Have I done something to give you the impression that I’m a supporter of the Democratic Party?
The empire is bipartisan. Almost all of the US political elite belongs in the Hague.
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It appears that they guy did actually more things that helped the US:
- he fought against Saddam Hussein, whom the US considered a terrorist
- he fought against drug trafficking
- he supported the US in fighting the Taliban after 9/11
It‘s worth noting that not only Trump will benefit form a war, but also that Netanyahu has some problems where a war might be a nice distraction.
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I did not mean to imply that you are a supporter of the Democrats, I just assumed you‘d vote for them instead of handing Trump a second presidency.
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Well, by now the wellbeing of a considerable part of the military-industrial-political complex depends on it.
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Here’s a freshly-relevant old article:
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Just when you thought it was bad things got worserer. And this is the guy with the football. Somebody please take him out of the picture.
Golf balls filled with nitroglycerin are the key to this problem.
That’s a pretty good assessment, as far as I can tell.
A bit of military history trivia: the Japanese Imperial Navy constructed a large-scale replica of Pearl Harbour on an “off-limits” island in the Kurile Chain and used it for testing of war-gamed plans and for training their naval aviators prior to the attack.
If you compare photos of the model with photos of the actual site you have to look twice to see which is which. Unless it’s one of the photos of the model with soldiers pushing the battleships around.
ETA: Another point are the joint naval drills Iran recently had with China and Russia. Two countries that have decades worth of data on the US Navy.
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And who also may like if Iran tests some of their newer missiles against US ships. It would give them valuable data without bringing them directly into war with USA. It may be pissed, but USA won’t attack China just because they sold some missiles to Iran.
This might be the ideal Iranian revenge, if they can pull it off. Send a few missiles or long distance torpedoes at a carrier, not to sink it, but to cripple it by hitting rudder and propellers. Not kill anyone, just prove how vulnerable USA is.
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So I guess that we are done talking about the impeachment, then ?
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Seems to be. This thread is worth splitting into a different topic.
I suspect that Nellis airforce base contains many such replicas.
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And I don’t meant to vilify him, but he was clearly involved in planning and carrying out attacks on US interests in the mid east. While his role in diminishing ISIS in Iraq may be true, his reasons were based on shite vs sunni, and a desire to extend Iran’s control over the region – not some noble fight for the independence and self-rule for the people of Iraq. I’m not going to claim that US interests in the mid east are correct or noble - they are not and have not been for a long time, but neither are Iran’s and the interests are clearly in conflict.
trump has been deliberately provocative, motivated by vanity and pride. And clearly the Iranians have pride at stake as well, more so as a nation than the US does. So the US foreign policy failings are clear here. But Irans failings here are also clear. They’ve decided to prod the situation to try to get the US out of their region, instead of waiting it out - when at all indications trump was predisposed to leave even if the results were fucked up, and with all indications that trump may be on the way out on top of it. So yes, trump scrapped the Obama agreement, and ramped up sanctions. Iran could have sat it out, but instead they prodded back, so now we’ll likely see many more on both sides killed, and many of Iraq stuck in the middle.
So how come I blame Iran when trump is clearly also to blame? Because Iran could have been smart, while trump clearly can not be smart. trump can’t control himself, nor can the rest of the US control him. So faced with an insane leader of the most powerful dangerous country in the world Iran decides to escalate?
Iran is clearly an aggressor in the region, this conflict not withstanding. That makes them part of the problem. If they can’t meet the low standard of being smarter than trump then well they carry at least half the blame here,
You could also describe Irans actions based on the war with Iraq where they were isolated. They realized they needed to build up some allies, any allies.
“Peace in our time” isn’t always succesful either. Sometimes pushing back is necessary to avoid said insane leader from feeeling that it’s safe to escalate. Trump isn’t exactly known for being a decisive leader, so it was a fairly reasonable choice. In addition, it’s unclear how many of the attacks Trump attributes to Iran was actually carried out by them. USA has plenty of enemies in the region, and a couple of players who might perform false flags to get USA and Iran into a war.
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They are up to their ass in counter measures. Even if some of the small events were false or contrived.
I think the current and coming events proves out it was not “reasonable”. Reasonable would have been constraining themselves till trump was gone. Or now in the aftermath reaching out to the US’s other allies who are still party to the prior Obama agreement to call for restraint on the part of the US. Instead they roll out the usual throngs in the street, “death to america” and 35 targets. This is not being smarter than trump.
Small events? You mean like Pence’s accusation that Suleimani was involved in 9/11? What attacks on Americans are you so certain Suleimani was behind?
“Reasonble” is decided on the information available at the time. Iran had no reason to expect USA to be so insane as to murder a war hero and a couple of other people. Even Pentagon didn’t think Trump would be that insane.
Yes, that strategy has been so succesful in getting USA to ease off its crippling sanctions.
I admit it’s a refreshing perspective to think that the Iranians leaders ought to be the responsible party, rather then the religious fanatics they are usually described as, but they are neither omnipotent or omniscient or even all the competent. Back them into a corner and they will lash out.
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Compared to the Trump administration they don’t look particularly incompetent, and I’d guess at least Pence is more of a religious fanatic than most Iranians.
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The van Ripper (what a name for a Marine commander!) part of that story is so prophetic as to be terrifying. Wanna bet the lesson learned was to target and destroy every damned civilian craft in the theater?
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Here’s an explanation what “imminent” means in this case. You can’t make this shit up:
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