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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   9137 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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Look, I understand that Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria were glorious boondoggles.

Iraq actually went rather well by these standards. And it's still shit.

It's an incompetent regime.

The Soviets were incompetent for 70 years. I mean, to the point of holding all of Ukraine and STILL not being able to feed themselves. Still took a leader not willing to massacre his way out to allow it to fall. The Iranian regime is still willing to massacre its way out.

Iraq's pretty fine.

Unless the Shia clerics can drink blood and summon rain, you can't kill your way out of having no water. The Islamic Republic has foolishly pushed themselves into a position where no amount of force will overcome its problems. It reminds me of Xerxes whipping the ocean for its insolence. One hundred million people living in a mountainous desert can't be denied water. Even the Soviets - hell, even the North Koreans and the Khmer Rouge - did not run out of water.

I can't overstate enough how incompetent you have to be to overlook this very obvious problem, of their own making. If the Iranian opposition starts getting denied water, they have literally nothing to lose but their lives - which their evil government is determined to do by dehydration and starvation. Just to make sure... you do know that humans require water to live, right?

The humanitarian catastrophe is already priced in: intervention is the difference between a impoverished but recovering democracy and an atrocity on par with the Great Leap Forward.

Even the Soviets did not run out of water.

The Aral Sea begs to differ.

Unless the Shia clerics can drink blood and summon rain, you can't kill your way out of having no water.

They don't have literally zero water. And killing indeed reduces demand, though it's unlikely they'll kill enough to make a dent.

If the Iranian opposition starts getting denied water, they have literally nothing to lose but their lives - which their evil government is determined to do by dehydration and starvation.

So the government simply reserves what water it has for its security forces, and the dehydrated and starving people are easier to kill.

The humanitarian catastrophe is already priced in: intervention is the difference between a impoverished but recovering democracy and an atrocity on par with the Great Leap Forward.

Note that the regime which did the Great Leap Forward is still in power.

Unless the Shia clerics can drink blood and summon rain, you can't kill your way out of having no water.

North Korea has survived famines without a regime change, and they can't drink blood and summon rain.

A famine isn't a drought. People can go without food for a month, very uncomfortably. People without water for a month are dead.

Iraq actually went rather well by these standards. And it's still shit.

Iraq is doing about as well as a non-GCC Arab country can do for now. Judged against its peers, it’s got good growth, a functioning economy with real median income having increased a lot in the last decade, and as a basket case of ethnic tensions between Sunni Arabs, Shias and Kurds it’s being vaguely held together with comparatively minimal violence.

In general though I agree with your point.

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