QOTD: The Great Seductions

 

An excerpt from an interview / conversation with retired General Stanley McChrystal, discussing how the delusional and dishonest Malignant Fascist's deadly misadventure in Iran may prove to be highly resistant to our -- and Israel's -- bombing campaign:

"There are three great seductions that happen to American administrations and to the military.

The first is the idea of covert action. A new president comes in, and he’s told by the intelligence community, 'We can create this great effect and it will be covert. No one will ever know who did it, and it’ll just be a good outcome.' And in my experience, it never stays covert and it rarely works. But it’s seductive because it seems like an easy approach to a knotty problem.

The second seduction, which I lived as a part of, is the surgical Special Operations raid. That is probably epitomized by the Maduro raid. I would argue that we demonstrated extraordinary competence that night, but not much changed. I don’t think that we actually demonstrated the ability to change the facts on the ground to any extent.

Which gets to the third great seduction, and that’s air power. We all love air power. In World War II, we went into the war with the Douhet theory, that air power, the bomber, will always get through, and therefore air power will be dominant.

It was certainly very, very contributory, but it was never dominant. [snip]

I think, in this case, we again fell for the seduction that if we bomb key targets, we will produce the outcome we want — but the outcome’s in the minds of the people. And unless you’re going to kill all the people, you may not affect that outcome.

We may be at a point — you used the word 'quagmire' in your article — but we may be at a point where we’ve run into a country that has an extraordinary capacity to be bombed."  (our emphasis)

The draft dodging MF has no appreciation for military strategy, and far less for the men and women who serve and who have died in combat for the U.S.  It's no wonder that he and his ignorant regime see this war as a video game, with lots of things exploding on TV.  He's likely to soon find out, as McChrystal says, that Iran has an extraordinary capacity to be bombed, and a long and vengeful memory.