctoedt 2mo agoPoint taken about the French thirst for revanche; I stand corrected. Again: Catastropic naïveté.