alt Hacker News3 generations of wealth poured into the most expensive military in recorded history - the reason that we don't have health care, clean energy, decent social safety nets and so many other things... and they can't even control a small stretch of water. What a waste.
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I think it's worth pointing out that the US almost certainly could have taken control of the strait. But it would have required boats in the water and boots on the ground. But that puts many more lives at risk, would have been very unpopular (much moreso then the current war situation), etc.
You can't win a war purely through air superiority and bombs. That's not a new lesson but it's one the administration failed to learn through history and is apparently now failing to learn through practice).
What are we even talking about here? Controlling the strait? This actually means controlling so much land around the strait that Iran can't launch missiles or drones at ships. Essentially conquering all of Iran by ground invasion. The USA could do this, sure, but we don't want to because its too stupid even for us.
Soft power would have gone a long way towards furthering US interests in the Middle East. Unfortunately, it seems too late for that. By the time a new administration's diplomacy reverts the current antagonism and lack of trust, the dollar will have lost ground as the default reserve currency and financing US debt will become much more expensive than it is now, making military expenses prohibitive, but still a priority.
This is usually the point the economy is flipped around into a war-based economy where all output is directed to military equipment.
The health care issue in the USA isn't due to lack of funding, the US spends more on health care per person than any other country, double that of many European countries with single payer systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...
The costs of medicare, medicaid and CHIP to tax payers are about what most Europeans pay in tax for universal health care, but then they also need to pay for health insurance for themselves.
As for controlling Hormuz, the US military absolutely could control Hormuz. I'm confident it's quite capable of it. It's that the US public wouldn't support the immense cost in lives and treasure it would take to do it, and maintain that control. No other military could even try, but the the USA could. It's not a matter of lack of military capacity.