I think the meaninglessness of large numbers is doing a lot of work here, which does not excuse it.
I don't think so. The numbers appear to be getting worse from back when I was working with people who did this kind of stuff. It's Trump and the ideas that propelled Trump to a win.
I've been waiting a few days for this to be close to on topic. It looks like pretty good journalism to me. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/department-of-energy-risks-michael-lewis
I'm tempted to link antipope's merciless again but I think everyone has read that one.
Even without clicking the links, I know the post title is entirely accurate.
The 100,000 option is tricky, in practice. It's hard to believe an assault on Tehran, especially one involving 20,000 US casualties, wouldn't kill many more civilians than that. So it really becomes a question about whether nuclear first strike is off the table. 2m though, yeah, that's bloodthirstiness (especially combined with the overthrow point - US civilians are fair game too, right, respondents?).
4.1: Good point. The study apparently didn't mention civilian casualties in the ground option. Even allowing for what you say though, the 100,000 option I think is still significant, in that there was little aversion to deliberate killing of civilians or to nuclear first use.
I think it's kind of interesting (as in: shocking) that the scenario sets up a situation where the Iranian nuclear program has been destroyed in retaliation for the attack on a US carrier. Umm, folks: at that point we have won.
Not really a good match to the situation at the end of WW2. What is the point of the invasion that "stalls? The big differences between the scenarios are (a) We had been at war with Japan for over 3 1/2 years, (b) The war had not "stalled" but we had not yet actually invaded Japan, and (c) Russia (Winter?) was coming. Ending the war quickly sounded like a great idea. In the fantasy scenario we have apparently been a war a short time, become "stalled" because we want to overthrow the Iranian government and theocracy. [There are many good precedents why this isn't such a cool idea (see: Saddam Hussein/Iraq).] So it's time to bring out the nukes or Tokyo-style city smashing via conventional bombing. Uh, sure.
The PDF doesn't have the "news articles" it refers to in the main text as being in the appendices. Any link?
So, really, there's much less of a case for nuking Iran; it's even more blood-thirsty than MC makes it out to be. Also seems a lot like a rehearsal/stalking horse/cry for sanity vis a vis the upcoming war with NK. /headdesk
What is the point of the invasion that "stalls?
Dick waving.
Also seems a lot like a rehearsal/stalking horse/cry for sanity vis a vis the upcoming war with NK. /headdesk
Or, more directly, Trump's apparent determination to fabricate a reason to pull out of the Iran deal.
7.3: Here. Haven't read any of it.
The research was done in 2015, in the dimly-remembered before-time.
Also the same toxic combo of sunk cost fallacy / our soldiers' lives matter more that has bolstered imperialism throughout history.
4: There's only one side to any war Americans are involved in. Everyone else is just a terrorist operating outside the bounds of military convention.
7 generally: Describing a sensible strategy wasn't the point. The aim was to try to recapture the emotional state of Americans in 1945. The war hadn't stalled, but there had been a long bloody campaign across the Pacific. The stalled invasion scenario can't recapture the time dimension, but tried to capture the blood dimension by adjusting WWII fatalities to the current size of the US armed forces. One can't get an exact match, but the approach seems reasonable, since it seems to me the American public have become far more sensitive to casualties and far more expectant of rapid victory.
The aim was to try to recapture the emotional state of Americans in 1945.
Can we work on the "Nazis are the bad guys" part first?
I'm all for rebuilding a Nazi-punching ethos by any means, but as a matter of historical fact, didn't the US fight Germany in WWII more because of how alliances shook out than because of any firm moral commitments? And when we then got a little better at practicing our ostensible moral values it was with the propaganda picture firmly in mind, during both WWII and Cold War.
Yes. The U.S. (or FDR and those who agreed with him) would have been in a real fix if Hitler wasn't willing to declare war on us because we declared war on Japan.
15: Killing yellow people, killing brown people. I think that part matches up ok.
16, 17: My understanding (based on very limited reading) is that there was steadily building bipartisan support for intervention in Europe, and that if Germany hadn't declared FDR likely could have sold the public a casus belli arising from the submarine war in the Atlantic. In which America was absolutely a belligerent from IIRC late 1940.
I just saw a nice cynical story on how disaster relief for Texas will be the sugar coating that get the debt-ceiling increase down. It may be right.
I thought I was in the weather threat. Ignore.
And the bipartisan support arose largely from strategy not morality. But there's nothing wrong with that. Criminal fuckups like Iraq arose largely from substitution of (im)morality for strategy.
19: FDR was slowly building support for intervention in Europe. The problem was that after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the people wanted to fight Japan. If Hitler hadn't been helpful enough to declare war, even the aid we were sending to the U.K. could have been kept for our fight with Japan. Or at least it would have been a struggle to avoid that.
Though there were strong domestic political currents against war with Germany, it is hard for me to see how we could have stayed out of it. But staying out for another year and thus resulting in a VE in 1946 or 1947 isn't hard to picture. Even thought most of the people dying to stop Hitler were Russians, I don't think they could have moved nearly as fast without our trucks.
14. Yes, to most of that. It just reinforces the point that we had (it seemed at the time) much more compelling reasons to nuke Japan than we have in the fantasy scenario to nuke Iran.
They couldn't have; but in the no-Hitler declaration war maybe they would have gotten the trucks anyway, but Europe wouldn't have gotten American troops until much later, so the Soviets would have advanced further. Worst of all worlds.
26: True that. I hadn't thought of it that way.
It took me a bit to figure out why I felt utterly revulsed by the study itself. I think it is because it basically amounts to a push-poll about those nasty Iranian cheaters who are itching to kill Americans. Authors are awful bloodthirsty motherfuckers like the rest of us.
I do believe I will live to see the US launch a nuclear strike on *somebody*. American Exceptionalism will compel us. On the other hand maybe I won't live much longer. Winning!
30.1: I didn't read it that way. Especially since the findings are that Americans are a pretty awful, and the authors seem to share that interpretation.
I mean, the drive to war usually functions a lot like a push-poll too.
She didn't die, she just flew south, because winter has come.
31. People are pretty awful. It's hard to find any country/religion/ethnicity that hasn't been bloody bastards at some point(s) in their history.
That being said, I don't think that "even Trump" would perform a first nuclear strike against another country. I'm with Tom Schelling on this one: surprised and pleased that the norm against first strikes has lasted as long as it has. I think it is still in force in the minds of world leaders. (Not so sure about terrorists, though.)
I'm not nearly so relaxed as to rely on the norm against first strikes is to assume away accident and uncertainty.
I still think this is much safer than the cold war because nobody is worried that North Korea could knock out the U.S.'s ability to make a second strike.
I'm more worried about a demented first strike on our part now than before, but more worried about mistaken detection and retaliation than about intentional first strikes. We were fucking lucky that never happened in the Cold War, and it seems now we're letting all those systems deteriorate while still expecting them to function well (which they arguably didn't do even when new).
I'm worried that somebody will mix meth in with the president's cocaine.
before people used to use cocaine to keep themselves up at night. now they can use moby's worrying suggestions.
Maybe it would be safer if we got the president to freebase.
to be fair, I guess it could have been me.
temporary threadjack before we move back to bloodthirstiness: I am moving house which is inherently stressful and I am as always spending money on my rental to make it livable (hanging my own lights, getting curtains, realizing there's no hot water in the fucking kitchen and having to get an expensive heater and installation), and I can't remember where my original landlord's lights went, and I can't solve the tetris problem of his currently disassembled hideous gold-flecked blown-glass tangle of leaves chandelier, and all these things are freaking me out in their own right. but then I am still withdrawing from this one drug, while having had a bad reaction to this other anti-depressant cymbalta, because one of the other fucking psych meds I take is like a force multiplier for cymbalta in bad metabolizers which of course I am one. at one point it induced mild serotonin syndrome where my eyes dilated to 90s rave standards and I was hot and panicking with deep terror. so I'm tapering off that too, great! but cymbalta has bad withdrawal symptoms also, boo, so I fell down again and am dizzy and puking (don't worry ajay I am fine for dim sum as I do all my own stunts.) PLUS now I am in a mixed state in which you are both depressed and manic, my new least favorite psychological state.
the mania is kind of great though, speaking of freebasing. get up at 4:30 and order a dishwasher and dryer from different companies because of obsessive price comparison! work out for 90 minutes hiking before sunrise! meet with an electrician! go to a meeting and have coffee with someone! clean grout at the new place with a homemade paste of bon ami, vinegar and water! (all in one day, mind.) at some level I recognize I need to chill the fuck out but lying down just sends my mind racing in pointless circles. I have klonipin and I could eat them like chiclets but that seems dangerous. there's really nothing y'all can do except say, "wow al, that sounds lame" but it makes me feel better to talk about it. I want to stop taking this stupid cymbalta which makes me tweaked out like a motherfucker, but I don't need any more withdrawal symptoms, and I want this to be over now. HATE. maybe push-ups and crunches and squats will help, let's try. or listening to the clash really loud. now back to your regularly scheduled despair about man's inhumanity to man.
Wow al, that sucks.
I thought you were going to take ajay for black pepper crab?
I don't even eat that but it sounded nice.
49: it's great but it's like the most popular restaurant for it in narnia so the line would be deathly long and he wants to bring small god-daughter.
Will they even let you bring your own god-daughter? Most places want you to buy when you arrive.
Al, I feel bad even saying this because I don't want you to be paranoid but I had that eyes-blonked-out side effect in my late teens and my pupils never went all the way back to normal, so you may want to do whatever version of keeping an eye on it doesn't create horrible puns. Sorry on many levels.
it's ok I spent years pinning my pupils out on heroin I figure it will just even out.
OK have graduated both to hitting palm with other fist dangerously hard, gnawing on fingertips and just taking two klonopin fuck it. at least at 3 I can go clean grout. fml.
Al, reading your post made me feel both dizzy and lazy. You maybe don't need to clean out the grout at a rental, you know?
What I wish for you is that you can get some calming and relaxing and restorative sleep. Bit the meds issue sounds truly awful.
Anyone voluntarily grouting will clearly raise the net happiness of the world.
This is going to be a fascinating lunch.
I promise I clean up real nice. lying down now in the dark on the advice of b-i-l, definitely a good idea.
sorry to worry people it's just soothing to vent occasionally. I'll be fine; it's just a rough patch of chemical storm inside my brain. like getting sick with the flu, but more internal.
It's hard to grout in the dark.
Jesus ajay, you better up your game. We're talking crab with alameida here.
hey I got lots of sleep! W00t benzos I guess. I really will be ok I just like to complain in pseudonymous fora.
I forgot to take my eye drops this morning.
Don't take any heroin or antidepressants before you retrieve them.
It says I have to wait five minutes after using the drops before I put something else in my eye.
talking crab with alameida
Narnia's number one radio show.