Strategic Bombing

<< Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

<< Oil is flowing like never before, thanks to the awesome Power of the United States Military. A special salute to Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine, and Commander of the United States Central Command, Admiral Brad Cooper. Because of them, and all members of the Most Powerful Military anywhere in the World, BY FAR, the Strait of Hormuz is open to ALL Ship traffic except for Iran - and that is because of their lying, violent, malicious leadership, which is taking them down the path of TOTAL DESTRUCTION. We will therefore have a FULL Blockade, but only on Ships coming to and from Iranian ports, or carrying anything have to do with Iranian cargo. Based on highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership, I have decided to replace the 20% United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States. Those Investments will be MASSIVE but, at the same time, extraordinarily good for them, and their future. As everyone is aware, we have the largest Dollar Investment into the United States, of any Country in History, but these new Investments will make that Number even larger, and we will see Factories, Plants, and Equipment pour into the United States at Historic levels, which will create additional millions of High Paying AMERICAN Jobs! America is WINNING again, winning like never before. The days of Iran killing hundreds of thousands of people, including 52,000 protestors, are OVER and, most importantly, IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP

<< 31 ReTruths 132 Likes Jul 14,2026, 6:04PM >>

It is exhausting to try to counter the statements that are 180 degrees opposite to the obvious factual reality. The delusions come like machine-gun bullets. That this is coming from the President of the United States and that there is not one clause that is not literally insane – if insanity means disconnection from reality – simply leaves me helpless with incredulity.

I’m 79 years old. I personally remember President John F. Kennedy. I committed Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address to memory when I was 12 years old. To compare the intelligence and adulthood of these past Presidents [both of them martyred in the cause of freedom from slavery and from war] to the lying, delusional, inhumane and illiterate gangster who now occupies that position …

The psychopathic, infantile products of his witless mouth speak for themselves.

Donald Trump is being informed and led around by people who are following a specific doctrine. This is the doctrine of Strategic Bombing. It holds that mass murdering civilians by aerial bombardment will win victory in war. This doctrine can be traced in history. It began in 1921:

Google’s AI Overview:

<< Giulio Douhet’s theory of air supremacy, pioneered in his 1921 treatise The Command of the Air, asserts that wars are won by securing command of the air. He argued that a nation should focus on independent strategic bombing to destroy an enemy’s industrial infrastructure and break civilian morale, ultimately rendering land and sea forces obsolete. [wikipedia]

<< Douhet’s core principles focus on the following tenets:

• Command of the Air: An air force’s primary objective is to gain complete control of the skies by obliterating enemy air forces on the ground. Rather than engaging in aerial combat, he advocated for destroying enemy airfields and aircraft factories. [Air and Space Forces Magazine]

• Independent Air Force: He proposed that air power should not merely serve as an auxiliary weapon for the army or navy, but be managed by an entirely independent air force. [Royal Air Force]

• Strategic Bombing: Once air command was achieved, large fleets of unescorted, heavily armed bombers were to strike civilian and industrial centers to destroy the enemy’s will to resist. [Airminded]

• Decisive “Knock-Out Blow”: Douhet believed that rapid, mass aerial bombardments targeting population and infrastructure could win a war in a matter of days, avoiding long and costly wars of attrition. [wikipedia]

<< His controversial ideas about targeting civilian populations to break morale formed the backbone of interwar strategic bombing doctrines, which heavily influenced the Allied bombing campaigns of World War II [Encyclopedia Brittanica ] >>

James B, Shepard:

The Ukrainians are following Douhet’s 1921 doctrine by deliberately attacking civilians. Note please: “workers tried to escape through an emergency exit but were forced back inside because the drones were striking the area around it. As they retreated into the warehouse, another drone hit the building.”

The Russians describe this as “indiscriminate”. I disagree. The drones are being directed with specific discrimination in order to murder as many civilians as possible.

It is well known that US, British, German, French and Italian companies have been supplying drones to Ukraine. NATO personnel including American and British and French drone pilots and satellite data are supplying targeting data and expertise to help the Ukrainians murder Russian civilians.

<< RT reports, July 18: Ukrainian drones deliberately targeted Russian civilians in deadly warehouse attack – survivor

<< Ukrainian drones deliberately targeted civilians during a deadly overnight strike on a warehouse in Russia’s Tambov Region, one survivor has told Russian media, saying workers were prevented from escaping the building.

<< Seven people were killed and another 25 injured in the attack on the logistics center operated by online retailer Wildberries, according to local officials.

<< Staff began evacuating after the first strikes landed near the building, the survivor, who asked not to be identified, said. According to his account, workers tried to escape through an emergency exit but were forced back inside because the drones were striking the area around it. As they retreated into the warehouse, another drone hit the building. The blast blew out all the doors and windows, and everyone nearby was injured, he said.

<< The eyewitness account was recorded from a hospital bed in Tambov on Saturday after doctors operated on the injured.

<< The drones had been fitted with shrapnel to maximize casualties, Tambov Region Governor Evgeny Pervyshov said, describing the strike as a premeditated terrorist attack.

<< Doctors removed metal ball bearings from several of the wounded during surgery.Russian Human Rights Commissioner Yana Lantratova said she had sent appeals to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk and the UN secretary-general’s special representative, Vanessa Frazier, over what she described as a new wave of terrorist attacks by the Ukrainian military on Russian regions...

<< The attack was part of a larger Ukrainian drone raid on Moscow Region. A drone crashed on the grounds of an oil depot in Noginsk, an industrial city around 35 km east of Moscow, causing a fire. As a precaution, the authorities evacuated a nearby maternity hospital, transferring all patients and staff to other medical facilities. An apartment block in the city was also evacuated. Two people have been injured, the governor said.

<< Another massive drone raid was launched toward Moscow. More than 370 UAVs flew in the direction of the Russian capital since 8:30 PM on Friday, Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said. Most were neutralized by Russian air defenses at long range, while 64 were destroyed on approach to the capital, he added.

<< In neighboring Vladimir Region, one drone struck an apartment in a residential building in the city of Vladimir and sparked a fire, Governor Aleksandr Avdeev said. People were evacuated while emergency services extinguished the flames.

<< The latest barrage follows another large-scale attack on Thursday, when more than 200 drones were launched toward Moscow, most of which were also intercepted far from the capital.

<< Russia has described the strikes as indiscriminate terrorist attacks intended to divert attention away from Ukraine’s setbacks on the battlefield and has responded with a renewed campaign of long-range strikes targeting dual-use and military-industrial sites.>>

James Bernard Shepard:

The doctrine of Strategic Bombing is what gave rise to the Atomic Bomb. The American Air Force is the remaining active proponent of Strategic Bombing but it can be argued that the Israeli “Defense” Force has carried this doctrine to new extremes.

It has never worked. Killing civilians never did and never will win wars. It only wastes one’s military resources. But in the hands of Israel and the US Air Force and NATO it goes on and on. The end of the graph is Nuclear War.

<< “The bombing of German cities did not break the morale of the German people, nor did it significantly impair the German war economy until the final stages of the war.”

• United States Strategic Bombing Survey (1945), concluding that massive strategic bombing campaigns aimed at civilian centers failed to achieve their primary psychological objective of forcing a surrender.

<< “The historical record shows that strategic bombing of civilian populations almost never succeeds in breaking their morale. Instead, it usually produces a ‘rally ‘round the flag’ effect, increasing public support for the government.”

• Robert Pape, Political Scientist and author of Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War. [1]

<< “When you kill civilians, you do not shorten the war; you lengthen it. You give the enemy the ultimate recruiting tool: grievance.”

• Sir Lawrence Freedman, Military Historian and author of Strategy: A History.

Simplicius, July 17/26:

<< Speculations Over Ground Campaign into Iran Again Heat Up as US Moves to “Isolate” Coastal Zone

<< Simplicius

Jul 17, 2026

<< Trump continues plying his neocon ‘forever war’ against Iran, with no plan or end in sight. Now the latest reports indicate his intention to escalate the strikes onto Iranian civil infrastructure like power plants and beyond in the coming weeks…

Some pundits are now proposing that Iran could be “overplaying” its Hormuz hand because Gulf countries are slowly moving toward redirecting oil via inland pipelines, to the point where Hormuz would theoretically no longer retain leverage for Iran.

The problem with this thesis is that it misunderstands the core dynamic of the entire war. Hormuz has presented a convenient focal point for the US administration, partly because after losing the wider war against Iran, Trump thinks liberating Hormuz can be used as a quick off-ramp and getaway damage control plan to save face.

In reality, Hormuz has nothing to do with US’s inability to defeat Iran, overthrow its leadership, and turn the country into a fractured client state and banana republic in one.

Hormuz had nothing to do with US’s inability to defend its bases from Iranian attacks which damaged or destroyed a large swath of US’s most critical regional assets. If you removed Hormuz from the equation, it would not change the fact that US’s aimless bombing campaign is incapable of crippling the Iranian state to the needed point of no return.

In short: Iran has successfully defended itself from an all-out attack by Israel-US via its own innate military means that have little to do with, nor rely on, Hormuz.

Sure, the strait adds a kind of pressure timer on the US, as economic life lines slowly seep away and oil prices creep up. But even if you took that away, there still remain other important ‘timers’, not least of which are dwindling US’s weapons stocks, waning domestic political capital, etc.

That’s without even getting into the fact that Iran can strike the newly proposed pipelines and infrastructure, which kind of obviates the whole thing to begin with.

Latest satellite images show Iran’s newest strikes have again wiped out major sections of US and allied bases…

It all rests on whether Trump believes Iranian deterrence has been “pushed back far enough” inland, as he hinted at the very opening. Should his advisors inform him the area is safe and secure, he could make an attempt of some sort, but by all appearances it would take a long time of further bombing and degrading of Iranian assets to even approach such a point.

Iran on the other hand continues to threaten the closure of Bab Al-Mandab as a final lever of escalation should the US proceed to bombing Iranian power plants and other key civilian infrastructure assets.>>

Russia and China and Iran are evolving and modernizing their thinking in response to reality. The USA is run by people who are stuck in 1921.