781–790 of 1001 posts
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Rig the election? You could pass a law that makes 1/3 of the country ineligible to vote, but makes sure they won't find out until they're at the polling booth. You could also prepare your allied goons to defend polling stations.
That won't work.
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The hijackers were Saudi nationals, but the operation was in no way sponsored by the Saudi state, which is a staunch US ally. Which is why the US proceeded to (attempt to) flatten Afghanistan instead.
> Which is why the US proceeded to (attempt to) flatten Afghanistan instead. It seems to have made things better for the Taliban.
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USA “flattened” and invaded Afghanistan but decades after Taliban is just back again. I don’t know, maybe it’s time for USA to just stop getting involved in wars.
War is one manifestation of politics. Politics will exist for as long as there are people. Any country not able to or interested in waging occasional war will be destroyed by countries that can and do. Simple as that. But please I'm interested in hearing any utopia arguments that claim we can/should deprecate war. And remember - you have to convince your country along with every other country.
You could at least say something like "we have to bomb the people so they can be free" or "don't you know the Iranians were seconds away from nuking new York, because they have no regard for their own survival".
We should "deprecate" offensive wars of choice based on lies because the opportunity cost is enormous (what could we have bought with the 200+ billion they're already looking to spend here?).
Every time we do this we create more terrorists (see the blowback incidents weve already had from this war), which results in more egregious government overreach on the domestic population (see patriot act and the experience of commercial flight in today's world).
And those are just some of the basic reasons. I don't have time to write them all.
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The US no longer uses its army for defense. Nobody in their immediate region dares attack them, they're too powerful ("Godzilla", in the words of John Mearsheimer). All the wars that the US has fought since WWII are nothing to do with defense. Just look at the Wikipedia article on "power projection": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_projection The leader image is ... a US aircraft carrier (the USS Nimitz). That's…
As an American, I think a better metric for outcomes of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq is: were we trading with the before the war and are we trading with them one generation after the war ? The same is even true of WWII, a more important marker afterward is that we spent the rest of the 20th century trading prosperously with Japan and Germany. Korea: the south became an economic powerhouse with whom we now tr…
Why can’t we bomb the missile bunkers that guard the strait?
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The US no longer uses its army for defense. Nobody in their immediate region dares attack them, they're too powerful ("Godzilla", in the words of John Mearsheimer). All the wars that the US has fought since WWII are nothing to do with defense. Just look at the Wikipedia article on "power projection": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_projection The leader image is ... a US aircraft carrier (the USS Nimitz). That's…
As an American, I think a better metric for outcomes of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq is: were we trading with the before the war and are we trading with them one generation after the war ? The same is even true of WWII, a more important marker afterward is that we spent the rest of the 20th century trading prosperously with Japan and Germany. Korea: the south became an economic powerhouse with whom we now tr…
Yes, but .. what was the actual objective again?
Must be nice for western arm chair commentators to discuss this without once feeling the consequences of the actions of their elected government. Where I live - we face a severe shortage of LPG fuel due to this. Quite a few restaurants have shut down temporarily. Migrant workers around the parts who have no access to a kitchen because they live in tiny quarters with a bedding and a common toilet are struggling to fin…
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Assuming the scenario happened the first bombing runs would be over after 2h and would continue for the next 48h until amphibious assault fast response finishes landing, by which time it’s safe to assume there isn’t much left to defend (though rubble makes a horrible war zone for the attacking side). Cuba simply isn’t Iran. They’re a blockaded island with not much military experience. Iran is a huge mountainous count…
Yes, and then they will be welcomed with open arms, right?
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> 50% of PRODUCTION, not plants, as in a few plants responsible for 50% of US refinery / LNG production. This is making a pretty big assumption that the long-term US energy mix is going to stay the way it is. The primary historical impediment to electric vehicles was high up-front cost, in turn driven by high battery costs. However: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-battery-cell-pric... We're soon to have el…
> This is making a pretty big assumption that the long-term US energy mix is going to stay the way it is. It's the stated goal of one of the parties to keep or increase fossil fuel usage, isn't it? > Meanwhile the US administration flips parties every four to eight years Magic 8 Ball says "yeah, in the past, 2028 isn't looking good though" > next time they're Democrats they'll be trying to hasten that result Which wi…
A big mistake here was simply underestimating the scale of Iran. Iran has 90,000,000 people. More than 2x Ukraine. More than 2x Germany. More than 2x Iraq. More than any country in Europe. About 2/3 of Russia. Expecting to win a war on the cheap was a fantasy. Especially since Iran has been fighting Israel for years. On the naval front, Ukraine sunk the Moskva with a few truck-mounted missiles. That finally made it u…
The impetus for the blockade on the Strait goes away when the US pulls out. Even the UAE said as much as which is why they are currently trying to pass a UN Security Council Resolution stating as much and get the RoW to show enough teeth to get Iran to back down.