6 ms·

Guerrilla war requires people at the grass roots to care. Is that true in Iran? Venezuela seems to have quieted down already.

by rayiner 8mo ago

ncallaway 8mo ago
The IRGC is 125k-150k people. Many of them are pot committed to the current government, because the IRGC has done... unforgivable things that a new government would be likely to punish. Venezuela is also run by the same security apparatus and government as it was before. We didn't attempt to turn over the entire government.
- rasz 8mo ago
  >The IRGC is 125k-150k people. Takes Ukrainians 4 months to kill that amount. What you are saying winning is quite doable.
  - anabab 8mo ago
    thats in a scenario with soldiers pushing into no mans land under permanent drone control. Israel demonstrates much lower stats when enemy hides underground. I would imagine having no boots on the ground will lower the numbers further.
  - ncallaway 8mo ago
    You... simply cannot take the numbers from one war and blindly apply them to a totally different one. The comparison isn't apt for a number of reasons. First, Russians are generally on the offensive, which means pushing into Ukrainian controlled territory. Often, they are pushing into defensive lines that have had years of fortification. Second, there are a lot more Russians in Ukraine. To kill 125k people, you have to find 125k people. It's a lot easier to find a Russian in Ukraine that it will be to find an IRGC soldier in Iran if there's an invasion and guerilla operations in response. In Iraq after the conventional military phase, the US killed ~26k insurgents over the course of a decade (and also captured ~120k). Iran is bigger than Iraq, has far more people than Iraq, and has much bigger logistical burdens for an invasion. I could believe that the US Military is quite capable of running some small scale targeted operations within Iran successfully. We can probably pull off operations to do things like attempt to seize and secure uranium stockpiles if we know where they are (though such an operation could also go catastrophically badly, too). I think the US Military could invade Iran and topple the regime, but it would be an enormous lift, and I think there's almost no chance we would have the political will to sustain the costs and casualties that a total invasion would entail.
Qwertious 8mo ago
Iran's theocracy is pretty ideologically motivated, they're not just in it for the money.
- rayiner 8mo ago
  Totally correct. I just don’t have a good handle on how deep the theocracy runs in society.
  - fmajid 8mo ago
    Probably as much as MAGA is in the US.
    - rayiner 8mo ago
      MAGA is just 1990s liberalism. Progressives are the ones experiencing a religious awakening, complete with all sorts of taboos and unfalsifiable shibboleths.
      - nullocator 8mo ago
        Ya, No. MAGA is modern Nazism and Christian Nationalism, it was bread out of the Conservative and Republican party of the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s, and has been fully embraced by and has enveloped by both. Rejecting hate, racism, indoctrination, and cultism is not "experiencing a religious awakening" it's quite the opposite.
        rayiner 8mo ago
        Bill Clinton passed sweeping laws to curb illegal immigration, including the ban on using federal dollars to support illegal immigrants: https://scholars.org/brief/how-americas-1996-immigration-act-set-stage-increasingly-localized-and-tough-enforcement https://scholars.org/brief/how-americas-1996-immigration-act.... Progressives meantime took positions that were fringe in the 1990s, like cultural relativism, and redefined that as “rejecting hate.” Progressives have elevated cultural relativism to a core religious principle. They can’t even articulate why it’s desirable for immigrants to “assimilate,” because in their world view it must be taken as axiomatic that America wouldn’t be substantively less successful if it was culturally more like Guatemala or India.
orwin 8mo ago
Maduro was such a bad leader that his prime minister sold him to the US. Which means now Venezuela is still a chavist regime, but not under US embargo anymore. This will improve their economy a great deal, and if the regime doesn't capture all the profits for itself, will also improve the QOL of all Venezuelians, hopefully.
- keybored 8mo ago
  Now Venezuela still has bad government, but without any embargoes imposed by us. This will likely improve the quality of life of the residents now that we don’t try to screw up their economy. Just hoping that the dastardly bad government doesn’t pocket the difference introduced by the better economy from us not screwing up their economy.
dragonwriter 8mo ago
Venezuela wasn’t a regime change war it was a US-backed palace coup that left the entire regime except for the guy at its head in place in exchange for a narrow set of policy favors to the US. It has little in common with Iran, which is more like the 2003 Iraq war (but, so far, without committing ground troops, but there is no way to maintain that with Trump’s stated goal of “unconditional surrender”; that’s going to require a ground forces occupation at a minimum, and probably a ground forces invasion to acheive it) than it is like the recent intervention in Venezuela. Even if they are not particular fond of the regime that is in the process of being destroyed, the Iranian people are likely to resist that, just as occurred in Iraq (with the most significant resistance there coming from forces that were opposed to Saddam’s regime and which had been actively suppressed by it while it was in power.)
- expedition32 8mo ago
  Americans have the uncanny ability to make everyone hate their guts. A US occupation will inevitably breed resistance.
  - toast0 8mo ago
    Not too many people like an armed occupation.
- rayiner 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - nullocator 8mo ago
    Iran can survive the war without regime change, they have infinite Ayatollahs, america just needs to chill out with the "bomb children and commit war crimes and being lead by the great satan and pedophiles" stuff.
  - keybored 8mo ago
    The US (following Israel’s lead) offensively invaded another country. Nothing Iran could have said about America would make it look more like the Great Satan than what it has done itself. But chill out, Americans say. We only demand that the Ayatollah (or any other Ayatollah) doesn’t exist/are dead. Why do you have to be so, like unchill about it?
anigbrowl 8mo ago
Getting bombed tends to make people care a lot, just not for the people doing the bombing.

Guerrilla war requires people at the grass roots to care. Is that true in Iran? Venezuela seems to have quieted down already.

by rayiner 8mo ago

Guerrilla war requires people at the grass roots to care. Is that true in Iran? Venezuela seems to have quieted down already.

ncallaway 8mo ago

The IRGC is 125k-150k people. Many of them are pot committed to the current government, because the IRGC has done... unforgivable things that a new government would be likely to punish. Venezuela is also run by the same security apparatus and government as it was before. We didn't attempt to turn over the entire government.

rasz 8mo ago
>The IRGC is 125k-150k people. Takes Ukrainians 4 months to kill that amount. What you are saying winning is quite doable.
- anabab 8mo ago
  thats in a scenario with soldiers pushing into no mans land under permanent drone control. Israel demonstrates much lower stats when enemy hides underground. I would imagine having no boots on the ground will lower the numbers further.
- ncallaway 8mo ago
  You... simply cannot take the numbers from one war and blindly apply them to a totally different one. The comparison isn't apt for a number of reasons. First, Russians are generally on the offensive, which means pushing into Ukrainian controlled territory. Often, they are pushing into defensive lines that have had years of fortification. Second, there are a lot more Russians in Ukraine. To kill 125k people, you have to find 125k people. It's a lot easier to find a Russian in Ukraine that it will be to find an IRGC soldier in Iran if there's an invasion and guerilla operations in response. In Iraq after the conventional military phase, the US killed ~26k insurgents over the course of a decade (and also captured ~120k). Iran is bigger than Iraq, has far more people than Iraq, and has much bigger logistical burdens for an invasion. I could believe that the US Military is quite capable of running some small scale targeted operations within Iran successfully. We can probably pull off operations to do things like attempt to seize and secure uranium stockpiles if we know where they are (though such an operation could also go catastrophically badly, too). I think the US Military could invade Iran and topple the regime, but it would be an enormous lift, and I think there's almost no chance we would have the political will to sustain the costs and casualties that a total invasion would entail.

Qwertious 8mo ago

Iran's theocracy is pretty ideologically motivated, they're not just in it for the money.

rayiner 8mo ago
Totally correct. I just don’t have a good handle on how deep the theocracy runs in society.
- fmajid 8mo ago
  Probably as much as MAGA is in the US.
  - rayiner 8mo ago
    MAGA is just 1990s liberalism. Progressives are the ones experiencing a religious awakening, complete with all sorts of taboos and unfalsifiable shibboleths.
    - nullocator 8mo ago
      Ya, No. MAGA is modern Nazism and Christian Nationalism, it was bread out of the Conservative and Republican party of the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s, and has been fully embraced by and has enveloped by both. Rejecting hate, racism, indoctrination, and cultism is not "experiencing a religious awakening" it's quite the opposite.
      - rayiner 8mo ago
        Bill Clinton passed sweeping laws to curb illegal immigration, including the ban on using federal dollars to support illegal immigrants: https://scholars.org/brief/how-americas-1996-immigration-act-set-stage-increasingly-localized-and-tough-enforcement https://scholars.org/brief/how-americas-1996-immigration-act.... Progressives meantime took positions that were fringe in the 1990s, like cultural relativism, and redefined that as “rejecting hate.” Progressives have elevated cultural relativism to a core religious principle. They can’t even articulate why it’s desirable for immigrants to “assimilate,” because in their world view it must be taken as axiomatic that America wouldn’t be substantively less successful if it was culturally more like Guatemala or India.

orwin 8mo ago

Maduro was such a bad leader that his prime minister sold him to the US. Which means now Venezuela is still a chavist regime, but not under US embargo anymore. This will improve their economy a great deal, and if the regime doesn't capture all the profits for itself, will also improve the QOL of all Venezuelians, hopefully.

keybored 8mo ago
Now Venezuela still has bad government, but without any embargoes imposed by us. This will likely improve the quality of life of the residents now that we don’t try to screw up their economy. Just hoping that the dastardly bad government doesn’t pocket the difference introduced by the better economy from us not screwing up their economy.

dragonwriter 8mo ago

Venezuela wasn’t a regime change war it was a US-backed palace coup that left the entire regime except for the guy at its head in place in exchange for a narrow set of policy favors to the US. It has little in common with Iran, which is more like the 2003 Iraq war (but, so far, without committing ground troops, but there is no way to maintain that with Trump’s stated goal of “unconditional surrender”; that’s going to require a ground forces occupation at a minimum, and probably a ground forces invasion to acheive it) than it is like the recent intervention in Venezuela. Even if they are not particular fond of the regime that is in the process of being destroyed, the Iranian people are likely to resist that, just as occurred in Iraq (with the most significant resistance there coming from forces that were opposed to Saddam’s regime and which had been actively suppressed by it while it was in power.)

expedition32 8mo ago
Americans have the uncanny ability to make everyone hate their guts. A US occupation will inevitably breed resistance.
- toast0 8mo ago
  Not too many people like an armed occupation.
rayiner 8mo ago
[flagged]
- nullocator 8mo ago
  Iran can survive the war without regime change, they have infinite Ayatollahs, america just needs to chill out with the "bomb children and commit war crimes and being lead by the great satan and pedophiles" stuff.
- keybored 8mo ago
  The US (following Israel’s lead) offensively invaded another country. Nothing Iran could have said about America would make it look more like the Great Satan than what it has done itself. But chill out, Americans say. We only demand that the Ayatollah (or any other Ayatollah) doesn’t exist/are dead. Why do you have to be so, like unchill about it?

anigbrowl 8mo ago

Getting bombed tends to make people care a lot, just not for the people doing the bombing.