>As for controlling Hormuz, the US military absolutely could control Hormuz. I'm confident it's quite capable of it. It's that the US public wouldn't support the immense cost in lives and treasure it would take to do it, and maintain that control.
This is like saying "I could easily afford a Ferrari. It's just that I wouldn't be able to make the interest payments on the loan". Military conquest is more than just guns.
The reason the US can’t take the strait is that the war is unpopular and the American people don’t want it to happen. The US military could absolutely 100% invade and take the street, but it would be extremely unpopular and very expensive.
You watch too much Hollywood. What is next, they will loose marvel characters against Iran. That will show them. Huh.
And nice cop you have there. Its because the US public didn't want it. Not because US military capabilities were up to the mark. Nice try.
Was the 300 billion war reparations US signed to pay also something that the US public wanted?
No, it's like saying "I can easily afford a ferrari but I won't be able to afford groceries for a year after that because I've emptied my savings account.
The military might be capable of a ground invasion and succeeding. It would be Pyrrhic. Even if Iran was a genuine nuclear threat (I am not convinced at this point that Iran would launch a nuke at anyone if they had it), is it worth 500k dead Americans?
There was never a path to victory that didn't involve ground troops. We aren't losing in Iran because of military incompetence, but policy incompetence. Previous administrations did not do this because the cost was well understood.
There has never existed a military who could win this conflict without ground invasion. This was understood when this administration started it.
>We aren't losing in Iran because of military incompetence, but policy incompetence.
My point is these two things are inseparable, and to conflate them is simply Call of Duty-esque military fantasy. It's a feel good war story that doesn't actually reflect the reality of actually winning a war.
If the US military does not have the ability to hold, occupy, and install allied regime change, then the US military cannot win a war with Iran. You cannot separate the short term wins from the long term objectives. No one looks at Imperial Japan and says "they easily bombed pearl harbor, but due to policy failures they couldn't keep control of the South West Pacific theatre.
The US winning WW2 wasn't just dropping the nukes and high fives. There was rebuilding the Japanese nation, aligned to the US, becoming a long term ally.
This is no different than Afghanistan. Future humans aren't going to look back and say "the US easily controlled Afghanistan for 12 years, and then just returned to the Taliban". The lessons learned will be the US failed to hold Afghanistan and the Taliban returned to power and it was a military failure.
No matter how you dress it up, I can't afford the ferrari.