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Post by aquaduct on Jan 3, 2020 13:24:49 GMT -5
I suppose it might be reasonable to wonder how well the dynamics of the playground scale up and how well they play out in the long run. (Also where the thresholds are for "stupid shit" and "killing them" and whether feeling refreshed is a good reason for the killing-them part.) The military exists by definition (a definition that even predates you) to fight and kill. Embassies are an extension of our country. You storm an embassy, you invade our country. You invade our country, we fight back- frequently killing you. There's no playground involved.
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Post by millring on Jan 3, 2020 13:26:44 GMT -5
A Washington and its press that mourns the death of this guy shows how impossibly divided America has become.
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Post by fauxmaha on Jan 3, 2020 13:42:29 GMT -5
A Washington and its press that mourns the death of this guy shows how impossibly divided America has become. Kind of, but I'd put it like this: Does anyone seriously believe that the narrative coming out of Washington wouldn't be 160 degrees opposite if Obama was still president? Reality has no ability to penetrate past the partisanship. Obama launched nearly 600 drone strikes, killing who knows how many people (many of them innocent bystanders), and went on to joke about it with the Jonas Brothers. And the press chuckled along. Hah hah! Drones so funny! I have no idea whether, according to whatever rules apply to this game, killing this Iranian guy was good, bad, or somewhere in between. What I do know is that the whole thing feels like a game of musical chairs: Some random event introduces chaos into the universe at some random moment, and virtue/vice are immediately identified based on who is able to successfully find an open chair. The comparisons to Benghazi have been flowing freely. I'll give Trump credit for not inventing some BS explanation and hanging some random YouTube guy out to dry. That's good.
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Post by millring on Jan 3, 2020 13:47:59 GMT -5
A Washington and its press that mourns the death of this guy shows how impossibly divided America has become. Kind of, but I'd put it like this: Does anyone seriously believe that the narrative coming out of Washington wouldn't be 160 degrees opposite if Obama was still president? Reality has no ability to penetrate past the partisanship. Obama launched nearly 600 drone strikes, killing who knows how many people (many of them innocent bystanders), and went on to joke about it with the Jonas Brothers. And the press chuckled along. Hah hah! Drones so funny! I have no idea whether, according to whatever rules apply to this game, killing this Iranian guy was good, bad, or somewhere in between. What I do know is that the whole thing feels like a game of musical chairs: Some random event introduces chaos into the universe at some random moment, and virtue/vice are immediately identified based on who is able to successfully find an open chair. The comparisons to Benghazi have been flowing freely. I'll give Trump credit for not inventing some BS explanation and hanging some random YouTube guy out to dry. That's good. Yeah, but I said it in one sentence.
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Post by Chesapeake on Jan 3, 2020 13:50:37 GMT -5
Does any serious person think the timing of this dramatic escalation of Mideast strife has nothing to do with the impending impeachment trial? Oh, right. It's just one helluva coincidence. You think they stormed the American Embassy because they were upset with the impeachment? What I understand is that the killing of this guy has been on the American agenda for two or three administrations, but has always been pushed back because we didn't think it was worth the escalation it would predictably set off. Now we kill the Iranian equivalent of George Washington because some affiliate in Iraq storms our embassy (and then withdraws with no casualties). Compelling evidence is still coming in that Trump's decision to withhold military aid to Ukraine was based on his seeing an opportunity to twist U.S. policy to serve his domestic political agenda. How can even his friends in Congress, if they're being honest with themselves, ever trust anything he does in the area of foreign policy again? I guess in a way I'm relieved that he's playing this game in the Middle East, instead of, say, bombing North Korea, if he's hellbent on finding an excuse to take the spotlight off the impeachment trial, and hoping American will rally around a wartime president, as we are wont to do. At least Iran doesn't actually have a nuke yet. I'm not one who thinks war decisions should be based on fear that the people we attack will fight back. What I am questioning is whether we can live with the demonstrated fact that Trump puts his personal priorities above those of the United States. Unless somebody on the Iranian side shows tremendous restraint, a serious escalation is now under way. Escalations have cruel dynamics. Once in motion, they get harder to stop with every upward notch taken. Who knows where this one will end?
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Post by Marshall on Jan 3, 2020 13:58:07 GMT -5
A Washington and its press that mourns the death of this guy shows how impossibly divided America has become. It shows how impossibly obstinate you are in your viewpoint. I've watched many news sources during lunch. I listened to radio news sources driving in the car earlier. I saw no press corps denunciation of the action. Sure the Dems have made some statements. That's politics as usual. But all the press corps has been reporting who Solemani was; what he has done for Iranian interests in the region; what revolutionary groups he has sponsored. And then soberly analyzing what might happen next. And interviewing mayors and police to ask them if they are ready. The press experts have all said there's no credible immediate threat. But that Iran has said they will retaliate in their own place, and their own time.
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Post by Marshall on Jan 3, 2020 14:02:01 GMT -5
The only snide comments I saw were on Fox where they showed tweets by whats-her-name the MN muslin Representative. (Like anyone but her close little support group pays any attention to her). They want to make her the face of the Democratic party. Talk about straw men.
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Post by Marshall on Jan 3, 2020 14:10:01 GMT -5
And when any of the press corps reports shows a Democrat politico making a statement, they also show a Republican. I saw or heard no one in the liberal press corps (NPR, MSNBC, & CNN) jumping to conclusions or making condemnations. Fox, on the other hand, was occasionally trying to make it a circus event.
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Post by Marshall on Jan 3, 2020 14:17:35 GMT -5
(PS - I still love you, John.)
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Post by millring on Jan 3, 2020 14:30:53 GMT -5
Are you? Because it sounds to me as though you're begging the question. You've already accepted the "why" of the action when that is the very thing being debated. There's a term for that and it includes the word "question" but it's not the term you just used.
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Post by millring on Jan 3, 2020 14:31:34 GMT -5
(PS - I still love you, John.) You and dozens of beautiful women.
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Post by fauxmaha on Jan 3, 2020 14:42:03 GMT -5
Yeah, but I said it in one sentence. Show off.
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Post by lar on Jan 3, 2020 14:47:58 GMT -5
Here's the sequence:
1. A violent act is committed in Iraq. Mortality is involved. 2. US intelligence blames it on Iran. 3. The US launches a strike on the originators of the first violent act. Mortality is involved once again. 4. The US embassy is stormed by people that US intelligence identifies as persons affiliated with Iran. 5. The US retaliates by taking out an important Iranian general.
Do I have all of that right? The only thing I didn't include on the list was that relations between Iran and the US have been deteriorating since Trump pulled the plug on the nuclear deal and started imposing sanctions on Iran. I don't doubt that events since that time led to the first item on my list.
Numbers 3 and 5 on the list bother me because I remember the "intelligence" that said that Hussein had WMDs and we had to invade Iraq before things got out of hand. I still harbor the suspicion that George Bush lied through his teeth to the American public.
I am of the firm belief that there are some people you cannot negotiate with. They will do what they want to do and when they want to do it regardless. Since the days of the American hostages in Iran and subsequent events I have put Iran in that category. It seems to me that we've been headed down this path for around 40 years and we're finally reaching the end of the road.
Assuming that our trust in the intelligence community is justified in this case, our response in taking out the guy who is being blamed for some of the things that are now happening in Iraq seems justified. By the same token it would be naive to believe that killing an important military figure would be the end of it.
Who knows how far Iran is going to take this? I think it's a given that this won't be the end of it. However, if Iran's leaders stop to consider the strength of the US military versus their own, some of the leaders might also come to the conclusion that taking this too far might shorten their life expectancy. Since it always seems as if the young, impressionable, and politically powerless are the people called upon to become martyrs it's not much of a stretch to imagine Iran's leaders might want to calm down a bit before they find themselves spending most of their time looking over their shoulders for a drone.
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Post by Cornflake on Jan 3, 2020 14:52:51 GMT -5
I'm wondering if there's a coherent policy that this action was intended to further and that it's consistent with. I can't see one. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
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Post by TKennedy on Jan 3, 2020 15:19:53 GMT -5
I read this a while back. I thought it was pretty good. My take was that Iranians are smart, have a clear idea of their perceived destiny, are experts at using proxies, and have infinite patience. www.amazon.com/Devil-We-Know-Dealing-Superpower-ebook/dp/B001FA0IYM/ref=nodl_#customerReviewsIn reading through the comment section in the Washington Post and Star Trib I continue to be amazed at the self righteous black and white opinions offered with almost no verifiable data except the act itself. I must admit it does feel kind of good to see that asshole reduced to a grease spot.
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Post by fauxmaha on Jan 3, 2020 15:24:34 GMT -5
I'm wondering if there's a coherent policy that this action was intended to further and that it's consistent with. I can't see one. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I'd take that a step further, and say that the error here is at the root level. It may be ontologically possible that there is a such thing as a policy coming out of Washington that....does what? I was going to say "works", but we don't even have a functional, coherent definition of what "works" means. I've come to detest all of this, root and branch. All these would-be Masters of The Universe and little Napoleons sitting around official Washington, filling the conference rooms, the martini bars, the right cocktail parties in all the right salons, with an endless blather about all the wonderful things they can do to correct the rest of the world. And somehow out of all that, a "policy" emerges. All of which would be a bad joke, except at the business end of all that blathering by all those idiots is a terrifically powerful and deadly military capability that can really do stuff. The great contribution of cable news is exposing all of The Oh So Very Well Informed Experts, telling us their Oh So Carefully Made Plans, in an endless 24/7 parade of sausage making. Want a real eye-opener: Record some blathering head cable news shows, but don't watch them until 90 days later. After three months, and after you've watched them, ask yourself if any of those people are anything other than idiots. Remember WFB's famous bit about how he'd rather be governed by the first 500 names in the Boston phone book than the faculty of Harvard? Never mind that we don't have phone books any more, he was on to something. If it all weren't so deadly, it would be more fascinating. Rule #1 of Washington Club is you never concede an inch to the other side. Never. Not once. No matter what. At most, you say something like "Well, what X did here is one thing, but the REAL issue is his motivation for doing X, which is clearly outrageous." The most tragically humorous thing I see today is all those Napoleons making the case that Trump is the problem here, which inevitably puts them in the impossible position of arguing that things were going just great before Trump came along. We're witnessing some Nadia Comăneci level rhetorical gymnastics with that one. Anyway, back to Don's comment, I'll put it like this: There needs to be a time limit on our gentle ministrations of peace. I'm not sure what date to pick for the starting point, but I'll go with 1990 and the Gulf War. (We were obviously involved way before that, but a later date strengthens my point, so I'm going with 1990.) If in 30 years we haven't killed enough people and broken enough stuff to inspire peace, it's time to decide we never will.
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Post by Marshall on Jan 3, 2020 15:26:48 GMT -5
I'm wondering if there's a coherent policy that this action was intended to further and that it's consistent with. I can't see one. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's the Trump doctrine. And I don't mean that in any negative or positive way. It just is. By this I'm saying it's an extension of the man. He does not pull punches. If you diss him, he;ll throw it back in spades. He cares not for appearances or for political correctness. His way or the highway - up your ass. What strikes me as so monumental about all of this, is that since WWII and through the Cold War and post-cold war all the big boys in the world; US, Russia, China now, and Iran (since the Iranian revolution) have always played out their geopolitical gamesmanship through proxies; some other poor schlobs that get beat the shit out of them with enhanced support and weaponry from the Big Boys. Some times the Bog Boys take a punch in the nose (like all our casualties in the middle east), but that's at the hand of another proxy. But this time it's one Big Boy (US) taking it directly to another Big Boy (Iran). Cut out the middle man. Sounds very Trumpian. For better or worse (**shudder**) we've entered a new era of direct confrontation.
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Post by Marshall on Jan 3, 2020 15:28:30 GMT -5
All these would-be Masters of The Universe and little Napoleons sitting around official Washington, filling the conference rooms, the martini bars, the right cocktail parties in all the right salons, with an endless blather about all the wonderful things they can do to correct the rest of the world. And somehow out of all that, a "policy" emerges. Yeah, but millring has all the beautiful women !
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Post by fauxmaha on Jan 3, 2020 15:33:17 GMT -5
All these would-be Masters of The Universe and little Napoleons sitting around official Washington, filling the conference rooms, the martini bars, the right cocktail parties in all the right salons, with an endless blather about all the wonderful things they can do to correct the rest of the world. And somehow out of all that, a "policy" emerges. Yeah, but millring has all the beautiful women ! Well, he does have fabulous hair, so there's that.
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Post by Marshall on Jan 3, 2020 15:36:37 GMT -5
The most tragically humorous thing I see today is all those Napoleons making the case that Trump is the problem here, which inevitably puts them in the impossible position of arguing that things were going just great before Trump came along. We're witnessing some Nadia Comăneci level rhetorical gymnastics with that one.
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