Comment by hnbad
19 hours ago
Given the state of ... well, everything ... it still surprises me when people pretend there's some level of modesty or decorum the rich and powerful still need to abide by at the risk of some sort of popular revolt. I guess it's a way to compensate for the material powerlessness most people actually experience (especially in politics), much like the handwringing over the Second Amendment in the US as if merely handing a town full of ordinary people guns is sufficient to defeat a modern military. Sure, it looks like nowadays you can do that with a stockpile of low budget drones because even the military industrial complex has found a way to optimize for profit by literally delivering nothing in return for extracting the lion's share of the federal budget, but even that still requires actual work like planning, training and organizing with sufficient political motivation, not just going to the range or "hunting".
The expectation of a need for decorum against all evidence almost seems like a quaint remnant of the aristocracy at this point. There's no advantage to being a nice or sensible person if you're a billionaire. People talk about "business" like it's still the 1800s and billionaires are the factory owners. The real economy (i.e. anything involving any pretense of being an exchange of goods and services in any shape or form) is now a minute fraction of the global economy. Everything else is finance. And if the nature of the finance "industry" wasn't obvious enough the US has given up all pretense to the point that members of the US government now intentionally manipulate online betting "markets" directly.
You may have needed some table manners to be able to run a tincan factory. You can let your entire ass hang out on TV 24/7 and still be a billionaire today. And people will still cheer you on like you're the inventor of sliced bread.
A slight tangent, but on your first point - defeating a modern military does not mean engaging them in head-to-head combat and coming out on top, but making it impossible for them to comfortably operate. This is how Afghanistan, with basic weapons and religious extremists running around in sandals, managed to defeat not only the US but also the USSR.
The big factor that works against military victory anywhere is that the military is left to visibly identify themselves as a means of projecting influence, whereas militants can seamlessly blend in with the population. And trying to punish the population at large to weed out the militants mostly just tends to backfire and create even more militants.
There is even modern precedent for this like the Algerian War where the people of Algeria managed to kick out the French even with the French engaging in widescale massacres, torture, and all other sorts of fun stuff that explains how anti-Western powers are so comfortably gaining influence in Africa today.
If one doesn't believe there was a conspiracy, then the assassination attempt on Trump would exemplify this - one guy with a rifle nearly single-handedly killed one of the most guarded men alive. Your average military logistics support doesn't have anything remotely like a team of secret service and police covering every single angle of attack in one well secured location.
> If one doesn't believe there was a conspiracy, then the assassination attempt on Trump would exemplify this - one guy with a rifle nearly single-handedly killed one of the most guarded men alive.
Sure, but that being a failure mode is a design choice. Look at Iran: we've seen how many decapitation strikes now? At this point there shouldn't even anyone be left that was in the original chain of command but clearly they're chugging along quite nicely because they decentralized military operations exactly for a scenario like this, knowing anyone appearing on the US' or Israel's radar too prominently was one bad day away from needing replacement.
> This is how Afghanistan, with basic weapons and religious extremists running around in sandals, managed to defeat not only the US but also the USSR.
Not quite. The US managed to "defeat" Afghanistan. The problem was just that nation building was never really on the menu. The US was extremely hands-off during the occupation because their priority was making sure more US soldiers don't come home toes-first when the war had officially been declared won than to build any kind of legacy. This also led to massive subversion of the supposedly US-backed government. There were very few incentives in supporting the US more than necessary not to get shot at, especially after it became clear the US government had no interest in rewarding the loyalty of most of the people who had risked their lives as translators and negotiators, let alone supporting the people who volunteered to join the new army or police. That's why when the US left the supposed new Afghan state just dropped its weapons and ran away and why the Taliban could pretty much just take over without much resistance.
A good counter-example is Iraq where not only did the US have to do much less work to do (because Iraq already had the concept of a powerful central government rather than effectively being a coalition of often loosely connected tribal communities), they also engaged in a lot more active nation building and had reasons to maintain a long-term presence.
If you want to see how bottle rockets vs modern hardware can also play out, look at whatever the IDF is doing at the moment. Granted, the US military being deployed against US citizens would probably show a lot more hesitance and restraint, but again that's a design choice, not an inherent property.
> And trying to punish the population at large to weed out the militants mostly just tends to backfire and create even more militants.
That assumes militants are a problem, not a calculated risk. Long-term social instability is manageable if you don't rely on popular approval as long as it doesn't disrupt supply chains enough to directly threaten the military's ability to operate. Israel for example arguably flourished for decades while having to continuously deal with militants and responding with large scale violence.
In the Iran War, Iran's strategy is much more akin to to a resistance force than a normal military. Israel clearly didn't believe their decentralization would be viable, or they wouldn't have had the US assassinate their leaders - because now they have younger, much more hardline leaders, with a blood debt.
As for Afghanistan I think people don't realize how much fighting was still going on over there. The Taliban forces weren't just camping out in the mountains and defending, they were actively striking all US forces and US proxy forces. In total hundreds of thousands were killed. The Taliban killed thousands of US soldiers, wounded tens of thousands, had a significant minority of land under their undisputed control, were actively contesting control of much more of the country, and rapidly took control of the country once the US left. And yeah nation building was 100% on the menu. There was a friggin George Floyd mural in Kabul lol. But the US was never able to get the country under control, and things were trending worse more than better.
Iraq was much easier for one simple reason - it's a heavily divided country which Saddam (who was himself part of a minority Sunni population) was able to stabilize only with an iron fist. This made much of the country hate him. He was also extremely paranoid, probably in part because of this, and didn't trust his own armed forces which led to direct efforts to limit their power/capabilities, installing commanders based on loyalty over competence, and so on. So it was pretty much an ideal target for a decapitation strike. But even in that ideal scenario we were left waving a victory from flag within tiny little heavily fortified green zones, because stepping outside of them was highly dangerous.
And I don't think Israel is showing anything productive at all. Hamas has comparable numbers today as when the war started, Israel's leader has a warrant for his arrest for genocide, and the future of Israel is probably more uncertain than it's ever been in its entire existence because they've isolated themselves from basically everybody except Trump who will be gone in a couple of years.