Two thoughts that I felt like sharing, but weren’t going to be full posts.
Controlling the World Ain’t Easy. One of the claims that Trump made on the campaign trail was that the world was more peaceful when he was president, but under Biden, the Ukraine invasion took place, as did the 10/7 attacks on Israel, and the subsequent war in Gaza.
And now it ends up that not only are solving Ukraine and Gaza not easy, but Israel and Iran are at war.
Funny how the world actually isn’t in the total control of the President of the United States!!
We are about to be reminded that oil prices are determined by a global marketplace, and not the whims of whoever it might be who occupies the White House.
Regular v. Irregular Warfare. I have seen a number of people make various claims about the differences between fighting Hamas and fighting Iran. I have seen things like “If Hamas didn’t hide among the population of Gaza, Israel could target them like the targeted Iranian leaders.”
Well, indeed!
It is not a defense of Hamas to state that, well, obviously, they are hiding among the population. It is the nature of an irregular, guerrilla army. Hamas is not a formal military belonging to an established, recognized state.
They are in an asymmetrical conflict with Israel. That is why they deploy terrorism as a tool. Their most successful attack, the one that took place on 10/7, was a pretty crude one from a military point of view. It was utterly asymmetrical and aimed purposefully at civilians.
I point out what should be obvious, because I guess it isn’t, but this is a wholly different kind of adversary than fighting an established state, such as Iran.
Even though a state is a more formidable foe in terms of firepower and resources, in many ways, winning a military confrontation with a regular military is quite a bit easier than putting down an irregular force.
Note, for example, how quickly and decisively the US was able to defeat the Iraqi army during the 2003 invasion, to the point of utterly toppling the Iraqi government with astonishing ease. And then remember how difficult it was to quell the irregular forces that emerged after we took full possession of the country. (See also, Afghanistan, 2001-2021).
Military defeat on the battlefield and military destruction of an insurgency/irregular force are simply two different things. People too often make the mistake of assuming that it is just about relative firepower (which is, of course, why the Colombian military, one of the largest and best trained in Latin America easily defeated the FARC when they emerged in the 1960s fought a multi-decade war with the FARC that only ended in a peace deal in 2016, and even then did not stop all fighting.
Bonus Thought. Taking out the leadership of Iran is likely the easy part (in relative terms). Controlling what happens after that is not so easy.
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Author: Steven L. Taylor
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