I agree with Mattis - but as he well knows at times it's unavoidable. Main thing is though the penny ante wanna bes need to understand that the US won't back down if they get truly stupid. My guess is that's why there is a carrier group headed there now. Shows of force aren't intimidating until you have something at that level in your neighborhood.
Good thing Bolton can't make that call then. Besides that, it's as always a game. For now Bolton is the up front asshole telling them to back the fuck down and Trump will play mediator. With KJ Cuckoo Trump played the role of asshole calling him out. Basic good cop bad cop aka diplomacy.
I think it's a loss. Wish he could have understood the game Trump is playing but can't blame him for sticking to his own views of how to do things. What Trump and Bolton are doing IS diplomacy. It's all part of it. Stick and carrot, good cop bad cop, whatever your preferred term it's all negotiating to get what you want.
Diplomacy, with Iran? Right. Maybe instead of reading about Mattis you should read up on Iran. Here is the diplomacy that should be taken with Iran. You fuck with us and we will level your shit back further than the stone age. Funny how the anti trump taint suckers said we would be at war with Russia and North Korea.
Except......... Most of the people in Iran don’t like the regime in power there and are cool with the US. If we go in there and start killing common folk with air strikes and whatever else, it galvanizes the people with regime against us.
I read somewhere that Iran's GDP is approx the same as Washington State which is pretty significant. Getting into anything with them won't be easy or cheap. Seems like the Wolfowitz Doctrine is still alive and well.
Could get into it with them using stockpiles of about to expire ammo slated for destruction anyway and it wouldn't cost a thing
I’m just saying it’s not so cut and dry. It wasn’t too long ago that things just about fell apart over there. If we’d had a president like Trump in place, a little support might have made all the difference.
War is never cut and dry, but diplomacy with a terrorist organization is. There are only two things terrorist respond to, force or threat of force. I am not interested in the US being the worlds problem solvers. If Iran people want their freedom they had better step up and do it. I am not interested in sending more of my brothers and sisters over to a sand box and die.
Maybe I read your post wrong? I thought you were being facetious saying “let Iran do whatever they want”. I don’t think war with Iran is a good idea. I do think a meteor falling on all of their current leadership is.
I don't think war is a good idea either, but if Iran want's to get stupid, the reaction needs to be beyond brutal, direct and effective. I am not interested in saving the Iranian people from the Iranian government, I am interested in saving American lives from the Iranian government.
As good as those guys are, I'm thinking something more along the lines of the cellulose bomb in "Clear and Present Danger", or maybe some kind of satellite mounted laser beam
They were keeping this on the DL. Only one little link on Drudge. Iran is pushing it with the nukes and backing Gaza putting Isreal under threat, the US responds by trying to push their oil exports to zero and declaring the IRGC a terrorist group. Iran lobs a threat over the fence and we respond with an aircraft carrier. Back and forth, back and forth. Sounds like every war carousel we have hopped on in the middle east. Shit ass game of badminton with an IED.