this is some “rome strong, will last forever” thinking.
we’ve shot enough million dollar rockets at $50 drones in the last 5 months to the point our capabilities will take years to rebuild, and putting us at a disadvantage if a real threat emerges (I would not put iran in a real threat category). our unilateral actions in the middle east have alienated allies but apparently we don’t need any besides israel (at least with the iraq war we bothered to build a coalition). US hegemony is propped up by the petrodollar, which this whole misadventure has put in jeopardy. what strategic victory are we accomplishing here?
we certainly aren’t making the world safer, and ending iran’s nuclear program isn’t even on the table anymore. as if iran having nukes would be the end of the world anyway - they’d just be another country with a deterrent weapon, which is almost redundant at this point since we’re already so deterred we won’t put boots on the ground after 5 months of fiddlefucking around. we abandoned a successful decades-long strategy of containment with iran because somebody caught a napoleonic hardon, and now the answer is “we’ll just hang around in the ocean for decades.”
our own regulatory bodies have been defanged to the point where the SEC, FDA, and CDC can’t perform their basic functions. the stock market is an insider gambling house built on an AI house of cards. our own food poisons us. once mandatory childhood vaccinations are ended, there goes herd immunity. people are on a treadmill of getting laid off then spending months or years looking for work. many have just given up looking.
meanwhile china watches and waits.
we may not be in shambles, but we’re speeding down the highway at 120mph thinking nothing can touch us, acting like we’ve forgotten that every society is 9 meals away from chaos.