No. of Recommendations: 47
ajm101:
^This is just the beginning, no matter how much the US president thinks he can slip away from the mess he dragged the country into.^
Steve:
^A classic case of confirmation bias? People hear what they want to hear, so they believe it.^
The market is famous for being pretty sharp at pricing in future events, but even the "efficient market" trips up occasionally. Right now, Wall Street is trading at near-record highs. We haven’t seen a real sell-off despite the war drums, and valuations are through the roof, with price-to-sales and CAPE ratios hitting some seriously historic peaks.
Meanwhile, the news for a change—arguably—understating the significance what's going on. It’s not just that it’s dire; it’s that it’s completely missing the boat on what’s actually happening—again. We’re seeing a total blackout on what is actually truly ^novel^ about the events of the past week.
That’s War Propaganda 101. Remember when everyone "knew" we were saving the world from WMDs in Iraq? Very few actually questioned it on day one; the skepticism only showed up once we were knee-deep in it and realized the whole narrative was a work of fiction. Or look at Vietnam: the carpet bombing didn’t even trigger the mainstream protests (other than very small ridiculed student groups) with millions on the streets until years later when the "unfruitful" reality finally sank in and the propaganda machine loosened its grip.
Then you have Russia’s security concerns. We’ve been arming Ukraine since the 2014 coup d'etat, despite the fact that NATO was literally designed as an anti-Russian club. Just imagine if North Korea, China, and Iran set up an "anti-US" military alliance on the Mexican border with missiles pointed all over the US. You don’t exactly need to be a rocket scientist to see why Russia was screaming for us to stop. But in our system? Silence. Total censorship. You can still flip through many hotel TVs in Europe today and find RT—only to be greeted by a literal black screen. I have personally experienced these during my travels.
Pretty much every war in history comes gift-wrapped in a propaganda system that tricks about half the public into cheering for "regime interference." But this unprovoked situation with Iran? That’s in a league of its own.
Is anyone actually tracking the last eight days? US diplomats promised to the politicians in the host countries that those bases all around the the Middle East would protect the neighbors. But if you look at the 40 major US installations and cross-reference them with the sites that just got wrecked—lost radars, smashed SATCOM, collapsed hangars—you’re looking at a 20% functional loss in just a few days. That's according to recent OINT (Open Source Intelligence) reports, or you can look over the various public satellite images yourself and see the scorched US bases for yourself, a recent video show everything by Medhurst here -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0cIOMVBSbUWhat?? Yes, I wrote that paragraph correctly. This is something in history, and investors shoud be paying close attention - not reading the latest censored video feeds on CNN showing just what Israel is doign to Iran, and hiding Iran's response. It's a disaster for the US National Security Counci and the Pentagon.
Our propaganda machine sold Iran as a "paper tiger," just like they did with Russia. We were lied to, and eventually forget what we earlier believed, revising our past memories with "Ah.. no I couldn't have thought that.. for its obvious enough now, I'm pretty sure I always believed it to be so". We revise past memories to be consistent with present facts - Charlie Munger 101.
The idea was that a little light bombing would trigger a regime change. We poured money into USAID and NED to make it look like the Iranian public was ready to revolt, but most of that noise was manufactured outside the country. Sure, Iranians in Europe or the US might buy into the "evil empire" narrative, but inside Iran? Support for the country is rock-solid—and way stronger than our TV screens would have you believe.
But let's play "what if." Even if the Iranian government wasn't popular, since when is it normal to just topple a government? If US approval ratings tanked, would it be cool for North Korea and China to set up media outlets and start bombing DC while chanting, "This is for your own good!"? It’s ludicrous. And it’s worse because the Iranian government isn't nearly as fragile as we’re being told. The whole "regime change" conversation isn't just absurd; it’s deeply immoral.
Here’s the part that’s actually new:
In my reading of history, we have never seen a loss of US military infrastructure this massive, this fast. Not even close. Russia and Iran are sitting on a mountain of hypersonic missiles that we simply cannot stop—and Iran hasn't even touched that stash yet.
If the US were smart, it would:
Kill the sanctions on Iran.
Stop the bombing. Immediately.
From where I’m standing, the US is already militarily outclassed. The National Security Council (NSC) can only stop if they can find a way to "fake" a victory. They’ll probably invent a story about how removing a specific leader was the "real goal" all along so they can pack up and go home. Of course, they’ll keep the sanctions—the urge to wreck Iran's economy is baked into their DNA at this point.
But Iran has non-nuclear military advantage when factoring weapon inventory, home geographic advantage (unlike us, they aren't having to move ships far away and maintain bases at medium range to their land), longevity for the fight (for them the situation is existential leading them to go to all lengths, whilst for us it is an ideology and kind of a game), and missile technology (they have colossally larger drone manufacturing capacity than we have, and hypersonic missiles which we don't know how to produce or defend from, and going the nuclear route would be a disaster for everyone. My research suggests that despite their "no-nuke" policy, if they’re pushed, they can enrich a bomb underground - ^response^ as a second strike in response to being bombed as the first strike and fire it without even needing a test. Anyone entertaining the "nuclear option" needs to sanely simply assume the return fire is guaranteed. That’s a gamble with some pretty terrible odds.
The best move? Admit Iran won. Lift the sanctions and stop the bombing. Iran might throw a few more punches just to make sure the lesson sticks, but they’d eventually stop.
Since I don't see the NSC ever lifting sanctions, and since we can’t win this militarily (and support for the Iranian government is actually growing because of the bombs), here is what’s coming:
US bases will keep getting hit until that 20% loss turns into 80%, leading to a total US exit from the region.
Iran will keep blocking non-Chinese trade through its waters.
For the first time in history since ww2, where we could always resort to force - I type again, for the ^first^ time - we are not able to use brute force to get what we want. We are about to be literally outgunned (outmissiled) and there is nothing we can do. (Please don't shoot the messenger!) Well, we can lift sanctions, but the NSC (by contrast, not most of the ordinary US public) are so ^ideologically obsessed^ about not doing that, I'm treating something as trivial as that outside the universe of all possibilities.
So it isn't the worst idea to play with METAR possibilities consistent with a ^continued^ sanctioning by Iran of all US trade past Iran, with the long-term (2+ years) consequences. Yes, we'll get over it, but it will be a new world we'll be living in.
In this we're approaching this new world now, but the US leadership, and (I write sympathetically, given all the brainwashing efforts) perhaps the US public to an extent, is still so overconfident about the US's military power the it doesn't want to imagine what is happening right before them.
We are so not used to being on the ^target^ side of sanctions (that is' being powerless to stop them), that we might deny actually being sanctioned, and we certainly couldn't utter the word in this context because of how we have mentally framed the US as the only country able to exert pressure. This is a new experience for the US.
This is also the biggest faceplant and loss of status for the National Security Council since Truman signed it into existence in 1947. This past week wasn't just a bad week; it was the most rapid military defeat in US history, and if we don't declare a loss pronto then it could become not merely the most rapid, but the ^largest^ defeat, as our prized militrary bases are further scorched over the coming months.
Andromeda
