TheDemonRazgriz
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User ID: 3577
TheDemonRazgriz
18hr ago
I do wonder if part of the reason for the ceasefire was a sort of “both of us need to regroup, and we both know it, so let’s talk in the meantime and see if it goes anywhere.” Obviously not the only reason but it could be a factor. Oddly old-fashioned and almost gentlemanly if true.
TheDemonRazgriz
1d ago
I feel like a lot of the takes flying around about the ceasefire are severely premature, both in places like this and in the regular news. Even on its face this is only a two week ceasefire for the purpose of negotiations, and as far as anyone knows the two sides are still very far apart diplomatically. In fact as of my typing this (it’s an insomniac kind of night) Iran has not actually ceased fire, missiles were impacting in Israel and the UAE many hours after the announcement (although this could just be down to their degraded command and control taking a long time to disseminate the orders, to be fair). And Israel is still fighting actively in Lebanon and saying that front isn’t part of the ceasefire agreement, while Pakistan (the broker) says it is.
Not to mention the Iranian-aligned regional militias, which they don’t have perfect control over; a rogue or misinformed group could hit an important US asset (think a lucky rocket or Shahed causing real damage to a US embassy or a Saudi refinery during the ceasefire period) and tank the whole thing without even really meaning to, although that is an edge case.
Just yesterday I was talking to my wife about the war, and I commented that the aftermath of the F-15 shootdown and pilot rescues probably leaves both sides feeling like they’re in a position of strength (Iran can still meaningfully threaten US aviation even under this much pressure; the US can operate deep inside Iran even without having a large-scale presence on the ground). The US has still been moving assets into the region and Iran has been continuing to fire on US bases, Israel, and the gulf Arab countries’ infrastructure. Both sides are feeling enough pain to want to negotiate, but neither seems to feel enough pressure to give anything up, and they certainly haven’t used up their options to escalate. All of the material signs in the past few days pointed to both sides settling in for a relatively protracted war, on the scale of months vs weeks, and I don’t really see that changing. It’s true that Trump could use this as an off-ramp, he is famously erratic and I’m sure the current situation was never the plan, but I’m not so sure he has a strong incentive to back down if Iran still isn’t making concessions, and Iran has no real need to concede anything as things stand.
I would be very surprised if both sides aren’t using the ceasefire as an opportunity to regroup and rearm in expectation of re-opened hostilities when the two weeks are up (or sooner if something else happens). That doesn’t mean negotiations are doomed to go nowhere, but I think people assuming the war is plainly over are engaging in wishful thinking. Not to mention that Israel was not involved in the talks and may decide to continue fighting with or without the US if they don’t like where the peace talks are headed (supposedly their threat of doing just that was a big part of how we got dog-walked into the war in the first place).
Again, the diplomatic positions of the two countries were very far apart right up until the announcement. Even Trump’s own statement only calls it a “basis to negotiate.” Right now the ceasefire is presented in such a way that both sides can at least try to spin it as a win, which is a fine way to begin peace talks, but that may not last when it’s time to hammer out lasting terms. It would be very easy for one or both sides to say the other is being intransigent or duplicitous and resume strikes after two weeks without having to take on the bad look of “violating the ceasefire” at all.
Color me skeptical, I guess is all I’m saying.
TheDemonRazgriz
5d ago
As an asids, I'm still deeply confused what they thought they were doing with "wolf warrior" diplomacy, but they seem to have smartened up.
My impression was always that the wolf warrior stuff was entirely for domestic consumption, propelled perhaps a little further than intended by a small number of true believers.
China specifically is not suffering as much from this situation; the Iranians have been allowing Chinese tankers through the strait, and the US has not been stopping them. There is no chance of the PLAN entering this war.
It would be good to see the EU step up to the plate but their preferred strategy is clearly to just wait for the whole thing to blow over, and I’m doubtful that they really have the capacity to sustain an escort mission over the long term even if they wanted to.
Australia’s navy, to my knowledge, does not have the expeditionary capability to get involved in a remotely meaningful way. Japan has some ships on paper to contribute (although they could not do it alone) but, even putting their domestic politics aside, it is unlikely they’d be willing to take ships away from their normal duties with China and Russia right in their backyard.
TheDemonRazgriz
9d ago
Yeah I actually like FdB, but I don’t think in a million years he’d have the patience to moderate a forum like this, lol.
TheDemonRazgriz
10d ago
290, kinda feel like I should’ve gotten a few that I missed, but I also was pretty even across all categories, no major gaps. So I’ll take that!
TheDemonRazgriz
20d ago
The victims were all members of the movement and have said that they kept quiet for so long because they didn’t want to tarnish his memory and in so doing hurt the Cause (possibly rightly so). They don’t gain much by coming out with accusations now, and “the cause”, in as much as it still even exists, isn’t really tied to his memory anymore. If you’ve hidden something like that for such a long time it’s easy enough to just keep on keeping quiet, but by the sound of things, one now-old-lady ex-activist decided she couldn’t take the truth to her grave, and then the floodgates opened.
TheDemonRazgriz
22d ago
Fair point.
TheDemonRazgriz
22d ago
The people most likely to be loose in the world without one are professional white women who think their phone is a scifi universal gadget.
They would have IDs, even if they don’t always carry them. I would think the only people who really don’t have a government ID today are going to be dysfunctional hobos/junkies, and extremely “off the grid” types. But yeah, the idea that there’s this massive number of black people (even more so, black people who vote) who don’t have IDs is a nonsensical caricature. Something something DR3.
As an aside, I made friends with a few international students in college. When I voted in an election they asked what it was like, and were somewhere between shocked and baffled when I said that you basically just walk in and say your name (and registered address) to a volunteer clerk. “You really don’t show them… anything??” We really are deeply out of step with the rest of the democratic world on this one.
I would prefer, idealistically, that if we require an ID to vote we should also make getting it free, but one way or another it’s long past time for us to do so. The alarm bells of voter confidence in elections being a live issue have been blaring since at least 2000 and it’s only getting worse.
TheDemonRazgriz
24d ago
Japanese leadership in general seemed extremely bad. A lot of decisions seemed to be made for ego-stroking reasons, rather than around any kind of grand strategy to win the war.
Complete and utter failure of Japanese intelligence and reconnaissance.
If you're interested in a window to the Japanese perspective, I would highly recommend the book Memoirs of a Kamikaze. The author, Kazuo Odachi, was one of extremely few surviving kamikaze pilots (he was sent on a kamikaze mission, failed to find any American ships, and returned to base; literally while he was on the runway for a second attempt, the war ended). It's short, and just his personal story, but that story is a very interesting one. He talks a lot about what the Japanese leadership looked like "from the inside" and why/how the Japanese soldiers were so fanatical.
It also includes some very interesting stories of his life adjusting to US-occupied Japan after the war, and what the country was like at this time -- you can imagine that going from kamikaze pilot to a defeated subject living at peace is not the simplest transition.
TheDemonRazgriz
29d ago
I would imagine those 1.24/1000 deaths are dominated by traffic accidents and, secondarily, fatal overdoses. It’s not like 1.24/1000 25-29 year olds are just dropping dead at random.
Yeah, I saw some vague allusions to the US having been explicitly aware that it would take time for the whole of the Iranian military to actually receive news of the ceasefire declaration, and accepting the fact. Nothing entirely concrete but it seems plausible; a lot of the US efforts were directed at degrading Iranian command and control after all, even on top of intentional Iranian decentralization. And the idea of a ceasefire (or any order really) reaching a whole army instantaneously is extremely modern.
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