People like Hegseth like to think that the rules of warfare are woke gay bullshit designed by losers to hamper the natural winners (i.e. them), but they don’t understand that prior to being codified by the Geneva convention, the rules of war were customary, and existed for reasons other than purely humanitarian ones.

For instance, when surrendering a city or fort, the defenders would be typically given something called honours of war, in which they would be permitted to march out bearing their arms and waving their flags, thus avoiding humiliation. They would then surrender their arms and be taken as prisoners of war, or, supposing that the attacking army doesn’t have the facilities to keep POWs, would be granted free passage. Now you could simply let them march out and then massacre them, thus avoiding either having to care for POWs or having a bunch of enemy troops that you have to deal with in a future battle, but you can only pull that trick once - the next time, the defenders will fight to the death rather than be massacred. So you pull a dirty trick to win this battle, but it makes every future battle harder, and it also means that they will not be likely to take you prisoner. Even the Mongols would typically honour the surrender of a city (provided no resistance was offered after the ultimatum), because besieging or storming a city is much costlier than making it surrender.

You see this effect in action in the present war, where the US twice used diplomatic talks as cover for suprise attacks, and thus Iran no longer has any reason to see any diplomacy with the US as legitimate, so even as Trump wants to pull out, he can’t.You can assassinate their civilian leaders, but now you have to keep your head on a swivel as you’re also suddenly a legitimate target. You can sink their defenceless ship and leave the survivors to drown, but now they have no reciprocal obligation towards your crews. You can strike their embassies, but now your embassies are struck in return. You can launch attacks on them from nominally neutral countries, but now those countries are legitimate targets.

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Elon Musk uses so much ketamine he ruined his bladder. He’s also a nazi pedophile, but that isn’t related

John Fetterman lives under a bridge and eats any traveller who can’t answer his riddles

I once had an idea that it would be funny if Trump got hit on the head and turned woke: We’re gonna add so many genders your head’s gonna spin. You’ll say, “Donald, there’s too many genders, we can’t keep track of them all!” Too bad, we just added 10 more genders

In WW2, America had segregation, the UK and France had brutally oppressive overseas colonies, and the USSR had gulags. The Axis were still much worse.

Credit where credit’s due, then. They did a fantastic job and they couldn’t have picked a better guy to destroy America

So Trump is a deep cover Soviet sleeper agent who has infiltrated all the way to the top rungs of power in the United States, and is using that power to destroy America? Fuck yeah, that rules.

So like, was George Bush a Russian puppet too? The Iraq war harmed America. Was Obama a Russian puppet for cancelling the public option and letting the bankers get away with crashing the economy?Was Biden a Russian puppet, since he was sleepy and feckless?

I’m a lot more inclined that your problems are due to institutional and societal rot, accumulated failures, a lack of planning, etc., rather than a grand Russian conspiracy. But if that’s true and you’re penetrated to the point where your government is just secretly controlled by Russia, I think you should just ask China to annex you. That way you at least could have a functioning country.

I remember thinking it was a silly idea in 2016, too. Like, the supposed “interference” was facebook ads featuring buff Bernie, stuff like that. It just seems like it’s a way to make an excuse for the US (and more specifically the Democrats), like their problems aren’t of their own making and everything is Russia’s fault. Linking it all the way back to Kruschev is especially ridiculous.

But, supposing it is actually a plot that goes all the way back to the Krushchev era, good for them. It worked perfectly. The gameshow man is radpidly destroying America.

That would have been true like 20 years ago, but the PLAN is absolutely a bluewater navy capable of projecting power. Their focus is on their backyard, but they have 3 aircraft carriers, 64 destroyers (with two more of the advanced type 55 commissioned a couple days ago), and 69 submarines.

A sea mine is like a land mine in that you always have a safe path through that you know and can communicate to allies. Even if enemies know the location of the minefields, you’re still forcing them to go through an area of your choosing rather than allowing them free movement. Most likely, Iran will have mined the areas closer to the UAE side of the strait, forcing any ships to hug Iran’s coastline and allowing them to strike with even their shortest range missiles.

Wait, do people really believe that Trump is the culmination of a 70 year Soviet and Russian campaign, and all of America’s mistakes leading up to today are the result of this? Seems a little far-fetched imo

I think they’re slow-dripping the release of information related to the KIA

It is, just not in the way they think it is. 🕋☪️allahu ackbar☝️🧕

They’re under siege you fucking moron

Sure, Americans are definitely to blame. The Democrats are Americans, by the way.

What you’re becoming is much worse than Russia.

Kamala lost fair and square. She was a shitty candidate who ran a shitty campaign. Supposing that Arabs and tankies are what lost her the election, well, perhaps she should have tried to win them over? Perhaps she could have promised to stop supporting the mass slaughter, for instance, but I guess unconditional support for Israel was more important than keeping Trump out of the White House!

And yet, despite the total failure of the Democrats to stop Trump, you still cling to them. “If only those damn Arabs had voted for us! So what if we’re killing their families?” “Tankies torpedoed Kamala for not being the perfect candidate!” Pathetic! You should own your failure - the Democrats failed you, and you failed yourselves and everyone else for not demanding more from them. You could have used this to grow as a person, morally and intellectually. Instead, you just fall back on scolding like in 2016. You’ll never learn a thing.

The white moderate is at it again, MLK remains undefeated in his assessment