(((Asa Zernik)))

It's gender all the way down.

Hegseth explicitly said this time is different because the US *isn't* doing nation building!

Depressingly predictable that, outside of the Iranian diaspora, no one in the pro-war camp can even muster up an argument like “the IRI has been killing its people by the tens of thousands in recent weeks and has to be eliminated” and can only say racist shit.

The Lebanese government working towards a functioning monopoly on the use of force in Lebanon is one of the few unequivocally good things to come from this awful era of conflict in the middle east. Wish them luck

Update: my reply team have now determined to the origin of “planter’s wife is Jewish” thing to be the neonazi website vdare, and apparently reported nowhere else. bsky.app/profile/pymu...

They were already attacking civilian targets in 2025; the problem here (for Iran) is that they're hitting *neutral* targets.

(Note: this is true for the US but not for Israel. Israel is "only" lacking on the strategy side, or at least, is taking a very risky gamble strategically.)

This is not a derogatory sentiment. It is a descriptive one. Better get used to it, there will be a lot of emails under socialism too

the "Dune" series of books tackles the age-old question of "would you still love me if i was a worm", eventually arriving at the answer of "your petty imperialism will not withstand the endless light of islam"

And now look at Gaza. There is a bizarrely unresolved dissonance between how many pro-Palestinian observerd rightly mourn the horrific damage meeted out to civilians, economy and infrastructure while at the same time claiming Israel has lost because Hamas has enough fighters to strut amidst rubble

Pape isn't wrong to point out how airpower alone was unable to bring down the Nazis in 1943-44, Viet Minh in 1947-75 or that despite all Israeli efforts Hamas still exists.

Yet in all three cases airpower turned economies and infrastructure into a sea of rubble that took/will take years to rebuild

The tendency observers shaped by GWOT-era failures to reach back to Pape's work in criticising US DoD belief in airpower's ability alone to achieve specific strategic objectives has led to less attention to the broader impact of the sheer carnage American airpower has unleashed since 1941

Sounds the same as the way that Russian hackers, even though they also target Russians, have often served as privateers for Russian foreign policy interests in exchange for a blind eye from the authorities.

Given that the UK's position in the last 50 years is that settlements are illegal and Israel cannot annex the West Bank, banning trade with West Bank settlements is really the absolutely minimal ask. It's pathetic that it hasn't happened.

That, and also all the government jobs running it used to be reserved for professional America Understanders, and now are sinecures for political insiders who don't make the cut for actual ministries.

Don't play dumb. "this is trump's and Israel's war, they both wanted it" is a VERY different statement from "Americans are dying for Israel's war" and you know it

Joke among anti-W Israeli Americans in 2003: Bush listened to Ariel Sharon asking him to invade, but it's Bush. He can't spell. He got the letter at the end wrong.

בארה"ב דווח ש"אלפי כורדים פתחו במתקפה קרקעית באיראן" - הם הכחישו ב"פוקס ניוז" דווח שאלפי כורדים חצו את הגבול מעיראק, אלא שבכורדיסטן העיראקית הבהירו: "אפילו לא כורדי אחד חצה את הגבול". גם במשמרות המהפכה הכחישו - ותקפו חוליות כורדיות בטילים. דיווחים בארה"ב: ארגונים כ...

I kind of thought so from the first reports, but nice to have confirmation.

"But Iraqi Kurdistan denied it: 'Not a single Kurd has crossed into Iran'"

www.ynet.co.il/news/article...

I'm the type of goon who agrees to a Chotiner interview

Having had this experience before - scanning a long document by hand can be extremely time consuming and error prone in a second or third language, but verifying that the two sentences someone pointed out to you do in fact say a certain thing is quite easy.

He said "I can't read *well*", not "I can't read *at all*". He checked the citations in the original document.

bsky.app/profile/opin...

Interestingly, once he gets to the Eastern Mediterranean coast he's pretty accurate. It's everything east of Israel/Palestine and Lebanon that's an undifferentiated blob.

These quotes are actually very revealing about modern American civil-military relations

Those Who Flock To Omelas

honestly, this would be a banger of a trap question

He went on to indict Israel’s military operations in Iran, which the United States backed up over the weekend by assassinating the country’s supreme leader.

"We’re talking about regime change?” Newsom said. “For two years, they haven’t even been able to solve the Hamas question in Israel.”

I'm no fan of Newsom, but I know a winning line when I see one

Platner leading Mills by 24 points among people earning over $100k while trailing narrowly among those earning under $50k is, ngl, both *deeply* unsurprising and flat out hilarious

*Khymani