How do know she's telling the truth? I'm not inclined to give any high level Meta person (current or former) the benefit of the doubt. I haven't read the book, so I don't really know what kind of, like, proof or anything she includes (or could include). Is it just a "trust me not them" thing?
How am I reading this? Wasn't the regime mowing down tens of thousands of its own citizens prior to this war? I mean, not a "war" crime, I guess, but it seems ludicrous to give them any "moral victories".
You forget that there's different moral codes in the world. There is yours, which is effectively Judeo-Christian and you judge Iran's islamist regime as reprehensible because of the amount of lives they destroyed. Brutally destroyed.
There is also "pride" as a moral code, where appearances of military superiority are what matters. At the start of the conflict the US and Israel appeared 100% invincible, and now they appear ... 99.9% invincible. So ... "victory for Iran" ... I guess.
In reality, of course, in response to "Israeli agression", Iran has severely damaged literally everyone who might have been on their side, with near-zero damage to Israel and US, while their own forces are dying in large numbers, while boasting of it. What an achievement! But that's where appearances matter. If they boast of it enough, maybe they can convince enough people ...
I’m not convinced that Iran has damaged their relationship to the gulf states any more than the US and Israel have damaged theirs. The US has clearly demonstrated that they are willing to use their bases in an allied state to start a war of at least questionable legality that has the entirety predicted outcome of massively damaging the allies economy, possibly for decades to come. All the gulf states will soon re-evaluate their security relationship with the US. On the side, the US has also severely damaged NATO, to the point that NATO states have closed their air space to US planes involved in the war. On top of that, some European states have blocked flights transporting weapons for Israel. Not to mention the fact that Iran and the rest of the world has been demonstrated again that negotiations or agreements with the US do not mean anything. China will look appealing as a guarantor or peace soon to a lot of people.
I believe the long term damage this has caused in immeasurable and the only way to remedy this would be that both Israel and the US find some way to investigate who and why started this war - and possibly prosecuting any war crime that may have occurred.
Also, the EU needs to grow a spine, fast.
But alas, I have no hope of that happening. We’re all worse off for that.
Wouldn’t that make it more damaging to the image of the US rather than less damaging? The brutal autocracy observes the international laws of war while the US orders no quarter, bombs schools, and destroys civilian infrastructure as a major part of its strategy?
Recently, Trump has also said he’ll destroy the entire civilization. Tell me how that’s not planned genocide, per the accepted international definition of the word. I’m pretty sure Iran has made no such statement about Western or even US culture.
I think the point is it's like the parable of the drunk looking for his keys under the streetlight, because that's where the light is.
The Navy is performing well at the things it's being tasked with because it's only being tasked with things it can do well! But I think the point of this thread is that it still reflects poorly on the Navy if those things aren't actually useful in this war. They say generals are always preparing for the previous war and perhaps that's happening here.
I feel like all the responses to your comment sort of prove its point.
As I was reading the post I was wondering along the same lines, if this is different from before. Going to space is an inherently risky activity. It's always going to be easy to write the "this is not safe" think piece, where you can either say "I told you so" or "Whew, thankfully we made it this time!" afterwards. Things like this only happen when you accept some risk and people say "yes" press forward.
All that said, not all risk is equal, and I'm trying to understand if NASA is uniquely dysfunctional now and taking needless, incidental risks.
Not much a fan of metaphor? I personally appreciated the way they described about getting (corralling? shepherding? herding? Lots of common animal husbandry expressions in English) all the relevant humans together.
Normies used to deal in binders full of pirated music and movies. Then for a time they got into portable hard drives, but gradually this culture of media ownership was lost to the streaming services. Now your average normie doesn't know what a file is, wouldn't know where to put or what to do with a media file and only thinks of "apps".
