Comment by wagesj45@kbin.social on Words fail me

Which is exactly why the US isn’t going to carpet bomb their own territory. One, ruling over a rubble-laden wasteland isn’t very appealing. Destroying your own infrastructure isn’t good for GDP. Two, soldiers are going to have a lot harder time bombing their own homeland, regardless of how well trained they are.

That’s like saying the US wouldn’t fight the confederacy because it would damage their land…

Reconstruction was mostly social, not infrastructure. It was reconstructing social order in place of what was removed (plantation farming a slave labor), not buildings/roads/railways really.

Well that became the narrative when it became clear that we weren’t going to rebuild all the buildings we burned down.

And things have changed quite a bit since the civil war. We have a very interconnected country and world. Airplanes exist now. Nuclear submarines and cruise missiles. The destructive power of our weapons has increased ten fold. And we have instant access to 24/7 new media. I don’t think we have the appetite for such a thing in this day and age. Not to mention how any number of hostile nations would be foaming at the mouth looking forward to us having our guard down.

Anything is possible I guess, even if I personally wouldn’t bet money on it. Then again I’m just a guy and no one in power is gonna ask my opinion. They very well may surprise me and bomb Jethrow’s compound or downtown Houston.

My original flippant response was triggered from the ease with which people think the US military is some unstoppable force and the Republicans that do this nonsense would easily be put down. I think it is a lot more complicated than that and no course of action would be easy and painless. That’s wishful thinking on behalf of us lefties.

So then the citizenry and army would be fighting on equal footing then and the “we have all the guns here in Texas” argument goes back to making sense. Either the US uses their overwhelming military power or not, you can’t choose both.

No?

Why would you assume it works that way.

I’m saying that if you rely on having F-16 fighter jets and drones dropping bombs, you’re arguing for wholesale destruction. If you don’t rely on fighter jets and bombing raids, that means you’re fighting a ground war against insurgents that are more or less equally armed, assuming they have weapons like AR-15s.

My point is that cruise missiles don’t solve every problem; namely armed local insurgencies. What kind of third use-of-force scenario are you imagining?

We don’t carpet bomb anymore. We hit critical targets. They would destroy the power grid, oil depots, ammo supplies, etc. They wouldn’t do “wholesale destruction”. That hasn’t been a thing for a while now in warframe, except for in Gaza and Ukraine.

You’re probably right, and I used overly broad language. I’m sure there would be targeted strikes. But any strike against infrastructure would be what I would consider a Big Deal™. Everything is so interconnected now that taking out the power grid, for example, would wreak havoc on all the innocent civilians in the area. Just look at how shit hit the fan when Texas lost power in the winter.

I just think it would be a much more complicated situation than either argument of “we have all the guns, libruls” or “we have Predator drones, conservatard”. I’m used to conservatives making stupid arguments. It bothers me more when I see my side do it.

But hey, maybe I’m the idiot and it would all work out with targeted strikes. That’s why I’m just some guy on the internet and not a general in the Army or whatever.

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