Interestingly, Iran is taking full credit even when Trump made a feeble attempt to downplay it. Looks like Iran is sending out a message that they may have some capabilities which are not understood fully by their adversaries. From what I hear, the U.S. has been keeping most of their ships safely OUT of the Persian Gulf as though they have a suspicion that they may be lost.
This is supposed to be one the most advanced aircraft on the planet and Iran shot it down at 61,000 feet. They have capabilities up to 81,000 feet. This proves they can shoot down F-35 we just spent 1.5 trillion developing.
Turns out the US spending is mostly just going to fill contractors pockets. They do things all the time like charge 1 million for a 50,000 dollar part. Could turn out that our adversaries capabilities have already matched ours with a fraction of the spending. It would be poetic justice to see the US get smacked out of the Persian gulf region.
If the U.S. gets even partially chased out of the Middle East, it's the end of the US Dollar. That means the end of life as we here in the U.S. know it. Big changes everywhere in the world, but since we live more high on the hog, it will be totally life-changing for us.
I suspect that almost everyone all over the world is chaffing under the insult of being forced to support the U.S. via 'we' having the world reserve currency. (Actually a set of unknown private bankers have it, but it's got U.S. written on the paper.) I doubt that there will be very many tears shed almost anywhere if we went down. Certainly I would expect very near zero support if we don't have either a stick to threaten people with or some goodies to buy people off with. After a war with Iran we could well end up with neither.
Thank God we have held on to our guns. Certain segments of our populations could, potentially, preserve some core values and a survivable quality of life since they could preserve law and order autonomously.
