The flip side is that the US isn't used to fighting anything other than asymmetric warfare / insurgencies / terrorism against people who can't project force and can't really hit back. We park valuable assets out in the open on military bases and installations around the world, and don't do anything to shelter them or even move them around during a conflict because of hubris.

Iran also basically just fought us to a stalemate, with an arguably long-term strategic victory going to Iran, just by being willing to absorb more punishment in the short term. Once we depleted our stocks of expensive weaponry we had to stop. We could win every fight and still lose the war.

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nozzlegear 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> Iran also basically just fought us to a stalemate, with an arguably long-term strategic victory going to Iran, just by being willing to absorb more punishment in the short term. Once we depleted our stocks of expensive weaponry we had to stop. We could win every fight and still lose the war.

Iran had a different victory condition. All they had to do was outlast and not be completely wiped out. Trump's victory condition was... well, only Trump knows. Short of a total ground invasion of Iran and full eradication of the Iranian regime (a tall, tall order), victory for the US in Iran, in the eyes of the public, was always going to be impossible.

	▲	ahartmetz 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Trump seemed to think that the Iranian regime was unstable and would fall once the US killed their top ranks and applied a bit of pressure. Turns out that he was very wrong (and experts would have told him if he had bothered to ask / listen).
	▲	mindslight 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		This is a war that even the "forever war" US military-intelligence complex had been resisting starting for decades. This really illustrates what a colossally bad idea it was.