SwordOfOccam
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User ID: 2777
SwordOfOccam
12d ago
I agree the US should have had better intelligence and taken the Chinese warnings seriously. And then blasted them to hell with superior firepower.
But Korea was a sideshow during the Cold War and not sufficiently important to get a war-weary public motivated to support it.
You're making the exact same mistake that MacArthur did.
I don’t think I am. I’m a China hawk myself. There’s a lot of unknowns about how well the US and Chinese militaries would operate in a full on war. With Russia, we saw massive underperformance in Ukraine, but we just don’t really know how good the Chinese navy and military technology is compared to the US.
SwordOfOccam
13d ago
Man, your understanding of the Korean War is limited at best.
The US got caught off guard and nearly pushed off the peninsula, sure, but we decided to only beat the ChiComms and North Koreans halfway back up the peninsula. We weren’t willing to seek actual victory, an attitude that went on to serve us well in Vietnam too.
(I actually think McArthur was probably right and we should have nuked the Chinese to keep North Korea from existing, given how things went thereafter.)
SwordOfOccam
14d ago
Well lots of people, including the mods, saw it differently.
SwordOfOccam
14d ago
He would not accept that many of us are color-blind meritocracy fans and recognize the factual reality of HBD. That combo just broke his brain. Perpetually misrepresenting the views of one’s opponents when explicitly corrected is shitty and intolerable behavior.
He would avoid dealing with the concrete evidence provided for the reality and utility of IQ, and its correlation to racial groups. He would make deluded attacks on academia—where IQ is not so popular a metric—and fail to acknowledge the contradiction. This is not denying the underlying framework. It’s being retarded and illogical. Several people who don’t like HBD pointed this out at the time.
If he had been consistently retarded but polite on the IQ issue, he wouldn’t have caught the ban and his average comment quality would have been good. Civility and order break down when those with status consistently and flagrantly violate rules and norms and the mods’ hands were forced.
Personally, I don’t care whether he caught a forever ban or just a really long one. Redemption is nice when you can get it.
SwordOfOccam
15d ago
He perpetually misrepresented his opponent and refused to engage with points actuality made, and he was snotty while doing it.
His average quality of engagement was low.
SwordOfOccam
15d ago
Why would these methods fail now?
Sure COVID was a thing in 2020, but Trump was in power and already suspicious of rigged elections. Despite that, the rigging took place ant 10% and there was no concrete evidence?
SwordOfOccam
17d ago
I don't see a good clear line between drone striking a citizen advocating the violent overthrow of the US Government and "assassinating a political rival.
The individual in question was unambiguously working for a terrorist organization.
Foreign vs. domestic soil and organizational affiliation matters quite a lot.
SwordOfOccam
17d ago
This is a hilariously weak whataboutism.
The evidence for election rigging was nonexistent.
At least Russiagate had enough evidence to put a few people in jail.
“Derail half a term”
Oh come on. What derailed a whole term is that Trump is an incompetent leader and he ran a clown show. Trump was the biggest setback for Trumpism.
SwordOfOccam
17d ago
The man clearly falsified business records for campaign purposes.
That’s a simplification, but not hard to grok.
SwordOfOccam
17d ago
Except this time it’s true.
And one can prove that by ignoring the media rhetoric and listening only to longtime Republicans and former Trump officials who have condemned Trump for a very long list of his personal and professional failings.
It’s funny because one thing so many Trump fans like about him is that he isn’t like normal politicians and doesn’t comply with various norms that supposedly made regular GOP politicians weak. Problem is, some of norms Trump has violated involved actual breaches of the law.
SwordOfOccam
17d ago
Biden is no doubt guilty of many felonies himself. The Clintons have as well. Yet they have not been prosecuted and for good reason.
Uhh, those are some bold statements. Bill did get himself impeached for lying about his affair.
Trump has flagrantly played fast/loose with the law for years. He literally refused to cooperate when the feds said “please give the classified documents back.” His brazen approach was going to catch up with him.
SwordOfOccam
17d ago
SwordOfOccam
17d ago
Bush and Powell weren’t lying about WMDs. They honestly believed they were there.
Was there a bunch of motivated reasoning and shoddy analysis of poor evidence that got them (and many others) to hold those beliefs? Yes.
The US intel community failed to resist “spin” on various reports and assessments, but it was basically taken for granted that Saddam had had a WMD program before and still was pursuing one in 2003. There wasn’t definitive evidence that he didn’t, and there was crappy evidence that he did. Motivated reasoning and the emotional environment after 9/11 did the rest.
SwordOfOccam
17d ago
Not like Trump did. He refused to concede and he and his close associates pushed all manner of blatant nonsense that failed to get any traction because of a stark lack of evidence.
As with many things, it’s not that no one else in politics has ever done Bad Thing, it’s that Trump finds a way to take things to a new level.
SwordOfOccam
17d ago
“Directionally correct”
The man has been lying for years about election fraud, even when he won (and didn’t mount an investigation).
Trump is an embarrassment to conservatism, morally and politically, and should have been jettisoned by the GOP years ago. He makes things worse by inflaming progressivism and turning away moderates/centrists, and the sooner he’s gone from political life the better.
Sure, this state-level prosecution was targeted/politically motivated, which I consider bad, but the man is a constant liar with no regard for rules/laws/norms, so he set himself up for this kind of thing.
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
It is an incredible irony that Christianity was the root of antisemitism for so long, but in America the Evangelicals are extremely strong Zionists.
The center is always attacked by the extremes, which doesn’t indicate correctness.
Christianity is a large set of possible beliefs and so it’s very easy to choose one’s own adventure. As a former believer, there’s a lot of good and bad in there.
Frankly, I wish the GOP would prefer a more WASPy Christian candidate than Trump, but MAGA is low class Christianity and a bit too forgiving.
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
My guy you seriously tried to argue Russian forces didn’t have a numerical advantage in the opening phase of the war and now you think I have the LLM-tier understanding here?
You think that makes Russian air defense look better? During an ongoing war a little civ aircraft just makes it through?
That’s the literal definition of Russia not controlling its airspace!
Russia demonstrably sucks at war fighting and here you are trying to pretend that somehow things would go better against an adversary far more capable than Ukraine is.
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
My understanding is the Ukrainians have been able to penetrate Russian airspace pretty regularly and that a lack of munitions and the West desiring them to limit attacks on Russian soil are the limiting factors. Not the impressive performance of the Russian Air Force or air defense systems.
The US has a lot more aircraft and missiles that are far more capable than what the Ukrainians have.
It’s a bad sign that Russia has to source drones from Iran.
I didn’t say against a peer.
Russia is, ostensibly, not fighting a peer either.
The fact that Ukraine and Russia are basically peers is my whole goddamn point actually.
Pretend the situation was reversed. Do you think the US would be struggling to win against Ukraine (assume Russian material support)?
I think not.
Also, if you’re trying to pretend Russia didn’t have a numerical advantage in the initial invasion then good lord. Ukraine’s standing army was like 200k, and it wasn’t necessarily all deployed where the Russian invasion started.
Think about how stupid it would be for the Russians to invade a foe they didn’t have outnumbered and outgunned where they were conducting operations. So you can choose: either the Russians are morons or they suck at fighting.
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
Note that you’re avoiding the main point that Russia demonstrably sucks against a weaker foe, let alone a peer or more.
But also, imagine thinking the US needs air superiority to be effective at combined arms on the ground.
It’s even funnier to think the US wouldn’t have air superiority against the joke of Russian capabilities we’ve seen.
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
In a defensive war, Ukraine merely needs to not have lost already to demonstrate my point. They were and are outnumbered and outgunned, and yet the Russians’ initial campaign was a disaster and now any victory is going to come slowly and with high cost.
The US had no problem dealing with IQ militias in force-on-force engagements. It wasn’t a military problem, it was a police problem.
You’re clearly not interested in objectively considering military capabilities if you’re unwilling to acknowledge Russia has significantly underperformed against Ukraine, and are incapable of separating the US military being able to destroy a foe in a force-on-force engagement vs. trying to do COIN, which is extremely different.
The US military has performed very well whenever it has conducted force-on-force operations, in terms of both logistics and combat. We barely took a scratch. Russia cannot say the same, and has taken heavy losses among its best forces.
Before Ukraine, you could make a reasonable argument that Russia would do well against the US in combat. After what we’ve seen, that is a laughable assertion that flies in the face of all available evidence and it’s embarrassing that others have to point that out to you.
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
Wow. Imagine how bad Russia would fare against a foe that was already trained and equipped with that top-tier weaponry you described and proficient in combined arms and maneuver warfare?
Seems like that would go poorly for them.
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
Based on how the Russians have conducted themselves so badly against a weaker foe, I remain confused why you think they would fare well against the US, which wiped the floor with weaker foes.
Russian IQ ain’t helping them much. You can also look at how well they fought the Taliban back in the day compared to the US. We steamrolled them and barely took any casualties.
But RuSsiA HaS sO mUcH aRtiLleRy.
It wouldn’t last long from precision counterfire and air superiority. Those Iranian drones won’t do so hot either, based on the turkey shoot when used against Israel.
What’s laughable here is talking up the Russian military where they are literally in the midst of struggling mightily against a weaker opponent and saying they would do well in a 1v1 against the US, which has long had far better equipment, training, logistics, and intelligence than the Russians. And maintenance. Can’t forget that.
Like how badly would the Russians have to do in Ukraine before you would consider “ah yeah they were way overrated”?
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
Russia demonstrably can’t even make convoys happen efficiently.
The US military would wipe the floor with Russia, even before they burned up the bulk of their forces against a far weaker opponent than the US.
The Russian military underperformed expectations quite badly.
In contrast, the US military wiped the floor with the Iraqis twice. People forget that Saddam had, on paper, one of the best militaries in the world.
It’s easy to focus on the challenges of COIN and forget the massively successful campaigns in IQ and AF that proceeded the occupation phase.
We go to the ballot box with the election system we have, not the one that we might want.
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