Curtis LeMay: “I’ll tell you what war is about, you’ve got to kill people, and when you’ve killed enough they stop fighting”

New York Times, regarding the untimely death of Ali Larijani, the guy who’d been running Iran: “Israel’s Killing of Ali Larijani Could Allow Military to Tighten Grip on Iran … had a reputation for acting as a bridge between hard-line figures in the armed forces and more moderate political factions”.

If that wasn’t clear enough for communicating how foolhardy the idea of killing the enemy is as a warfighting technique, the NYT ran a second article explaining that killing the enemy “can backfire” (i.e., will backfire).

(The Iranians retaliated per usual by launching missiles at civilians in Tel Aviv. One odd feature of this war is that the Iranians complain that it is against the laws of war when the U.S. kills some civilians by mistake while at the same time the Iranians mostly attack civilian targets, e.g., in Israel or the Gulf Arab states. Similarly, folks in the West don’t complain that Iran attacks civilians, but point out that if we were to shut down Iran’s weapons factories by disabling oil production and electric power generation that would be a war crime because civilians also benefit from oil sales and electric power.)

The New York Times doesn’t explain its rationale for why killing the enemy is a sure way to lose a war, but maybe it follows logically from Islam being the Religion of Peace. If Muslims are by definition peaceful then killing a Muslim such as Ali Larijani reduces the amount of peace in the world.

A good companion piece, from state-sponsored PBS: don’t be concerned about the four Islamic jihads waged domestically in the first two weeks of March (Ayman Mohamad Ghazali trying to kill 140 preschoolers in Michigan, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh killing Lieutenant Colonel Brandon Shah, an Army helicopter pilot, in Virginia, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi throwing bombs in Manhattan, and Ndiaga Diagne killing Texans). Islamophobia is the real problem here in the U.S.

Let’s have a look at the New York Times right now. Every story on the front page seems to be about a failure of U.S. military. Russia is winning. We stole some oil tankers and that’s actually costing us money instead of making us money. Missiles are falling in northern Israel. Maybe we’re firing some missiles at Iran from Bahrain, but they certainly aren’t hitting anything. We’re suffering an “oil shock” like in the bad days of the 1970s.

Let’s compare to a random day in the middle of our involvement in World War II. The British-spec’d P-51 hadn’t come into action yet so we were losing B-17 bombers and crews at a ridiculous rate. Nonetheless, the focus of the stories was on the enemy’s losses, not our own.

This is the first time that I can remember when more than half of Americans seem to be invested in the idea that the U.S. is doomed to lose a war.

(I personally believe that our best option for winning is to use bombs to (1) disable Iran’s oil production and export infrastructure, and (2) disable Iran’s electricity generation. Without money from selling oil, the Islamic Republic won’t be able to do too much that we don’t like. Without electric power, Iran won’t be able to produce a lot of sophisticated weapons. (Yes, they can use generators for some stuff, but that’s not the same as plugging a massive factory into the power grid.))

It’s been a week since the U.S. attacked the peace-loving leaders of a peaceful Islamic theocracy. Let’s look at some of the wartime propaganda.

Sunday, March 1, a day after the hated dictator launched airstrikes while poolside in Palm Beach, the deaths of most of Iran’s senior leaders was just slightly more important than the second most important story: the Jeffrey Epstein saga. 93 million Iranians were without leadership for the first time since 1979, but also why didn’t the hundreds of U.S. government lawyers across multiple administrations manage to prosecute more of Jeffrey Epstein’s elite friends? (We know that it can’t be because it wasn’t actually criminal for Larry Summers to try to have sex with a 43-year-old or for Prince Andrew to be introduced to a 26-year-old female in a jurisdiction where the age of consent was 16.)

Today, the stories all seem to be reminding readers that Donald Trump is incompetent and mindlessly aggressive. Here’s part of the NYT front page in which Trump refuses to compromise while the Iranians are reasonable (apologizing):

CNN assembled PhD experts to do a “forensic analysis” and they concluded that war is damaging to infrastructure:

NYT, today, says that attacking Iran is pointless and, by implication, only a moron would order such an attack:

Also from today, the NYT says that only an incoherent (stupid) person would consider killing folks who chant “Death to America” while building nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles to deliver them to American cities:

The peaceful people of Lebanon, who declared war on the Zionist entity, never recognized the State of Israel, supported the October 7 attacks by Hamas (80%; 60% support among Lebanese Christians; 32% wanted to bravely attack Israel to help their brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters in Gaza), and continue to fire projectiles at Israeli civilians are sadly forced to flee their homes because of Jewish aggression:

(The Israeli attacks on Beirut actually do confuse me. The Israelis told the Lebanese to evacuate and then bombed some empty buildings. How does that reduce Hezbollah’s ability to fight? The apartment buildings weren’t being used as forts.)

Another sympathy-provoking story from Lebanon. Merely because they declared war on their neighbor and refused to accept any peace treaty over a 75-year period, some Lebanese can’t sleep comfortably in their own beds:

Trump is far worse than Vladimir Putin (March 6): “Mr. Trump has demonstrated a willingness to disregard international norms and engage in foreign adventurism by fully exploiting Washington’s might.”

From March 3, perhaps it would make sense to prevent a nation of 93 million people from building nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles that could deliver them anywhere in the world, but not if 900 people are killed:

(Comparison to the Bad Old Days: The U.S. killed 100,000 residents of Tokyo on March 9, 1945 and rendered 1 million homeless.)

In a politically diverse discussion group on Facebook, a passionate Democrat posted about 20 times about rising oil prices. In other words, Donald Trump has now convinced Democrats to support Islamic theocracy and also cheap fossil fuels for maximizing climate change. (Greta Thunberg has similarly been posting in support of the Islamic Republic of Iran; you’d think that at least she’d be happy that oil prices are higher and, therefore, that consumption will be lower.)

My own social media post on how Donald Trump has caused suffering on the home front: