domain:web.law.duke.edu
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1d ago
I think it's simpler than that even. It just clearly fits the left's fixation on victims.
This is just a less nuanced (and less charitable) articulation of what I said. The Israeli defense of their conduct is, essentially "if the situation was reversed, they'd behave even worse." This is almost certainly true, but also immaterial because the situation isn't reversed and is extraordinarily unlikely to be (and if it is, it will be because Israel systematically alienated every potentially sympathetic party). Which is to say, Israel postures like it is responding to an existential threat, but it isn't. In the here-and-now, the Israeli boot is up the Palestinians' ass and it's pretty clear that a significant share of Israelis are down for ethnic cleansing.
The mere fact that there's a power asymmetry is not sufficient - historically, Palestinians have struggled to win western support, and this was in large part because they've historically made poor victims while Israel could tout being the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. However, the recent war has completely eclipsed prior phases of the conflict in terms of both overall casualties and the general lopsidedness of outcomes, badly eroding any sense of moral high ground. The personage of Benjamin Netanyahu hasn't helped in this regard either.
The basic reality is that Israel is fighting an uphill battle on the PR front, given the raw optics of the current conflict, and zoomers don't have the entrenched preferences of older generations.
On the right it's like a reverse of that, they're anti-idpol
The right is not anti-idpol, so I don't think anti-idpol explains right-wing views on Israel. White identitarians tend to have conflicted views because they tend to be both anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic/anti-Arab. Old school conservatives tend to be uncritically pro-Israel both for some of the same reasons old school liberals do, as well as weirder reasons like millenarianism .
2rafa
1d ago
“Remigration” certainly isn’t official AfD policy, its advocated by the far-right Höcke wing of the party, nor the Weidel center.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
The vibes I'm getting is that Trump was way too bullish on the success of the Fordow strikes. Partly this is just Trump to a T: would he ever admit something didn't go well right away? Per this link, not only Fordow it buried deeper than the MOP bomb is actually rated for (~260 feet vs max disclosed bunker depth of 200, though that figure might be misdirection), but also we only possess about 30 of them -- so we'd only be able to make one more pass or so, given that it was reported that 14 were used. That is to say, a sustained bombing campaign might not have done much more. At least with a single strong strike, you can still deflect most of the blame on Israel, because it really is mostly opportunist. Satellite imagery is hard to parse, and obviously tells you little about the underground condition of the facility, but it's still plausible the cave-ins weren't super extensive. Source which also mentions that there's another facility in Isfahan that also has some deep underground areas, plus the chance Iran has a complex that the US/Israel don't know about, plus the fact that as noted here in thread, the uranium itself was almost certainly moved.
For Iran, in terms of the simple pros and cons, if they really has suffered a multi-year setback, I think there would be a certain logic to setting up a new deal, despite looking weak. There's still probably room for more carrot even so. If we say they really did get a major setback, by making a deal are you truly giving anything up? You'd only be giving up on something you no longer fully have. I was impressed by the initial Trump response to emphasize that he didn't necessarily care about regime change (formally and publicly giving up on it would be one such carrot). Sadly this did not last long. But overall yes, assuming the strikes were successful, there's a good argument to be made that this is the "best" (maybe not "good" but "best") chance for a longer solution since at least the JCPOA?
In terms of potential (middle to long term) blowback, I see two main routes. One, some kind of cynical move by China where they lend Iran tons of stuff as a major proxy, in a way that for Russia/Ukraine they didn't fully commit to. I don't actually list major reprisals on US troops by e.g. Iraq militias because I don't think that makes a massive difference in the long term. Two, and this is the true scary one you refer to, if the Iranian navy actually does try and fully close the straight, and gets in a shooting war with the US Navy, this is actually one of the worst-case scenarios (the true worst-case scenario is the Iran detonates a dirty bomb in Israel, but I doubt they'd be able to pull it off and it would make them an actual international pariah). It's possible the US Navy would take some losses, and that might lead to a wider war, because it's a major unknown how the public would react to major combat losses. Americans would probably stomach it, despite how ahistoric it would be, and just double down on long range bombing, but the endgame there would be very unclear and it could still snowball into a more conventional-ish war. It's just, anything short of losing a carrier or major battleship (think 100+ crew) I think wouldn't be enough to overcome the war skepticism.
Under scenario 2, the actual most probably end result would be a bombing campaign, and we get a rehash of history when an American pilot or two gets shot down and captured alive, resulting in yet another hostage situation. From there it's anyone's guess what would happen, but history does offer some clues.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1d ago
Kyoto during COVID and just after was as it should probably best be experienced. Only Japanese, no tourists whatsoever. It is currently a kind of hellhole.
2rafa
1d ago
Regime change isn’t possible without a ground invasion which isn’t possible. Posturing doesn’t change that.
ThisIsSin
Cainanites and Abelists
1d ago
I would model their close ally Hamas as being willing to sacrifice every soul in Gaza to kill a few 10k or 100k Jews.
That doesn't scream "crazy" to me, though.
Parthia has convinced Judea, and by extension Rome, to spend many shekels destroying an enemy who were attacking from, given the wider context, strategically insignificant locations. If Judea wants to occupy that land now they'll be spending even more shekels rebuilding it and spending Judean lives clearing out their own UXO, all for the price of the lives of an ethnic group the other Arabs in the region are all OK with being genocided.
This is exactly the same trade the US is making in Ukraine. For some of the same reasons, I might add; tying Russia up in Ukraine leaves room for the US to reconquer more interesting prizes like Syria all at the cost of checks notes the military hardware that was designed to fight that exact war, that was otherwise just going to age into uselessness anyway.
And no, the use of the odd child soldier does not crazy make, especially if by "child soldier" we mean "fighting-age male, but one young enough to make Westerners big sad" (or the occasional 8 year old with a grenade for the newsreels). Even the Taliban weren't that desperate.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
1d ago
So is McCain not a politician or is bombing not an act of war in your mind?
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
1d ago
My problem with Iran is that I do not have a good model of just how nutty they are, really. I would model their close ally Hamas as being willing to sacrifice every soul in Gaza to kill a few 10k or 100k Jews. Presumably they are less crazy than that.
What do you think of the use of child soldiers and also child martyrs?
back the last century
If by 'last' you mean 'the 19th', sure, I'll grant that. At no point past 1920ish was this true for women (so no woman born/raised in the West knows what it's like to be uniquely oppressed- that it happened once upon a time is their origin myth, just like it is for the Indians); for minorities, at no point in Boomer living memory (post-childhood, so 13+: someone born in '45 would be post-Brown v. Board at that age) were they really oppressed.
It's something their parents and grandparents had reason to take seriously; what we're seeing now is the echoes and turbulence of a once-truth so widely held industry sprung up around it reaching its sell-by date. (This is also why, if LGB organizations did not embrace and pump up T, they'd have faded away like MADD did: their original grievances don't exist any more, hence the lie that they do must be defended ever harder.)
YE_GUILTY
1d ago
However, half the Gaza strip is under the age of ~20.
One can't help but wonder at the natalist implications of this.
I mean, compare to South Korea. Both of these cultures grow up under the specter of the overwhelming firepower of an undying nuclear-armed foe, yet one of them is dissipating into despair and the other is bursting with life. And the less-overwhelmed one is the one that's despairing!
remzem
1d ago
It's never the oppressed's fault if they also oppress. Same with blacks committing crime at high rates and what not in the west. It's the west and Israel's fault.
That situation seems at least as bad as gay conversion camp
If it makes you feel any better (and it is literally the same thing, I'll add), my outgroup claims those don't work. Of course, they would say that, wouldn't they?
Where do you all draw the line? At what point would you intervene?
Depends on the kid, depends on the family. And really, you just do what you can within your strategic and tactical realities/liabilities; you can't influence if you're dead (either to them or more literally).
There does come a point where you just kind of have to trust the kid'll figure it out. Parents stop being the prime authority figures around physical adulthood sexual maturity (for blatantly obvious evolutionary reasons) anyway; this is why, when I hear "the teenage years were hell", I think "yeah, that's 'cause you were bad at parenting/were still under the pretense that the biological age of adulthood is 18, expecting the tricks that worked when they were 5 to work when they're 15, and taking it personally when they do not".
I once met one who was like this- 12 years old, standard fundie-type Christian family, tracked out the ass. Had a bedtime on vacation (wtf?). We watched Dirty Harry and he didn't object over the scenes I would have expected him to get upset over were he a party-liner.
Observably, he's going to be fine. Likely, so will this one.
His long hair was plaited, and every article of clothing was not even unisex, but just straight up girl's clothing and sandals.
Remember, the specific reason those who worship LGBTesus are destructive is that they impose an adult (sexual) outlook on a child not strongly caring about which gender clothes they wear (his behavior is still male, after all). I suspect that it would have been a fight to get him into those clothes if he actually cared; merely failing to care at this age is not really a sign of malfunction.
Actively adopting the other gender's clothes for the sexual reasons that the other gender wears them at a post-sexual-awareness age... that's different. (It's also only a reliable signal of malfunction in men, since there are no male gendered clothes except maybe boxers.)
When should the State intervene?
Given how hard it has been abused against me in favor of specifically this kind of child abuser? So long as the State is unable or unwilling to punish abuse from women in the same degree it does men my answer is "never".
anon_
1d ago
The IAEA declared Iran out of compliance in the runup to the bombings.
I'm a big fan of "stick to the treaties or else the freedom dorrito levels all your facilities" as having the right incentive gradient.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
I would say that this is correct, the left/liberal rhetoric is pro-Islamic mostly by accident (as a byproduct of the anti-racism and anti-discrimination ideas taken to a logical conclusion)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
This is actually part of why Congress or the President will “approve” arms sales - it’s not just national security (making sure we only give restricted tech to people we like) but to some extent foreign politics too. So it’s not like states totally ignore it when it happens, but yeah it’s generally not considered an act of war. This can vary and change over time of course: the Germans started unrestricted submarine warfare in WWI, and even today the Chinese throw a fit when we sell to Taiwan despite literally telling them we’d continue to do so over 50 years ago
anon_
1d ago
It's also a mixed bag what happens during succession. That's always been the concern in Pakistan, not necessarily who is in charge at the moment, but the wildcard that happens when regimes change.
anon_
1d ago
As opposed to brainrotted Boomers who think women and minorities are oppressed.
I mean, they were back the last century. At best, they're just slow to update and relying on cached thoughts from when they could last think independently. In that sense, it's less like rot and more like calcification/ossification.
anon_
1d ago
I'm sure they grow up hearing stories of friends/family/neighbors who've lost loved ones, been injured, or lost their homes to isreali strikes. If you or I were born there, we'd hate Jews too. I have a very hard time holding teenagers accountable for the beliefs they were born into.
Proportionally more Germans and Japanese folks lost loved ones to Allied bombing and yet 20 years later both of them were singing god bless America.
Perhaps a Japanese teenager during Hiroshima would be justified in hating America. Perhaps he saw his siblings die a slow death of radiation poisoning. I wouldn't judge his hate as unnatural or misplaced, only as counterproductive to his (individual and national) well being.
Understanding that one's reaction to events is not intrinsically true and that one's immediate inclination may not be wise is one of those critical mental milestones.
UwU
1d ago
This is predicated on Iran not developing a nuke in the next few years without the most recent conflict. It's impossible to know with only public information, but at least the US and Israel believed Iran was close enough to one to warrant an attack.
ABigGuy4U
1d ago
The current state of R/Stupidpol is against the spirit of everything that the late Comrade General Secretary Dolezal stood for, and all currents of her revolutionary thought as transcribed in the Little Beige Book. I can only conclude the subreddit was covertly overrun and subverted by wreckers, Kulaks, and Gucci-ist counterrevolutionaries.
anon_
1d ago
I don't know that this works. LGBT folks in Egypt or Indonesia are powerless victims, their majority-muslim societies are their oppressors. You don't see the left fixated on them.
anon_
1d ago
I'm not sure I really understand why so many zoomers are so rabidly pro-Palestine.
I doubt there's a single explanation, but one crystalized point made recently on x was that leftism and islamic radicalism are both ideologies on the (relative) decline. BLM was the high water mark of left and can't win much any more. ISIS, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood are all basically defunct.
Sure, but I don't think they're getting stuck in Iran. That said, I also think nuclear weapons are overrated, and while it's likely worthwhile to launch delaying tactics... once Iran has the bomb, what exactly are they going to do with it? Iran already knows that Israel has sufficient nuclear capacity to glass Iran, and Iran already has (or by all rights, should have) sufficient conventional weapons manufacturing capacity (possibly aided by the Chinese) to turn Israel into a parking lot. I think they'll sell them to African nations for shits and giggles and maybe explode some other neighboring nation's capital city CoD 4-style (Baghdad?), but that's about it unless they can convince Egypt to take the hit. Iran can't hit the US and if they try, they'll be quickly reminded that the Tomahawk was primarily designed with a thermonuclear payload in mind.
Which is probably why Israel is right to declare open season on Iranian allies right next to them. The thing about nuclear weapons is mainly that they allow small nations to go toe to toe with nations many times their size (they are, quite literally, the nation-state equivalent of personal firearms)- not relevant for the Iranians, very relevant for the Israelis (and the North Koreans, and the South Africans back before they entered their current cold civil war, and the Libyans, and the Ukrainians), and very very relevant for the Palestinians.
Ukraine, sure- both because Russia sucks, but also because the entire country is one big open field. That's why the Russians want it; a war fought against NATO in Ukraine is one that isn't being fought in Russia, a war fought against NATO in Prussia isn't one being fought in Ukraine, a war fought against NATO in East Germany is one that isn't being fought in Prussia.
Iran, on the other hand, is actually in a solid strategic position; Rome encircled it, warred against it, even outlasted it, but never conquered it. Seafaring peoples don't have that level of power projection- they discover this when they inevitably try to conquer Afghanistan- and the desert west of Iran is trivially conquerable by Iran simply because it's a desert. Ain't exactly much to defend, or many people to defend it with, out there. Judea is in the strongest tactical position and yet for most of its history it's been governed by one or other empire that, ultimately, revolves around Iran.
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