Lot of chest thumping in this thread. It occurs to me that the best way to lose a war is to overestimate your capabilities and underestimate your enemy's.
Assume they're intelligent enough to perceive the obvious. They'll lose a conventional war. So they'll avoid having one. We have lost plenty of wars, mostly due to insurgency. It's proven effective and efficient for 15 year or so in their neighborhood so they'll use it in the ME.
Terrorism is effective and efficient so they'll use that. We haven't faced much of that domestically during our occupation of the ME, which is a credit to our intelligence capabilities, but a large push could overwhelm our services. Also seems like it wouldn't take too many communication restrictions to place cell sized threats beyond the reach of our surveillance. How would we weather that? You're talking about people with zero tolerance for privation. When the lights went out in New Orleans there were riots, like, immediately. We're not rock solid. I'm sure you're a tough bastard but look around at the supermarket. They're not going to become resolved and pull together. You're kidding yourself if you think we're not vulnerable.
Conventional retaliation is ineffective. Our time there has demonstrated that. If we hit 52 targets, then more after that, and more again, the insurgency and terrorism will continue. I don't know how you stop these fuckers. They know how to surveil too, so they're going to take measures to avoid it. It seems like intelligence is paramount and I hope we're up to the task.
Remember there's not just 2 pieces on the board. After 9/11 we had a lot of the world on our side. By now we've accrued quite a few whoopsies over there and everyone has cataloged them. Iran will snuggle up with China. It's conceivable that they'll institute a Poor Us PR campaign complete with pictures of bleeding school children, and China will stand in front of the UN and say something along the lines of "We head a coalition representing half the world. Go home or we'll make you go home." Then they get to be the heroes and protectors of the downtrodden and set up shop on top of all that oil. That's not far fetched. People form alliances, particularly when they have something super desirable, and wars do tend to escalate. Our White Hat image is pretty tarnished and world opinion could turn against us.
I recognize that at this stage keeping our foot on the enemy's neck may be the only plausible strategy. Maybe it's always been necessary but I feel like we could have left at some point instead of being their police and security service until kingdom fucking come. Maybe we really do need need that oil. We fucking better after all this shit and lives lost for it.
Our responses will have to be proportional and we'll need a strong White Hat campaign. Even if it's complete bullshit we better sell it well because the audience is getting increasingly skeptical. "Fuck world opinion" is not a winning strategy. Glass the place, hit too many schools, etc, the gig might be up.
Don't know where you guys are getting your bulletproof attitude. Seems possible to me they'll do their damndest to undertake terrorist attacks. If we get the intel or the casualties, seems to me the only way forward is to cut off the head. Topple the government to disrupt the downstream and hope a parallel political operation can install a puppet that looks like an organic groundswell. Do this while keeping your hat white. Lot of balls in the air there, like we've learned before.
