The other day the Triggernometry boys sat down with a Professor Robert Pape to discuss the Iran War. Here are his main points along with my commentary:
- Airstrikes do not change regimes. – Spot on. They don’t change their aims either. Although they may change their capabilities.
- The 12-Day War of 2025 didn’t work. – That sounds about right. It would appear that Iran still has stocks of the stuff you make nuclear bombs out of.
- Kharg Island will be difficult to take. – Nonsense.
- Iran has become an oil “hegemon”. – In other words, by demonstrating it can close the Straits of Hormuz it dominates supply. I doubt it.
- Suicide bombing has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with desperation. – While I am always open to other ways of looking at things I can’t help but notice that suicide attacks are almost never carried out by Westerners however desperate.
- The Obama deal, which Pape advised on, is as good as it gets. – He’s losing me.
- Israel is involved in ethnic cleansing in Gaza. – Now he’s completely lost me. “To Hell or Connaught” it is not.
- Israel will end up having to allow inspections of its hitherto unacknowledged nuclear facilities. – Maybe, but there won’t be any bombs to inspect because by then the Israelis will have used them.
There was something else that bugged me. It was his general tone: defeatism mixed with smugness.
*Of course, this interview does no such thing. It seems to me that Obama’s guiding principle was the destruction of American liberties and their replacement with a communist tyranny. The Papes of this world just provided suitable intellectual cover.
“Israel is involved in ethnic cleansing in Gaza.”
Israel absolutely undeniably WAS involved in ethnic cleansing in Gaza and has consistently admitted – if not bragged about – the same: when it cleared every single Jew – living and dead – from the territory in 2005.
But I don’t think that’s what he meant.
TPG,
Nicely put. I forgot they took the dead out as well…
There is no attempt for Jews to resttle Gaza. There is no genocide in Gaza. The population of Gaza has increased since 2023 largely because thier hags in bags are whelping implings for Allah. Largely because they’re on bennies and so are the blokes who because they don’t have to turn an honest dime are entirely bent on Jihad.
I know that is a horrid thing to say but it’s true isn’t it?
Gaza could be a really nice place if they had to earn a living as a tourist resort (beautiful beaches) and tax haven. Play the cards right, get ex-pats and tourists, stop building tunnels and rockets to glorify a C7th sadististic nonce and you know what? They might actually have Israelis wanting to live there and paying Shekels for it! Might even get me. The climate would be a nice change from Manchester.
Yes, TPG, Gaza has no Jews. It has a serious Allah problem though…
Surely this is an April Fools Joke?
Patrick has already made the comments I would have made – so it would be silly for me to repeat what he has already written.
I hope that Triggernometry is engaged in an April’s Fools joke – because, if he is serious, Professor Robert Pape is a swine, not a “military expert” – an enemy propagandist.
As for the conflict with the IRI regime – which has been engaged in “Death to America” for 47 years – my fear is not that it is a “trap”, but that President Trump will leave the job of destroying this regime (which has to include destroying the Revolutionary Guard) unfinished – perhaps we will find out with the President’s address this evening.
Well this gentleman certainly looks like a flabby faced coward. He talks like a flabby faced coward. So I am forced to conclude…
As for Trump, I doubt he will force regime change on Iran. There was a chance of that in January, when the people rose up against the regime, but they were slaughtered, and now have no stomach for it, much less the means. The most we can hope for is that much of the infrastructure of repression will be destroyed from the air, but that will not destroy the regime. The thing which finally beat the Nazis was Russian soldiers in Berlin. There will never be American soldiers in Tehran, and they know it.
The Obama deal didn’t work. Any courtiers fluttering about pretending it did are just sycophants sucking up to Emperor Obama.
Actually, it worked just as intended.
Alisa – yes.
The mistake is to assume that Barack Obama had good intentions – his intentions were never good, he always hated the West. He was taught to hate the “capitalist” West – both by his mother, and by family friend Frank Marshall Davis.
The Marxist background of Barack Obama was not hard to discover – and the fact that the “mainstream media” covered up this background (not just failed to discover it – attacked anyone who tried to bring it up) showed what the media had become, even as far back as 2008.
Indeed, Paul. I do agree though with Discovered Joys on his ‘fluttering courtiers’ point.
Meh, what does anyone expect him to say other than the old approved narrative? Pape has always been little more than a sock-puppet, a dreary establishment apologist without an original through in his head.
Why pay any attention to Pape?
Here’s an Iranian-in-exile’s view of the current situation there. (His father is still in Iran and he has other contacts there.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWj9wMonsJs
Guns don’t win wars, either. But they may degrade the enemy’s capabilities to wage one. Which sorta kinda DOES win wars, no?
Sort of the anthem of our times. We’ve been stuck in a niceness bubble for decades. “You can’t say that!” “Is it true?” “No matter, you can’t say that!”
One thing about the conflict is that it has exposed the “Woke Right” (as James Lindsay calls it) – the Nazi types, they have come out with exactly the same lies, “the war was to distract attention from the Epstein files” and-so-on, as the Marxist left.
The “Red/Brown” commonalities, the strong kinship between the Marxists and the Nazis, was noted long ago, by Hayek, Mises and others, and it remains the case.
Discovered Joys and Alisa – yes there are indeed “fluttering courtiers” people who do not really believe in Marxism, or anything else, who crawl to people such as former President Obama. Indeed the establishment (the education system, media, government service, major corporations….) are full of such “fluttering courtiers”.
As for internal matters…
Around 80 people were killed in the Nice truck attack in France and many other French people have been killed in other Islamic attacks – this has led to no arguments against Islam by the French establishment, on the contrary they punish people who oppose Islam. And the number of followers of Islam in France continues to increase.
In Spain around 200 hundred people were killed in the Madrid bombings – there have also been other Islamic attacks, but like France (and Britain) this has not led to the establishment having a change of heart about Islam – and the number of followers of Islam in Spain continues to increase – both immigrants (legal and illegal) and by natural increase (births).
In the United States almost two thousand people were killed in the 9/11 attacks – and there have been many other Islamic attacks (Fort Hood and so on), again this has not led to any change of heart by the establishment on Islam – and the number of followers of Islam continues to increase in the United States.
Yet Jews, who are NOT increasing in the United States, Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, are (by the leftist education system – and by the Nazi “Woke Right”) held to be the threat – NOT Islam. Even though there are no Jewish terrorist attacks in these countries.
Governments such as that of Spain and the Republic of Ireland rush to say how much they hate Jews, sorry “the Zionist entity”, and how much they love “the religion of peace” – with all Islamic attacks being explained away as “misinterpretations” of Islam – a “misinterpreting” started by Muhammed and continued for some 14 centuries.
Vienna, saved in 1519 and 1683, now has 40% (and rising) of the children in schools being followers of Islam – yet the government of Austria insists that the only problem is “Islamophobia” – and in this almost every other government in the Western world agrees with them.
To the establishment in almost every Western nation “Islamophobia”, NOT Islam, is the threat.
So it is clear that the West is on the road to destruction – it will be destroyed, because of the ruling establishment of Western nations.
The United States?
Fertility is already below replacement levels (Americans are no longer having enough children to replace themselves – the same is true in all other Western nations) – and followers of Islam are already in senior positions in some States.
America is not a special case – it is on the same road to death, it is just (perhaps) not so far down the road to death.
FWIW, I was going to watch this, but it was two hours, and who the hell has two hours? So I asked grok to summarized and it did — remarkably quickly. Which was more than enough for me to see that it wasn’t really worth watching. Useful tip for the future I’ll have to remind myself of this.
And to Putin fanboys – and fangirls.
Russia is in the same mess – the same lack of children, the same blame-everything-on-the-Jews (even though there are very few Jews left), and the same rise of Islam and propaganda campaigns from the state (from Mr Putin) about how wonderful Islam is and how Russia supports “Diversity” and “Inclusion” – at least when it comes to Islam.
It appears that both friends and enemies of Russia were wrong – it is not in-its-self specially good or specially bad, it is just another Western country, although it is led by Dictator, Mr Putin, who has got a vast number of Russians (who should have been husbands and fathers) killed – in his vanity project invasion of Ukraine.
Yes he may get his “victory” – but it will be ashes-in-the-mouth for ordinary Russians.
I am old enough to remember when other Western nations were ruled by dictatorships – Spain, Portugal, Greece….. but they were not as destructive to their own people as that …… Mr Putin is.