US military tells Iraq it is preparing to ‘move out’: Official letter
The US military informed its counterparts in Baghdad on Monday it was preparing for “movement out of Iraq,” a day after the Iraqi parliament urged the government oust foreign troops.
The head of the US military’s Task Force Iraq, Brigadier General William Seely, sent a letter to the head of Iraq’s joint operations command, a copy of which was seen by AFP.
The letter said troops would “be repositioning forces over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement.”
A US defense official and an Iraqi defense official confirmed the letter was real and had been delivered.
So it looks like the Iraqi PM was in on the assassination plot, right? He seems to have lured Soleimani to the airport with a peace ruse, which Blumenthal pathetically pretends to think was real, but of course it probably wasn't and Blumenthal knows it, and I seriously doubt Soleimani himself thought it was real. (Sure, the Saudi puppets of America just all of a sudden want peace with Iran, sure. What's really going on?) Then he acts horrified and betrayed and has the parliament vote to expel US forces, i.e., provides Trump with a perfect excuse to withdraw forces from Iraq like he already probably wanted and free up all those resources for a potential invasion of Iran. Makes sense, right?
Too soon, apparently. Now the letter was just a "draft" released by "mistake". I still expect a large "withdrawal", i.e., repositioning.
“Joy is a current of energy in your body, like chlorophyll or sunlight, that fills you up and makes you naturally want to do your best.” - Bill Russell
DrEvil » 06 Jan 2020 15:59 wrote:@fourthbase: By your reasoning Saddam Hussein would have been justified in killing five million Americans, and someone should nuke Washington to prevent Trump from starting a massive war in the Middle East.
Right, well, that's where the dominance I'm happy about comes into play. However evil my country can be, to whatever evil extent it has not been genuinely trying to suppress the evil of others: Nobody can out-evil America like that. Unless they want to be exterminated. Call me a smug, ugly, arrogant American and worse. But it is what it is. Any of you who live within the borders of an American ally are probably secretly grateful about it, too.
And your hypothetical about nuking Berlin is bullshit. You're arguing through 20-20 hindsight goggles.
No, it's not bullshit.
You people just can't answer it without losing.
Either you condone nuking a city and you lose face as an anti-fascist who's always condemned evil, evil America for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Or you condone letting the Nazis kill several million Jews and tens of millions of Soviet comrades. In which case, you really lose face as an anti-fascist.
You said 1941. People didn't know just how bad it would get at that point. Bad, yes, but not 50 million bad. It's not as black and white as you want it to be. If that makes me "lose" your little game, so be it.
But let's assume that people back then knew exactly how bad it would get and that they nuked Berlin and cut the war short. Yay! Except then the Soviet Union wouldn't be an ally, and they wouldn't have a broken back and would be in a much better position to challenge America, which at that point hadn't gotten their war machine up and running. Perhaps the only reason the US is top dog today is because WW2 happened as it did (one dumb hypothetical is as good as any other).
Evading the game isn't losing. But it is evasion, which is telling. You obviously know it's a lose-lose for any anti-fascist who's ever condemned Hiroshima. And it's not really a game. It's a hypothetical scenario designed to reveal something real about your principles. As I said, the history of the counterfactual isn't the point. This isn't an alt-history novel being written. This is one question, in a vacuum. Any complications of the nuke relating to which country would then have how much power are irrelevant. Any practical concerns about how the bomb-droppers would know that 50 million lives are on the line are irrelevant. Let's say the bomb-dropper is you, in a time machine. This is basically just a large-scale version of "Would it be okay to assassinate Baby Hitler if it could prevent the Holocaust?" The unintended consequences make for interesting sci fi, the potential precedents set would make for interesting spinoff dilemmas, but to get to the ethics of it, the choice must be simple, no further worse consequences, no precedents set. It's simple: Nuke Berlin, or let 50 million people die.
Ffs. If it's a choice between nuking Berlin or letting 50 million people die then you nuke Berlin, but no one at the time had that information available, as time travel wasn't invented back then, so your entire hypothetical is just a really dumb trolley problem trying to boil messy reality down to a simplistic binary choice in an attempt at a cheap gotcha. It's not clever, or really that interesting, just annoying.
"I only read American. I want my fantasy pure." - Dave
There are these magic time-traveling drones and if you type ooga-ooga-ickety-ickety-ack-ack-ack in the next post that will unlock the program that sends them back to the 1890s, programmed to kill babies born in Austria in a very horrible fashion. IT'S SCIENCE, GODDAMN YOU, THIS iS HOW IT WORKS! But the technology is unable to distinguish which baby was Hitler. So RIGHT NOW YOU CAN DISPATCH THESE KILLER BOTS AND MURDER THE HITLER BABY along with thousands of innocent children just like they did in that pizza shop! What do you mean, I'm full of shit and sound like a completely unhinged bizarroland parody character? COME ON, ARE YOU GOING TO DO IT? TICK TICK TICK, you MUST DECIDE NOW in the next MINUTE or I gotcha in a double bind and YOU LOSE! YOU WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE 50 MILLION WHO DIE! CHECKMATE! YOU AND YOU ALONE, AND EVERY NOTION AND LABEL I ASSOCIATE WITH YOU, WILL HAVE KILLED 50 MILLION PEOPLE! WHAT YOU POST HERE IN RESPONSE REVEALS YOUR TRUE NATURE! BUT POST NOW OR ELSE! I WIN! ARE YOU GOING TO LET HITLER LIVE?! YOU BASTARDS! I WILL BE ALWAYS RIGHT AND YOU WILL BE FOREVER WRONG!!! SCIENCE! THIS IS A PERFECT CHECKMATE PLOY, I LEARNED IT FROM BEN SHAPIRO!!! MWAHAHAHA!
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.
To Justice my maker from on high did incline: I am by virtue of its might divine, The highest Wisdom and the first Love.
JackRiddler » 06 Jan 2020 22:48 wrote:There are these magic time-traveling drones and if you type ooga-ooga-ickety-ickety-ack-ack-ack in the next post that will unlock the program that sends them back to the 1890s, programmed to kill babies born in Austria in a very horrible fashion. IT'S SCIENCE, GODDAMN YOU, THIS iS HOW IT WORKS! But the technology is unable to distinguish which baby was Hitler. So RIGHT NOW YOU CAN DISPATCH THESE KILLER BOTS AND MURDER THE HITLER BABY along with thousands of innocent children just like they did in that pizza shop! What do you mean, I'm full of shit and sound like a completely unhinged bizarroland parody character? COME ON, ARE YOU GOING TO DO IT? TICK TICK TICK, you MUST DECIDE NOW in the next MINUTE or I gotcha in a double bind and YOU LOSE! YOU WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE 50 MILLION WHO DIE! CHECKMATE! YOU AND YOU ALONE, AND EVERY NOTION AND LABEL I ASSOCIATE WITH YOU, WILL HAVE KILLED 50 MILLION PEOPLE! WHAT YOU POST HERE IN RESPONSE REVEALS YOUR TRUE NATURE! BUT POST NOW OR ELSE! I WIN! ARE YOU GOING TO LET HITLER LIVE?! YOU BASTARDS! I WILL BE ALWAYS RIGHT AND YOU WILL BE FOREVER WRONG!!! SCIENCE! THIS IS A PERFECT CHECKMATE PLOY, I LEARNED IT FROM BEN SHAPIRO!!! MWAHAHAHA!
Wouldn't it be a lot easier to just answer the question? Not for you, I guess. Coward. DrEvil, to his credit, answered it like a normal person. No, nobody in 1941 could have foreseen 50 million. But a million or two? Absolutely. And that's what the bombers of Japan knew they were saving. And that's what's keeping you from answering it. You want to be able to keep calling Hiroshima and Nagasaki war crimes because you fucking hate America because you're a communist. And that's what's driving most people here to uncritically defend Iran and demonize America, not just you. I mean, I could understand an American with a conscience hating America and Iran. But only America? That's not using your conscience, that's being a traitor.
“Joy is a current of energy in your body, like chlorophyll or sunlight, that fills you up and makes you naturally want to do your best.” - Bill Russell
The board's leftist emeritus speaks...and evades, of course. Jack's smart enough to recognize a double bind. Naturally, it's not a double bind for anyone who's normal. It's actually a really, really easy choice. It's only impossible for people like you.
Posing these fifth-grade counterfactuals ("WHAT IF YOU WERE ABLE TO KILL HITLER OR LEE HARVEY OSWALD BEFOREHAND?? Whoaaaaa duuuuuude...") isn't actually having a conversation. You're just weakly trying to bully people into your position, which is exactly how far-right galaxy brains like you operate. You have no conception of ACTUAL argumentation.
because you fucking hate America because you're a communist
Whoo boy just keep digging man. This IS an anti-fascist messageboard, can someone do something about this pls. This person is really stinking up the place with this authoritarian rabid bullshit.
-I don't like hoodlums. -That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it.
The board's leftist emeritus speaks...and evades, of course. Jack's smart enough to recognize a double bind. Naturally, it's not a double bind for anyone who's normal. It's actually a really, really easy choice. It's only impossible for people like you.
Posing these fifth-grade counterfactuals ("WHAT IF YOU WERE ABLE TO KILL HITLER OR LEE HARVEY OSWALD BEFOREHAND?? Whoaaaaa duuuuuude...") isn't actually having a conversation. You're just weakly trying to bully people into your position, which is exactly how far-right galaxy brains like you operate. You have no conception of ACTUAL argumentation.
Yeah, again: I'm not far right. Sorry to disappoint you. I know you wish I were.
because you fucking hate America because you're a communist
Whoo boy just keep digging man. This IS an anti-fascist messageboard, can someone do something about this pls. This person is really stinking up the place with this authoritarian rabid bullshit.
So, just to be clear, you think "anti-fascist" is a synonym for "communist" and "anti-American", and you think I shouldn't be allowed to point out the hypocrisy of anti-fascists who support a fascist antisemitic regime like Iran or who refuse to choose the anti-Nazi side of a simple hypothetical because, yes, they are literally communists who literally hate America that much?
“Joy is a current of energy in your body, like chlorophyll or sunlight, that fills you up and makes you naturally want to do your best.” - Bill Russell
Not that counterfactual historical nuances matter for the ethical question, but okay, I'm intrigued. Why, what would be the difference? Did enough Jews die in that period or enough Russians die in July to change the equation?
“Joy is a current of energy in your body, like chlorophyll or sunlight, that fills you up and makes you naturally want to do your best.” - Bill Russell
Why not at the dawn of time? Stop Hitler, Stalin, and Jack the Ripper!
You really expect other people here to think it's absurd to wonder what the right thing to do would be if the bomb which forced the Japanese imperialist fascists to surrender and saved a million or two lives in 1945 had been available a mere four years earlier to force the Nazis to surrender thereby saving many millions more lives? Nah. I know you think you're everyone's intellectual superior, but people are smarter than that. They see through your lame attempt at ridiculing the question away. It's a simple hypothetical, yes, something a fifth grader could come up with, yep -- and it's still perfectly valid, and everybody here knows that, including you. Why don't you just grow up and answer it like an adult?
“Joy is a current of energy in your body, like chlorophyll or sunlight, that fills you up and makes you naturally want to do your best.” - Bill Russell
At least 50 killed, 213 injured in stampede at Soleimani’s funeral procession
Tommy Hilton, Al Arabiya English Tuesday, 7 January 2020
At least 50 people were killed and 213 others were injured in a stampede which broke out at the funeral procession for slain Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani, according to reports from Iranian state TV.
Reports of deaths were confirmed by the head of Iran’s emergency medical services, Pirhossein Koulivand.
Thousands of Iranians have taken part in funeral processions to commemorate Soleimani, the former commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - Quds Force, who was widely considered to be one of the most powerful men in the Iranian regime.
Soleimani was killed in a US airstrike on Friday, prompting Iran to vow retaliation.
The hypothetical to be discussed is whether exploding atomic bombs off the coast of Japan (or your fictional 1941 Germany) for military, scientific, and civilian observers would have been the better fucking idea.
I think it's much less fascist to demand that your attackers drop their weapons.
norton ash » 07 Jan 2020 12:37 wrote:The hypothetical to be discussed is whether exploding atomic bombs off the coast of Japan (or your fictional 1941 Germany) for military, scientific, and civilian observers would have been the better fucking idea.
I think it's much less fascist to demand that your attackers drop their weapons.
That's another hypothetical to be discussed. I agree with you that such a demonstration should have been explored first. And if it didn't work? If Japan would only surrender if one or two cities were destroyed? Then what? Would you let an extra 1-2 million people die in order to be able to say you were not the first to use the bomb?
The hypothetical I raised is no less valid. Would you let somewhere between 1-2 (no hindsight) and 50 (hindsight) million people die in order to be able to say you were not the first to use the bomb?
It's not like the hypothetical is would you rape 100,000 grandmothers or sadistically torture a toddler for a year in order to stop the Holocaust. You'd still be doing the same basic thing you were going to do: Killing Germans. A nuclear bomb would just be killing people you were already willing to kill but in a different way. Except now you'd save 10 to 500 times that many people.
“Joy is a current of energy in your body, like chlorophyll or sunlight, that fills you up and makes you naturally want to do your best.” - Bill Russell
