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Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

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Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#311

Post by jmyeet »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #233
whatwhaaaaat wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to understand the US position and the assistance the US provided first and then this question makes less sense. We ran their airborne refueling ops used in many of the strikes for years for a start. No opinion of this being good or bad is made with this comment

> have to understand the US position America didn’t want the war in Yemen. We’re trying to pivot to Asia. We can’t tell Riyadh what to do because they still influence oil prices and have been cozying up to China.

America doesn't care about the war in Yemen.

The US props up the Saudi regime with economic and military aid. Of course, it does this for its own foreign policy reasons. But basically the Saudi regime cannot survive without US support. The US protects the Persian Gulf, the Straits of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman. That's why the US could've ended the war with Yemen with a phone call.

All it takes is the threat of ending sanctions on Iran (which should end anyway). Same with Venezuela.

This isn't the 1970s. The US is now a net oil exporter [1] and the largest single oil-producing country by far [2].

[1]: https://www.ogj.com/general-interest/economics-markets/artic...

[2]: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=709

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#312

Post by whatwhaaaaat »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #233
whatwhaaaaat wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to understand the US position and the assistance the US provided first and then this question makes less sense. We ran their airborne refueling ops used in many of the strikes for years for a start. No opinion of this being good or bad is made with this comment

> have to understand the US position America didn’t want the war in Yemen. We’re trying to pivot to Asia. We can’t tell Riyadh what to do because they still influence oil prices and have been cozying up to China.

That is a strange statement given the significant us participation in the war.

Let me guess - You also don’t consider the current government “Yemen” but rather a rebel group fighting the true government of Yemen that just happens to control only uninhabitable mountains.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#313

Post by edanm »

mrtksn wrote: post #284
edanm wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're referring to the current Israel-Gaza conflict - this is basically not true. Israeli soldiers are fighting because they think that, if they don't, their friends and families will be killed. They might be right or wrong - but that's why they are fighting.

That one is a particularly complex conflict that didn't start on 7th of October and I'm sure they have more complex thoughts that include the illegal settlements and their religious rights to take that land and their political positions on these issues. They are conscripts, so I would imagine there's a range of positions when they are killing thousand of women and children alongside with combatants. I don't believe t…

> They are conscripts, so I would imagine there's a range of positions when they are killing thousand of women and children alongside with combatants.

Firstly, the majority of the IDF isn't active-duty conscripts, they're reservists. They're still conscripts, and they still have to serve, but it's not exactly difficult to not serve if you choose not to. Not sure this impacts anything else you say, but I thought it's worth mentioning.

> I don't believe the premise that Israeli soldiers were concerned for the lives of their loved ones and killed that many civilians and ar OK with it.

Almost all IDF soldiers are incredibly regretful that any civilians have to be killed. This is true of most armies most of the time, btw, not specifically Israeli soldiers.

But they are absolutely fighting for the fate of their homeland. They might be wrong - but most Israelis believe that Hamas cannot be allowed to continue, because they have promised, multiple times, that they will repeat the October 7th attack again and again. They are literally an hour's drive from many people's homes. Two hours and they can reach the majority of Israel.

Almost every Israeli knows someone, either directly or via one other person, that was killed or taken hostage. Without trying to hard, I can think of about 5 people I know who lost a loved one.

In that way, this isn't similar to something like Iraq or Afghanistan, where for the most part, American soldiers were fighting a real, but vague, threat, which posed almost no immediate danger to anyone they knew.

> Unarmed women and children are not that dangerous, they must have range of thoughts when killing those. Some regret, some glee, some disgust, some joy I would imagine. I wouldn't put the relief of saving their own in the top 10 though.

Unarmed women and children are not targeted intentionally. There's great regret that anyone is killed, and probably majority happiness that the person targeted is killed, usually someone who is directly responsible for deaths.

There's also a lot of mistakes, because it's war, and because Hamas tries hard to cause these mistakes to happen. It's sad, unfortunate, and I doubt anyone feels "glee" or "joy" that civilians ever are killed. I'm sure there's a few psycopaths like in any large group of people, but the IDF tries to weed these people out.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#314

Post by pclmulqdq »

vidarh wrote: post #195
smegsicle wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

meme contraexample of course being the gulf of tonkin incident where us warning fire on vietnamese vessels in vietnamese waters being responded to with actual fire was taken as grounds for war, because war was desired

It's worse than that: The US intentionally provoked the incident with sabotage and hit and runs, and then "faked" the second incident (they had bad data, fired on nothing, and then used skewed intelligence reports to back up a false claim of an attack) which was used as the final excuse (the latter was long suspected, but admitted to by McNamara in 2003, and by NSA records declassified in 2005).

Yeah, this is not a counterexample to the Clausewitzian view of war, but an example of it, because the converse of what I said is also true: If there is a political will to war, there will be a causus belli, no matter how weak. In the case of the Vietnam war, it does appear that the US military and the CIA basically manufactured that causus belli. A lot of cold war conflicts had the same sort of thing happen.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#315

Post by edanm »

johnnyworker wrote: post #303
edanm wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, you obviously care a lot about this topic, but I think you're really wrong on your facts. For the record, I'm Israeli, so take what I say with your appropriate level of skepticism - but I'm going to at least try to get across what I think you're wrong about. I hope you approach what I say with an open mind, though many people tend not to (in any discussion of anything, not just about this). > And when you say "…

> Israel has the means to kill far more people, if it wanted to - it just doesn't. That you say this and still come on to me with that "I share your values" stuff is just gold.

I don't understand people who say this, I really don't.

If I were to say "the US is capable of nuking Iraq and killing most of their civilians", that would just be a true statement of the capabilities of the US. That they chose not to do so during the Iraq war is proof of something about the US's intentions.

It's proof of the value that the US places on human lives, despite it sometimes costing the US dearly.

Of course I think nuking Iraq would've been unconscionable, for many reasons. For the same reasons that the US chose not to do it, obviously. But pointing that out is just plain old logic.

Acting otherwise doesn't add anything to the conversation.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#316

Post by ceejayoz »

adolph wrote: post #102
asylteltine wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonder why this is getting downvoted. It’s just a statement of fact.

I can see how the slogans of the Houthis make them a less than sympathetic set of missileers. For example, it might be awkward for a person supportive of the Palestinian cause to be in goal alignment with a well funded group stating uncloseted hatred of Jews.

No more awkward than supporters of Israel having to cope with Israeli ministers suggesting nuking Gaza, or having to deal with the ACLU defending Nazis in court.

Every cause, even (sometimes especially) the righteous ones, has shitty people attached to it.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#317

Post by 1letterunixname »

The linchpin of this tactical situation in the Red Sea is the presence of the Iranian spy ship MV Behshad (the one that replaced the Saviz). It is giving precise targeting information of commercial ships to the Houthis to launch land-based missiles and drones. Without this ship, the Houthis would be shooting wildly into the ocean with the granularity of open-source maritime surveillance networks like marinetraffic.com.

Behshad's transponder's last update: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:65...

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#318

Post by meepmorp »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #91
seo-speedwagon wrote: post #84

The Bab-el-Mandeb has tons of ships in it, and as far as I know the only ones Ansar Allah have attacked are the ones who have ignored their very clear criteria. It’s incredible to watch in near-real-time how hollowed out the US’s ability to project its will has become. They announced Operation Prosperity Guardian, and within days it seemed to collapse. Looks like there aren’t many folks signing up to be vassal states…

It’s such a cringe name, I wonder if that hurt the adoption. I think the real issue is that the Operation gives a bit too much power to the US to direct the participants. There is cooperation and then there is subordination.

> It’s such a cringe name, I wonder if that hurt the adoption.

Yeah, because governments make critical decisions about their economic and security interests based on how cringe the name a given operation has.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#319

Post by mrtksn »

edanm wrote: post #313
mrtksn wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That one is a particularly complex conflict that didn't start on 7th of October and I'm sure they have more complex thoughts that include the illegal settlements and their religious rights to take that land and their political positions on these issues. They are conscripts, so I would imagine there's a range of positions when they are killing thousand of women and children alongside with combatants. I don't believe t…

> They are conscripts, so I would imagine there's a range of positions when they are killing thousand of women and children alongside with combatants. Firstly, the majority of the IDF isn't active-duty conscripts, they're reservists. They're still conscripts, and they still have to serve, but it's not exactly difficult to not serve if you choose not to. Not sure this impacts anything else you say, but I thought it's…

Half of the people they kill are women and children. That’s lots of regret they will have to go through the upcoming years. They won't be known as the "good guys", even if the Prime minister tries to frame this as a fight between good and evil most of the world isn't buying it.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#320

Post by badpun »

johnnyworker wrote: post #305
badpun wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Leave" as in "ethnically cleanse themselves, never to return"? So what's all this song and dance about pretending to not be on board with genocide about? Ethic cleansing is about mass relocating people, while genocide is about mass murdering them. They are two different phenomena.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide > acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group When they all live in refugees in other countries, they are destroyed as a national group. With this level of hair splitting you might as well say it's not genocide as long as even one member of the group survives, why not go there, too.

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

> Ethnic cleansing has been described as part of a continuum of violence whose most extreme form is genocide, where the perpetrator's goal is the destruction of the targeted group. Ethnic cleansing is similar to forced deportation or population transfer whereas genocide is the attempt to destroy part or all of a particular ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. While ethnic cleansing and genocide may share the same goal and the acts which are used to perpetrate both crimes may often resemble each other, ethnic cleansing is intended to displace a persecuted population from a given territory, while genocide is intended to destroy a group.

Whereas, by your understanding, ethnic cleansing and genocide are the same thing. Why would we need the term "ethnic cleansing" then?

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