An eerie quiet hangs over Ras Al Khaimah’s industrial port. Usually a thriving maritime hub of the United Arab Emirates, now ships stand docked and silent. Not far out along the hazy horizon, a backlog of hundreds of tankers have lined up in recent days, halted along a waterway flooded with danger.
Any vessel heading past Ras Al Khaimah out to the Arabian Sea must traverse the world’s most treacherous strip of water for shipping today: the strait of Hormuz. Just over 20 nautical miles from Ras Al Khaimah, two oil tankers heading for the strait were attacked by Iranian missiles this week, one catching fire.
It is one of the many consequences facing Gulf states as they are pulled deeper into a war that they did not start and had diplomatically tried to prevent.
For decades, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Oman have allowed US military bases, infrastructure or access on their soil, and have been among the largest buyers of American weapons and technology. In return, the US has stood as the Gulf’s closest and most significant military partner and protector.
But now, Gulf states have growing concerns over the relationship, analysts say, after Donald Trump was seen to wilfully torpedo peaceful diplomatic negotiations in favour of starting a war in the Middle East.
The reason that every other US president has ruled out war with Iran is exactly because of this tactic. It takes a group of really ignorant, egotistical, and foolhardy leaders to melt through the layers of decision making that underlie such a course of action.
The more Trump screams on social media and Hegseth bully pulpits while whining about media coverage, the worse this war is going. Look for more avoidable Air Force and Navy incidents, more dead American soldiers, and a civilian bloodbath that will take decades to unravel the implications of.
I heard a commentator describe it as “victory disease”.
Trump is in control of the largest and most sophisticated military in the world. He had a couple of one and done victories, its easy to see how he might start to feel over confident.
It was almost inevitable they would eventually pick a fight they couldn’t win.
That said, going in with absolutely no plan-b was really, really stupid.
The most ironic thing is if they had bothered to set up a practical plan and stated war goal, the US could have invaded and captured Iran in a matter of weeks.
It just that the largest and most sophisticated military in the world is completely useless if you don’t spin up and use its full potential, which you can’t really do without troops on the ground and congressional approval (not the literal declare war sense, just public support).
Of course they can’t actually justify a proper invasion (or a draft) without causing insane fallout in the US, so they used everything except ground troops which will accomplish nothing and get the US stuck in a forever war like Vietnam.
Even though China is facing eventual oil supply issues, they’re probably looking at this thing like prime cinema as the US expends its military global dominance on Iran, which will solve their Taiwan plans for them.
They didn’t even have a plan A!
They had a plan A: put the fear of god (aka USA) in Iran. This technique doesn’t work on most teenagers (as well as most countries)
What victories have they had???
Venezuela and the last strike on Iran.
Venezuela wasn’t a victory. And what strike in Iran is a victory? They killed 160+ children.
It doesn’t matter whether you think Venezuela was a victory. Trump certainly does.
The stealth bomber hitting the nuclear lab under a mountain through the vent tunnels.
Fuck the Americans involved in this war,nobody asked them to join the army and they’re aware who and why they are fighting for
Joining the US military is just signing up to murder brown people at the direction of the oil industry and war profiteers. Been the way for at least half a century.
“I was a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism”.
-Smedley Butler, 1935
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That’s not very class conscious of you.
why
In a society where higher education is paywalled, I can’t look down on people who use the military to get pass the paywall.
You would if they killed your daughter while she was at school
Fuck em. They can read, they know what this leadership is.
What if they signed up before the current regime came to power?
When Dick Cheney was making the world safe for Halliburton? Yeah, there’s no comfort there.
This goes way before the “current” regime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes
You think the US military was out there distributing flowers before Trump came along? They’re all scum.
Only possible valid defense.
I’ll cut a tiny bit of slack to the 9/11 sign-ups, it was harder to fact-check the various lies coming from the feds.
Not only that but if it wasnt for the US military then Russia would control Ukraine and would be advancing into Europe.
Or China would have already invaded Taiwan.
Or North Korea would control South Korea.
The problem here isn’t the US military. It’s the leadership.
But the foreign bots brigading lemmy want the US military weaker so those nations can advance their geopolitical goals.
What exactly did the US military do to prevent Russia from progressing their invasion in Ukraine? If anything, this administration has done anything possible to allow Russia to progress, which despite their effort, they don’t seem to be able to on a larger scale.
Don’t worry. They asked
ChatGPTGrok if it was a good idea, and it said “You’re absolutely right”. And if the magical computer box that our entire economy now rests upon says so, it must be right.deleted by creator
Their president has started this war and one of his first moves was to bomb a school full of girls.
Then he goes saying that they will hit them even harder and allows the nazi jews of israhell to bomb targets that are causing hell to the civilian population.
You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t share the thought that what you describe will be “unfortunate”.
a double tap, to kill the girls and then the first responders who came to save the survivors. Thats some straight up israeli level war criminality, but we did it directly this time. I think that is what Israel wanted-- us doing war crimes like they do so the world will have a hard time coming after them for it, and they can blame it all on the US from the start.
You want civilians to die?
No. But this is not unfortunate, this is another consequence of having elected him.
By now, a president must come with a disclaimer. Just like with medicine. “May cause wars. May cause economic collapse. Read full program before voting. Discuss this with your representative.”
We had that. For fuck’s sake, even The Economist, that capitalist tabloid rag, ran a cover story describing how Trump would ruin the economy, alongside an entire opposing campaign built around how he would ruin everything else that used the Republicans’ own literature as reference. People were warned, people knew, they don’t have any excuses.
Unfortunately? You guys voted that shitbag
can you back that up?
Personally I’m amazed it hasn’t already happened.