Iran again

[padraig (u.s.)]

Stupid? Immeasurably

But even smart U.S. presidents with competent advisors have a very bad track record of ordering immeasurably stupid invasions

 

[DannyL]

Don't have any major disagreements with you there. Just was reading a Tweet about some reconnaissance showing preparation for counter strikes on the way. Could get hot very quickly. I'll double check the details and post a link.

In the meantime, UK tankies continue to have appalling takes :

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

This wasn't done in a calculated way

It was a dick size thing

I'm sure some people would say that's reason enough, "gotta prove you're tough"

+ I understand why a lotta people in the M.E. would celebrate, for them it's a victory

What I'm focused on is: it's an incredibly stupid thing for an American president to have done

Except in an American domestic political sense

If anyone thinks Trump or anyone around gives a single fuck how Syrians or anyone else felt about Soleimani, they definitely don't

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I mean, we'll see

There's not gonna be a declaration of war next week

Sometime in the next 6 months? Who knows

 

[DannyL]

This is the tweet I was talking about:
Iran-backed militias beginning tactical preparations for retaliatory rocket strikes on US operating bases. I’d keep a close eye on Al-Asad, the BDSC & BEC, Q-West and K1 and NiOC in Mosul, but there are several other vulnerable locations.


Could be hot air. I don't know.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Or next however long

I do think a major ground invasion highly unlikely, again for U.S. domestic reasons if nothing else

But once these things they sometimes develop, as we've seen, their own ineluctable logic

 

[DannyL]

Agree in general it's a very dumb thing for a US president to do, and that he doesn't give a single fuck about civilian lives in those countries.. Have seen some comments that it's likely that Trump was responding to Twitter insults from the Iranian top brass . Seems too stupid to possibly be true which probably means it is true in the context of this presidency.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Sure. Whether that specifically is true or not, it's exactly the kind of response you'd expect.

The wheels of ineluctable logic grind into motion

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

it's likely that Trump was responding to Twitter insults from the Iranian top brass

whether this is literally true or not, it's the basic spirit of the decision

 

[DannyL]

This is a really good thread giving a bit of context behind reactions to the killing. I dig the graffiti in post 7! Contains some photos of the starvation sieges in Syria:

 

[entertainment]

Multiple people who've spent decades following him say that yes, killing this one person does in fact chance a lot. He wasn't carrying out a mission, he was that mission.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Slight tangent here, but anyway: while agree that all this "WW3" is hyperbolic and unhelpful, surely the crucial thing here is how Russia retaliates? Obviously they're pissed off:

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-us-...onal-stability-impact-millions-people-1480262

Putin isn't a maniac so he won't risk an open confrontation with American forces, so I expect he'll seek revenge in other, subtler ways.

 

[entertainment]

This is a really good thread giving a bit of context behind reactions to the killing. I dig the graffiti in post 7! Contains some photos of the starvation sieges in Syria:

Well it was his orders to gun down their families in the streets of Iraq. Not a huge surprise that they're happy he's gone.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Multiple people who've spent decades following him say that yes, killing this one person does in fact chance a lot.

cool story

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

did you also celebrate other extrajudicial American killings outside of a declared state of war?

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

that to boot, did absolutely nothing to dismantle any element of the Quds Force, any part of the IRGC, or their proxies?

in addition to being carried out unilaterally in a country that is at least nominally a U.S. ally

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I know this has been normalized by going on two decades of drone strikes etc

(leaving aside the longer history of covert assassinations which at least had, or were supposed to have, plausible deniability)

but like, what the fuck

like, did you also applaud Trump's equally useless North Korea brinkmanship?

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

"he was the mission" made me laugh, tbf

the world is also full of people who invest in obvious and well-known pyramid schemes, I suppose

 

[DannyL]

Nicked from Facebook:

“Soleimani is a martyr”

"Killing dozens of Sunni Kurds in their uprising from 1979 to 1983
Exploding the American embassy in Beirut 1983 which led to the killing of 60 civilians
Hijacking plane of the Iraqi airlines 1986 so it crashed killing 60 civilian travelers
Hijacking plane of the Kuwaiti airlines 1988 and killing two Kuwaiti citizens
Liquidation of more than 5.000 Iraqi Sunni scholars after 2003
Killing hundreds of students and protesters in Tehran 2009
The architect of using chemicals in Ghouta 2013 which led to the killing of more than 3000 civilians by suffocation
Besieging and killing more than 700 civilians in al-Qusayr (Homs) 2013
Besieging the city of Homs 2014
Killing tens of thousands of civilians in two months after besieging and destroying Aleppo
Importing 110.000 Shiite mercenaries to Syria who inflicted calamities on the Sunnis and raped their women in al-Safira Aleppo countryside 2016
Destroying the city of Mosul and causing killing of 15.000 civilians and burying them under the rubble 2016
Committing the massacre of al-Saqlawiya and killing 1500 Sunnis and burying them in mass graves 2016
Evicting the people of Diyala and dragging them in the streets 2016
Besieging al-Zabadani and Madaya to the degree of killing 1000 children 2017
Besieging the Yarmuk camp two years until the Palestinians started eating leaves out of hunger 2017
Destroying eastern Ghouta and killing more than 15.000 civilians 2018 after besieging it three years
Destroying idlib and the Hama countryside and killing more than 25.000 civilians in just two years
Evicting 13 million Syrians scattering them in the land
Killing 1500 Iranian protesters since one month 2019
Killing 1200 Iraqi protesters since three months 2019"


It's tough not to take very real delight in the death of such a thoroughly evil man. Pass that baklava.

 

[yyaldrin]

to me, i don't see so much difference between trump, or obama or bush. i mean, the latter killed a million iraqis because that's what god told him to do. as long as the usa is the most powerful country in the world no black or brown person will ever be safe.