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Houthis 'take control' of key island in global shipping route

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Re: Houthis 'take control' of key island in global shipping route

#561

Post by ericmay »

etchalon wrote: post #543
ericmay wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So your argument is its cool that we killed children because they've also killed children? Hell of a take. No my take is we do it by accident and they do it on purpose and at a much larger scale and instead of pearl clutching about the US doing it on accident you should be pearl clutching about Iran doing it. I didn’t bring it up, but anytime someone brings up this whole “US killed kids” I’m happy to remind everyon…

We didn't just do it by "accident". We did it through incompetence. This wasn't the unfortunate result of a necessary attack on a valid target. This was the result of stupidity. "Hey, we're not as bad a literal terrorist regime!" is not a metric by which I think we should measure our own country. I'd believe we'd actually accomplished our goal of stopping their nuclear program if this specific administration hadn't t…

> We didn't just do it by "accident". We did it through incompetence.

Ok and they did theirs with malicious and clear purpose. Yikes!

> This wasn't the unfortunate result of a necessary attack on a valid target. This was the result of stupidity.

No. Iran and their militant proxies know that we don't attack civilian targets on purpose. That's why they set up facilities, military equipment, or hide combatants behind children or in hospitals and such because they know we don't want to kill innocent people. Hamas or Iran will tell you this as part of their doctrine.

So think about it. You've got the US and allies, Hamas, Hezbollah or whatever, Iran, and they're all saying "The US and western allies don't intentionally kill innocent people" and then there's you who is like sitting here complaining about it and now it's just "incompetence". Give me a break.

> "Hey, we're not as bad a literal terrorist regime!" is not a metric by which I think we should measure our own country.

Nobody is using that metric except you. The US admitted the mistake and apologized at a minimum. I believe there was some talk of compensation though I'm not sure where that has landed. Probably tough to do because the Iranian regime would steal any money we gave to the families.

But hey I do agree with you, Iran's government is a terrorist regime.

> Bullying nations has a tendency to harden them against cooperation and negotiation, as we've seen with Iran.

Well sure but they were never cooperating anyway. If they were, they wouldn't have been taking the actions they've been taking. What does cooperation look like? It looks like not murdering tens of thousands of your own people, it looks like not pursuing nuclear weapons, it looks like not funding militant groups who murder innocent people throughout the region, and it looks like not building up gigantic stockpiles of missiles and drones and then launching them at every country around you.

Iran is the only country doing this stuff. Why aren't they cooperating with the rest of the world peacefully?

Re: Houthis 'take control' of key island in global shipping route

#562

Post by ericmay »

mmooss wrote: post #535
ericmay wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India and Pakistan both rushed their programs back in the 40s/50s ( or maybe later I can't recall off the top of my head). Libya and South Africa were negotiated away. That leaves Israel probably from the, what, 70s or 80s? And North Korea was supported by Russia and China. I'm not sure you could consider any of those countries to be "pursuing nuclear weapons" today. Plus by that logic you'd have to throw in the US,…

> India and Pakistan both rushed their programs back in the 40s/50s India worked on them on and off for decades and first tested one in 1998, and IIRC Pakistan matched them soon after. North Korea was in the 2000s. > So when you sort of set aside countries from prior to, idk, 1980s ish you don't really have anyone at least publicly (to your point) pursuing nuclear weapons. I'm not going through the comment correcting…

> I'm not going through the comment correcting all of it.

Yea, why bother when you're peddling misinformation?

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

> North Korea was in the 2000s.

Yes supported by Russia and China they got the keys they needed for the delivery mechanism (ballistic missiles). But the problem with North Korea is they threatened to kill hundreds of thousands of people in South Korea if anyone stopped them from building their bomb. South Korea didn't want that to happen and China would have fought against American forces had we tried anything in North Korea. Not much we can do.

Re: Houthis 'take control' of key island in global shipping route

#563

Post by jst1fthsdys »

tptacek wrote: post #425
mamonster wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Ansar Allah (Houthis) is a terrible Islamist group IMO this is kind of bad framing because it suggests that they're the minority in Yemen, when in reality they basically are the government of 70-80% population of Yemen and absorbed 60+ percent of the Yemeni regular army. They are basically at this point the de-facto Yemeni government

Ansar Allah isn't even close to a majority of the population of Yemen. Yemen is majority-Sunni. Ansar Allah is a militant Zaydi revivalist movement, and what they're attempting to revive is a Zaydi caste system.

[flagged]

Re: Houthis 'take control' of key island in global shipping route

#564

Post by ericmay »

mrguyorama wrote: post #403
ericmay wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Iran clearly has the capability to flatten every major hospital and university and desalination plant in Israel, like Israel has done in Gaza, but they don't. I'm not supportive of Israel having nuclear weapons, but Iran won't do something like this because the Israelis might nuke them. That doesn't excuse Iran also building nuclear weapons. Neither should have them, in my view. Iran also supports the militants tha…

Why did Iran willingly disassemble their other WMD programs, like bioweapons and chemical weapons, if they are irrationally bound to destroying Israel? Chemical weapons are perfectly effective for that desire and dramatically easier to build and deploy than nuclear weapons. So if you expect Iran to just explode Israel ASAP, why are they holding back right now with their weapons not targeting civilian infrastructure?…

> Okay, then by your arguments about Iran, we should be invading Israel right? Like right now! They cannot be allowed to have nukes!

This is immature. If you wanted to use that logic we should invade Russia and China too, and of course the UK and France. Let me cut to the core of the issue here and prune away the window dressing: not all countries are treated the same, nor do they deserve to be.

> What about North Korea? It sure is funny how all the hand wringing about them getting nuclear weapons got quiet after they built a nuke and didn't use it

You don't think it's still worth hand-wringing about? Just because it's not #1 on the news cycle - quick look a Trump tweet - doesn't mean it's not a big problem. Tell it to the Japanese in particular who have to suffer from North Korea launching ballistic missiles around their country.

Re: Houthis 'take control' of key island in global shipping route

#565

Post by ericmay »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #367
ericmay wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's any change. But I think it's less possible.

I think they are more motivated than ever and other countries will follow. North Korea shows that Trump will kiss the ass of countries that have nuclear weapons, no matter how bad they are. And he will kick around countries that don’t have them. If I were Iran, I would put every possible effort into obtaining nuclear weapons. Probably from Trump’s best friend Kim Jong Un.

> and other countries will follow

You sound gleeful about the idea of nuclear proliferation. It's unfortunate that so many have stopped caring about the institutions and liberal world order we created. Oh well.

If/once Iran gets one we'll give one to Saudi Arabia at least and make sure Israel's program is well supported. Then we can make sure Germany has them and Poland too if they want them. Korea and Japan will also get the green light. Anyone who opposes China/Russia will can get access to then and we can add a dozen or so countries to the nuclear armed states list. Why not?

Re: Houthis 'take control' of key island in global shipping route

#566

Post by ericmay »

mmooss wrote: post #359
ericmay wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iran probably wasn't following the JCPOA, denied inspectors access to certain sites, and you'd also have to say you 100% trust American intelligence to verify that Iran isn't building a nuclear weapon in secret and if you want to do that I've got a war to sell you in Iraq. Separately that doesn't resolve the other issues, funding militant groups, &c.

> Iran probably wasn't following the JCPOA When are you talking about and what is that based on? It was the US that withdrew; the other countries continued. US intelligence concluded that Iran had no nuclear weapons program (or maybe, no active one; I don't recall). > you'd also have to say you 100% trust American intelligence to verify Nope, the plan was for the IEA to do their thing with on-the-ground inspectors, s…

> When are you talking about and what is that based on? It was the US that withdrew; the other countries continued. US intelligence concluded that Iran had no nuclear weapons program (or maybe, no active one; I don't recall).

They'd just move the research to clandestine or military facilities. They're not stupid. Countries like Iran know how to play these games and they use our own legal mechanisms against us all the time.

Separately we shouldn't have to have a JCPOA in the first place, they can just not pursue nuclear weapons like almost every other country on the planet.

Re: Houthis 'take control' of key island in global shipping route

#567

Post by LarsKrimi »

kadoban wrote: post #551
LarsKrimi wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We agree that China won't care long term. They cannot lose in the current setup In my view the worst that can happen for China is that Trump gets limited by anything. He's hurting US relations more than he's hurting China short or long-term. Relations take longer to build than trade "Don't interrupt your opponent when they're making a mistake"

> "Don't interrupt your opponent when they're making a mistake" Yeah, that's the obvious answer, but I suspect there's a point where if the US fucks things up too quickly and too messily, there's fewer customers for China's crap and/or the random throws of monkey shit drag China into messes they don't feel like dealing with. Slow erosion of the US's global power is likely better for them than an implosion that might…

I'm curious what you think that may be.

The situation you're imagining is one of a global all encompassing depression caused by a single government.

Not unthinkable, but the Americans would feel that deeply. Do you think they want to?

Re: Houthis 'take control' of key island in global shipping route

#568

Post by mrkeen »

spwa4 wrote: post #532
riffraff wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% agree Iran wants nukes, but I don't think it's a given they want to "destroy the region". It is more likely they want to get the same level of safety countries with nukes get, e.g. North Korea's leadership is at no risen of getting a "democratizing" invasion. Then again, who knows what the next leader will do.

Iran's current government started killing people to maintain power HOURS after they got to power. They have continued killing, constantly, people in their power, for about 55 years now. Including in january, and they're still killing more of their people for the crime of protesting one by one. They torture them first, especially if they're female. The IRGC has constantly used every weapon they have, and by that I mea…

It got me curious, so I took a look at what Iran has been up to.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/13/a-timeline-of-crise...

It doesn't look like foreign conquest is part of their MO.

Re: Houthis 'take control' of key island in global shipping route

#569

Post by goatlover »

rayiner wrote: post #430
marcyb5st wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. It's an intolerable premise and if the price to be paid is global oil catastrophe it's a price well worth paying Says you. All other nuclear nations behave (even Pakistan and India, which are at each other throat all the time). What makes you think that Iran won't? It will also have Russia and China keep a lid on them, same as North Korea. And I don't buy the "Iran is different" go…

> All other nuclear nations behave (even Pakistan and India, which are at each other throat all the time). What makes you think that Iran won't? Because Iran's leadership is actually crazy.

The same could be said for the current US leadership. All sorts of crazy sounding stuff comes from the White House. Imagine being Canadian.

Re: Houthis 'take control' of key island in global shipping route

#570

Post by ericmay »

drTobiasFunke wrote: post #339
ericmay wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The continual attack on the sovereignty of countries around the world has made nuclear weapons one of the few ways to Name the other countries pursuing a nuclear weapon. Maybe you are drumming up a fear that nobody else really has.

There is no large country left which is not an American client state to pursue nuclear weapons . India was in the 90s, and they pursued nukes, tested them and got sanctioned by the west.

How are you defining large? Geography? Population? Certainly you've got countries like Brazil or South Africa or Indonesia. I'm sure we could think of a few more.
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