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Nowhere is safe

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Re: Nowhere is safe

#61

Post by gmuslera »

gmueckl wrote: post #58
gmuslera wrote: post #25

There is a layer over this that should be noticed. Nowhere is safe, because international order is a joke. You can conduct invasions for land, to exterminate population, to whatever Trump is doing, every instrument of international law was just useless, or even cooperative with the stronger offender. Which will be the ones taking advantage of this situation? China, Brazil? Everything is forgotten or accepted with the…

The same line of reasoning leads to constitutions and laws being jokes, too. The simple fact is that rules matter if and only if they are enforced effectively by a community. And power is the ability to direct and control that enforcement. The international order has declined in the past one or two decades because the UN security council was hamstrung by the enormously powerful veto rights held by Russia, China and t…

It is not that laws are being jokes or not because are not in place, but ends being that way when they are in place and they are blatantly ignored, specially for some power groups or communities. Then they can break those laws with impunity, and then others follow example with varied success, but still, those laws are already a joke.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#63

Post by YZF »

throw310822 wrote: post #49
stavros wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who did the US bomb before 9/11? Iraq, during the Gulf War. > Who did the US bomb before Pearl Harbor? Japan, though the US didn't bomb them, it instituted an oil embargo and asset freeze. > Who did the US bomb before its embassies in East Africa were attacked Iraq, during the Gulf War. > Who did the US bomb before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103 ? Tripoli and Benghazi, Iran Air Flight 655. I don't…

The US are also the major enabler of Israel's colonial expansion and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. This was clearly expressed by Bin Laden himself as one of the motives behind the 9/11 attacks. > Were you thinking the US was just minding its own business and some bad guys came and attacked it As I remember, this was exactly the way the US explained 9/11: "they hate us for our freedom".

[flagged]

Re: Nowhere is safe

#64

Post by testing22321 »

Apes wrote: post #31
testing22321 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. When all you have is a hammer…

The theory behind the US having a large military is that it acts as a sort of fleet in being - that the US prefers other methods of engaging with countries, and having a stronger military precludes other countries from engaging militarily. In turn, having stable global relations and protected global trade provides the US with a huge economic boon to fund its large military. That's the theory anyway - our Idiot King a…

> Apples to apples, China probably spends about half what the US does on military.

With fours times the population

Re: Nowhere is safe

#65

Post by lotsofpulp »

ACCount37 wrote: post #47
CodingJeebus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is it that we can dream up more conflict but not peaceful scenarios? Sadly, war is often a driver of economic growth. WWII pulled the US economy out the Great Depression and transformed it into one of the most prosperous in human history. I'd argue that the proxy wars the US has been waging largely exist to satiate a military industrial complex that is focused on growth. Hard to grow when your business is war i…

That's a property shared by any large scale government spending. The difference between pouring 80B into a war and pouring the same into infrastructure is that one gives you a more developed MIC and a lot of munitions and a lot of explosions (exported), and the other gives you... infrastructure, and construction industry.

A big part of this is that apparently, any president can unilaterally decide to go to war and spend $1B per day destroying things, but building infrastructure for Americans requires the agreement of 60 US Senators.

Pre-emptive strikes are “national security”, but ensuring nutritional food for children in schools, safe bridges and potable water, and healthcare are not “national security”.

Look what Biden had to do to try and get Americans a piddling amount of paid sick leave and paid parental leave. And still 60 votes couldn’t be mustered. But if he wanted to bomb another country to the stone age, that was well within his capacity.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#66

Post by krisoft »

ACCount37 wrote: post #44
firefoxd wrote: post #9

I often see these angles, how we should have prepared better or attacked this instead of that, or the unexpected strategy from the adversary. What about not bombing? The best safety trick the US can use is not bombing others.

[flagged]

> When the choice is "let Iran have nukes" or "bomb Iran", you bomb Iran every time.

There was also the choice of “Iran let us verify that they are not making nukes, and in return we remove economic sanctions from them”. It was called the JCPOA, and according to non-proliferation experts it worked. And then on the 8th of May 2018 Trump unilaterally withdrew from it.

Let’s not pretend that there were no other options.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#67

Post by gib444 »

YZF wrote: post #37
firefoxd wrote: post #9

I often see these angles, how we should have prepared better or attacked this instead of that, or the unexpected strategy from the adversary. What about not bombing? The best safety trick the US can use is not bombing others.

Who did the US bomb before 9/11? Who did the US bomb before Pearl Harbor? Who did the US bomb before its embassies in East Africa were attacked? https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/east-african-embass... Who did the US bomb before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103 ? I would love for nobody to bomb or kill anyone. Did Ukraine bomb Russia? Is Taiwan bombing China that declares it is going to take Tai…

> Who did the US bomb before 9/11? Who did the US bomb before Pearl Harbor?

Right, they just hate the US because of their freedoms.

/s

Re: Nowhere is safe

#68

Post by dboreham »

intended wrote: post #46

Drones have upended the unit economics of combat and made older doctrines less relevant. Drones seem to combine the benefits of missiles level payloads, aircraft level control and ability to project force over a distance. I don’t see any technical way we can stop them - but it’s not like we stopped guns. The drone and LLM era are the end of many things we older folk are used to. The information commons are sunk with…

I'm skeptical about the "cheap drones: who knew?" narrative. Such drones have existed since 1944.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#69

Post by krisoft »

esseph wrote: post #43
dragonelite wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think the US will unleash nuclear holocaust of the human race for some drone parts? The US will do none of that shit because they wont be able to do it. Given the US is struggling against Iran, couldn't outproduce Russia on the battlefield yet they want to force down China which is an order of magnitude bigger than Russia.

> struggling against Iran Idk what to tell you, but any target that seems to get marked in Iran blows the fuck up. > couldn't outproduce Russia on the battlefield ??? What does this even mean? It's not like the US is in a wartime economy.

> Idk what to tell you, but any target that seems to get marked in Iran blows the fuck up.

I’m sure that is true. And yet, the oil is not flowing. We keep “winning” like this for a few more weeks/months and we lose. Not because we sudenly stop “blowing targets the fuck up”, but because we cripple our economies.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#70

Post by dboreham »

outside2344 wrote: post #19

Trump has blundered like an idiot into this in Iran ... ... but the upside is that the same dynamics are making it possible for Ukraine to beat back Russia too. It is a bad time to be an invading force.

Like an idiot?
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