Supah_Schmendrick
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User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
11d ago
Why would Israel do this? Some conjectures:
Iran's strike from its own territory appears to be, in my admittedly imperfect knowledge, rather unprecedented in the history of tit-for-tat strikes between the two countries. Historically, the strikes on Israel have come from Iranian proxies, not Iran itself. Even with the telegraphed nature of the 4/13-4/14 strikes (allegedly Iran told the US exactly what flight-paths the drones/missiles would be on?!?!?) Israel wouldn't want to let the precedent stand that Iran can launch on targets in Israel proper without Israel having grounds to strike at Iranian targets inside Iran in retaliation.
Supah_Schmendrick
14d ago
Okay but metropolitan sized battery arrays sounds kind of awesome though.
Imagine a lithium-ion battery fire...the size of Pittsburgh!
Supah_Schmendrick
15d ago
If Ethan Crumbley had run over 4 people with the family car, would the parents have been prosecuted for leaving the keys on the counter?
Civilly, quite possibly! (Caveat, I'm not a Michigan lawyer so this isn't legal advice, but my Westlaw subscription includes Michigan cases and I'm bored). Michigan recognizes the tort of negligent entrustment, and there are several cases in which parents are found liable for permitting incompetent minors to drive. Dortman v. Lester (1968) 380 Mich. 80; Zokas v. Friend (1984) 134 Mich.App. 437
Supah_Schmendrick
16d ago
When progressives complain about straight white men, are they looking for a "scapegoat" for all their problems?
Yes.
Supah_Schmendrick
16d ago
Even corrupt and dysfunctional governments have a huge incentive to do accurate censuses for the purposes of taxation, conscription, and economic planning.
There are also incentives for various players in government to fudge census figures for purposes of representational allotment, project funding, public relations, etc. Not saying it happened in any particular instance, but we can't just point to an incentive here; census accounts have to be researched and justified like any other historical record/document.
Supah_Schmendrick
16d ago
Many thanks!
Supah_Schmendrick
16d ago
I would be interested in what mistakes those are - I read and enjoyed "Stalin's War" but have very little outside knowledge of Finnish history.
Supah_Schmendrick
16d ago
I mean, the narrative I was taught in school was that there were a lot of different ways that Nazis killed jews - rounded up and shot in the wake of Wehrmacht conquests, beaten/burned to death in pogroms, worked/starved to death in slave labor camps, and yes, gassed in extermination camps. All of which was tied together by the Nazi's fairly-consistent rhetoric that Jews were the ethnic enemy of Germans and should be killed. The idea that it's "6 million gassed" or complete denial/revision seems like a really bad strawman to me.
Supah_Schmendrick
16d ago
I apologize, I think I was not clear. What I meant was that the OIF comment @Ben___Garrison cited itself does not provide convincing examples of the proposition that a partisan war can be handled without reprisal against civilians, because the methods described both explicitly involved significant intracommunal violence up to and including actual ethnic cleansing.
Personally, I think physical relocation and/or separation can be, but isn't always, a solution to intracommunal violence. More important, to my mind, is that a situation be reached whereby all parties agree that one side has conclusively triumphed, the other has conclusively lost, and that further conflict is futile to change this result. That's the only way that both parties will settle down and start funneling resources into building their own prosperity rather than attempting to destroy/displace the other.
Supah_Schmendrick
16d ago
I'm not sure this post proves what you want it to re: the utility/necessity of reprisals. As I read it, it claims that the insurgencies in Iraq were broken by:
(1) coopting moderate factions inside the (Sunni) insurgencies and relying on them to do the dirty work themselves (does anyone want to bet that those Sunni militias didn't target civilian supporters of the radical factions as well as combatants under arms?), or (2) allowing the (Shiite) insurgencies to more-or-less achieve their objectives, which included withdrawal of US troops and ethnic cleansing of enemy civilians from insurgent-controlled areas.
Neither of those are particularly happy outcomes, and neither would be acceptable in the Israeli/Palestinian context.
This is very bad history. Colonization in India occurred not because a few god-like white people showed up and crushed all before them, but instead because very clever and ruthless opportunists, through a combination of skill and luck, managed to co-opt local power structures by backing challengers to weak overlords. The British didn't rule India in their own name; they slowly accumulated alliances and legal rights and privileges through local intermediaries.
This is also very bad history. The Aztecs didn't think Cortez was a god - they in fact whipped his men out of Tenochtitlan in La Noche Triste, after killing the collaborator Moctezuma. Instead, Cortez proved himself a diplomat of no small skill, and put together a coalition of the Aztec's subject peoples which ultimately strangled Tenochtitlan, and then entered into negotiated political relationships with the Spanish crown. The influx of more and more Spaniards into the region, coupled with the massive disruption to Mexica society caused by the plagues of the Columbian exchange, was what finalized the ultimate subjugation of the locals.
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