They can, to some extent, but drone stockpiles and factories can be targeted and destroyed by conventional means. It is difficult to destroy them ALL, but it is certainly a problem that can be addressed to a degree without taking over the country.

I'm pretty sure that the reputational harms of using nuclear weapons on a country of 70M is going to be pretty severe. Surely you understand how starting a war with a country without sufficient cause and then using nuclear weapons on them might result in significant and very long lasting consequences?

Yeah, why _is_ killing a ~hundred million people to satisfy the ego of a buffoon controversial?

HN sometimes poses really difficult questions.

If you will remember from a few months ago, many of our actions was apparrently to cause a revolution from within. That didn't happen.

We can't just change our strategy to "nvrmd: kill 'em all" and think we'll have any allies after this. Iran would once again not just attack us, but practically every country near it, causing even more causalities and infrastructure damage.

And this doesn't get into the problem that this would eventually require a land invasion, which would be impossible. We couldn't even get an actual war ship close to Iran.

There is a "Sunk Cost Fallacy" that someone in our Administration should listen to. Times up with this complete disaster.

> Then why is "glass the entire country" not an option?

It is an option, but civilians bear most of the cost of it. That being said, I do think more could have been done militarily. The U.S. should have continued combat operations for at least a few more weeks and taken what is left of ballistic missiles, drones and arms facilities, etc. Striking dual-use infrastructure such as bridges and railroads is also fair game.

Attacking civilians has always been "controversial". As a civilian myself, I would be pretty worried if this changed.

It would triggering an apocalyptic conflagration deter a bunch of religious fanatics that are actively trying to bring about a prophesied apocalyptic conflagration?

I feel like they made a movie with Matthew Broderick explaining why this policy was bad...

It's attacking civilians that's controversial.

Donald, is that you?

Because all the american assets in countries around iran will be "glassed" too, like american bases are already. And then special forces deep in US will start "glassing" US infrastructure, power, water, logistics, etc. (It's not terrorism if you're in war, it's just special units behind enemy lines). Looking at eg. texas, it doesn't take a lot to bring the whole power grid down, especially if properly planned. If you bomb water supply facilities in eg. new york, how many people will you have to evacuate? How hard would it be for those special forces to start forest fires in california? Or poison food supply for the army? Or just bomb a random school in retaliation for the one you guys bombed in iran?

> Why is attacking one's enemies suddenly controversial?

Flying half the planet away to attack someone who in no way endangers you is controversial... it took a few years of vietnam war for americans to figure it out and a few decades to forget it all again and now you're repeating it against a stronger adversary. It's no wonder most of the world hates americans.

edit: looking at his comment history, commenter above me seems to be from israel, not US, but same applies to them too, with the exception of having to ask trump (and the brits and others) for help when iran fights back.

[flagged]