VIM
4d ago
No it isn't. How long do you think Israel would survive a European trade embargo combined with an American blockade?
VIM
4d ago
I think any other direction has darker implications: to reverse your claim (which, to be fair, is factually accurate to my knowledge), those that would commit mass ethnic cleansing of Jews in the 1940s were stopped by making their cities look like Dresden. Why wouldn't "Never Again" mean turning cities (Rafah) to such in 2026 for the same reason? "Which river? Which sea?". I don't agree with it, but I can at least understand the position.
With the crucial difference that Rafah was demolished, whereas the antizionists are still a decade or so away from possessing the power to demolish Tel Aviv. I'm not inventing a new standard, just taking the existing one and applying it consistently.
Ultimately, the cycle of violence is only broken when one side loses or admits defeat — the West Germans were to some extent lucky the Western Allies were more magnanimous than many other historical examples — or when "hippy-dippy peace-and-love attitudes" prevail. In most cases I can imagine, I'd prefer the latter.
The "hippy-dippy peace-and-love attitudes" only came out after Germany was defeated. If the Wehrmacht had been greeted by a bunch of protesters waving peace signs instead of millions of heavily armed Red Army soldiers then the war would have gone very differently.
I'll grant that there is a range of actions that are more extreme than total pacifism and less extreme than Dresden but basically anyone who isn't a total pacifist is going to say that armed resistance to an ongoing genocide is justified.
VIM
4d ago
these people don't understand that Hamas is still fighting
Hi there, ignorant peon here! Could you explain how "Hamas is still fighting" when there's a ceasefire and there have been precisely zero (0) reported instances of Hamas attacking the Israelis since said ceasefire began?
If you want to side with the weaker side in a military conflict because that is your philosophy, then just say that. But it is, to me, disgusting and evil when people reward the use of human shields and false flags and piracy and the like with sympathy. The crybully tactics of modern Islam need to be punished like they would have been by the Brits and French of the 19th century. And, quite frankly, given the current set of belligerents, the Brits and French should have been mounting up to do it themselves years ago under a sane system.
Ironically Hamas learned their "crybully tactics" from the Zionists who liked to, for example, hide weapons caches inside synagogues.
If the Brits and the French had applied your reasoning consistently Israel wouldn't exist in the first place. They'd have been wiped out after kidnapping and murdering British soldiers instead of being rewarded with international recognition and protection from the consequences of their actions.
VIM
4d ago
Why does opposition to genocide require a "hippy-dippy peace-and-love" attitude?
The Nazis weren't stopped by hippies waving signs but by the Red Army tearing through East Prussia committing enough war crimes to make Hamas look like humanitarian organization.
If you think that Israel is committing a genocide then it logically follows that violent resistance is justified, assuming you aren't a full on pacifist.
VIM
6d ago
Dear Baghdad Bob: if the Strait is more open than ever then why is the price of oil still going up?
VIM
6d ago
I have no idea why you're citing the Jordanian claim when it's been proven that the missiles which hit "unpopulated areas" actually hit A-10 and F-15 jets. How gullible are you? If some tinpot Arab dictatorship announced that they had invented faster than light travel would you believe that too?
So your demonstration of American strength is that when fighter jets are damaged the response is to...blow up Iranian cargo ships?
Putting aside the hilarity of America being so demonstrably incapable of disabling Iranian military assets that it's been reduced to impotently copying the Iranians in cargo cult fashion (see also: the LUCAS drone), what exactly is the benefit of blowing up tankers when Iran is already under blockade? Unless you think those tankers have been running the USN blockade regularly there's no benefit whatsoever to targeting them.
It's pure impotence signaling on Trump's part. The missile cities have proven to be impenetrable from the air so all he can do is throw a temper tantrum.
VIM
6d ago
Is the US and Hamas guilty of terrorism via using human shields when soldiers are stationed in hotels or are Iran and Israel guilty of terrorism when they bomb said hotels for stationing soldiers?
But what does it matter? Look at it like this: when did the Iranians last bomb anything that mattered? They are totally out of juice. In March they were bombing apartment buildings. They can’t do that anymore. The last time they shot anything, a few days ago, they launched 20 missiles (lmao) and hit a few parked military assets. Causing, essentially, no change in the status quo.
At the beginning of the war they fired hundreds of projectiles and sometimes hit apartment buildings! Now they fire twenty and that's enough to penetrate the most well defended airspace in the AO and hit USAF fighter jets at will (what you call "parked military assets", lol)! Soon, the pathetic Iranians will only need a single missile to hit whatever they want and that will signal their imminent defeat! If you blow up your enemy's fighter jets on the tarmac then they win!
More seriously, the Saudi East-West pipeline was knocked out of commission by, depending on you ask, either the Houthis, the Iraqi PMFs, or the Houthi branch office in Iraq. Once AD has been sufficiently drained the Iranians can let their proxies handle the dirty work. Do you unironically believe that Iran's weakest proxies can cripple Saudi oil production single handedly but the Iranians themselves couldn't hit apartments if they really wanted?
Perhaps most embarrassingly, at the beginning of the war US forces would instantly respond to Iranian attacks with airstrikes. Now they sit there like cucks as Iran rails their assets, infrastructure and allies with missiles, their multi-billion dollar AD systems powerless.
Trump is totally impotent. Iran won.
VIM
6d ago
This isn't a game or a sports match, so there's no particular time limit on this. The US and its allies can keep this up for as long as it takes.
literally the next paragraph:
Of course, it's possible that Democrats will sieze power, and then they'll give in. Give the IRGC money, give them terrorist proxies, give them nukes, give them whatever they want. That would be a huge disaster, but it's not the result of this current war, it's just Democrats being idiots.
So actually there is a particular time limit, namely the midterms and presidential elections. The Iranians don't need to destroy the US Navy to achieve victory, they just need to inflict enough pain on the global economy to ratfuck the Republicans. Pretending the political angle isn't the core of the Iranian strategy is just preemptive cope.
Instead we've been... mildly inconvenienced? The price of oil has gone up, but not enough to cause a recession- the economy is still growing. (Edit: 18-20) servicemen have died, and that's a shame, but that's also a very small number in historical terms- every military person knows the risks when they sign up.
Going by current polling the "mild inconvenience" has been enough to set up Republicans for the worst midterm result since 2006. The Senate was supposed to be bulletproof but even typically solid red states like Texas, Nebraska and Kansas are in danger of flipping. Evidently the voters have a different standard of "mild inconvenience" than you do, though perhaps the Biden strategy of "don't believe your lying eyes, this economy is great!" will work this time around
VIM
13d ago
Would you say Trump sending death squads to abduct every Democrat voter for summary execution would be a reasonable response to the risk of mass immigration ruining the country?
VIM
13d ago
Remigration has happened many times in history.
Well okay, by the same standard extermination has happened many times in history too. Ancient Rome did it, Russia did it, Germany did it.
Why not just take all the leftists into a room somewhere and shoot them in the back of the head? Why not just go full Sulla on anyone who stands against your political objectives?
VIM
30d ago
Do you want to say that Iran controls the Straits? I think it’s getting harder to say this with a straight face and an open heart.
You should go tell the oil and bond traders. In fact, if you're so confident you should go buy bonds and short oil on leverage and see what happens :)
Ok, where is the serious economic damage?
Serious shortages of essential products ranging from diesel and motor oil to fertilizer? Japan desperately dumping treasuries to cover their oil costs? Did you miss the failed Yen bailout followed by the failed bond bailout?
I am on the record many times saying that Iran will never get a nuclear weapon
Iran was not going to get a nuclear weapon in the first place so this has all the probative value of Lisa Simpson's anti-tiger rock.
and will never toll the straits.
as we've established, Iran has already received protection money from Gulf countries and charged passing ships money to use their new tolled route. That is, they've already tolled the strait.
Does it only count as "tolling the strait" if the victims all assemble under the full moon to sign a blood oath in the personal presence of the Ayatollah? Because it sounds like you just gave a standard that Trump is already losing under.
Everyone in the world understands bombing ships as an act of war except apparently Iran and you. That’s literally what the flags on ships are for.
Is English your third language? I never said it wasn't an "act of war" but last I checked Iran and the UAE didn't sign a peace treaty. When you pay protection money to the mafia it's the mafia who gets to decide what that "protection" entails, not you. If anything the fact that the Emiratis are literally flying cargo planes loaded with cash and gold only to get bombed anyway makes Iran's position look stronger, not weaker.
And it’s down since the war began.
No it isn't. That's just not true. Both gas and oil were ~25% cheaper before the war began. You're just making things up at this point.
Not to mention that you totally dodged bond yields, potentially an even bigger problem.
This is basically his exact position. Trump posted today that he’s fine to continue blockading Iran because they won’t take a deal.
No it isn't. He was claiming to be on the verge of reaching a deal just last week and a week before that was threatening to annihilate Iranian civilization.
Now he's impotently doing nothing as Iran freely hits ships at will. At least in the beginning of the war he would respond to Iranian strikes with American strikes, now he doesn't even bother with that.
VIM
1mo ago
At this stage Iran's ability to support their proxies in the near term has been wrecked and those proxies are in the process of being rolled-up
Based on what?
The Houthis reportedly flew in IRGC commanders and weapons just last month and by all indications are stronger and more aggressive than they were before the war. At the moment of writing they basically launched a war with the Saudis and are attempting a major ground offensive against their local proxies, something that would have been inconceivable even a few years ago. Hezbollah transitioned from a pre-war "ceasefire" where Hezbollah ceased and Israel fired to a "ceasefire" where Hezbollah periodically responds by obliterating IDF troops with drones and Beirut is explicitly off limits to Israeli strikes. The Iraqi government has been pretending to "roll up" the PMFs for over a decade but in practice this just means that some of the smaller pro-Iranian militias get absorbed by the bigger pro-Iranian militias; Iraq has always had to play this game because their military is dominated by pro-Iranian Shiites and their oil income runs through the Federal Reserve but the idea they'll ever side with the US over Iran is ludicrous. Did you see Khamenei's funeral at Karbala?
VIM
1mo ago
I was going to debunk some of these claims but I see other Mottizens have already done so. I'll just say that when this war was a few days old my first question to someone claiming it as a great success was:
Was Operation Rough Rider a great demonstration of American invincibility too? They brought in multiple carrier groups, bombed Yemen endlessly and assassinated plenty of Houthi leaders even up to the Houthi Prime Minister but the Houthi missile/drone capabilities were basically untouched and Trump effectively gave up after a month when stockpiles started running low.
So if this goes the same way and Iran is still firing missiles and drones a month at every country hosting American military assets, shutting down the Strait of Hormuz and possibly obliterating all of the soft oil infrastructure between the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea would you still consider it to be a great victory for Trump?
I'm probably one of the biggest "Iran won" advocates here but I never claimed that they'd literally start conquering their neighbors or obliterating carriers (mostly since the USN isn't stupid enough to park a carrier in range of Iranian anti-ship missiles), just that they'd be like the Houthis on steroids, capable of absorbing Trump's blows and inflicting serious economic damage on the world for basically no benefit to the average American, ultimately provoking a political backlash that will make American politicians in the future think twice about messing with Iran for fear of becoming Jimmy Carter or Trump.
Then, a few months later, I specifically asked you a question:
do you agree that Trump leaving right now would be a good move, since Iran is already beaten?
I notice you never replied to that one. If Iran is broken and everything is fine then would everything still be fine if Trump pulled a Joe Kent and left? As others have pointed out, you seem to have no clear definition of what would constitute "Trump losing" short of Trump literally going on TV and admitting defeat.
Also a few side points,
According to Al Jazeera, however, Iran denies bombing UAE.
So, how do we reconcile these claims?
Easily: Iran didn't "bomb the UAE", they bombed Emirati ships in Emirati waters. The Emiratis thought the Mullahgeld would give them protection to resume shipping through the Strait but Iran disagrees. They're willing to accept bribes to avoid hitting land based infrastructure, as evidenced by the disparity between strikes on Bahrain and Kuwait vs the UAE and Qatar, but they clearly consider control of the Strait to be their most powerful card, one they'll never sell at any price.
What's changed recently? Well, not much.
This is only going to become more and more obvious.
Well, since the last time you claimed "Trump won!" the price of crude has risen, the diesel crack spread has expanded, the Dollar is down and bond yields are up. Why does every market indicator contradict your fantastic story about invisible supertankers effortlessly breaking the blockade?
Why does Trump Chickening Out consistently result in Crude prices falling while Trump (or Iran) escalating consistently cause them to spike if Iran is powerless regardless? Why does Trump constantly oscillate between claiming a Deal is imminent and threatening to annihilate Iran if everything is going his way? Presumably he could just go "we've got Iran where we want them and now I'm going to focus on American priorities" and let the problem solve itself.
VIM
1mo ago
No, we have good reason to believe that they (or possibly IDF) aircraft were doing it on March 26 (this is ignoring that the US flew B-2s and a ton of escorts deep inside Iran to hit Fordow in the summer of 2025) because of the complaints about the mines in Shiraz.
Just outside of the week, if you toll from the 26th as a minimum start date for penetration bombing. Much longer than that, if you toll from March 4.
I'd appreciate if you actually provided hard proof of this but I'll take your word for it. Regardless, I don't see the difference of one week or two as being particularly significant in this case, and if it began when Hegseth claimed then presumably there would be hard evidence as is the case with the bridge. Perhaps they began using bombs on March 4 to hit the fringes of Iran but that wouldn't quality as penetration bombing.
Either Iran's air defenses are pretty bad (they hit all of three manned aircraft - for reference, the Iraqis got three manned aircraft on the opening day of Desert Storm, and the day after that, and the day after that, too) or US ISR is so good that it just routes US aircraft around them nearly infallibly. (Or your theory is true and all the photos of aircraft with JDAMS on DIVIDS are just for show.) It wouldn't really surprise me if US ISR (and ability to communicate it to forces in theatre) has improved considerably since ODS and that is playing a large role here.
I'd break it into three stages.
At the beginning of the (pre-ceasefire stage of) war, the US almost entirely relied on standoff munitions to the point where you couldn't even find a photo of a plane taking off with bombs. Iranian air defense couldn't even conceivably hit anything because they were outranged.
In the middle of the war, the US began using JDAMs to hit the absolute fringes of Iran, like Tabriz and Bandar Abbas. This is when Iran's ambush-posture IR air defenses began actually scoring hits on manned fighters, like the F-35 earlier in March. Nevertheless, modern jets are designed with plenty of cameras to detect any incoming fire so that particular F-35 was unlucky; they were either caught in a blind spot or they happened to fly right past a loitering 358 missile.
At the end of the war, CENTCOM started to try to actually penetrate into Iranian airspace to drop bombs and either within the week or by the end of the week the US lost multiple planes in a day, and then lost six more in the subsequent rescue mission. At that point it became clear that you can't fight a "low cost" war with Iran; you can accept failure and leave, you can accept a much higher casualty rate to sustain the bombing campaign without massive use of standoff munitions or you can waste the entire global stockpile of said munitions and wind up in the same place a few months later. Judging by the repeated urgent leaks coming from every which direction on catastrophic stockpile shortages it seems Trump chose the third.
If my story is true then it makes perfect sense that Trump immediately cut his losses and has been desperately searching for an offramp whereas if your story is true then it makes no sense whatsoever that Trump agreed to a ceasefire instead of escalating the bombing.
VIM
1mo ago
You claimed that UAE “literally flew a cargo plane loaded with billions of dollars in cold hard cash to Tehran”. None of that comes from Reuters (your Tabnak link doesn’t even link back to Reuters). The only Reuters reporting I have found (discussed on a different thread here) does not allege this either. They allege that the UAE had released to Iran $3 Billion of its own funds, I.e. toggling permission.
“Weakmanning”? You claim that UAE is so desperate that they sent a plane loaded with cash. Gulf states are loading planes with pallets of cash to pay Iran off. This is central to how you phrased your own argument. This comes entirely from Tabnak. It is not credible at all.
Let's disaggregate the claims: Reuters claims Iran received billions of dollars from the Emiratis, OSINT discovered that the UAE flew a cargo plane directly to Tehran and the Iranian media claims that cargo plane was specifically loaded with billions of dollars.
The core of the argument is provided by Reuters and the Iranians are only adding specific context that only the Iranians (or Emiratis) would know. Normally Iranian media wouldn't be particularly trustworthy but in this case Occam's Razor suggests that the Emiratis wouldn't just fly a cargo plane to Tehran in the middle of a war for sport.
You are regurgitating Iranian propaganda. Absurd
See what I mean?
If the question is "what are the Iranians demanding?" then the actual absurdity is trusting serial liar Trump over the Iranians themselves.
Even more absurd is claiming Trump has more authority in the Middle East while pointing to a "peace deal" that Netanyahu responded to by practically laughing in Trump's face and calling him a stupid goy, or claiming that the comparative lack of attacks granted to the countries paying the Mullahgeld is evidence of Iranian weakness.
VIM
1mo ago
I am also skeptical of your broader claim. Overall, Iranian air defenses likely performed worse than Iraq's in Desert Storm against manned aircraft.
Are you accounting for the sortie rate? The Coalition ran over 100,000 sorties from January to February whereas the USAF over the entire Iran conflict to this point ran just over 10,000. Not to mention that the Coalition didn't have access to MQ-9s or all of the other "exquisite weapons" they have today. Iranian air defenses are far less likely to be in a position to target manned aircraft than those of the Iraqis when said manned aircraft are launching JASSMs from well beyond their range.
The counterpoint is
In terms of a concrete timeline, Hegseth said that the US was switching to bombs on March 4, 2026. There's at least evidence of mines dropped in Shiraz dated to March 26, the US bombed the Karaj bridge with a JDAM on April 2, indicating strikes by bombs against targets far inland by that point at a minimum. Iran hit one F-35 on March 19 and 1 F-15E and 1 A-10 (doing CSAR for the F-15) on April 3. A ceasefire was declared on April 7, but on April 5 (the same day the WSO was recovered) Iranians are said to have reported a number of aircraft overflights, including over Isfahan and Alborz - hardly exterior provinces.
Ignore the statements and go purely by confirmed cases: the Karaj bridge was hit on April 2nd, suggesting that's around the time the USAF began actually penetrating Iranian airspace to drop bombs. The next day, April 3, two (manned) jets are hit and by the end of the week there's a ceasefire in place. That's a week between the US switching to bombs and the US agreeing to a ceasefire.
I don't think that this data (which I am eyeballing, so welcome for any corrections) necessarily excludes the narrative you put forward, but I don't think it maps cleanly onto it. There's no real indication that the US slowed down after the F-35 was tagged on the 19th and there's evidence of a surge on the 5th, after the F-15E and A-10 were shot down.
The F-35 was hit over the southern coastline, it wasn't deeply penetrating Iranian airspace to drop bombs. The first confirmed "deep strike" JDAM is on the 2nd, the pilot gets downed on the 3rd, the USAF uses basically everything it has to rescue said pilot on the 5th and then there's a ceasefire by the 7th. Again, within the week.
If Iran's air defenses were really as weak as you seem to think then the USAF would have no reason to waste so many JASSMs and other expensive standoff munitions, nor would Trump have any reason to agree to a ceasefire. They could simply fly over Tehran dropping bombs at will as the Iranians impotently shake their fists the way they treated Iraq after the Gulf War or Syria today.
VIM
1mo ago
Your source for this is Iranian news outlet Tabnak, which offers as proof two pictures of a plane flying over Tehran.
No, the original source is Reuters. This is just weakmanning.
If you would read the article you linked, you would see that Israel rejects the deal because it asks them to make certain withdrawals, and the Board of Peace is making clear that Hamas will be disarmed before Israel has to commit to any such withdrawals.
The Israelis rejected the deal and Trump's BoP was incapable of forcing them to accept it. Now they're trying to alter the deal, except Hamas won't accept the altered deal, they want the deal Trump said the Israelis agreed to in the first place.
Again, this is terrible example of proving that America has more influence since both Israel and Hamas are pretty clearly defying Trump.
America attacks Iranian allies, this is proof that Iran could win if they want to... Ok, when should we expect Iran to finally cripple Gulf oil production? Or barring that, since Gulf countries are paying the Iranians bribes, when should we expect Iran's financials to turn around?
At the beginning of the war, Iran had to fire hundreds of missiles and drones at the Gulf to land just a few hits on critical infrastructure. Now their proxies can do the same with far smaller volleys. It has been effectively demonstrated that American bases are incapable of protecting these countries from Iranian missiles, hence why they've switched to paying them off. The fact that American allies are more confident in paying bribes to American enemies than paying America for protection is a pretty clear sign of defeat.
You are just repeating the worst sort of slop Iranian propaganda while calling me credulous. Do you want to defend the position that, any day now, "The Strait would become about as profitable as Alphabet ($132B in 2025)"? Can we make a bet on this? Please?
I have no idea how much they're going to get as revenue. I'd imagine the Gulf countries paying the Mullahgeld aren't going to be keen on revealing the total outlays so they'll resort to moving it around quietly like the Emiratis did. Regardless you're changing the subject because we're established that
- Iran is demanding a toll on the Strait, literally the one thing you said Trump would never allow, and
- Iran has already extracted revenue from their hold of the Strait
Quick question: if Trump simply pulls a Joe Kent and abandons the Strait to Iranian tolls while pretending he doesn't care, would you still call it a great American victory?
It seems like Iran is just months away from tolling the strait
No, they DID toll the Strait! The Emiratis gave them billions of dollars! This isn't something that will happen, it already happened!
VIM
1mo ago
How is Iran going to rebuild their manufacturing when we can bomb it whenever we want and they are running out of money?
The last time the USAF tried switching from using stand-off munitions to dumb bombs they began rapidly taking airframe losses and nearly had a pilot taken hostage. Hence why they instead used up nearly the entire inventory of ATACMs and PrSMs.
VIM
1mo ago
Going down the list,
Critics say that Iran is winning because they now control the Straits of Hormuz. In reality it appears that trade in the Gulf is returning to pre-war levels as it risks the Straits or bypasses them entirely:
The UAE, for example, is already exporting at 85% of pre-war levels.
The UAE is the worst possible example because they literally flew a cargo plane loaded with billions of dollars in cold hard cash to Tehran to pay the Mullahgeld. The fact that Iran's neighbors are now paying them protection money to use a strait that was previously free is a point for "Iran is winning".
Critics say that the Iran War has driven America's allies to shake off American leadership. In fact we see the opposite:
Reconstruction. Recently, the Board of Peace announced, over the objections of Iran, an unprecedented agreement to disarm Hamas
A bizarre example considering Israel also rejected the deal. Not that you have many better examples, considering the other Gulf "allies" are currently either begging Iran to stop hitting them or paying them protection money, kind of the opposite of what you'd expect strengthened American allies to do.
America recently carried out strikes in Iraq, working with the Saudi military, to push out Iranian militias, and is now concluding multi-billion dollar business deals:
Again, you keep giving examples that prove the exact opposite of what you intend. The Saudis attacked Iraqi militias because they launched a coordinated attack along with the Houthis on their oil infrastructure, effectively demonstrating that Iran can cripple Gulf oil production relying entirely on proxies hitting the production sites directly should a Hormuz blockade be insufficient.
How's Iran's Nuclear Program doing?
In the same place as it was after Midnight Hammer, which is to say that it's irrelevant to judging the success of this war.
But the general consensus is that Iran's centrifuges were definitely evacuated and their HEU is either spread across the country, evacuated to a new location or sitting at Fordow waiting to be dug out. It would not be particularly hard in any case for the Iranians to turn said HEU into a bomb regardless but I personally think the odds they race for a bomb are actually pretty low, if only because the Saudis or Emiratis getting a nuke is about the only way they could deter Iran alone at this point.
Trump, Iran, and Oman are apparently on the cusp of announcing another deal to reopen the Strait. But it increasingly doesn't matter: Iran needs to make a deal because their economic crisis is so acute, while America and the rest of the Gulf can shrug it all off as increasingly a minor inconvenience...
Trump won. Trump was right from the beginning. The Iran war is below-the-fold news now.
Iran will never toll the strait
The deal Iran cut with Oman includes a 5-7% toll, a ban on "Zionist shipping" and an exemption for the Chinese, hence why the oil price is rising again. If we count confirmed Mullahgeld payments like the UAE's moneyplane then not only will Iran toll the strait but they have already tolled the strait so even by your definition Trump lost.
Then again, I'm sure even if ships literally had to sail through a giant gate marked "IRAN TOLL BOOTH" generating Iran tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue every year you would still find some way to pretend that this was all part of Trump's master plan.
VIM
1mo ago
The typical economically right wing explanation for the rising cost of living would be that the government is spending beyond its means, resulting in money printing and inflation which ultimately enrich those connected to the government at the expense of the broader public.
But obviously Ben Shapiro and Dan Crenshaw can't make an argument like that when they're trying to justify spending untold billions on a wildly unpopular war after Trump explicitly ran on "no new wars".
Consequently, they're reduced to playing dumb, either mildly dumb by pretending it's all about the cost of food vis-a-vis other expenses or downright retarded by pretending that the issue is about literal $20 burritos and going "heh, don't you know burritos aren't actually $20". They're basically in the same position as Biden was four years ago; they can pretend nothing is wrong or they can blame the last guy. Neither is likely to work.
VIM
1mo ago
They're obviously incompetent since they claimed their goal was to destroy the tiny militia located in a territory entirely encircled by their forces and in the end they wound up having to release thousands of ostensible deadly terrorists while leaving said militia still in control.
The only real dispute is whether they're incompetent cowardly losers who were too militarily inept to defeat Hamas or whether they're incompetent cowardly losers who were too politically inept to engineer circumstances sufficient to kill or displace the entire population of Gaza.
It's strange how we have to pretend that the fact that these clowns who haven't won a war since 1982 have failed at their objectives is an indication of anything other than their incompetence.
VIM
1mo ago
They are not under Israeli sovereignty. Israel doesn't claim to own them or rule them.
If the West Bank isn't under Israeli sovereignty then why are Israeli settlements full of Israeli citizens guarded by the Israeli military located in the West Bank then?
They don't claim to own or rule them, yet they do. Israeli forces freely enter both, kidnap or murder who they please without the slightest accountability. The Israelis effectively exercise sovereignty without all the inconvenient parts that come along with it, like providing basic services or allowing the people there to vote on their leadership.
And if tomorrow Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or the Alpha centauries offer to conquer the west bank and gaza, Israel will welcome them and unroll the red carpet.
Would they? At various times they've also pretended to welcome a Palestinian state, but it's pretty obvious that this is just a pretense so they can absorb the land at their own pace without absorbing the people too.
I think we can guestimate by how many hospitals Gaza ministry of health has claimed to have been destroyed.
Well if we're doing "guesstimates" then my "guesstimate" is somewhere in the mid 6 figures. Around a tenth of the population at the low end, closer to a quarter on the high end. Comparable to the losses of one of the Soviet Republics during WW2, certainly genocidal by any standard.
So did the IDF tank that responded to the ongoing hostage situation by opening fire on the hostages
The antizionists who will be destroying Israel aren't Palestinians but Americans and Europeans. I wasn't saying that Palestinians were going to somehow amass the power to obliterate Tel Aviv in a decade but that the political changes in developed Western countries caused by Israel's campaign in Gaza and the subsequent mess the Middle East has devolved into will ultimately lead to Israel's destruction.
At any rate, the original example I gave was of the Red Army in East Prussia where none of these differences apply. The point is that even a bloodthirsty, vengeful horde led by a brutal tyrant committing the worst atrocities imaginable can still be viewed as the lesser evil when they're up against a genocidaire. "Armed resistance" is far, far short of what Stalin's troops did to the German civilians who fell into their clutches.
Was Stalin "the baddie" in WW2? I personally don't think "the baddie" is a meaningful term; in the vast majority of wars you don't have a choice between the "good guy" and the "bad guy", you have a choice between the "bad guy" and the "worse guy". Stalin and FDR were bad guys (obviously FDR less than Stalin) and Hitler was the worse guy. If Israel is guilty of genocide then it follows that armed resistance is justified; that doesn't make Hamas the "good guy", it makes them the "bad" to Israel's "worse".
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