functor
6mo ago
No one originally wanted to invade Afghanistan or reshape it into a modern western ally. We just wanted to capture/kill Bin Laden and other Al Qaida leaders, and stop Afghanistan from being used as a terrorist training center. That was accomplished.
Occupying a country to find one person or even a handfull of Saudis and Egyptians is absurd overkill. Besides, the taliban were willing to cooperate to hand them over.
The issue is neocons and globalists can't really accept that there isn't a part of the world without feminism, hollywood movies and American imperialism. They rather spend 20 years bombing a meaningless plot of land than accept that there is a realm outside of the liberal paradigm.
Turns out it's very difficult to change a culture!
They managed to make the west woke. Admittedly it took a century but they assumed they could speed up the process with more advanced tech and military superiority. What was underestimated was the resolve and bravery of the Afghan people, who put up a 20 year long heroic defence.
functor
10mo ago
The start -stop behaviour is fairly unnatural. People don't do it when walking, cycling, boating or ridng horses. It is really a car specific behaviour. Urban areas existed for thousands of years without traffic lights and then as soon as the car came they were all over the place. Good urban design is less built around starting/stopping and more around interactions. Speed probably needs to come down a lot.
functor
23d ago
The perception of Israel across the world has been in steady decline for the past 1.5 years. More Israeli warmongering and bombing just makes people dislike them more.
functor
23d ago
Who claimed they were pragmatic? They have an ideology that is completely opposed to the western view of war and ruthlessly commit war crimes.
functor
23d ago
The desire for another Iraq war fiasco is extremely low. More war mongering in the middle east, more refugees to Europe, surging oil prices and another forever war was not what Trump campaigned on for a reason. All these wars have been disasters and there is no reason to think the next war won't be as bad as Libya, Iraq, Syria or Yemen.
It is unpopular now and it will be as unpopular as Iraq war 2.0 was once this fiasco has ended.
functor
9mo ago
Fundamentally the solution to this war can't be from an Israeli perspective. We have hundreds of millions of middle easterners and then we have Europe close by. The solution needs to be one that benefits arabs and Europeans.
They have been kicked out of countries 109 times and seem to be a fairly nomadic people. If they want to settle somewhere it has to be on land that is available and doesn't cause a constant headache for the rest of us. The jewish autonomous oblast is bigger than Israel and available to jews.
functor
9mo ago
Lebanon has been bombed regularly for decades, has had large groups of Palestinians pushed into its territory and Israel is fighting wars in both Syria and Palestine. They have every reason to militarize against Israel
functor
9mo ago
you can't beat Muslim terrorists and militias and will only make it worse so don't even try- a lot amongst Americans (usually left leaning ones) and I don't get it.
How did 20 years of bombing Afghanistan go?
Why should they not fight back when getting occupied? Why should I as a right winger support people who went to the middle east and try to bring wokeness and globalism to the third world? The neo con/globalists wars have caused massive waves of refugees to Europe. There is no critical race theory and gender studies in Iraq. They fought back and kicked the globalists out.
These wars have given us nothing but a surveillance state, migrants, and debt. It is a good thing that the locals manage to resist.
functor
10mo ago
Of course, if you're determined to be charitable you will interpret any "death to [country]" chant as a desire to merely rid it of the bad elites in a manner surgical enough to not kill the entire country, or at least large amounts of countrymen. However, it does not appear to work out that way often.
Why are they chanting death to America and not death to Iceland, Zimbabwe or Uruguay? It is clear that they are motivated by the absolutely abhorrent policies that american impoerialists have imposed on them. They are fighting the same military industrial complex that is a cancer on western societies.
I'm also curious if you'd extend the same charity to the domestic extremists who say "death to AmeriKKKa".
A lot of that crowd seem to be actively pushing the same wokeness as the people trying to impose gender studies on Afghans. If they strictly meant the NSA, black rock and Lockheed Martin I would support it. If they want to impose all sorts of wokeness then I don't support it.
functor
23d ago
The US and Israel no longer want to do nation building and building friendly regimes. They are going for destruction. The new model is turning countries into Libya or Syria. Wrecked countries controlled by various competing militias. A disaster for the country, an eradication of the local Christians and a refugee crisis or Europe.
functor
2mo ago
lithium mining
Being self sufficient is a goal in itself. Being reliant on other countries is a risk.
It creates good jobs in the US.
More smaller mines and processing plants in different countries is less risky than having a globally centralized industry.
functor
4mo ago
Small oversea territories provide little value to a high cost. The UK has to be able to control and defend a bunch of insignificant islands half way around the world. This ranges from peacetime patrolling of fisheries to a potential falklands like war. Having small islands doesn't provide any real strategic benefit, it just provides a few thousand citizens for whom providing NHS services will cost a fortune and provides the military with a continuous headache.
The UK would be far better off if it stopped larping global hegemon and simply accepted that it is a mid sized country like Holland and stopped getting involved in far away places.
functor
5mo ago
First off the British military wasn't incompetent enough to get pwnd that hard. The Israelis were defending military outposts with hundreds of soldiers and got owned by men in sandals running over an open field. Of the 797 civilian casualties a large portion was killed by Israel blasting the area and preferring to kill civilians rather than letting them be taken prisoners. That is a civilian to military casualty rate well below two civilians killed by Hamas for every IDF soldier.
functor
6mo ago
These terrorist attacks have nothing to do with middle eastern conflicts
How would fighting multiple wars in the middle east not be connected to blow back? Having large well organized and well equipped jihadist groups can very well cause terrorism in other countries. 9/11 wouldn't have happened without the CIA-asset Bin Ladin, multiple attacks in Europe have been conducted by people trained in the middle east. The ideological inspiration, propaganda and connections between jihadists in the middle east and the west do exist. Terrorism increased markedly in Europe during ISIS hay day in Syria.
The neo-con project, mass immigration and terrorism are intertwined.
functor
7mo ago
NATO expansionism into every last corner of the map is pro-war. Russia wanted to negotiate over and over again. Zelensky's election platform wasn't that different than the Minsk agreements.
functor
9mo ago
They are largely middle eastern jews. In other words, lower IQ than eastern European jews. A nation of bazaar hagglers isn't really that martial. Israel performs abysmally in international sport for a reason. They aren't a physical people.
functor
9mo ago
South Africa was not facing existential threat from invading armies.
The Boer who have lived there for 400 years are effectively second class citizens.
France was not facing existential threat from invading armies.
They lost a part of France with a million ethnic French people that had been French for over a century.
Israel doesn't need (or use) nukes to subjugate a population. It can use nukes to mitigate existential threat from invading armies.
There won't be any, it will be death by a thousand cuts.
Unlike Rhodesia, the Israelis have nukes that can be used to mitigate existential threats from invading armies.
There was no vast army of tanks that rolled into Rhodesia. Rhodesia fell because it was being hit constantly by endless insurgency.
Israel is not an apartheid state in which a minority is attempting to rule over a much larger majority that dominates the demographics of the interior of the state
Over two million Palestinian citizens. Also much of Israel is within range of being engaged by Palestine. Even Houthis have hit Israel twice from 2000 km away. Thinking that Israel can just ignore a large group of people 10s of km away is naive.
sufficient strategic depth
West bank to the sea is 20+ km. That is minimal strategic depth.
which were not MAD contexts.
Israel isn't going to nuclearly destroy the west bank.
functor
10mo ago
You have it fundamentally backwards. Israel not only already substantially opened up shortly before Oct 7,
Israel was expanding the occupied terrirories on the west bank, had killed hundreds of Palestinians during 2023 and had thousands of Palestinian hostages. They were conducting a blockade against Gaza.
Endless death and war on the other hand is in the Hamas' interest, since it lets them generate western and arab support and keeps them in power.
It isn't endless. Algeria was French for a century, now it isn't. Rhodesia was British for a century, now it isn't. They are turning Israel into the next Vietnam and making Israel fundamentally unsustainable. The US left most of Iraq and all of Afghanistan because it simply wasn't going to end. Israel minus Palestinians and ultra orthodox is about 1/60th of the US but trying to occupy a quarter as many people as the US tried to occupy with the help of Britain and several other countries in 2003.
functor
11mo ago
Is it Dems or Reps being cucked?
Both. They might as well have come to the speech in a gimp suit.
Who is fighting the brutal war?
Israel is fighting with a genocidal level of brutality.
Why would the Palestinians not put up armed resistance? I find it amazing that Americans talk about gun rights yet don't expect others to fight when they are being occupied.
functor
3d ago
Israel killed as many civilians in two months as Russians killed in 3.5 years of fighting against a far more competent opponent.
functor
2mo ago
If china was just producing plastic junk it wouldn't be an issue. BYD can produce cars at a similar quality as American companies while using their enormous home market, their mineral and processing capacity and the fact that Chinese engineers cost 20% of what American engineers cost. Far more Chinese people in the 100-120 IQ range go into trades while the west unfortunately dumps low Iq people into these jobs while pushing the slightly above average into meaningless office jobs.
Free trade was great in 1950 when the US bought bananas and sold cars. It isn't great when almost everything can be produced in China, India, Poland or Vietnam. China can even compete with AI models and satellite systems. The US can't compete without tariffs. The US risks becoming a real estate bubble using debt to buy goods from Asia.
Free trade was based on American supremacy, the rise of tariffs is the US becoming one country among many. The US isn't a global empire any more, they are a sphere of influence and need to be self sufficient.
Also with covid and Ukraine we should have learned that self sufficiency is paramount and that the US shouldn't be dependent on convoluted global supply chains. Having several supply chains in the world with local suppliers is a lot less fragile.
Jarvis pull up the gazan death toll in the latest war
Lower than what the Vietnamese, Algerians or Afghans paid.
I again remind you that Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza,
So they took all the land except for a tiny sliver with minimal natural resources and no connection to the west bank and then put it under blockade.
As simple as that, yet you only apply the standard one way.
Because there is absolutely no reason for the IDF to be there. The idea that a God gave them the land in exchange for parts of babies penises is absurd as a legal argument. The Palestinians did not start the fight, people who managed to get all of Eastern Europe to hate them and then decided to move to Palestine started the conflict.
They couldnt take a city in a year and pacify it even with exceptional brutality and completely cutting off Gaza from the rest of the world.
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