Hacker News Reader

Comment by tclancy | Hacker News Reader

Great. Can we change it to just be the non killing part for a few years until the bad project ideas fully die off?

If anything, we've been letting the killing parts languish dangerously for decades - to the point where we may not be able to defend our allies in a serious conflict.

As proven so well during this whole debacle in the Hormuz strait.

Hard to see that as an indictment of military capability when it is so overwhelmingly a reflection of political incompetence.

Hmmm, the US is not able to control the Hormuz strait. Iran decides who goes through it. Yesterday Iran shot at a vessel [0]. We can argue the semantics of “control” but I think this whole debacle showed the limits of US military power.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2026/06/26/nx-s1-5871963/un-agency-pause...

There is a difference between military might and political will.

Going all out on Iran would free up the straight, but also be political suicide for the right.

Do you really think the US military was given orders to control the strait, and couldn’t?

It showed limits for sure. But the limits were bluster without the will to follow through (and accept the consequences).

It’s a political and diplomatic catastrophe for an empire in decline. But if control of the strait had been an actual priority, it would have been very achievable. That was never the goal though. The goal was to look stupid on TV, for some reason.

Re: “Do you really think the US military was given orders to control the strait, snd couldn’t?”

Pretty much. I think US military was given the order to make Trump look good, and they couldn’t (Trump looks weak now, which he completely hates)

“Make Trump look good” and “control the strait using whatever means necessary” are not compatible.

I agree they can’t make him look good. And I guess we’re agreeing the mission was not actually to control the strait in as a critical military objective .

Good thing you don't have that many allies left, so it should make the job easier.

Hopefully we elect a sane executive next election so we can start figuring out how to keep the executive from fucking over our allies. We can make a lot more of our partnerships with allies into ratchet mechanisms that are far less easily undone.

No it would obviously lose its purpose then.

You could have a jobs program that builds infrastructure instead.

That's where we got a whole lot of dams in the American West!

Last that I checked, you guys could use some more trains.

We have way more rail than the rest of the world. More than China, Russia, and the EU. We have almost 20% of the world’s total rail. But we prioritize freight instead of passenger service.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tran...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com