Sum Guy

🇺🇸🇮🇷 Trump said "air superiority." He didn't say "air supremacy." That word choice matters more than you think. These are two very different military classifications. Air superiority means you have the advantage and can operate without major interference, but the enemy can still fight back. Air supremacy means the enemy has essentially zero ability to contest the skies. The U.S. has air superiority over Iran. It can conduct strikes, fly rescue missions, and operate across the country. But Iran shot down an F-15E, hit an A-10, struck two rescue helicopters, and forced the destruction of two MC-130s and two Little Birds in a single weekend. That's not supremacy. That's contested airspace where operations succeed but come with real cost. Trump was careful with his language in the rescue announcement. He said "air dominance and superiority," not supremacy. Supremacy is what the U.S. had over Venezuela. Aircraft moved freely because there was nothing left to contest them. Over Iran, every sortie still carries risk. The rescue proved that American forces can operate deep inside Iran and win. It also proved that winning comes with a price tag of downed jets, damaged helicopters, and $200 million in aircraft destroyed on the ground. Air superiority means you can fly. It doesn't mean you fly for free. Source: WSJ / MilNet

Europe's disease is not a disease of America. It is a disease of World War 2. In 1946, after we rescued them from themselves and each other, Europeans crawled out of the rubble they had made of their continent, looked around at their mess, wept for a bit, and then formed the wrong conclusions. They decided that ethnic nations are bad. That patriotism is bad. That supporting your tribe, in preference to random strangers, is bad. They decided that these things had led to the horrors of global war and genocide in Europe itself, and so all vestiges of loyalty to one's own people must be stamped out. Nations were, forever afterward, to be post-ethnic, post-cultural legal and economic units filled with... well, anyone, really. A bunch of people who didn't, in fact shouldn't, share values, goals, morals, customs, or even a common language. Nations were to be mere fiefs, their boundaries determined by which set of political elites controlled them. America, having not been smashed to rubble in WW2, did not share this view. We saw WW2 as an expensive adventure in bailing out Europe, which we spent our treasure and our blood on (including my own grandfather's life, and his chance to ever see his grandson) precisely because we shared cultural and ethical values with the people we were rescuing. But they hate us for it. They see our patriotism as fascism precisely because they see all patriotism as fascism. Psychologists have long understood that humans respond to favors with gratitude only up until those favors become so great that they have no hope of repaying them. At that point, their gratitude turns to resentment. How dare we believe we did them a favor? How dare I believe that my father gave up his father so Europe could be safe, peaceful, and free? Don't we know that, because ${ELABORATE MENTAL GYMNASTICS}, we didn't do them any favors by fighting that war? Don't we know that, because ${ANY PATRIOTISM = HITLER}, our love of our country and favoring of its interests makes us fascist and problematic? Well, no. I don't know that. I don't think any European nation is our ally any more. Certainly, we have shared interests, but how much does that really matter, when they refuse to act in those shared interests, because they have come to believe that acting in your people's interest is bad? They hate us too much to work with us. They resent every ounce of the burden which they are asked to share. Our support has made Europe into a pack of idle welfare recipients, complete with sense of entitlement and self-destructive behavior. But if we didn't defend them... who would? Their native populations have been purged of all patriotism, and who would blame them if they didn't fight for ruling elites that hate them? Their imported third-world barbarians won't fight for them. The very idea is laughable. What's left? And what will make them wake up and think about these questions? Perhaps they need to dig themselves out of the rubble of another war.

NO MERCY TO TERRORISTS you dumb bastards!