JTarrou
11B2O/IDPAM/USPSAA/BJJB
User ID: 196
JTarrou
13hr ago
When the British took over Mandatory Palestine, the Ottoman Empire had been governing it for like half a millennia since anything interesting had happened there
Hmm. Let's do some rough napkin math.
Mandatory Palestine started in 1920, half a millennium back is 1420. Did anything much happen then? Well, let's start.
The Mamluks of Egypt were ruling the area, and had since they kicked the Crusaders out in the previous century.
In the sixteenth century the Turks invaded, and the levant came under Ottoman rule.
In the seventeenth there was the great Druze revolt, which destroyed several major cities.
In the eighteenth, around the time of the French and Indian War in America, local elites revolted against the Ottomans, drove them from the Levant and formed an independent Emirate under Sheikh Zahir al-Umar. This lasted some decades, from around 1730 to 1774, before the Ottomans were able to regain control of the area.
Twenty years later, Napoleon invaded, won, then lost at Acre.
In 1831, Egypt re-conquered the levant from the Ottomans, but withdrew nine years later. The Ottomans regained nominal control in 1840.
So, when Zionism kicked up in the late 19th century, the Ottoman grip on the area had been slipping for centuries, living people remembered independence, French control, Egyptian control and the Ottoman was the most recent. The actual ability of the empire to govern the area was almost completely sub-contracted to local sheiks and mullahs, which is why the British-sponsored Arab Revolt of the first world war actually worked.
JTarrou
1d ago
Of course the guys fighting are going to be mad and talk some wild shit. Some of them might even do something about it.
It's called a war. That's how things work.
Go ask the lads in the 82nd Airborne how they'd prosecute the war in Gaza. Even without the personal connection, you'd get an earful.
JTarrou
1d ago
My read is that China will take Taiwan, and they'll do it very similarly to the way they did Hong Kong, and almost certainly not in the next twelve months.
The Taiwanese consider themselves chinese, large sections of their population already support union with China, the Taiwanese military is ridiculous and corrupt. In time politics, soft power, economics and possible chinese control of the south pacific will give China a beachhead in Taiwan without invasion. Say what you will about the Chicoms, they plan for the future.
My guess is the only thing that would trigger an invasion is a tottering Communist Party which needs a popular war to stay in the saddle.
JTarrou
2d ago
This is common. I recall a case where two robbers, one armed, held up a place and shot someone. Both were convicted as the shooter.
Both had fingerprints on the gun and testified the other guy pulled the trigger. Prosecutors had no problem convicting them both for a crime that logically only one could have committed, the other being an accessory.
Really? Nothing happened in 1936-39?
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