brasidas

Hard disagree.

I think ISIS was a pretty good example of ungoverned spaces having bad side effects.

Yeah. Yeah...

I would rather be lucky than good and goddamn it I wish servicemembers didn't stand outside to record things.

My understanding of the targeting was that it was clownishly incompetent.

Look, IR theory seems pretty stupid if you view the world through the eyes of a goldfish swimming around a castle in a fishbowl...

The Iran we’ve known for 50 years is literally blowback!

The funniest thing was the intercepts of them arguing over who gets the nicest places on the first day of the invasion.

How many casualties do you think would have been a fair estimate for this point in an air campaign and ballistic missile counter-attack?

I'm absolutely devastated about the Kuwait strikes too.

Yeah but Zelensky lives and Russia threw salvos of Kalliber missiles into the wrong targets.

Also, two days into an air war with a country that is flying our military assistance prior to 1979 and using Russian toasters for IADS isn't the right time frame to take a measurement of how we are doing.

It's not like Iran is conveniently located adjacent to two pretty good examples of everything not being fine after killing bad people.

And I'm not making a value judgement - the anemic and hugely counterproductive response from the Iranian regime is a symptom of having multiple layers of their chain of command taken out.

It's just that off-ramps are going to work poorly here.

Gray longboi cargo shorts with a built-in belt on the rack at Kohl’s

We’re at war in the Middle East and there’s cargo shorts with a 12” inseam and a built in belt on the shelf at Kohl’s, 2007 is so fucking back.

Yes this was a good one.

It's just that asking them to negotiate is like wondering why the person who got knocked unconscious never says the safe word...

Also, nothing like stunting on the Russia's inability to do this in '22.

The other part is that you put those trying to reconstitute a government at the horns of a dilemma where their ability to assemble power structures is opposed to any outreach to the other belligerents.

The thing about kicking off an operation with a decapitation strike is that you preclude any ability to negotiate and off-ramp. Coercion theory is out the window when you create a leadership vacuum in one of the parties.

It's kind of amazing that Iran is doing the heavy lifting when if comes to coalition building for us.

It's interesting that this is being done by drones.

Right?

This is hardly the primary issue, but I guess Khamenei isn't going to respond to my Twitter DMs asking if he liked anime.

(Whispers) there’s a difference between orders that are illegal to follow and orders that are illegal to give, and this may have been the second but it probably wasn’t the first

They could. There might also be some who realize their lives have become untenable.

"I'm in Mike D'Andrea's DMs"

It’s ok to have a moral take in the moment without becoming a pundit.

I think it’s worth trying to figure out what’s happening and explaining things that are happening now is ok.

“Heres what this is really about” and “what does this mean for Taiwan” though…

I think it’s ok to take a break from the “here’s what this all really means” takes.

We don’t even know what’s happening.