Through the magic of Googling "Persian Gulf salinity" it seems like it's more that it's a shallow Gulf in a dry area so it has significant evaporation. Desalination does effect it but it's only a few percent of the total evaporation (which is still surprisingly big) and doesn't sound like the main driving factor or an imminent ecological concern.
My brother took Latin and I took French in high school and I found French to be much more actually useful in improving my vocabulary and understanding. I went to a Catholic high school and we learned some snippets of Koine Greek as part of studying the Bible. None of these were time effective at learning English at all and more English classes would've been much more effective (especially at the level most high schoolers are at).
My high school was more classical than most and it was not a better way to teach English.
Human land use is incredibly inefficient. As a simple example, in the US the vast majority of corn production is ethanol or animal feed (which is incredibly inneficient on a calorie basis). Then when you take into account low density residential and their endless lawns (turf grass has by far the most acres of any crop in the US) and a million other poor uses of land and there's a lot we can do, even at 8 billion people, without destroying every forest.
The issue isn't that the problem isn't solvable, there are tons of things that have huge environmental benefits. The problem is that these generally require some sacrifice (e.g. denser housing with much smaller lawns, eating more resource efficient foods like lentils, moving away from fossil fuels) but there's not sufficient collective will for actually doing these things.
I think such problem are unsolvable. In America, people can't live without meat and they will always justify it by bringing pasture raised cattle farm :/
So firstly there's been a lot of progress. I know people that grew up vegetarian in the 80s and there are so many more animal and environmentally friendly alternatives and people care more now than ever before.
Secondly, these things will change. If you look at the history of activism often there are people advocating against things hundreds of years before we see large changes (there is activism against forced labor in the Americas in the early 1500s even). So I've found it useful to accept the idea that we'll pass down this fight to the next generation and they'll probably pass it down to the one after that. It could be three decades or it could be three centuries but eventually things will change.
What really puts all of this into perspective for me is I work in academia and one of my friends works for a defense contractor. He told me the maintenance cost per flight hour of F-35 was a bit more than $40k, which is significantly more than I make in a year as a grad student. It's crazy basic science is what's been the focus of so many cuts while it's so cheap.
I wouldn't assume that this is about cost cutting. If the goal were saving money, the cheapest option by far would be to leave the hardware in the water and just stop funding the monitoring. Instead the plan is an expensive operation to send ships out to extract 900+ instruments from under two miles of ocean.
It's clear that this is driven by performative climate denialism and a pro fossil fuel stance. The Trump administration made a billion dollar deal with an energy company to stop construction of offshore wind farms and redirect the investment into fossil fuel projects. Trump constantly talks about the "green new scam" and "climate alarmism". And on top of signaling to his base, Trump met with oil executives at Mar-a-Lago before the 2024 election and pitched them on rolling back climate regulation in exchange for $1B in campaign cash. Destroying the instruments that would document the consequences and might spark alarm and activism is one way to hold up his end of the deal.
But… why? Climate change is very much real and even stubborn deep-right voters like my father now ‘believe’ in it. Ok, some people make some cash. But wouldn’t they anyway? I don’t understand this need to keep pandering to a minority and to destroy ecosystems.
It's the very definition of a culture war and in addition sadly evidence of limited intelligence. Even the most red blooded oil man wouldn't do this because this data is also useful for petroleum drilling and logistics - it's a whole other kind of person driving this.
Science is antithetical to rule-by-decree or other forms of despotism, since it strives to disprove any and all claims. The powers that be simply don't like to be told "you're wrong", and that is the core of what science does. It's as simple as that.
He sees the consequences, he’s a hobby farmer. He watches the news talk about how weather patterns got aggressive and disruptive, how crops now fail, etc. He fixes the roofs destroyed by giant hail. He gets it.
Now, you’re right in some ways. He doesn’t care for the science or the electric cars and so on; but after a lifetime of exposure to the situation, it’s hard to keep dismissing it. He grew up in a very different country, weather-wise, and made the connection between climate change and why his potato harvest failed.
I believe, without proof, that most people understand that the world’s climate is changing and creating Big Problems. They might not admit it or understand the science, but can see the consequences. And no, they don’t agree with how to solve this.
I don't think Trump or any of his appointed lieutenants think any of this through. It's the result of decisions made by emotion, not logic. "Vibe-governing" in other words.
Climate change, and science in general, is associated with nerds, boring reality, obstacles to immediate gratification, and effects on poor people.
Fossil fuels are associated with large wads of cash, action films, and sticking it to the libs.
Decisions might have terrible consequences. Who cares? Thinking things through is boring, and the people making the decisions are rich enough to be insulated from anything that might happen and old enough to not be around when it does.
I doubt that people in government, along the entire chain of command, that get paid to analyse policy, that pay consultants to analyse policy, that produce reports on the many facets of the world… that all of that is put together to NOT think things through.
I’d honestly prefer the explanation to be that they’re just that evil, at least that aligns with my worldview.
It's the deep desire for a sort of restorative authoritarianism: someone who can reduce the complex state of the world into "the way it should be".
The resentment is not versus fate or calamity but against those people who study and give voice to complexity. If someone can just shut those people up and make them go away, we will be restored to a simpler and more moral world. Where tragedy can rightly live in the realms of Gods and Mystery.
I would gently remind those that prefer such simplicity that not all nations do. We are not alone in the world. The nation that better understands the complexities of the natural world will, all else being equal, utterly trounce the nation that persists in fictionalizing existence. Unless you want to re-write your national anthem in Mandarin, you will someday need to (re-?)grapple with the complexities of the universe.
The government knows it's real, these are generally well-educated people who went to decent schools. But, I would challenge that most right-wing voters know whether it is real. Where I live in rural America the vast majority are pro-fossil fuel, anti-EV. EVs are seen as "gay" or "feminine" by the folks out here. So the choice to use fossil fuels might just be some performative machismo, allowing their pick-ups to output black smoke, make a loud noise and look "tough."
Those are the majority of the Republican voters at this stage. To make them happy you do things like spend millions to tear up infrastructure which challenges their worldview. This should result in increased votes for the current administration at the mid-terms. So even if climate change is a real and current threat, you need to say it isn't to get re-elected.
I don't believe they do any of this for votes. I think somebody within the administration has a personal grudge against science, especially anything related to climate change.
I think that attitude may change if there is ever an EV that could be competitive in a NASCAR event. For now, the closest we are likely to see is a hybrid, because EVs don't have enough range.
NASCAR has a tendency to fight changes to the drivetrain technology, so a hybrid might take a while still. The regulations banned fuel injection up until 2012, required transmissions to be 4 speed manuals until 2021 and will probably keep the 2 valve pushrod valvetrain and 90° V8 layout til the end of time. If they ever get around to implementing hybrid powertrains (they've been grumbling about the issue since 2024), they aren't going to be there to save gas. Racing hybrids are designed primarily to recover kinetic energy in deceleration, store it for short term and use it to boost acceleration. There are designs for race hybrids that don' t even use batteries or utilize electrical energy for the hybrid part; instead storing it mechanically in flywheels to avoid the inefficiency of converting from mechanical to chemical energy and back.
> So the choice to use fossil fuels might just be some performative machismo, allowing their pick-ups to output black smoke, make a loud noise and look "tough."
Might be linked to petrol cars being cheaper to buy for the same amount of car? That seems like an easier explanation. There is a masculine element in that men want to be seen to own big things to show off, but I doubt it has anything to do with liking black smoke. If they wanted loud noises they'd go a motorbike or get an obnoxious horn.
I was in the gas station recently and heard a girl talking to her friend. She said she'd never date a guy who didn't drive a pick-up and would definitely never date a guy who paid with a [credit/debit] card. She said "cards are for girls."
There are still a ton of cash transactions out here in the sticks. When I ask why they say they don't want the government knowing their business. But I guess from that conversation it also helps you get a date?
No, it’s tribalism of sorts. For men they’ll often paint something they don’t understand with words like that. I grew up in a culture that did that and won’t go back. Many many humans lack basic curiosity about the world.
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about if you don't know anything about rolling coal and you don't realize people like to drive loud cars.
I've had several friends tell me they just couldn't drive an EV because it just doesn't have a soul, meaning it doesn't have that roar for its performance. It being nearly silent as it accelerates hard is missing half the point. It's a common thing among car enthusiasts.
I can attest that a lot of “car culture” and “motorcycle culture” people want the car or motorcycle to be as loud as possible. Where I live they’re frequently interrupting conversations and waking children up. It’s a major nuisance.
1) I doubt the rolling coal people are a particularly large group. Sounds niche.
2) They could buy an EV then put some sort of smokestack on it. If they're going to convert their car to preformatively blow black black smoke and make extra noise sure, ok. But an close consideration that isn't actually a reason to prefer a petrol car over an EV. They'd get to exactly the same end point and probably annoy the people they're trying to annoy even more starting with an EV.
The major factor for people buying a petrol-powered car is almost certainly the cost. If electric cars were cheaper they'd mostly switch over to them and then rig them up to own the libs instead.
You are, I see, a member of the "reality-based community" as Karl Rove presciently put it back in 2004. You live in a mental space where you critically evaluate facts and make decisions aimed at maximizing your outcome in life.
You would do well to explore this great nation of ours and realize that a wild and terrifyingly large number of its inhabitants travel in an almost unimaginably different headspace.
The men who roll coal are not doing it in cheap beater cars. A Ram or F-150 Super Duty is a $40-80,000 vehicle which requires $200-$5,000 in modifications so they can pull up next to a Prius ($28-36,000) and belch out thick black lib-ownin' ball-crushin' smoke, damaging their own engine in the process. You may ask them why, to which they'd spit a wad of brown tobacco in your face and scream in primal rage into the air: because f*k you, that's why.
> belch out thick black lib-ownin' ball-crushin' smoke, damaging their own engine in the process.
The black smoke belching is caused by a fuel rich air mixture that leads to incomplete combustion and is pumped out of the engine as a burning cloud of smog. While this can cause problems with carbon build-up in the combustion chambers, it's not especially difficult to clean that out before the engine suffers permanent damage. Most often the worst case is fouled spark plugs, which are wear items meant to be replaced at regular intervals.
The real damage occurs in the exhaust plumbing, typically rendering the oxygen sensors inoperative and cooking the catalytic converter. However, a common way to induce black smoke is by hardwiring the oxygen sensors to report the engine needs more fuel, so it's not like the oxygen sensors were typically working anyway.
Likewise, in many parts of the country where this sort of "coal rolling" is common, it's also common for the catalytic converter to be forcibly removed from the vehicle and pawned off for the platinum mesh inside by a couple meth heads looking for their next fix, which has the side effect of preventing it from being damaged. The missing portion of the exhaust pipe is frequently repaired by welding in a straight pipe, allowing the black smoke to flow more freely while also making the exhaust notably louder and adding the scent of immediate global warming (note: this is pretty much super illegal in most states).
>Most often the worst case is fouled spark plugs, which are wear items meant to be replaced at regular intervals.
You do realize we are talking about diesel's here, they don't use spark plugs. They use Glow plugs because diesel engines don't rely on spark to cause combustion, its just heat and pressure.
Nor do they rely on downstream oxygen sensors like a gasoline powered car. They just use tuning software to up the turbo boost pressures and adjust the fuel mapping. Some guys literally just have a button to hit to briefly swap to an alternative fuel map that maxes out those fuel injectors briefly.
The main problem with rolling coal is damage caused by the extra exhaust temperatures from dumping extra fuel into the combustion process. Plus the fouling up of entire exhaust system over time. Sometimes causing fires within the exhaust system (see Ford's 6.0L Power Stroke meltdowns on youtube)
1) I see multiple people doing it every day and my commute is <5mi.
2) These people hate fake engine noises even more. Making it blow fake smoke and make fake noises would be even more of a turn off. Once again, not knowing that really shows you don't have a clue about what you're talking about.
> The major factor for people buying a petrol-powered car is almost certainly the cost.
If the main reason was the cost they wouldn't be spending almost $100k on SUVs and pickups that get like 14mpg to go get groceries and pickup the kids from school.
Eradicating species, destroying economies, and eliminating entire ways to enjoy nature's bounty here on earth –– a small price to pay to hurr hur hurrr... own the libs ;)
The DSM needs to be updated soon for this type of sociopathic cynicism. It can't be kept with the rest of society.
Because once shit hits the fan, those responsible for destroying the ecosystem will take a one-way flight for a fully air-conditioned bunkerized apartment lot in Dubai with any Epstein island-level luxury you can think of and fuck the consequences for everyone else, that's why.
People are going to give you all sorts of answers that are based on strategy or negotiation or interests, but I think it basically all boils down to "to own the libs." We have to remember that before this all started, he was registered as a Democrat. He doesn't (or didn't) give a shit about any of this, but people that said no to him do, so he's going to do his level best to break it all. It's just spite, and glee at being able to make people bewildered, angry, and sad. That's all so much of this is.
Because we have actual retards in office. People keep looking for a deeper explanation. There isn't one. They are actual stupid people. They do stupid things.
It all makes sense when you realize QAnon basically runs the white house now. There’s a very insulated type of American who lives in their own world, that unfortunately lots of voters are apparently sympathetic to. It’s probably seen as a victory against the climate change hoax or something along those lines.
It’s seen in Crusader terms. A bunch of things which are not Christian, for example controlling social order at all costs, are adornments on nationalism. The apocalyptic parts of QAnon slot into their belief system. So many other religious movements rely on salvation. Another commenter mentioned ancient China. Big political upheavals swept ancient China based on very slight new ideas about salvation.
I have seen some chatter where 2nd-term Trumpism has been (very imperfectly) compared to Mao's Cultural Revolution.
Obviously there are many differences, no question. But it's actions like this where a bit of the comparison seems apt -- fervent, nonsensical anti-intellectualism / anti-science actions done purely in the name of ideology.
Why else would one actually go out of the way to dismantle a working ocean observation system, which provides a rich amount of data for multiple purposes?
The only action that seems to make sense is that:
A) Some of that data can be used to observe climate change issues.
B) In Trumpism, it is not enough anymore to propagandize that climate change is not happening. One must also actively suppress anything that could suggest climate change is happening, no matter how much the cost, no matter how much it hurts other non-related things.
The entire motivation of Trump and the MAGA movement is "fuck you, libs." The left likes green energy and scientific research performed on the environment so the right hates that stuff even if their actions also hurt themselves.
I don't believe Trump himself makes any of these decisions, and as for deals I don't think he remembers what happened yesterday let alone a deal made on the campaign trail. Parties in his administration are actively trying to destroy science and cripple any kind of climate research or green energy development, even if it costs nothing. Whoever they are, they make these plans and then get him to sign while he's awake.
Of course. Trump isn't aware of "details" like this. But he's very much on board with the "own the libs" project, the project of helping fossil fuel, and he appointed the people who are making it happen.
Although with Trump, it's more specific than "owning the libs": a clear motivating force is undoing anything Obama did or that was around on his watch. Pulling out of the JPOA agreement Obama made with Iran, then launching a war at the price of tanking the global economy which best case will result in a pale imitation of the JPOA (along with a much stronger and richer Iran), is only the latest example.
The post boxes were more about crippling mail-in votes. In Washington Bill De Joy had at one point dismantled several of the sorting machines which dramatically slowed how fast mail gets dispatched. The result was that you could no longer mail your vote the day before election day and have it arrive on election day.
The crazy thing is that the oil companies confessed to a misinformation campaign and at least publicly talked about change/reform (of course, they're still oil exploration/refinement companies so not abandoning that). But they did discuss responsible use of fossil fuels in transition towards renewables.
But Trump was fooled and is more committed than ever to the since-abandoned misinformation campaign. It took on a bigger life than Exxon ever could've imagined.
The snowflakiest of them all - they can't handle unbiased readings from instruments that survey our planet.
The Mauna Loa CO2 data is still up.[1] Trump tried to kill off the CO2 measuring, but that doesn't seem to have happened. The Mauna Loa data goes back to 1958, measured at the same point, far from any CO2 sources. 315ppm in 1958, 441ppm today, and almost a noise free curve with mild seasonal variations. Clearest trend in global warming.
I don't think Trump was "fooled" by anything. His policy positions reflect what makes him and his cronies money, and what keeps him in power. That's it. He doesn't care about truth or correctness. Just money and power.
I submit that the "is malice or incompetence" heuristic can be broken by pathological inputs which result in an indefinite runtime, and that we've encountered some of them in the last decade.
The correct response when that happens is to say "both" until/unless the perpetrators want to plead just one or the other.
I think bombs they drop on innocents are much more more expensive than $40K. Some think glaciers melting is at point there will be no turning back, record time heat waves and El Niño gives clues about upcoming disasters.
How many million graduate students do you need to give the US the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides ?
Looked at from a policy maker's viewpoint, things look very different.
Wouldn't take very many at all, we've now learned these past four years (and even the past 2 months). All you need are drones, that are pennies on the dollar cheaper than trillion-dollar militaries. Depending on the munition, a single bomb we drop on Iran could cost between $40,000 and a couple million dollars. Think of all the high-end drones you could buy instead.
In the Russian-Ukrainian war the GPS guided shells that the USA was sending to Ukraine cost about $40k a pop, where as you can get at least a dozen drones for that price.
Even the fanciest self propelled artillery is getting destroyed by these little cheap buggers.
> Wouldn't take very many at all, we've now learned these past four years (and even the past 2 months). All you need are drones, that are pennies on the dollar cheaper than trillion-dollar militaries.
You make an incorrect conclusion which is unfortunately both quite popular and incorrect among westerners who read two and half editorials about Russo-Ukrainian war in some NYT/WAPO/whatever and think they now understand modern warfare. The reality of the situation is that drones are a very useful tool, but any side achieving actual air supremacy would result their fighters and bombers cruising over frontline and enemy towns on low altitudes taking out any high-value targets at whim. The situation would be similar to boots-on-the-ground phase of The Iraq War, resulting one of the sides to rapidly gaining ground and winning the war. Keep in mind that the cited "40k per-hour" price is quite cheap compared to per-hour operation cost of any kind of big ground force.
In fact, last thing US wants is to be in Russia's shoes unable to meaningfully advance into the territory of by all measures much weaker enemy.
That isn't really accurate, small drones are enough to antagonize regional neighbors. They are far from being able to project influence, stabilize international trade, or even remotely protect a territory from an enemy that isn't concerned with civilian casualties.
> project influence, stabilize international trade, or even remotely protect a territory from an enemy that isn't concerned with civilian casualties.
We just failed to do all of those things quite visibly.
Iran made a choice not to escalate to destroying desalination capabilities and that's why a lot of Saudis and Emiratis are still alive. It's not because we protected them.
Because they didn’t want the retribution that would follow. That’s what protection looks like. Assured destruction when it’s not mutual is pretty motivating.
Not being able to stop random killings or destruction from small arms fire has nothing to do with military power projection.
Military power projection is the reason the US was able to destroy a significant portion of Iranian leadership, nuclear infrastructure, and weapons infrastructure with no retaliation from Iran back in the US nor any pushback from any of Irans allies.
Military hegemony has nothing to do with being a perfect police force that can stop anything from happening anywhere.
>but we still couldn't have stopped them with our vaunted carrier-based power projection, or with our exhausted ABM capabilities.
Who is “we”? Your account started posting nothing but anti-US stances and pro-China/Iran stances since this conflict began.
I'm American, also that's considered bad form. 2/3 of Americans were against this and think it was a failure.
Military hegemony in the gulf region would mean being able to force Iran to stop attacking gulf targets, rather than negotiating a ceasefire because both sides are hurting. What we have is a multipolar situation, it's not arguable, it's right on the scoreboard.
A hegemon would be able to unilaterally open the straits.
Best for everyone to recognize it and act accordingly. It's got nothing to do with cheerleading, that stuff is for rubes.
> Military power projection is the reason the US was able to destroy a significant portion of Iranian leadership, nuclear infrastructure, and weapons infrastructure with no retaliation from Iran back in the US nor any pushback from any of Irans allies.
First, Iran doesn't have allies, it has friends of convenience (Russia like the military cooperation but don't like the cheap oil competition, China love the cheap oil competition but don't care for the damage, etc).
Second, US bases and US allies (in the actual sense of the word) were attacked by Iran, successfully. US and all its allies were also impacted by the trivial closure of the Hormuz. US allies now will forever know that the US is not a reliable ally and can't protect them; stocks of crucial materiel were wasted on achieving nothing; and high oil prices will cost the US domestic politics dearly. US power projection whacked a few nutjobs from a regime full of them. Oh, and they're a theocracy that believes in martyrdom! And the new supreme leader is a strong proponent of nuclear weapons (unlike his predecessor and father), and saw half his family blown up in front of him.
> Military hegemony has nothing to do with being a perfect police force that can stop anything from happening anywhere.
Being unable to enforce your will on an enemy is not "hegemony". Iran will walk out of this conflict with their nuclear programme back on track, a revenge minded regime, and maybe even a toll on an international strait to fill up their coffers.
US military deterrence has been a paper tiger ever since Biden told Iran "don't" [1], and Iran did, and Biden did not respond. Now whoever the sitting US president would be - Trump or anybody else - must restore that deterrence. There is no nice or easy way to do that. The last time the US had to do that was during WW2 and the enemies were not floating heavy, extended media campaigns and funding US universities at the time.
The reason why Iran was even back in the nuclear game was because a moron pulled out of the JCPOA that was giving them concrete steps and carrots to get them to stop.
An agreement that had independent inspectors from several countries accessing utilities and leaving behind tamper resistant (and tamper revealing) instrumentation at regular intervals (along with the usual back and forth robust discussions).
The sort of gear that could count atoms from Fukushima drifting across the oceans to end up in HVAC filters in middle North America.
The JCPOA agreements were set to expire in January 2026 - and then Iran could continue their nuclear ambitions. The only people who could support those agreements either:
1. Didn't read them and know that they expire in 10 years.
2. Think that 10 years is a long enough time in the future where whatever happens then doesn't matter to their current goals.
3. Would like to see a nuclear-capable Iran.
For what it's worth, January 2026 already passed 5 months ago.
So, there would now need to be new negotiations as to the future of the Iranian nuclear program? Except with Iran in a weaker position than they actually are today, due to a decade of no progress on enrichment.
How is that worse than the current situation? Iran is closer to nuclear capability now than in your counterfactual, yet those who disagree with you are the ones who want a nuclear-capable Iran?
Or alternatively, in 2026 Iran would have been hooked on closer economic cooperation and trade, (relative) reformers would be in power, and the deal would have been renewed. Yanking the deal all but guaranteed that the hardliners would go back in charge, because they were proven right - the US could not be trusted to keep its word, so negotiations don't matter, the only thing that would actually protect them is nuclear weapons.
> Would like to see a nuclear-capable Iran.
Postponing their nuclear programme with at least 10 years is absolutely worth doing. Because realistically you cannot, I repeat, cannot force them to stop it. If the regime wants to continue, it will and their facilities deep under the mountains are impenetrable.
> Or alternatively, in 2026 Iran would have been hooked on closer economic cooperation and trade, (relative) reformers would be in power, and the deal would have been renewed.
Oh, so you expect to change their culture and their value system. And do that in only 10 years.
That's called imperialism. I believe it's no longer fashionable.
> Oh, so you expect to change their culture and their value system
What do you mean culture and value system? You think isolation and nuclear weapons are parts of the Iranian culture????
And yes, Iran had multiple bouts of reformer presidents. Reformer within the limits of what the Supreme Leader would allow of course, but there is still a massive gulf of difference between them and the hardliners. A few years of visible economic development under reformers would have nudged things in the reconciliation direction.
Again, yanking the deal, even before the current strikes during negotiations, ensures that Iran will never fully trust the US. So realistically, what other choices do they have other than procure nuclear weapons for protection?
You said that "closer economic cooperation and trade" might lead to "(relative) reformers would be in power". Westerners "reforming" other cultures has not been fashionable for about half a century.
Who is talking about westerners here? What even is your argument, because it seems you're just throwing random catchphrases around.
The topic is Iran. A theocracy with an unelected supreme leader with final say on political decisions and candidates for all elections in the otherwise relatively democratic system. Reformer in their context (hence the relative qualifier I used) is people like Ahmadinejad who are for rapprochement and trade with the world, but without too many concessions. We're not talking about socially progressive or "western" or anything of the like. They are infinitely better than the hardliners aligned with the IRGC who are against anything other than autarky and building more strategic security via stuff like nukes. The reformers got their way with the JCPOA, and were proven wrong by the orange moron destroying that. Since then the hardliners have been in power and they are not going anywhere now.
Did you mean Ahmadinejad or Rouhani? The negotiations technically started under Ahmadinejad but Rouhani would be more reasonably considered a reformer, and is probably more relevant in the context of the JCPOA's lifecycle
- Calling for the destruction of the state of Israel
- Provided funding, training and arms to Hezbollah and Hamas
- Condemned by the UK, Germany, Austria, and even the UN
- Condemned the Palestinian Authority for holding peace talks with Israel
- A nice quote of his: "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country."
Thank you for explaining to all those who won't listen to me because I'm Israel and therefore biased, what a "reformed" Iran would look like. Now they can understand just how hateful the current "unreformed" Iran looks like.
Is Iran, ran by hateful men, but open to trade, integration, reform, inspections and having a lot to lose perfect? Of course it fucking isn't. But realistically it's the best we could have had.
Instead we have Iran ruled by even more hateful men. Men that saw their families blown up in front of them, and have nothing to lose. The economy is already shit, and they don't care about regular people, and as we saw in the recent protests, power structures are intact and they do not hesitate using them to enforce their rule. Men who were demonstrated multiple times that American promises don't mean anything. Those men also have a pretty clear path on how they'd be left alone - Kim's nuclear weapons / threat of destroying Seoul.
How is that any better? It isn't. It's drastically worse for everyone, from the common Iranian suffering under the regime to every single one of us that will have to live under the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons and worldwide economic disruption via Hormuz and direct sabotage.
Not at all. Iran was rewarded with progressive sanction relief and progressive unblocking of their own money that was seized decades ago, as long as they continued cooperating.
This is a great example of where the Israeli perspective diverges from the American.
The classic American perspective wouldn't worry about that because being part of our market is so attractive. There is a win-win here, they are not mindless orcs.
Yes, living under constant rocket threat does affect one's perspective. I personally was injured in an Iranian rocket attack on Israel. My children have had their camp counselors kidnapped and murdered. And their teachers. And thier friends. My daughter attended the funeral of a close friend who was murdered in his home, along with his sister and brother and both parents.
I could go on. I know two women whose babies were both burned to death due to Iran. I could tell even worse stories. Suffice it to say that us who actually live under Iranian threat treat the threat seriously. It is not theoretical for us.
Give us some credit, we have our bigots but it's been 25 years and we also have hospitality culture like everyone else. The average person, even if they voted Trump, would be kind and grant human-ness to a muslim they met in person. Look at the Borat sketches, he's there with southern conservatives acting like a freak and they STILL act like gracious hosts to the foreigner.
Acknowledgement of edit: I rephrased the sentence you're replying to in order to try to be less inflammatory.
Are you asking how the 2002 Millenium Challenge showing that the US Navy would lose any directy military engagement with Iran by a large margin is relevant to "The American navy was already a paper tiger ~20 years before your example with Biden"?
It was more son that they have space to escalate. It was strategic decision. They did attacked those when their plants were attacked.
US does not have capability to destroy them. It can make lives of civilians hard, as it tried, but foreigners attacking civilians dont make regimes fall.
Iran didn't attack the desalination plants because that would amount to actual warcrimes - and they care about their public perception in the broader community of nations. Unlike, of course, Israel and the USA, who don't mind turning a few schools and hospitals to smithereens.
You might call this "assured non-mutual destruction", and of course it helps that the US is located away from Iran's immediate neighborhood, but destroying the lifelines of the GCC countries would assure an economic collapse globally that the world has never seen before. Imagine something on the lines of oil at $300 a barrel, zero fertilizer, zero semiconductors, zero plastics, the works. And Iran could just as easily turn Israel to glass, with a death by a thousand papercuts (or drones, whatever your flavor). Of course, all of this at a huge cost to itself.
Protecting territory is pretty pointless for many countries, who would be facing neighbors they cannot remotely match in capability. Allowing civilians to be slaughtered is a cheaper and more effective method of warfare for these. Protecting civilians well is difficult even for very well armed countries with expensive defense systems, letting them die brings many martyrs and propaganda opportunities and breeds hatred for the enemy.
Something tells me a war with china isn’t going to be carriers duking it out but carriers filled to the brim with aviation and naval drones that seek and destroy enemy craft. As Iran has shown, you don’t need to attack the USA directly to destabilize its influence. The US market economical influence has been far more important for force projection and stabilizing trade than anything else and by all accounts Trump has pissed away allies on that front too. US force projection for trade stabilization is for minor things like protecting against pirates - you don’t need million dollar missiles for that.
> an enemy that isn't concerned with civilian casualties
You mean like when the Zionists openly stopped food from getting into Gaza, while the western governments were backing the Zuonists? Those people concerned with civilian casualties?
An enemy unconcerned with civilian casualties, give me a break.
If you mean Operation Spiderweb, the Ukrainian Osa drone only had a range of 5 miles/ 8km (one-way) and had to be launched from the roof of containers simultaneously transported unknowingly by Russian truckers and that was a covert operation that took 18 months to set up. So no that particular model couldn't attack even 10 miles away.
Ukraine has other long-range strike drones but haven't heard of more than a thousand miles range.
Details, details. The drones got the job done, didn't they? Getting a truck to within a few miles of the target is still pretty cheap compared to traditional weapons-delivery methodologies.
Spiderweb was a modern-day Doolittle Raid. It didn't scale, at least not immediately, but it still changed the tenor of the war. It put the Russians on notice that they weren't safe. Not that the Russians care, but most countries would. Imagine if someone attacked an Air Force base in the US with similar tactics and a similar outcome...
How not? Precision kills with 0 warning. You can just bring one on a plane to whatever country and have the thing charge with solar/powerlines until your target is getting coffee outside on a nice day. Or whatever.
Ok, I'm not even sure what to reply here, that makes no sense and doesn't accomplish any of the things I mentioned. It's also not even particularly feasible and just not at all how any sort of wartime operation is likely to work at scale.
But I am sure of who I wouldn't put in charge of critical military operations.
Drones are not a strategic weapon. When you talk to the Ukrainian military, with their actual expertise in drone warfare, the general consensus is that drones are an inferior replacement for artillery (note that ex-Soviet military systems are a lot heavier in artillery use than NATO military systems) that they use because they can't get the artillery shells that they need but they can get drones in sufficient quantities. It hasn't enabled any strategic breakthroughs in the Russo-Ukrainian War, it is merely served to lock in the grinding stalemate it's been in since October-ish 2022.
The US war on Iran also demonstrates the problems of drones too: the US is currently able to wage a war 6000 miles away from its shores, because of the use of an awful lot of weapons systems that aren't drones. Iran is unable to dislodge that military, or even meaningfully impact its ability to carry out said war, not 100 miles away from its shores, despite a heavy use of drones to attempt to do so.
The war also demonstrates another big issue... the continued delusion of many civilian and military leaders that strategic bombing alone is sufficient to win a war despite this failing literally every single time it's been attempted in the past 100 years.
> that they use because they can't get the artillery shells that they need
That used to be true, but I don't think that the case anymore. UA is now striking logistics ~150KM behind the contact line with drones. Regular artillery can't do that. Guided rockets maybe could, but they'd be more expensive and come in smaller quantities.
> US is currently able to wage a war 6000 miles away from its shores
For a rather restricted use of "wage a war". They did not stop Iranians from doing their thing. Bombing alone does not have a history of winning wars.
> How many million graduate students do you need to give the US the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides ?
Well, given that the Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed for months despite Iran's military supposedly being decimated, and the President of the United States is now threatening to bomb one of our closest Mideast allies (Oman), a reasonable person might ask where this military hegemony and political influence you're referring to is.
Because it would require a boots on the ground invasion to occupy the entire portion of Iran overlooking the Strait.
The strait is physically open but no insurance company will cover massive oil carriers because they are so easy to hit with small weaponry from the ridges of Iran.
Why doesn't the US government just insure them itself then? A quarter of a billion dollars is a major risk to an insurance company with no internal capacity to mitigate the risk itself, but it's not even a rounding error in the federal budget and the US government would then be expressing confidence in the ability of its own military to ensure safe passage.
And even if they had to pay a claim, it would cost the population less than the higher gas prices, since increasing supply lowers the market price for all supply, not just the incremental units.
That would require an act of Congress. So implicitly, the majority party in the House and Senate don’t want to do this. Ask yourself, who is in power right now?
> Because it would require a boots on the ground invasion to occupy the entire portion of Iran overlooking the Strait.
Which even the morons who started this conflict know is suicidal because Iran has literally at least a million loyal fanatics (Basij, the same organisation doing unarmed meat waves against Iraq)!ready to die for the regime, and the terrain is in their favour.
After all has been said about the ages of Biden and Trump, it’s ironic that having presidents with experience living through Vietnam and the Soviet-Afghan war has been so useful for their two terms.
This maybe a bit of sarcasm, but it's actually accurate. The information was so contrived that multiple firms sent physical analysis to observe the strait in person. They all have said that the strait remains active with decreased but consistent transit. Regardless of who claimed the strait was open or closed. It's the reason oil markets are so hesitant to bid up futures contracts.
The US could/can, they're just not willing to undergo the mass casualties it would take to put boots on the ground and put those boots up the ass of the people controlling Hormuz. Which absolutely cannot be achieved purely by air.
I'm not interested in a lengthy semantic debate about what "can" means but I'd hope we could agree at least one possible interpretation includes things you're unwilling but able to do.
Is it the case that if someone doesn't do something some time then they can't do that thing? Like, if you were playing basketball and Lebron James walked by and you threw the ball to him and said "dunk this!' and Lebron said "no, I'm not willing to" does this mean Lebron can't dunk?
Because personally, I'd still take Lebron on a basketball team even if he wasn't willing to dunk the ball that one time.
> if you were playing basketball and Lebron James walked by and you threw the ball to him
Yes, this is a terrible analogy for the war in Iran. Hugely unpopular, costing Americans vast sums of money daily, headed for possible catastrophe. Very much not a low-stakes "Lebron walks by" situation.
Better analogy with Lebron would be: championship game with a title on the line. He gets possession as time runs down and the team needs him to score or make a play that scores. It's not okay for him to then say he's fully capable of scoring but doesn't want to at just that moment for reasons.
NB: this is not to say the US military couldn't cause untold damage on the region. This is obvious, anybody can look at recent history to see that the US military is more than capable of destroying a country in the region.
Rather, this is an object lesson that war is politics by other means, and here we tried to do war without any politics and it has not gone well for us.
I will remember from now on that you can compare war to Lebron playing in a championship game but not to him playing in a pickup game.
But to be clear, the comment I replied to was one in which you made an abstract point that it doesn't make a difference to someone if you can do something but in practice don't/aren't willing to and I think that this is obviously wrong (just because Lebron didn't dunk doesn't mean he can't or is a bad ball player). You don't like the Lebron analogy, that's fine. Let's use a war analogy: in 2025 Pakistan and India, two nuclear armed countries, exchanged significant fire. Neither was willing to use their nuclear arsenals. Should we now conclude from this that they can't use their nuclear arsenals and are therefore equivalent to being non-nuclear countries? I mean who cares if they have nuclear weapons which can (can't?) kill millions if this one time their political will wasn't there for them to use them in their defense?
> Rather, this is an object lesson that war is politics by other means, and here we tried to do war without any politics and it has not gone well for us.
Be careful not to trip over your rhetoric in an attempt do display profundity. If war is politics by other means, then doing war is always done with politics. This whole statement is word salad nonsense.
> I will remember from now on that you can compare war to Lebron playing in a championship game but not to him playing in a pickup game.
The stakes of a given situation matter to the disposition of the participants. Is this not obvious?
I'm really confused as to what your larger point is. Nobody disagrees that the US military can kill untold numbers of people and cause untold damage in Iran and the wider region. Was this the point you wanted to make? Yes, the US military is capable of killing everyone in the region, which would make the Strait "open" again.
> If war is politics by other means, then doing war is always done with politics.
The problem is doing so has not/does not appear to be on a path to achieve the stated political aims of the administration, inasmuch as they have been willing to articulate aims.
Anyway, you're being insulting and not making coherent points. Good evening/morning/afternoon.
Wanting the US to be successful in worthy endeavors was considered pro-US when I was born. Call me a conservative if you want because I think we should still support that way of thinking. But I don't see myself changing to support failure just because the US is doing it.
> how come nobody is talking about it?
Nobody is talking about the war? I suggest you revise your media diet.
His statement about war and politics is a reference to Clausewitz, the famous military strategist that apparently you have not read nor have heard referenced, which is surprising given how often this quote comes up in military-political discussions, articles, and books.
(It’s ok, nobody in the administration has read him either. And before you accuse me of partisan hackery, the prior admin was just as incompetent.)
If you cannot afford doing it, then you cannot do it. What's the purpose of having the capability to do something if you cannot afford the losses of doing it?
US military ain't some unstoppable force in all possible scenarios, it was stopped and won over quite a few times, last time I recall by taliban sheepherders. In some cases like first Iraq war yes, but they don't wage those wars anymore. And all mental limits re casualties are very real limits just like other.
Its like saying russia could/can conquer whole Europe, if only X, Y and Z. That effectively means they can't, as we see playing out right now despite them trying desperately to achieve this very thing.
Part of the reason that Americans prefer to lose that war is because the enemy is called "sheepherders", implying innocent civilians, when the military is winning. The blurring of when a militant is referred to as a civilian has proven to be a very effective tactic to reduce the American population's tolerance for war.
I'm confused, are you insinuating that the Taliban essentially ran a PR campaign to portray themselves as sheepherders to garner sympathy from the US population to reduce its appetite for fighting them?
No, I am stating that there are strong elements in popular media, news providers chief among them, who seek to weaken US influence and use US public opinion to drive that change.
I suggest that you query for "Qatari influence in US media" in your favourite search engine or LLM. Many media bodies operating in the land of the free do not represent the interests of the people of that land.
The Qataris didn't force us to do stupid shit like invade Iraq and Afghanistan. Our feckless leaders did that. It's nice that you've invented this excuse for our terrible leadership, but it doesn't actually explain away any of our terrible foreign policy decisions of the last century.
But I'm still not really seeing what the US would have been otherwise likely to do to "win" in Afghanistan? Is the implication that they somehow convinced Trump to prematurely withdraw from Afghanistan because the Taliban were merely sheepherders? Qatari influence certainly didn't seem to play much of a role in his actions this time around
> Forget US casualties. The US is concerned with minimizing Iranian casualties.
I can’t help but notice how closely this mirrors Russian talking points. According to them, the war is not finished only because the Russian military fights with their arms tied to avoid Ukrainian casualties. It is about as credible in Iran as it is in Ukraine.
Are you forgetting the bad neighbor that keeps attacking most of its other neighbors, even while under ceasefire agreements? And then moving onto the land and saying "this is ours, time to redraw the border again.".
You mean the bad neighbor whom Iran has constantly funded attacks on from those other neighbors? The bad neighbor who has IRGC Funded terrorist and militant cells along its very border? You mean the bad neighbor whom comes under rocket fire on a routine basis?
Are we forgetting that Iran is the one who has funded Hamas and Hezbollah and provided them safe haven?
Maybe that bad neighbor wouldn’t be a bad neighbor and be attacking the other neighbors. If the other neighbors did not provide shelter for those who wish to burn down the bad neighbors house?
Point is - Iran plays a SIGNIFICANT role in the destabilization of the region. That bad neighbor might be a good neighbor if Iran wasn’t attacking it via proxies.
But I suspect we’re not ready to have that nuanced conversation yet.
The people downvoting your comment should be aware of a few things:
1. The ceasefire with Lebanon specifically states that Hezbollah is to retreat to the Litany river, which they have not done. The ceasefire further states that military operations against Hezbollah are permitted so long as they remain south of the Litany, and so long as they attack Israel. They attack Israel daily - Israel is not breaking the ceasefire. That's why popular news use the term "Israel attacks despite ceasefire" instead saying "Israel breaks ceasefire" - because Israel is not the side breaking the ceasefire.
2. Hezbollah attacked Israel unprovoked on October 8th 2023, leading to the current conflict.
3. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been internally displaced since then. Popular media calls internally displaced Gazans refugees, yet I've never seen this term applied to the internally displaced Israelis.
I get it, but no, that's not leading to regional instability that actual hostile nations and leadership have been responsible for creating in the region.
> How many million graduate students do you need to give the US the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides ?
All good questions 3 years ago.
How many would rely on US weapons or their US relationship today?
And then there is the unimpressive show in the Middle East.
We haven't been able to produce a complete F-35 since Feb 2026 because we lack the necessary rare earths to do create their electronics.
Why? Because we stopped doing that work (and science) in the 90s and now China produces over 90% of rare earths on the planet and said the US can't have any for military purposes (its being negotiated).
There are zero under and post graduate programs that specialize in rare earth extraction and refining outside of China. None. And China has barred their scientists from collaborating with any colleagues from the US on the topic.
Sooooo, you're right, the F-35 program offers a lot, but can it do so "by itself" and does it provide that value in an economically viable way? Much less clear cut of an answer.
Block 4 is the only version they'd dare put up against a peer air defense, and Block 4 is delayed, delayed, delayed, and . . nowhere in sight, at the moment.
There has been two and a half decades of FUD billowing around the entire program, like the world's most expensive fart, so don't expect to know the truth until they fly the thing past Zamami Island in anger. But I personally will be mentally prepared for disappointment, with some bitter despair as digestif.
If policymakers genuinely cared they wouldn't have let things get so bad that allies are considering to have orders cancelled for the Saab JAS 39 Gripen
Without those people being trained at the level of grad school in workforce, you would not have enough people to even maintain a good checklist for F35. The program will go down within a year.
Grad schools do more than research, they train people for these industries, for the shop floor.
Yeah, 11 f35 lost to motor/software issues. Only modern war plane that have those issues.
Its minumum speed is worse than the f16, which make drone interception an issue (f16 are already a bit to fast for that according to Ukrainians), despite a pretty low takeoff speed. It should be capable of less, i'm pretty sure it's software limiters tbh, the wing design seems fine, even if the weight is a bit high (i mean, you don't need to be able to fly at 15 knot like a Rafale, but still).
It _still_ have cooling issues that brick it if you don't bring an external cooler after it landed (which is crazy to me, how did Lockeed not fix that? it's like half the reason why the availability rate is so low).
The availability rate is slow (as said earlier) but it is still more expensive than other jet yearly, despite 2/3rd of the flight hours.
F35 pilots now have less flight hours per year than recommended by NATO (a lot less) (which used to be below US standards btw), and while US f35 pilot still have more hours than their russian conterpart (~145 vs 120), it is very possible that smaller countries who made the mistake of buying them without an economy strong enough to bear the costs might fly their pilot less than 100 hours per year and complete the rest in sims (which, as demontrated by the russian, is a _very_ bad idea) (i'm afraid Greek pilots will suffer from this, which would be a shame)
On the "political influence", it's wrong. Selling the F35 cost the US influence in Norway (thank you wikileaks). In fact, each time the f35 lost a competition, political influence was expended to make the country still buy it. Imho, scientists and scientific conferences are a better way to get influence over allies and adversaries (Cas9 is probably the best example, without Doudna having an international recognition and the conference being hosted in the US, Charpentier might have gone to another RNA specialist)
[edit] to be clear, i think the f35 is a great plane for the US, and a good plane for rich countries who want to go on offensive wars, mainly due to its EW capacity that are second to none and its ability to penetrate enemy territory (which is second only to other US planes). I do also think that it still needs _massive_ improvements to be usable by regular, defensive armies, and the US expending political power to sell it to countries who don't want/need to attack their neighbors was a mistake. Also, not a good cold weather plane, which make it even worse for Norway and Canada.
Also i think its software impairs it, because the wing design seems almost perfect for its missions, and at least on paper, the reactor seems great too
After potus ordered massive degradation of F16 radars used by Ukraine on his emotional whim making them useless, which btw were gifted by other NATO countries (!!), nobody, absolutely nobody wants US jets anymore, F35 or not.
Every single European country that already ordered them had immediately afterwards long hard talks about completely cancelling those orders and most ended up at least loweing massively the ordered amount (I presume due to contractual requirements and some money already sent, nobody expected backstabbing crooks on the other side when they were signed).
At this point its trojan horse and much worse than having nothing - it gives illusion of certain (extremely expensive) capability, but only if you lick specific ass hard and frequently enough, peppered with a billion here and there flowing in the right hands. Even then, the other side may be licking harder and thats it. Its ridiculous, and intensively insulting to every decent human being.
Except they've traded it all away with idiotic chest thumping. There was a bargain on the table for the US, and we've just chucked it in the trash.
The military isn't some limitless resource, and lead by incompetence, it is useless. There are no policy makers in this administration, they go on vibes and bad ones at that.
Even a guy named mad dog said that diplomacy was cheaper than bullets.
> the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides
Hilarious to say this, given the very public and very significant failures of US foreign policy these past couple decades, not least of all the current special military operation.
Nah, I'd say that common "americans" (really: US citizens) are perhaps a bit on the dumber site. Not only confuse they constantly a continent (America) with a country (USA), they also have no idea about history. Or logics. You wrote "ALL of tech" ... no lets check.
Cars - Germany (Gottlieb Daimler, but he didn't patent it), Germany (Carl Benz which made the first patent).
Motorbikes - Germany (Gottlieb Daimler)
Train - invented in Germany
Radio transmission - UK (James Clark Maxwell described them theoretically), Germany (Heinrich Hertz created/used them first in experiments)
X-Ray - Germany (Gustav Röntgen)
Telephone - Germany (Philipp Reis, your Bell bought examples and reverse engineered them)
Bookpress with movable letters - Germany (Johannes Gensfleisch a.k.a. Gutenberg)
Lightbulb - Germany (Heinrich Göbel)
Periodic system of elements - Russia (Dimitri Mendelejew) and Germany (Justus Lothar Meyer)
Dynamo / Generator - Germany (Werner von Siemens)
Vaccination - UK (Edward Jenner)
Gliding plane - Germany (Otto Lilienthal)
Pain killer - Germany (Felix Hoffmann, Aspirin)
Relativity theory, Quantum theory - Albert Einstein, Planck,
TV - Germany (Manfred von Ardenne)
Cathod ray tube in TVs - Germany (Conrad Röntgen experimentally, Ferdinand Braun with horizontal and vertical directivity of the ray)
Computer - France (Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace) for mechanical ones and Germany (Konrad Zuse) for electric ones
Atomic fissure, used in plants and bombs - Germany (Otto Hahn)
Chip cards - Germany (Jürgen Dethloff, Helmut Gröttrup)
MP3 music compression - Germany (Fraunhofer Institut)
Electricity - actually already in ancient greek they used electrostatic charging of amber. And one century before Christ they had actual batteries in Bagdad! But then a plethorary of european scientists brought the work forward: UK (William Gilbert, Francis Hauksbee, Joseph Priestley, Henry Cavendish, Humphry Davy, Michael Faraday), Germany (Otto von Guericke, Ewald Jürgen Georg von Kleist, Georg Simon Ohm, Carl Friedrich Gauß), Italy (Luigi Galvani, Allesandro Volta), France (Charles du Fay, Charles Augustin de Coulomb, André-Marie Ampère), Netherlands (Pieter van Musschenbroek), Denmark (Hans Christian Ørsted).
I actually terminate this electricity list here. I could go on and on.
Also note that physical units named after their discoverer indicate some kind of importance of the relevant invention. So we have e.g. Volt, Ampere, Coulomb, Farad, Gauss, Watt, Ørsted, Tesla, Weber as units. None of them is based on USA's academia.
If we look at unit names outside of electricity we also find outdated ones like Röntgen or Curie. And still used ones like Plack constant, Newton, Pascal, Kelvin, Becquerel, Gray, Sievert. So where are the USA american ones if "all" of technology is supposed to stem from their academia?
IF we want to trace the roots, then perhaps we need to go back to antique greek philisophers. Because western academia itself traces itself there. But then again ... something like that existed also in ancient India and maybe China.
Does the F35 do that? Wasn't Iran shooting those down recently? If there's anything Iran has taught us it's that airpower doesn't win wars, allies do. The US will leave the middle east with their tail between their legs. This is the beginning of the end of the American Empire.
For the privilege of spending enormous sums of treasure flying around dropping bombs on brown people what did we get?
I would have rather seen that spent on giving lunch to every school age child or paying graduate students a wage above poverty level. At least something useful would have been accomplished
> I would have rather seen that spent on giving lunch to every school age child or paying graduate students a wage above poverty level. At least something useful would have been accomplished
Yeah I guess the only thing we’ll give away for free these days is $100,000 bombs.
I'm sorry, but this is like the most ignorant take ever. The world is essentially one life supported regime away from having a level of stability in the middle east that has quite literally never been achieved. Iran and their regional proxies have been almost the only source of middle eastern discontent in the last two decades. The stability of the region is already vastly improved from any time in the past and the dismantling of the IRGC will create a wave of vastly improved living conditions for hundreds of millions of people.
Iraq has for the first time ever entered in the high category of HDI.
Okay so Iran is responsible for the insurgency in Iraq, the Arab Spring, AQAP in Yemen, Islamic State, the ongoing situation in Syria, proxy wars between Saudi Arabia and the UAE and much more…
I think it’s extremely clear that the major contributor to instability in the Middle East over the past two decades has been the United States.
I think it's fair to say that pretty much no-one is a fan of the Iranian Regime. (And we'll ignore for the moment that the regime is a a direct by-product of previous US intervention.)
The regime is all kinds of bad, but you cannot change govts from without. Stability comes from people changing govts from within. Every time the US has changed a govt to support themselves it has ended badly.
This latest war has not unseated the IRGC, indeed it has entrenched it further. This is not surprising; they are the largest organised structure in the country. There are no other structures of comparable size or influence in the country.
Unfortunately the US military does not just project power. To justify its existence (far beyond the realm of self defence) it actively creates and enjoys conflicts. And increasingly those conflicts are showing the real limitations of military power projection.
By contrast the soft influence projected by technological leadership, USAid etc are much more influential. It's not surprising that support for these alternatives are the first target of a govt susceptible to being influenced. A trillion $ industry will not go quietly into the night.
Yes, of course, the US could deploy troops into Iran. They could topple the IRGC if desired. But it would be very expensive politically. (And I don't mean to the Republicans, but that also) but to the Military Industry. Because the electorate clearly indicated that after Afghanistan the appetite for foreign wars is dwindling. Another debacle in Iran (even more than the debacle it is now) would be disastrous.
I have no love for the Iranian regime. But no military intervention from outside has the ability to improve it. And the Iranian people will not support a US puppet govt - that influence was burned in 1956.
Govts change when people inside rise up to change them. Recent examples in Afghanistan, South Africa, Romania and even Iran (1979) show this over and over again.
Interestingly the Soviet Union fell because the satellite states broke away. Because the people in Poland, Hungary etc rose up. Not because of outside intervention.
This latest war in Iran follows a long tradition of US and UK meddling in the region, all of which is designed to get oil, not create stability. Indeed this latest foray has created instability in the supply of oil, and that is an unforgivable sin to the US public.
If the US wants to stop seeing unstable, barbaric regimes in the middle east, maybe it should stop making unstable barbaric regimes in the middle east. We don't get to literally create the problem on Tuesday and then cry that it's an existential threat on Thursday.
>The world is essentially one life supported regime away from having a level of stability in the middle east that has quite literally never been achieved.
> The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed. A Floating Fortress, for example, has locked up in it the labour that would build several hundred cargo-ships. Ultimately it is scrapped as obsolete, never having brought any material benefit to anybody, and with further enormous labours another Floating Fortress is built.
George Orwell, 1984.
The Republican project is one of making the population dumber while enriching military contractors and other private interests. This achieves it perfectly.
Because it’s an excuse, the trump admin is lying. All the time, you should never take them at their words. They have never been about cutting costs. Just look at Trump deficit. They are very openly going after science because it goes against the fake reality they are selling to their cult members
I’m sure this has nothing to do with 3.1 million graduate students versus 500 F-35s.
For actual context, F-35 program receives $9B per year (amortized over lifetime), which is $3000 per year per graduate student. Erasing the F-35 program entirely would make something like a 10% difference in graduate wages, while destroying the US Air Force as a modern military.
So no — your request to fund graduate students is more expensive than the F-35 program and delivers at best marginal results.
When you math through per unit or per capita or per year, we already spend more on education and science than the military — and it’s unclear further science funding to the detriment of the military would improve things.
Where did you get that the number of federally funded graduate students is 3.1 million?
Note that many will have industry, international or self funded (for MS it is less common to have funding). The 9B figure for maintaining the F35 you just said is very close to the entire annual budget of the NSF. Which is the main funding source of most of non medical research.
Also we are not talking about military budget, just the F35 maintenance program here.
The $9B figure is total amortized to yearly: research, development, production, and maintenance across the near century of lifetime (1990s-2080s).
I took the total number of graduate students, to spread the money across them. We could also look at the same number as, eg, funding an increase from 3.1M to 3.3M or 3.4M graduate students.
I stand by my original claim:
A 10% increase in graduate salary or number of students doesn’t justify dismantling our air force.
$9B/yr is less than half of the Pentagon's more recent estimate of $2T through 2088 for the F-35 program (according to Wikipedia and its sources, which is all I have to go on).
And again, the F-35 is not synonymous with the entire air force.
The F-35 is absolutely synonymous with our entire airforce through 2088.
The F-22 is still a viable Air Superiority Fighter but there's about 100 of them. It cannot hold back a peer air force. The primary point of the F-35 was a cheaper F-22 that we could build 3000 of.
4th gen fighters like the F-18 cannot compete in an air war with a large amount of stealth fighters using modern long range missiles, like China is fielding. They would be defeated before even seeing a blip on their radars.
Without the power of Air Superiority, all the rest of our air force is basically useless. B2s and B21s might still be usable, but they cannot maintain a strategic bombing campaign on their own. The money spent on 4th gen missile trucks is pointless.
Giving up the F-35 is equivalent to total abandonment of our "Best Air Force" doctrine and would require a significant shakeup of how we view the military, and billions poured into other parts of the military to make up for giving up the sky. It also means capitulating to China in advance. Though, if we are willing to do that, we could save like half the military budget every year.
Just have to abandon the entire pacific, Japan, and South Korea, and the Philippines, and Australia, and Vietnam, etc etc etc.
You are both comparing stuff that is nonsensical to compare $ amounts on. Would you give up science for more F-35s or vice versa? probably not or not by much.
Defense is a legitimate thing to worry about. For example, Vietnam defended itself against America. We do not defend, we attack and pillage resources from the global south. Real defense is honorable and to be celebrated. However, the US military is not an institution that does those things and they cloak themselves (well until recently) in rhetoric designed to confuse the public.
The poster said they work in academia, not the part that has to do with science, so it seems unfair to compare the F35 to all of academia when they were complaining about science being cut.
Later, after the math showing that graduate students as a whole are more expensive than the F35 program, you claim that the U.S already spends more on education and science than the military.
The claim is of course somewhat unclear, because what comprises science spending. Is Darpa science and not military. Does Nasa count as science in this claim? If Nasa does then it might be that you throw all the budgets of NOAA and the EPA and other similar organizations into the Science pile. I say it just because I am unsure how you are calculating one part of your budget. Actually the education part I am going to suggest that is just higher education.
Higher education is around 100 billion a year, without student loans which doubles that.
The U.S government spends also approximately a couple hundred billion for Science, if I am reading this correctly
https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf26314
which does a lot of work putting government and business spending together which gives you a number essentially what the government spends on the military.
I can easily construct something that shows the U.S does pay more for science and education than it does for military, but only by being IMHO somewhat misleading, for example by throwing K-12 spending together with the higher education payments and mixing federal and state monies, so to clarify what I mean when I say the U.S in these kinds of conversations and what I think most people mean is "the federal government"
I suppose that the original poster also meant the federal government or it wouldn't make any sense to mention F-35s either.
Under this limitation I believe that the combined ratio of science and higher education is at best 0.8% of GDP and military is 2.8%.
Although it is not really possible to trust very much the data one receives from the American government any more so I am uncertain.
for example this document - I am just having a hard time to trust what data goes into these various parts as federal spending in that area.
At any rate the military 2.8% I am quoting based on looking around is historically low. I would expect, especially given Iran, that it would be more in line with the historical 4.1%.
other issues - Veterans Administration budget is always not calculated as part of defense spending, because they are separate agencies. So when people say military budget they may be keeping that separate, however putting them together of course increases the amount spent
I happen to believe this document on money more than others, because publication controlled by congress and not the executive.
> I can easily construct something that shows the U.S does pay more for science and education than it does for military, but only by being IMHO somewhat misleading, for example by throwing K-12 spending together with the higher education payments and mixing federal and state monies, so to clarify what I mean when I say the U.S in these kinds of conversations and what I think most people mean is "the federal government"
I disagree: total tax burden and allocation is the relevant aspect, regardless of pointless semantics about which government unit disbursed the funds.
You admit the fact:
US governments spend more on education and science than the military, as measured by total funds allocated to purpose.
I think you’re the one being misleading by quibbling semantics about who dispersed the money: US taxpayers give more of their tax money to science and education than the military.
You focus on the federal government rather than totals is precisely to obscure that fact — which you know to be true, but find inconvenient for your politics. Hence the semantic quibbles.
>You focus on the federal government rather than totals is precisely to obscure that fact — which you know to be true, but find inconvenient for your politics.
Basic science is often cheap, I don't know where you're getting it's generally expensive. I've yet to meet someone whose equipment costs as much as any of the stuff my friends design for defense contractors. Even the head of the lab I'm in is making less than my friends are making as engineers and the lab equipment is pretty cheap compared to the stuff my friends are designing (we have a radar that cost maybe a couple hundred thousand but that's the majority of the equipment cost for the past decade).
Idk what your idea of budgets are for these sorts of labs but I think most engineers would be shocked at the shoestring budgets they run on (at least the ones I know are a fraction of the cost of a single engineering team).
The “whole thing” is never cheap. Running something like a university — providing the environment, infrastructure, administration, facilities, compliance systems, equipment, libraries, grants offices, laboratories, and institutional platform that allow professors and graduate students to do research — is itself extremely expensive.
After all, if you look at the fiscal budgets of major economies, public spending on education and research is often much larger than military spending.
The cuts that don't make much economical sense are ideological, its because they need to give something to that part of the coalition. Somewhere someone is having an erection when hears about these cuts and say something like despite everything supporting Trump was worth it after all.
For me, what really drove home how bad it is is that I know otherwise normal people in real life who think that many Haitian immigrants are eating people's pets. To even find that plausible there was a lot of racist misinformation they needed to have already internalized to the point that "don't live in the same reality" seems very accurate.
Though one bit of hope is that for me politics has never been that much different. My first foray into real political discussion was people in high school trying to convince me global warming wasn't real or that allowing gay marriage was a slippery slope to bestiality. Even back in 2008, before social media was what it is today, there was still tons of misinformation.
I know scientists who want to move back home but can't because where they are from doesn't have funding for the research they do. Even with the uncertain federal funding it's still more viable than many places around the world.
It seems like most significant agriculture extension programs have advice for irrigating wheat, so presumably someone is doing it, even if it isn't common. If drought is reducing yields significantly I wonder if the amount is going to start growing.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S14635...
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