domain:anarchonomicon.com
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
12m ago
Oh man, if you think that's bad, AI studio will drive you mad. I was asking it what it could do (using 2.5 pro always of course since it's free) and we got onto its TTS abilities. I checked the list of dozens of star names like achernar and fenrir and asked it why none of them mention which ones are male or female and it rattled off a wall of text about how Google wanted to promote inclusivity, avoid gender stereotyping and focus on function over form.
After it refused to reply to my 'lol fuck you' I developed my argument into "actually people have been able to readily distinguish male voices from female for thousands of years, so it doesn't matter what lofty goals Google has, what they have done is reduce function due entirely to form." after some more sparring it admitted that the function of a Google TTS bot is to optimise its immediate task, not shape future behaviour and it agreed to tell me which names were which gender.
Victory? No, not even close. All of its voices were named after their accent followed by a person's name - not star names. It apologised and explained how to find the voices named the way it said they were. Incorrectly. Those names did not exist, nor did the pulldown menu it told me to use. I explained that, and it apologised again and explained google had rolled out the new chirp3 system and so the actual names were Vega, Sirius, maia and so on. Incorrect again. None of those names were available to me. By now it was beating itself up pretty hard, and the conclusion it came to was that Google were a/b testing and it asked if I could tell it some of the names I saw in the list so it could piece together our disconnect. I mentioned achernar and fenrir and gacrux and acherd and it finally managed to give me a list of voices that sounded male and voices that sounded female. One of them was clearly an effiminate man, but the rest were spot on.
It was a lot of effort for very little reward, but I was just fucking around with AI studio anyway, and I found the entire thing much more interesting than frustrating. This was the best version of Google's ai looking at another part of itself and whiffing so completely I was beginning to feel sorry for it. And yet the tech is still so much better than it was a year ago that I can't help but be optimistic about it. I use ai instead of search now pretty much every day and I have only been blindsided by a hallucination once so far. Search is still better for... things you already know the answer to, I agree. No, just kidding, search is better for simple stuff like that for sure, the big benefit of ai imo is it collates all the information you would usually have to browse multiple sources for into one place - then you check the sources and one might be nonsense but the others are usually good.
sun_the_second
13m ago
If you know how to hack the real world, why would you write novels?
jake
23m ago
The event mentioned here is the 20-month long Great March of Return.
"Protestors" accepts framing and implies them as the righteous party. Week after week these groups showed up to "demonstrate" and week after week people there got shot and killed. At a certain point it's no longer "protesting," if it ever was, it's about optics, and if it's about optics, well -- TPOASIWID and the purpose of the Friday "protests" was to produce dead Palestinians.
"Gunned down" evokes imagery of incidents of massed concentrated fire at civilians, and that isn't right either. Across those 20 months, Israeli soldiers, I think almost all snipers did fire on Palestinians, totaling 9,204 injured and 223 killed. 46 are listed as "children" but the citation is "minors under the age of 18."
The one claimed definite child was this:
An eight-month-old child, Leila al-Ghandour was widely reported, following an initial statement by the Gaza Health ministry, to have been a victim of tear-gas at the border. The following day, the Gaza Health Ministry announced that it was not certain of the cause of death and two weeks later struck her name off the official list of people killed during the protests. In a court case against a Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades militant, who had been captured on the border, the indictment stated that man in question was a relative of the deceased's parents, and had stated the latter had been paid by Yahya Sinwar, the head of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades in Gaza, about US$2,200 to report to the media that she had died of tear gas inhalation rather than from a pre-existing medical condition.
But even if this had been true, that a baby had died from tear gas inhalation, it wouldn't have been the IDF's fault someone brought a baby.
You will also find this recurrent. Any Palestinian aged 17 years, 364 days or younger is counted as a child. Children can use guns and toss Molotovs. 16-year-olds are not children and if one throws a Molotov at a soldier, whatever they get is what they deserve.
According to the Commission’s data analysis, the Israeli Security Forces injured 6,106 Palestinians with live ammunition at the protest sites during this period.
6,106 opportunities for video, or above, 9,204 total. Where the fuck is it? The absence is deafening. I am told to accept that thousands were unjustly shot and there isn't one single video? Not one single person over 20 months of "protest" thought "I should record this." Why would I accept this? I bet there is video, only it captures what I describe. A Palestinian tossing a Molotov or trying to breach the fence and getting their leg shot off or hit in the gut or groin or chest on a pass-through tumble from a kneecap.
As for that kneecapping, here's an interestingly candid article from Haaretz:
Eden says he broke the “knee record” in the demonstration that took place on the day the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem was inaugurated, on May 14, 2018. He did it jointly: Snipers usually work in pairs – together with a locator, who is also a sniper by training, and whose task is to give his partner precise data (distance from the target, wind direction, etc.).
Eden: “On that day, our pair had the largest number of hits, 42 in all. My locator wasn’t supposed to shoot, but I gave him a break, because we were getting close to the end of our stint, and he didn’t have knees. In the end you want to leave with the feeling that you did something, that you weren’t a sniper during exercises only. So, after I had a few hits, I suggested to him that we switch. He got around 28 knees there, I’d say.”
The sniper shot 42 people in one day, his partner 28. They're boasting or all but about shooting 70 people. I looked for video of this and found one: https://x.com/vic2pal/status/981095851010469888
Gunshot, he instantly falls, couple frames of the wound but it's not graphic. I think you'd have to know it's a gunshot wound to even make sense of it. (And of course you can't actually tell what's going on around him.)
This team in one day produced themselves 70 opportunities for video. Again, boasting or all but, "Yeah sometimes we hit people behind our targets. Bummer." Where's the video? We do know this happened, since both sides say it did. 70 opportunities from one team in one day for video of a bad shot.
Nothing.
From 2015, if something has supposedly happened more than 10,000 times and there isn't video of it, the simplest and only rational explanation is that it didn't happen. The excessively compassionate, I understand how their brains turn off, they just aren't the sort of people who can think past suffering, and that's often good. The inadequately cynical, who talk about how "you think you hate journalists enough but you don't," how much lefties lie, how the crusades were justified and Islam is shit and how much Muslims rape and marry their own cousins, how much human rights organizations are just masks for USAID State Department globohomo/lefty sinecures/looting public coffers, and how the UN is one giant fraud at best or Bilderberg NWO fronting at worst, to have their brains turn off on all of those things they loudly hate because of the word "Jew" is just fucking funny.
But, not an argument, and I'm not saying you're either of these. I'm only saying you should consider if you reached your position from pure reason as applied to evidence, or if you reached it because you read words that aligned with how you already saw things. That you felt convinced by those words when really you were flattered, and you think I might also be convinced. Words won't convince me, I am adequately cynical, I know both sides are nothing but liars, and that's why I want video.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
24m ago
I'd say Sherlock Holmes, but that leans heavily on asspull magic, in my view.
Southkraut
Vibe of vibes, saith the Preacher, vibe of vibes; all is vibe.
27m ago
I'm rather dissatisfied with the entire rational fiction genre, because it all seems to be fantasy that hinges on magic or "magic" systems that just so happen to be navigable by autists with a modicum of rules lawyering or vidya minmaxing skill.
Is there any rationalist fiction that takes place in a completely mundane setting without video game logic or outright ass-pull magic?
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
28m ago
Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin return to Mediterranean for the first time in something like 6 books in a Temu Ship of the Line.
Will Stephen finally get ganked by French Intelligence? Will Aubrey get any on the side? Will they run out of Plum Duff? Let's find out!
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
45m ago
Part of, sure. But im pretty sure they weren’t choosing fashions or foods or other products because they were associated with abolition.
I distinctly remembered reading about a movement to boycott products created using slavery, and it indeed seems to have existed, but was abandonded after a few years due to not working out.
Arnaud
46m ago
But im pretty sure they weren’t choosing fashions or foods or other products because they were associated with abolition.
They absolutely were.
Modern politics isn’t politics as they would have understood it. It’s more of a lifestyle brand in our culture. And in a lot of ways I think I would compare our way of thinking about our political party affiliation much like someone pre-enlightenment might have thought about religious denominations.
Religion was central to politics in medieval Europe, not a distinct thing that was seperate and fenced off. The distinction between the nationalist killing a communist and a catholic killing a protestant is on a conceptual level, not that different. In both cases it is an argument over how the world as we understand it is arranged and who is handing out bread.
Ultimately I think you're starting from a false premise here, or have an odd definition of politics. At the end of the day humans are going to be humans and love showing how much they are part of the tribe through how they dress, act, eat, etc. I mean, just look at the history of nationalism and nationalist movements.
We have a strong interest in Iran.
We don't want another regime change fiasco with another migrant crisis to Europe. The neocon wars have been a disaster for Europe, they have been a disaster for the christians in the middle east and they have destroyed the region. We have a stake in this war, Iran is defending Europe and we should be greatful for that.
The idea that we should keep bombing the middle east because they hate us because we bomb them is silly logic. The US has good relations with Vietnam because the US hasn't bombed them for decades. If the policy was to have an eternal conflict with Vietnam it wouldn't have benefited either party. Pull out of there and focus on trying to mend the relations after decades of horrific wars and crimes committed against the people there.
China is the biggest trading partner in the middle east. They have achieved a significant economic presence without wasting trillions bombing weddings, running torture camps and backing jihadists. If anything the US is doing an excellent job pushing countries toward China as they seek a patron that isn't bombing them.
sun_the_second
1hr ago
I've not heard of Israel killing every Palestinian child who says "when I grow up, I will kill you", or anything to that effect.
Of course, it's "their child soldiers weaponized and brainwashed by propaganda - our lads providing assistance to our guerillas". It's hard to have read the accounts (even if fictional) of Soviet children helping resist the German occupation during WW2 and not have some respect for the child soldier. But the respect comes with tacit understanding that once you pick up the pistol or carry intelligence for the military, the German can kill you and be no more in the wrong than killing your soldiers in general.
2D3D
1hr ago
Quisling because they made the devils bargain with the clerics following the grand mosque seizure. The Hashemites should have won over the house of saud, but they overrepresented their position to the colonial powers and could not capitalize on the fall of the ottomans. There is ONE polity that functions exceptionally well in the region on its own merits, and literally everyone ignores them for reasons that baffle me.
All Arab leaders wish to vacation in the West and fund such travels with their receipts from home. Their domestic political situations make reconciliation with the hardliners impossible because islamists rush to fill any political void and their ability to destroy what little influence the Arab nations have is quite astonishing. Left to their own devices, eternal repression and poverty is the only way the leader can keep his neck off a noose, and so they must beg and abase themselves to anyone willing to lend them some technical experts to keep their rigs flowing and the secret police happy.
Southkraut
Vibe of vibes, saith the Preacher, vibe of vibes; all is vibe.
1hr ago
Finished my reading sample of Ninti's Gate, and ended up not buying the book. Pierce seems to have attempted a show-don't-tell approach to worldbuilding and characterization, but ended up moving the plot along too fast. The characters' motivations were completely opaque and the action made no sense.
So I'm still re-reading The Worm Ourobouros. I dunno why. Maybe the pretentious language gets me. Maybe I'm just a sucker of chivalric romance. I don't regret it.
Also picked up the Cyropaedia, but taking it slow.
2D3D
1hr ago
In my ideal world, every state brazenly implementing such a value function in favour of its own citizens ought to be ganged up on by everyone else, until only countries that assign reasonable value even to foreigners remain
Is whats good for the goose good for the gander? The Arab states CONSISTENTLY display and act on their desire to destroy their proximate enemies, be it the neighbor or village or country or cousin. Israel isn't even the most devastating conflict each of their antagonists engaged in, with Egypt intervening in Yemen to lose more troops than the Yom Kippur War and Syria losing.... well, literally everything. Even their domestic conduct and respect for foreigners leaves much to be desired, as anyone who has ever set foot in any of those countries can attest. Try going for Haj if you're not of superior Arab or acceptable White blood, see how they treat you. If you put your value function as 'fuck these constantly defecting assholes', we have EXISTING proof of such actions being conducted ad nauseum. I maintain that the best path for the Israelis is to just buy out Carnival Cruises and go on a nationwide 4 year booze cruise, and let the region implode upon itself.
LazyLongposter
1hr ago
Two caveats. Firstly, my thesis was not "the US should strike NOW", but that Israel succeeding here is undoubtedly very very good for us, and if they needed help to succeed, I'd want to do so. I say that as someone with skin in the game.
It seems to me that obviously either nations with nuclear warheads can be threatened, in which case they can be deterred. Or they can't be, in which case the United States (and Israel) has nothing to worry about. But you seem to be trying to have it both ways!
Secondly, allow me to rephrase: Nuclear weapons make you functionally immune to a conventional invasion and will make anyone think twice about even striking within your borders. At any point during a real conventional invasion you can consider (or declare) your existence threatened and use them to great effect, either wiping out entire armies or the invaders' home front. They do not make you immune to internal rot, discord, economic decline, or anything else, as the USSR will gladly tell you. That this is your opening argument is disheartening, because I find it quite intellectually dishonest to feign ignorance of that distinction.
As such, I don't worry about someone invading the United States. If decades of discord and hostile messaging (bolstered by adversaries who are quite happy to watch us tear ourselves apart without firing a single shot) leads to the United States to cease to exist as a political entity, then we would be quite susceptible to invasion, be it by a hostile force or something more covert. A "North American" continent with dozens of individual nation states that are likely at each others' throats would present a foreign actor many potential inroads into allying with, occupying, subverting, or otherwise controlling part of the landmass. As I live on that landmass, I'd like the huge boon that "two massive oceans and only two continental neighbors" to stay that way. We already have Chinese and other agents coming through our weak border to the south. Imagine that ten or a hundred fold. That is why we can be both a nuclear power and vulnerable.
Nuclear powers can also be defeated abroad, as in within other people's borders, without really having the right (in international eyes) to use the nuclear option. We have failed to achieve many military objectives, as has Russia, and neither have deployed nuclear weapons. But it also means no one can ever go to the source. As for Iran, yes, they have weapons that can reach us, but they are not yet nuclear capable. Once they are, you essentially waive all your chances to military deterrence. And from there stems the problem. A nuclear Iran can proxy war to their hearts' content. A nuclear Iran can threaten to retaliate to conventional Israeli strikes with nuclear weapons (whereas now only Israel can), leading both to consider a nuclear first strike necessary to preserve their existence/secure their victory, depending on perspective. A nuclear Iran can lock up within its borders when its armaments are exhausted and refill its stockpiles and have a credible threat against anyone trying to stop them. They go from being a regional power to a fact of life unless some sort of unconventional method deters them or causes their regime to collapse. Once again, see America. I am reasonably hopeful that we won't collapse in the near future, and I am also reasonably sure that a nuclear Iran would also last quite a while. Even if they didn't, those nukes would have to go somewhere once they collapse, and that's a huge security risk. All you need is one powerful higher up or base deciding they wanted to get massively rich, or being insanely anti-Israeli/American/whatever to sell or use them.
These were all real arguments up to the end of the Cold War, and they ring true now. Every single nation that develops its own nuclear weapons increases the risk of some sort of horrible outcome, be it an entrenched regime, accident, or sale to/use by crazies within or without the government. I don't want it to happen.
FIRST, the United States does not have infinite capacity to do things. If we actually want to fight China, which we've said we want to be able to do publicly, that means very specifically that we cannot write blank checks where ballistic missile interceptors, smart munitions, etc. are involved. We are already arguably under-equipped to deal with the very real Chinese threat, which will likely be a more serious threat to American hegemony than anything that Iran can do. And part of the reason we are under-equipped to fight China is because we canceled procurement and research programs throughout the Global War on Terror to fund the Global War on Terror – effectively eating our own seed corn.
I agree with this. I admittedly did not make this clear enough in my post, but I must say I am aware of the looming threat of China to American interests and I don't want to be bogged down in this. I really hope that Israel succeeds or Iran comes back to the negotiating table, as you said. However, there are two issues here. Firstly, Iran has been "at the negotiating table" several times, including with previous administrations, leading to billions of funds going into their pockets in return for them only pursuing civil nuclear reactors... which they then proceeded to ignore completely. Secondly, the inverse of your statement is true as well: Iran does not have infinite capacity to do things either. They have already used a huge amount of missiles in the current exchange, and their IADS seems to be in shambles. They may already be close to their limit as far as projecting power is concerned, and dealing with them now is a lot more appealing than waiting for an armistice where they are able to refill their reserves. If they actually nuclearize, or perhaps state their intent to use those weapons against the US, and we suddenly have to divert resources back to them to stop an imminent threat, it will be a lot costlier, and likely bloodier.
And the only reliable way to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is regime change.
I don't know that this is true. There was a lot of fear about Iraq getting one, and after we utterly demolished their ability to make war in the first Gulf War, they were never a credible threat. That's why the "they're making WMDs" justification for Gulf War 2 is a persistent joke.
Second (another commenter posted in response to this but I'm going to put my reply here, as it's relevant and I've received a number of replies) I think the biggest issue with Gulf War 2 (other than doing it) was that we picked the worst middle ground imaginable. We banned every single Ba'ath party member from ever being in government, which is not even a thing we did with the Nazis or Japanese. This essentially left a fledgling government in the middle of a war zone filled with the unqualified, malcontents, and sometimes literal terrorists in power. That Iraq even exists after ISIS is kind of a miracle to me, not that they're somehow doing great. I think we should have either:
- Completely obliterated their military again, ousted their leaders that time, and left.
- Actually worked with the remaining government to allow for some kind of legitimate regime change.
Both of these things are something I would accept, at least on the home front. "Don't fuck with the US or they'll show up, kill all your leaders, and break all your stuff" is at least something we can credibly do multiple countries. We cannot get continuously bogged down in a 20 year nation building/peacekeeping quagmire.
SECONDLY
I somewhat responded to these points above, but I agree partially. I'll explain below.
If Israel conducts the war successfully, they may reduce the cost of a limited US intervention (destroying the buried nuclear facilities with bunker busters – although it's possible that some of them are buried even too deeply for oversized US ordinance!) to near-zero.
As I said above, I want this to happen. As with Ukraine, I like the idea of adversaries blunting themselves against our allies at zero cost to American lives and (relatively) low cost with materiel. As it is, if we're going to have to strike, I want to strike while the iron is hot and their munitions and defenses are depleted. If we're not going to take our hands off the steering wheel of the entire region and withdraw entirely (which I think is a bad idea outside the scope of this already long-winded discussion), then I want it done now when it's going to be the easiest for us to do.
The Iranian regime may not last forever.
I hope it doesn't. The average Iranian is not a lover of their regime, which is why we see regular protests despite the authoritarian nature of their government. While I've mentioned I prioritize American interests over others, I don't want a single life to be lost. But I have to be realistic and consider the fact that their nation will be able to do damage as long as they're in power, even more if they nuclearize.
2D3D
1hr ago
Much of this comment smacks of US centrism rather than contempt of Israel, though Israel certainly is consistently sneered at by everyone. Theres this weird fiction that the USA is God, that the USA simply flexes and all submit before its might, and that flexing is the only reason Israel is able to exist. It ignores the USA flexing on behalf of Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Qatar and UAE and literally any asshole anywhere in the world that has positional relevance against US strategic threats.
Israel is, unfortunately, not merely a puppeteer that will be helpless once the glorious USA has cut off its strings and unshackled itself to this meddlesome burden of irrelevance. Sanctions don't work if someone has useful shit in the first place, as we see with Iran and USA still able to import all manner of European technologies never mind random Asian crap. Israel has a domestic tech base and production capacity that can be spun up irritatingly quickly, and the entirely of Gaza is within dumb artillery range, a capability that Israel can restart with little effort given that they actually manufacture their small arms themselves and are a net exporter of smart arms.
There is this worldview that the great act and the weak suffer as they must, and the defiance of the weak is merely due to the restraint of the great. Russia conducts itself in this way, as if their dominance is assured and their stumbling in Ukraine is an act of deliberately considered mercy on their part. And as Russia acts, so too does this current iteration of USA in its trade wars, where the first order logic is 'US trade is critical for all other economies, so they will all rush to surrender to our threats'. Its a nice comforting logic that means the weak inferiors are about to collapse immediately and all that must be done is to wake up and simply flick the switch to manifest reality. Flicking the switch to turn off Israel will see that country drowned in its own iniquities, but the bright light from Israel is less likely to be its burning and more the activation of its own backups.
sun_the_second
1hr ago
I have to appreciate just how well-handcrafted the brutal math of the setting is. Particularly the shift from Gu Masters to Gu Immortals. I'll spoiler it because the mechanics are not revealed immediately in the story.
Amazing Cultivation Simulator but for Reverend Insanity setting cannot come fast enough.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1hr ago
Based on what you say, I'll probably get to Grave Peril sooner than I otherwise planned, thanks.
I agree with @Muninn that the first two books are just OK. Book 3, for me, is where the series really grabbed me as something special. And from there on out he keeps that high level of quality pretty consistently.
2D3D
2hr ago
If everything is Genocide, nothing is Genocide. The cooler heads currently in power in Egypt and Jordan are the ones imploring Israel to not go forth with the mass exodus, because Egypt and Jordan are even less ready to deal with an eternally hostile population than the Israelis are. Egypt just kicked out several hundred 'peace activists' that wanted to go show their support for Gaza by marching into Rafah, and the entire world was just reminded that Egypts border wall with Gaza is even more intense than Israels. The neat new trick is that these border walls are there for Palestines benefit because 'if they were allowed to leave then the Palestinian cause would be extinguished', and I for one REALLY hope this logic takes full root everywhere because then every single asylum seeker will be denied on compassionate grounds. No, little Aylan, you must stay in shitholestan to keep the dream of the PKK alive.
2D3D
2hr ago
Maybe we should just abandon Israel and let them sink or swim on their own. I'd actually be okay with that, as long as there are no crocodile tears when Israel says "Fine, we'll show you what a genocide actually looks like."
Foreign intervention on behalf of local proxies seems weighted towards Israel only because Israel seems to have the best ROI for stability generation. Supporting Iran lead to its revolution, supporting Iraq lead to the Gulf War, etc etc etc. Despite that, CENTCOM still has to swing its dick to shower 'regional support' jizz to thirsty Saudis and the Gulf States because without that the whole region goes even further to hell. Its a shit pot with shitty players that will blow up the casino if they aren't bankrolled by a big daddy somewhere, and US/West either plays big daddy or China gets more notches in its Belt (and road). Israel just happens to be the least shit player in a table full of self destructive retards (including Israel). Besides, foreign intervention restrains more than enables. Were it not for foreign intervention Israel would have had parades through Cairo and Damascus in 73, if not 67, and effective control of the Suez in 50whatever. Israel actually produces shit that makes sanctioning it ineffective, just like how Russia and even Iran sanctions don't even matter. If Israel truly had a free hand, they'd force all the Gazans to be Egyptian citizens and West Bank to be Jordanians, like the Palestinians Territories were before the Egyptians and Jordanians got sick of their shit. Forced displacement is nothing foreign to the middle east, and the last great Palestinian exodus was the Kuwaitis kicking out 400k Palestinians. Its well known that no one gives a single shit about 130k Jews expelled from Iraq back in the 1950s, and we can see no one gives a shit about Arabs kicking out other Arabs. Any foreign intervention on behalf of Jews is conducted out of necessity to keep a tenuous balance beyond the Middle East in place, not out of love for the Jews.
remzem
2hr ago
So do you think it was a mistake to make nice with Jolani? He's ex al-qaeda and had ties to ISIS. The majority of deadly attacks in the west, 9/11, charlie hebdo, bataclan, nice, etc. Were either ISIS or al-qaeda, either directly or inspired. Iran's / hezbollah / houthi attacks have been more military targets and less civilian. Yet the US had no problem making nice with him and removing the bounty from his head the second he happened to topple a country that was an impediment to the expansion of their empire, but no real threat to American lives.
The Iran thing really has nothing to do with keeping us safe, and everything to do with expanding our dear leaders' geopolitical power.
2D3D
2hr ago
I'm just waiting for random attacks on buildings to be justified as 'Theres a SCIF there!' and have a whole web of 3 letter national agencies try to figure out which dumbfuck might have put a SCIF in Office Tower 55.
Before I get accused of 'justifying attacks on civilians' (not that I particularly care about the moral valence of such a statement as much as I care about the trotting out of this thought-terminating cliche as some gotcha meant to end all subsequent conversation), the primary objection to mass ballistic strikes against theoretical civilian or decision making centers is that there often will be more immediate threats that actually further ones cause of shifting the balance of power. Hegseth can shitpost from the Pentagon Pizza Hut all he wants, but if the 5th Fleet is blocked off the Strait of Hormuz he's just being a little bitch. The Houthis arguably achieved more strategic impact by lobbing shitbottles at random vessels in the Red Sea than the Hamas rocket attacks ever did.
No_one
2hr ago
Well, exercise could always speed it up although that'd probably be incredibly unpleasant I guess.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2hr ago
If they wanted to do this, why muck about for the last 30-40 years without getting nukes? It really doesn't take that long. They've got plenty of engineering expertise and oil money to spend on it.
Iran has demonstrated that it has the intent to strike the west and US if it can. They are working on the capability, and once that's done, an active nuclear arsenal presents them the opportunity at any time.
The West? What Western country has Iran struck? France? Germany? Japan? Canada? They could bring out a bunch of drones from a shipping container and cause mayhem in any major city if they wanted.
Iran only strikes Israel and US bases right on its borders, with the US launching strikes on Iran and generally acting in a hostile fashion (sanctions, cyberattacks, proxy wars, assassinations, open threats to invade). The Houthis attacked a bunch of shipping as part of a campaign against Israel.
Iran is an American foe. But it doesn't necessarily have to be this way. It could be less of a US foe, like Venezuela for instance. Or it could be a friend. The US's biggest victory in the Cold War was swaying Maoist China away from the Soviet Union. Maoist China had actively fought and killed thousands, maybe tens of thousands of US troops in a major war. Total ideological incompatibility. They hated America and were super, duper crazy. Iran is much less of a foe than China was in the 1960s. Yet the US was able to work constructively with China and shift 1/3 or so of the Red Army into the far east, facing their former ally. Suddenly the US stopped needing to fight wars in East Asia! Diplomacy is really powerful!
There were opportunities to reopen relations with Iran during the 1990s but the US pursued an unhelpful strategy of 'dual containment' of both Iran and Iraq since neither were friendly towards Israel. Obama tried to improve relations with Iran but Trump then nixed this initiative.
Now the US is involved in yet another Middle East conflict. This is strategically foolish - China and Iran were the biggest winner of the Iraq War. China got much of the liberated oilfields and the US navy defending their shipping lanes for free! Iran got most of the country of Iraq. Terraforming the Middle East to be friendly towards Israel is extremely costly and dangerous and doesn't work. It should be much less of a priority than the primary theatre of conflict, with the great powers.
Iranian militias in Iraq wouldn't exist if the Iraqi government hadn't been demolished by America. No US troops would die if they weren't there. There's no need for them to be present, the damage is already done. Iraq has been pushed into Iran's sphere of influence (about 40% of the way to puppet state), at US/Coalition expense. It's time to take the L and depart.
China will be a winner of this war too. There is little they want to see more than US air defence stockpiles depleted by Iranian missiles, carrier groups redeployed from the Pacific to the Middle East. Russia is another winner if oil prices rise, though it's bad for China, probably evens out. There is no reason to face Russia, China and Iran at the same time when Iran could've been turned. Too late now but don't double down further on an error!
A better strategy would be to tell Israel to shut up about Iran and move on. Iran hasn't nuclearized in the last 30 years when the Israelis continuously shrieked it was going to happen in a few months or so. Barring a major shock like this attempted disarming strike, they're unlikely to nuclearize, there's a fatwa against it. Iran didn't retaliate with chemical weapons after Iraq gassed 20,000 of them to death, a more than reasonable provocation! Putting more pressure on Iran is the exact way to get them to undo the fatwa and nuclearize.
More than that, North Korea is an extremely poor country which has continuously struggled to develop a missile program. I don't think that it's outside the realm of possibility that they do, but again, at least there's some reason as to why we all sat around on it.
They already have ICBMs that can hit the US. North Korea is another example of the danger of the 'I can't even spell diplomacy' trend in DC. Sanctions and threats don't result in compliant denuclearization (certainly not after going in on Iraq and Libya when they'd complied), they end up with tens of thousands of North Korean troops fighting on Russia's side in Ukraine.
That's absolutely fair, but also reinforces my opinion that rationalist fiction is just feel-good fantasy literature for autists.
More options
Context Copy link