This is a very heated topic for a lot of people. Please remember that name-calling or generalizing people who hold a different view than you do, doesn’t really help your case. Stick to the facts and pinpoint the issues. Thanks!
I agree with you @Ben_Blanc. The President has a lot of responsiblity and needs to make sure he’s doing the right thing for the big picture. I pray that he (and every President) utilize the smart people around them for guidance.
@Ben_Blanc - you seem to be making an awful lot of assumptions based on little or no information about the situation at hand. The only way President Trump knew at all about the Irani’s being in Iraq was through his military and CIA adjutants.
what is this “lot of assumptions” you speak of
Who says we didn’t learn about all we figured we would learn? Or at least as much as we could before the window of opportunity closed.
You’re assuming here that we don’t know Soleimani’s successor, but you stated in a later post that Soleimani’s replacement is Email Ghanni. Which is it?
My guess is that we had a pretty good idea who would succeed Soleimani before we took him out.
You seem to assume President Trump hasn’t talked with anyone with “military instincts.”
@Ben_Blanc - I guess my point is that you seem to be expecting us to take your wisdom at face value without question. You seem to assume that taking out a high-ranking enemy of the USA was a bad idea.
didn’t say “Trump hasn’t talked with anyone”…i’m saying Trump has “no military instincts” …and i’m saying that because he never served in the military.
As for soleimanis’ successor, although we may had an idea of who he would be, nothing is for certain…we now know with certainty who it is.
…and i don’t even know how you can disagree that “we could have learned more about the regimes playbook with continued observation”…so i’ll just leave that alone and gracefully bow out of that point.
Neither did former President Barack Obama, military experience that is, when he had Osama Bin Laden (use whatever euphemism here you choose).
The only thing that I would have liked to seen President Trump do differently was to have a quick reaction force to deploy to extract the bodies. So they could have been respectfully disposed of in the Indian Ocean. For the exact same reasons that Osama Bin Laden’s body was respectfully disposed of in the Indian Ocean.
So! Is it time yet, ballistic missiles are flying. Can we now please just nuke em? Get this all over with.
One mistake on the Iran side or a rogue genius and we may have to.
Or we will be at undeclared war until the end of time.
Seriously, ‘war until the end of time’ is something the Iranian knows the US can not afford and will, even so, end with us leaving and their Muslim Brotherhood in control - by common acclaim - the Shia population in control of the Gems of Islam. If we could get over the idea we need the hydrocarbon resource available in the ‘Persian Gulf’ it might dawn on us that having a Friend in Iran and the Persian Empire could be a very good foil to the Russian agenda. Iranians are coming into their own and they’re looking at the long game, not just trying to figure out what’s happening fiscal year to fiscal year as our government seems to be about.
Please no. That’s not even something we should be considering. The fallout would be horrific.
Unfortunately, that is very true IMO, @CHRIS4. 
I think Iran is thinking about it. I just think we should be ahead of the eight ball. If they have the capability to launch a nuclear ICBM at Israel do we really want to wait? I’ve served a total of six deterrent patrols on submarines, we are out there for one reason and one reason alone and that is deterrence, not preemptive, that means we wait for them to strike first! Are we prepared for that fallout?
No pun intended, but we are in some serious waters both home and abroad.
I don’t want nuclear war, neither does most of the world! Are we willing to allow Iran to run amuck?
Truthfully I’m not sure what we should do! I don’t want to sound like a liberal, but something needs to be done! We can’t keep loosing good people. Wow I do sound like them! I give up!
LOL! hmmm… maybe this is a new way for you to relate to those who don’t want anyone having a firearm?
The difference in this situation is that we’re responsibly armed and aren’t out to kill anyone. We only use our firearms in defense. Iran was the aggressor.
The hardest thing Iran may do is achieve its goals of holding Empire from the Eastern Med to their 'stani boarders.
As to deterrent, I don’t know if you’ve seen the graphic they sent to the world after demonstrating their medium-range ballistic systems performance and accuracy. They can reach the Mediterranean, anywhere in Saudi Arabia, and all points in-between. Their technology includes MIRV’d warheads. Not many people have been speaking of the accuracy of a possible cruise missile engagement in September on the Saudi production facilities in Abqaiq. So far people envision this was a nape flight from Iran, but it could have easily have been from one of the two BESAT (200ft length) SS in construction since 2008.
I’m thinking the Iranian military may have just told America “We can get as real as you want. How badly do you want to keep believing your own lies?” We can’t do it financially all on our own, and our buddies in Saudi Arabia are so in debt to the “Western” powers they’ve been trying to get us to turn it down since before Gulf War II.
Looking at the close ties the Iraqi common people have already with the Iranian people/government, all we’re doing right now is making it all happen this year and not 2 to 3 to 10 years down the road. Iran is playing us and has been since the day we decided in the late 1970’s we couldn’t survive without the oil of the Mideast.
Although I know these networks usually lean left, I like hearing some comments from former high-authority military either with experience/authority and gathered intelligence of the history, actions, evolution, and changing government thoughts on the subject, or whom has further made a job in the civilian market related to analysis of ongoing trends. Here’s a few videos with comments from Admiral Mullen (on PBS) and Colonel Jacobs (on CNBC):
President Trump is the only one doing anything for America and the American People. Listening to Democrats make their “case” for impeaching Trump and complaining about this strike is like watching a child make excuses for why they should be able to stay up late or not have to eat their vegetables.
I think with four members of congress from the area that was bombed he shouldn’t tell congress till after it was over.
@CHRIS4 I think Iran is trying to balance on the knife edge right now. The economic sanctions are causing unrest among the population, Iran just killed a bunch of its own people to stop protests. They want a limited war to regain some support among their population but not a large conflict that they couldn’t win. No matter how big of a mess you think Iraq is today, Saddam Hussein was still hung… a fact not lost on Iran’s leadership. They will likely start causing trouble with oil shipping and refining again as they have had some success there. The Trump administration has been less likely to react to oil export issues since we have oil for sale in the USA.
It seems there is just one troll here trying to stir the pot, but is being handled quite adequately. It appears that the USCCA has gotten large enough for the trolls to have found it.
I understand the view of allowing people to voice their opinions, but you have moved comment threads to separate channels in the past, too, when they did not appear to fit with the main topic of discussion. His posts, critiquing the president in the manner he is, are for the sole purpose of trolling this discussion to provoke conflict, would seemingly meet your standards for being moved.
“personally am speaking from a tactical stand point, didn’t really seem very tactical…”
To quote from a movie I love I don’t think that word means what you think it means🤪
Tactics is short term.
Strategy is long term.
I think President Trump’s decision was tactically sound, as well as strategically sound.
What I think you are concerned with are long term strategic goals.
I would posit that we probably have assets in play to maintain the same level of surveillance on the General’s successor, as we did on him.
Actually, in real life (not a movie) this is the definition of Tactical: “relating to or constituting actions carefully planned to gain a specific military end”.
But yeah, my concern is “your” president is leaving most of us in the dark, (and i say “your” president because he has clearly divided our country and disregarded the roughly half of the nation) making it impossible for us to prepare for any sort of retaliation, thankfully no Americans have been killed thus far…can’t say the same for the 176 casualties that have been shot out of the sky seemingly due in part to this incident.
Your stated issue for the entire thread was "the US losing its ability to continue surveillance on the General and not having that window on his replacement. That is a long term goal. Thus a strategic worry.
Second he is your President as well as mine. Surprisingly, I didn’t vote for him, just like I didn’t vote for Hillary. I actually have not voted for a mainstream candidate in 3 election cycles. I have wrote in a Libertarian candidate.
As regards to President Trump, I respect the Office. Just as I did with former President Obama. I may or may not like the person in the chair. But I respect the Office.
"we could have learned more about the regimes playbook with continued observation”…
“fact still remains, we basically blew up a window, that gave us live time insight into the daily operations of a regime that clearly has us in it’s crosshairs…”
“General soleimani was under 24 hr surveillance and could be hit at any given time, seems like we could have learned more about the regimes playbook with continued observation…”
All of the above are quotes, directly from your posts on this thread. All of them are long term issues/concerns, which make them long term objectives. Thus strategic in nature. It’s the nature of the beast you can’t change your argument.
Go ahead to Dictionary dot com.
One other thing, that everyone seems to be missing, is that the Iranian General was not the only target. The local Commander of the Quds militia was as well.
One last note, you are seriously saying that it is President Trump’s fault that IRAN shot down a UKRAINIAN civilian jet liner. That’s a bit of a stretch there. That’s basic safety there. Know your target before you pull the trigger. No one forced IRAN to use their Russian procured “Gladiator Anti Air System” on a UKRAINIAN civilian jet liner.
Post edit comment: I was in the military and I am very aware of the difference between tactical and strategic planning. So no I am not using the movies as my guide to chat with you.
