Air superiority is supposed to deliver a quick triumph. But history has shown that promise to be written on the wind

To explore the roots of Donald Trump’s Iran military strategy and the pugnacious rhetoric of his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, means looking back 105 years. In 1921, a year before Benito Mussolini and his blackshirts marched on Rome to launch the Fascist era, an Italian general named Giulio Douhet published The Command of the Air, proposing a revolution in warfare.

Victory in the future, he said, would no longer come from the grinding trench combat of the great war. Instead it meant large-scale aerial bombardments, targeting not just combatants but civilians and civilian infrastructure and logistics.

“[It] is much more important to destroy a railroad station, a bakery, a war plant, or to machine-gun a supply column, moving trains, or any other behind-the-lines objective, than to strafe or bomb a trench.

  • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    With diligent planning and help from our allies and a clear objective victory from the air is achievable.

    We just had none of those things.

  • metermatic26@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Just look at those morons…

    And let it sink in for a moment that these two losers have just ended 80 years of globalism and free trade, killed thousands of people, forced millions more into poverty, planted the seeds for future wars and famines that will affect hundreds of millions more, likely enriched themselves in the process and give absolutely zero fucks about the suffering they’ve caused.

    And all I’m reading online is comments from Americans either explaining how sad they feel for the rest of the world or excusing themselves because they didn’t vote for them. Nobody fucking cares. Fix your shit, America…

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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      This right here.

      It’s always boots on the ground.

      The “win the war from the air” has been around since airplanes became a thing in WW1. They’ve been wrong every time.

      • Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        There was a joke I read when I was in high school. Two tank commanders meet in Berlin at the end of WWII. One was a soviet tank commander and the other an american tank commander. One looks at the other and asks. Who won the air war?

  • Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.ca
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    4 days ago

    Nobody seduced these chucklefucks into anything.

    On behalf of Israel, Epstein and Maxwell honey-potted Trump and a bunch of other republicans, filmed them all kiddie-fucking so that Israel could say “Hey…you do what we say now, or else”.

    It wasn’t a seduction. It was an order.

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    They thought once the Khomeni was got rid of the “opposition” in Iran would take over.

    They believed all those fake AI videos that Israel produced.

    There is no “opposition” in Iran, outside of their own political system. Almost no one remembers the Shah, and those who do don’t remember him fondly.

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    Avoiding saying that listening only to Israel and Mossad agents in cabinet forces full zionist supremacist government, not just syphlitic brain in chief, to destroy world.

    There is no way that anyone could ever think that assassinating the pope will not increase church attendance. To paraphrase Kissinger, Being Israel’s enemy is dangerous, being Israel’s devotee is stupid and deadly.

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    I wonder if the Taiwan invasion goes south we’ll see the grauniad talk about China “being seduced into invading”.

  • MrSulu@lemmy.ml
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    4 days ago

    Delusion is the operative to apply in anything coming out of the Whitehouse right now.