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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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Look at Northern Ireland. The greatest recruiting campaigns for the IRA were when the British Army did something stupid and cruel.

If you're a Palestinian, your choice is between "Trust the Israelis and the IDF, the same IDF targeting hospitals, the same IDF shooting kids collecting water. Or Hamas, who may be sons of bitches, but they're our sons of bitches".

I don't think the limiting factor for Hamas is recruits or manpower. It's not a binding constraint.

Meanwhile, the Japanese didn't have any trouble trusting the US even after we obliterated an entire city, hospitals and all. Or maybe they didn't trust us but realized that when one starts a war, one takes the chance that they will lose and be conquered, at which point they wouldn't have a choice one way or the other.

All the Japanese had to trust is that if they kept on we'd keep killing them until they surrendered, were all dead, or at least mere remnants scattered through the countryside with all the cities and industry destroyed. And that the alternative of surrender was better than that. And they were right -- the US didn't have any more nukes at the time so it would have taken more time and US lives than they may have thought, but they had no winning scenario at that point.

Gazans either think they can win because of some outside force making Israel back down to the point of ceasing to exist, or they don't care -- they prefer fighting uselessly against Israel to the alternatives. And given that the demonstrated alternative was living in Gaza, being fed by the UN and still being able to shoot rockets over the wall from time to time, that's pretty damned dumb. If they'd been willing to actually stop shooting rockets and stirring up trouble in Egypt, they'd have done better than that. But they aren't.

the US didn't have any more nukes at the time so it would have taken more time and US lives than they may have thought

Groves thought a third bomb would be ready to drop on Japan a week after Nagasaki and could be dropped as soon as weather permitted after that. Even after the surrender, the next bomb was still ready by the end of August. After that things slow up a lot for the next year, from an expected rate of 3 accelerating to 7 bombs per month down to only enough plutonium cores for a bomb every month or two, but I'm not sure if that's because of unexpected difficulties or just because they declined to ramp up production after their expected target finally surrendered.