NapLajoieonSteroids wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2024 6:56 am
Heracleum Persicum wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2024 6:48 am
NapLajoieonSteroids wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2024 6:17 am
Colonel MacGregor's expertise started and ended at the battalion level. Everything else is being a professional gadfly.
He was the guy that worked with the Bush administration to undercut higher ranking officers apprehensive about the 2nd gulf war.
"We can invade and occupy Iraq with 50,000 troops" MacGregor. That's
our guy.
Take off the military uniform and you're looking at John Bolton, who for some mysterious reason gets no love on this forum.
A most impressive thing is that he's prognosticated the end of the Russia-Ukraine war so many times, he holds the record for predicting the end of wars.
All true
but
Seems he learned his lesson
No shame being once wrong, shame being twice wrong
Same goes with Trump
Am sure if and when Trump president, he looking at Iran and Israel, he seeing things pretty much all
"upside down", he
will bend to mad mullahs and throw BiBi to the dogs .. am sure of that .. he knows alternative would be "Afghanistan - II" in 20 yrs after poring billions in bottomless pit.
Biden done.
.
Maybe he learned his lesson. Maybe. But 2 decades of being one character just doesn't wash away in one laundry cycle. One thing holds true over the last 2 decades, the US military brass is not good and needs to demonstrate it can be trusted before any trust in put in any of these guys.
MacGregor gained fame for his first book, which was dead on a tactics level. He was also probably right that creative guys were being sluiced out by the upper bureaucracy. But then the subsequent years proved that they were right not to promote him up the chain.
And like all the other fish in that pond, he went through the same lifecycle- military fame->consulting->punditry.
All smells like bad fish to me; though I'd be glad to be shown otherwise.
US military did perfect job, they never lost a battle post WW2 .. America lost all wars since WW2 not because of military, the wars were all lost politically .. Notion wars can be won by military means naive.
Notion, in WW2, Germany and Japan were defeated militarily, deceiving .. Germany and Japan did get (were guaranteed) what they were demanding before the war and for what they started the war ..
Germany and Japan wanted free access to resources and free market for their products,
Americans and Brits said NO ..
after the war, Germany and Japan were guaranteed free access to world resources and free world market for their products .. that is why Germany and Japan now are "peaceful" nations, there ZERO doubt should the "free access to resources and free market" be no more the case, Germany and Japan "and now China" would look at wars. Germany already, openly, saying this "to Russia" ..
US politicians are not at par with old world.
NapLajoieonSteroids wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2024 6:58 am
You may very well be right about BiBi.
Trump isn't happy that Netanyahu very publicly abandoned him during the 2020 election. So there is something personal there at this point; whereas with the mad mullahs it's "nothing personal; business is business- and what's today's business."
Yes, there a uTube clip Trump saying Natanyahu double crossed him
Trump a top top smart businessman, business is all about reward/risk, nothing personal .. Natanyahu made Israel a "liability" for US, now cost of siding with Israel becoming "unbearable" for US with no "upside" at all (that Holocaust credit already over spent manyfold) .. Trump's issue not BiBi, but what's the plan for Israel .. Businessman Trump will think what's in it for US to hold to Israel and will see the cost too high and no reward.
Re mad mullahs, things evolved entirely since Trump left office .. Trump now looking at a "New Persia" AND at new geopolitical realities,
the risk/reward algorithm totally changed ..
IMVHO, if American, Western goal is "check" China, key for that is on whose team Iran is ? Iran is key in chessboard now West playing
Iran not same Iran when Trump left .. neither world same world
Trump best man to handle the new situation, he "independent" from Military complex, from Jewish Lobby, etc .. AND .. American street is with him
.