The attackers’ ability to spare newly established adjacent facilities (such as the Martyr Absalan clinic) and their glaring failure to avoid an elementary school operating at full capacity and packed with 170 girls leaves us with two scenarios, both unequivocally condemnatory: Either US and Israeli forces relied, in striking the vicinity of the Asif Brigade, on a very old, outdated intelligence target bank (dating to before 2013), which would constitute grave negligence and reckless disregard for civilian lives; or the strike was carried out deliberately and with prior knowledge to inflict maximum societal shock and undermine popular support for Iran’s military establishment.
A common belief amongst some people, right or wrong, is that if you hurt someone badly enough they’ll do what you want because that path becomes less painful.
Those people believe that sending the message “war with the US means all your children die” will result in people furiously demanding that their military stop fighting to prevent the killing.
It’s quite literally the abuser mindset but applied to nations. “I wouldn’t have to hurt you if you had just done what I said”.
This fits with who’s in power.
Yeah, but the US and Israeli militaries in specific are well aware of how bad optics make a military campaign harder. They’re not those people.
You say that, but also… They specifically said this wasn’t going to be a “politically correct war” with “rules of engagement”.
https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4418959/secretary-of-war-pete-hegseth-and-chairman-of-the-joint-chiefs-of-staff-gen-dan/
Remember that while sensible people know optics matter, there are people who think the problem with Vietnam was that we were too soft on them, and too soft on domestic political dissident.
Those are the people currently in power. They are not competent military thinkers. They view strength the same way the people who were blindsided by our loss in Vietnam viewed it. We can’t lose because we have more weapons. If the enemy is still fighting it’s because we haven’t bombed hard enough. Anyone who wants to hold back is weak.
I mean, it also says there that they didn’t start the war. Hagseth is a politician saying things he knows are untrue for domestic political consumption.
It’s possible he believes some of this stuff in private, and Trump earnestly believes all kinds of crazy stuff. The generals and officers that pick targets and run strikes are still the same ones from Afghanistan, though.
And to finish the point, it failed in ww2 strategic civilian bombing and itll fail here.
It just doesnt work. At least the uk in ww2 didnt have dresden in history books to know better.
It did work in Japan though. But better don’t tell them how far they’ll have to go for it to have effect.
It actually didn’t. The carpet bombing and flattening of cities didn’t make the population want to give up or turn on the military.
The first nuclear weapon didn’t either.
The second made the emperor inclined to surrender, when paired with a declaration of war by the Soviet Union.
The civilian population never posed a significant threat to the stability of the military or imperial rule.
People aren’t generally idiots, and will lean towards supporting the people fighting the people who are hurting them. You may not like them, and you may want them to do something else, but you’re unlikely to trust the party that is currently trying to kill you.
“Take off your armor and we’ll stop shooting” just isn’t a compelling argument.