No. of Recommendations: 13
Besides destroying all the launchers, the drone stockpiles and the factories that make them?
Yes. Because we're not going to be able to destroy all of them, and it's not going to take too much time and effort to replenish both the factories and the stockpiles. Again, they got from nearly gone to fully restocked within less than a year of the 12 Day War.
Are you under the impression that China isn't a global threat of ours, doesn't work against our interests and never conspires with our enemies to cause trouble?
Of course not. Are you under the impression that that's what my point was about?
China is a global threat, and what they use the Middle East for is primarily an energy resource. They predominantly achieve their goals in the Middle East through economic and diplomatic means. They derive minimal benefit from Iran's conventional military resources, so it does virtually nothing to China to deplete those conventional military resources. As long as the oil is flowing, China's getting what they need. Notice how we're not stopping Iran from sending oil to China, even though we certainly could? How we're liberalizing the sanctions on Russia so they can sell more oil to China, even though that benefits both Russia and China?
I will never get conservatives' refusal to see the situation for what it really is:
1. China is a threat so we have to do something.
2. This is something.
3. Therefore we have to do this.
The fallacy is obvious. But you keep misinterpreting the discussion as if people were dismissing the threat of China, rather than questioning whether the "something" that we're doing in Iran is actually doing anything to affect China's threat profile more than we're depleting our responsive capabilities. There's a reason why China almost never gets mentioned in any of the Administration's efforts to explain their war goals - because the effect on China is so attenuated and contingent compared to the depletion of our own military resources that they would get serious blowback if they tried to pretend this was about China.
-Take care of Iran, Venezuela and Cuba now
Yeah, you keep using the generic phrase "take care of" - but that's the problem. We're not "taking care" of these countries. Venezuela remains governed by a left-wing socialist dictatorship hostile to the U.S. and deeply allied with China. Iran remains governed by an authoritarian dictatorship hostile to the U.S. and deeply allied with China, and there's a good chance that it will come out of the war in the same position. Neither of those countries has been "taken care of" in any material way that affects China. We haven't even gotten started with Cuba, though it's been such a reduced priority for both China and Russia over the last decade or so (mostly relying on support and interaction with other leftist countries in Latin America more than anything) I think the security implications are modest.
So if we were going to have a problem with Venezuela and/or Iran in 2028/2029 before, we're still going to have that problem now.
