What was interesting about life in Germany during WW2 was that until late 1943 when mass bombings of Germany began, life for the average German really didn’t change once WW2 started. Sure, everybody knew someone who’d been drafted and sent to the front, but you still got up, went to work, went to church, children played in the streets, grocery stores had food in them, etc. And yeah, “those” people had been taken away and put into work camps to build war goods, but so what, everybody knew “those” people weren’t any good anyhow, they were all criminals, so it was okay that Germany ran the biggest prison system on the face of the planet.
Then 1943 happened, with massive numbers of Germans killed on the Eastern front as the Soviets pushed back at German advances, and the beginning of mass bombings of German cities causing huge disruptions to daily life. Suddenly life became more desperate. Hellish, even. Support for starting new wars suddenly disappeared. People didn’t want to surrender, exactly, they were still patriotic Germans, but war was no longer a fun and happy thing for them.
The United States has been at war for 18 years now, and we’re still Germany in 1941. We’ll probably always be Germany in 1941 as long as we don’t have waves of bombers flying over us dropping bombs on our cities, because when war seems to have no cost other than full employment for our people, why *not* go to war?
Well, other than the fact that the last war we won was frickin’ seven decades ago, and we needed a huge help by the Soviet Union (which killed 3/4ths of the German military personnel killed during the war) to do it. But if victory isn’t your goal, well.
– Badtux the History Penguin
Of course, should we get a stick in the eye (like 9/11), we will be shocked, shocked that a lot of the world is pissed at us…and that our military-industrial allowed somebody/something tto throw a brick through the plat glass window of our oblivity
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The GPS guided drone of 2020 is the submarine torpedo of 1913, a cheap and effective weapon of the weaker power. Iran seems very competent with them. I’d expect a tit-for-tat strike on a US military leader or facility, or of our allies or ‘contractors’. Remember what happened to the saudi oil plant. A nearly flawless and effective strike against our ‘ally’.
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Except it’s cheap only in relative terms. The average cost per drone is over $4 million. Cheap compared with a manned bomber, but not exactly pocket change.
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Nope, the average “terrorist drone” is a few hundred dollars with a small explosive payload. The pisser is that retail drones have software programming to block flight in areas like D.C….but I fell pretty confident the Iranians have the knowledge to produce or modify small drones without such a limit. Now, when the airspace around D.C. has to have a GPS jammer active, and National and Dallas are closed for air traffic because the planes can’t fly without the GPS, and Uber and Lyft flake out…then people will start to notice.
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Considering a trivial game-theory analysis for this situation, what does Iran have to lose by, say, using their drone expertise to kill a few higher-ranking American brass? They’re already under about all the sanctions the Trump administration can impose. If the hardliners get Trump to do a few more attacks, they’ll be guaranteed to remain in power for another generation.
And if, as a side-effect, the price of oil goes way up and they can sell at a higher price, that will hurt them just how?
(By the way, it’s been so long I’ve forgotten what moniker I’ve used here…but I guess a rose would smell as sweet, etc…)
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nonono, you cannot kill brass, only the grunts. You don’t off the boss class, cuz when *that* starts nobody, not even POTUS, is safe from a Barrett 50. Why that would upstart the whole natural order of things…someone might even ‘do’ Mitch McConnell and then where would we be?
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Defeat doesn’t have to come from outside forces. It can also be an internally focussed collapse, like a sandstone structure crumbling from the inside. When people turn upon each other as pressure mounts. I reckon that’s what’s going to happen when climate change changes EVERYTHING. The stress of fires, flooding, crop failures, generalised disruption — it will make people into screeching weasels. Not everyone, because most humans have a decent side. But all it takes is a certain critical mass — maybe 10%? — to go apeshit and then the system breaks down.
The disruption is happening now. It might be hard to recognise, because it hasn’t been falling apart for so long, and lots of people can delude themselves that it’s just anomalies. Like those early setbacks for the Nazis in North Africa, being stopped short of Moscow. “Ve vill vin next year, ja!” By the time the losing is undeniable, it’s too late.
This post is in reaction to the droneassassination, I presume. (News bias check — how many meeja that you read use the word “assassination”? If they don’t, it shows their propagandagenda.) When the Iranians fight back asymmetrically — I’m with Todge that they’ll murder some high-ranking U.S. military figures, probably in some NATO territory such as Turkey — you’ll see Amerikkkans turning on other Americans who are not properly bloodthirsty in their desires for counter-revenge. And we’ll see the truth of Lincoln’s statement about how a house divided against itself cannot stand.
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Yeah, I was looking around in amazement at the fact that nobody seems to be talking about how bad war in Iran would be other than Bernie (and who listens to Bernie, right?), it’s like they’re all resigned or okay with it happening. At which point I’m like, wtf?
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May I put in a good word for war by assassination? It sure beats mass-destruction war, except for the ruling classes.
But those ruling classes might do strange things if put under personal threat. So Trump is conducting a risky experiment.
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Been missing your comments BadTux….this was a good one. Everything OK? Or is just that the overwhelming preponderance of stupidity, venality, fraud, meretricity and oblivity is getting you down? Some days, just rolling over and getting out of bed can prove to be a bad choice. My wife has told me she doesn’t want to hear the news. First it was no Trump (we aren’t playing bridge here…), now with nothing about Oz, it’s no natural disasters. I think I’m down to the weather and cat videos.
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I’ve been pretty much on a steady diet of cat pictures the past few months, the stupidity has been overwhelming. I kept wanting to make a post on that whole impeachment crap, but it’s all kabuki anyhow so I just couldn’t drag myself out of the doldrums. If it wasn’t for the cats, both the indoors cats and the ferals in the colony that I feed and TNR and tame kittens out of and adopt out the kittens, I’d probably have a concussion from banging my head on the desk over and over and over again.
Gotta go, brought a new cat home and need to interact with him. Maybe I should convert this blog to all cat pictures, all the time. SIGH.
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What ultimately got us out of the mess in Vietnam was the draft. That’s a cost the average person understands. We need to bring it back and maybe that’ll help end the keeping Lockheed profitable foreign policy the U.S. has now.
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Then we get statements like the one from Elizabeth Warren, where she says Soleimani has killed lots of people. Unlike say, Reagan, Bush I & II, Clinton, Obama, Trump.
Dear Elizabeth, please do a quick search for the words Obama + Disposition Matrix. Then try again.
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Sad to hear that about Warren. I had hopes for her being a good Preznittial choice since 2016, but the more I read about the nitty-gritty of what she stands for (especially the analysis on Naked Capitalism) the more Hillaryish she sounds. She’s waffled away from supporting a real Medicare 4 All program into a “I’ll offer a sort of medical welfare service that Congrifts can vote on and water down, after I’ve been in office for two or three years.” Warren apparently goes deer-in-the-headlights when faced with sharp-questioned citizens. Even though they’re snarkers from the Republikkkan spectrum, a crafty politician (like Bernie) can deal with them because the crafty one has things he/she BELIEVES in, and can explain.
And now she’s mealymouthing the “he was a bad, Bad, BAD man!” line of the warmongers? Yeah, Soleimani was a muthafucka who fought back, and I have no trouble believing his force was behind lots of the IEDs that blew up some many Merkin invaders during the submission of the Babylon Oil Colony. When a country attacks someplace, the natives are going to fight back and only idiots (Amerkia’s political class) are shocked when the savages won’t just lay down quietly and let themselves be killed. I would not want to be stuck on a lift stalled between floors with Soleimani. Hearing that Warren is talking about him the same way that SecState Hills talked about Qadaffi, though, is disappointing. Time for me to look up Bernie’s campaign mailing address and send him the last U.S. $100 bill I have kicking around my home cash stash. I gotta see what I can do to reactivate the voter registration I had before fleeing California in 2005.
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Here’s the full quote, which I admit I should have posted in full. Soleimani was a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans. But this reckless move escalates the situation with Iran and increases the likelihood of more deaths and new Middle East conflict. Our priority must be to avoid another costly war.
But except for Bernie this is pretty much every Dem running, plus Dems in the Senate and House. But let’s also not forget how many Dems supported Little Georgie’s war in 2002-2003, and that the AUMF has never been revoked.
War, war, war. Almost every elected R & D love them some war.
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Thanks for the fuller version of what Warren said. I suppose it’s mandatory for Amerikan politicians to say “He was a murderer!” Did they say that about General Giap of North Vietnam, who oversaw the defeat of U.S. and South Vietnamese forces? The only reason Soleimani and Giap could cause American deaths is because U.S.soldiers were OVER IN THOSE GENERALS’ BACK YARDS. It’s not like S and G were rigging roadside bombs outside of Fort Bliss..
When Iran assassinates some high-value Amerikans, and Twitler unleashes cruise missiles onto Iranian territory (will he order some of the Shia holy sites to be blasted? I wouldn’t be surprised) that’s when the war will come home to the continental U.S. Stuff explodes inside Iran; shit’s gonna go bang in Sovokamerika. Wait for it!
Iran has been measured and proportional in its revenge for attacks on its interests. The Moon of Alabama blog (which is so left-wing that it leans to the right in some areas, such as opposing the impeachment of Orangesatan because its creator thinks it’s a lawfare coup by the spook faction) has had many posts analysing the nitty-gritty of Iran’s fight-back. When the Brits seized an Iranian oil tanker and hauled it off to Gibraltar, four Norwegian and Saudi tankers got holes blown in them by unidentified forces. That was done in such a way that no sailors were killed and no massive pollution resulted. There have been similar eye-for-an-eye (but not “head for an eye”) counterpunches by Iran, such as the assault on the Baghdad Green Zone in reply to the U.S. killing a couple dozen Iranians and Iraqi militia fighters. Whatever Trump and the dogs of war do, America will receive equally. I don’t cheer for that — the best thing is NO killing — but when it happens, I’ll understand it.
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Meanwhile, we here are part of another 1%….that small part of America that understands that there are realities, facts and consequences, that we are not immune among nations.
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Bukko, the orange moron has already tweeted his revenge-porn fantasy, threatening exactly 52 strikes, some on cultural sites, which is just another fucking American war crime – like so many others over the decades. I’ve often found myself wondering how many US presidents have NOT committed war crimes, using Truman as an arbitrary starting point. Maybe Carter. Maybe. All the others – fuck ’em.
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Here is Kevin Drum with some thoughts, more nuanced than most I’ve seen.
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/01/overnight-musings-on-iran/
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Colorado: Arguably, many of the horrors of the past fifty years were Saintly Peanut Farmer policy ideas. Central America horror show, Iran, and certainly Afghanistan. If anything, that poor southern bohyhhh was WORSE than many of the others. Remember…he was a nuclear submarine commander who hired Brzhinsky and Kissinger as advisers. (That’s like if Obama had hired Bernie Madoff as a economics advisor).
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