Recent content by Perfectionist

Hey Masada, do you hear the same revolting justifications down there that we do up here? You know, the thinly coded "blacks are locked up so much more than everyone else because they're innately violent thugs," or "they're poor because they only care about gang-banging and swag instead of...

Iran's the only actor that's got any pull with SAA, Hezbollah, and the developing Hezbollah-style organizations in Syria and Iraq. These are the only forces with any realistic ability to militarily and politically defeat the Islamic State. Iran is essential to any such effort.

Are you asking what it is in practice, or what I think it should be? If the former, it varies a bit from NES to NES, but it's usually somewhere in between 1 and 2, I think. As to my preference, and how I generally try to conduct myself, I'd say as the leader and his immediate inner circle...

You all seem to be misunderstanding what happened at Aldina. Association itself is not an issue for even the most paranoid of rulers; the mistake was agreeing to this particular point (emphasis added): Absent the Vellari voluntarily agreeing to extraterritoriality and tax exemption for...

George Washington is the only god, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a traitor to the Republic. We made a picture about it and everything.

So, there's not a lot reliable coming out of KRG these days, but according to admittedly pro-PUK media the KDP peshmerga are on the brink of Iraqi Army style collapse, Barzani's incompetence finally having caught up to him a little: mass desertions, abandoned bases, KDP officials evacuating...

It really isn't. ISIS, for all its many faults, keeps society running, more or less. They keep the lights on, they keep the bakeries stocked, they keep the water running, they maintain civil order (through exceptionally brutal means, but still). Successful "humanitarian intervention" without a...

And Qassem Soleimani is actually good at this whole insurgency/counter-insurgency stuff.

If your ideals are important enough for you to airily commit thousands of other poor (in both senses) bastards to die for them in war of choice, they're important enough for you to go die yourself, and so the contrapositive applies. I've more respect for British jihadis than America's armchair...

I'm asking about your willingness to bleed out in a ditch in Fallujah. You say it's the finest thing in the world; well, prove it. Go sign up. It's just self-serving crap otherwise.

Well, I'm sure there's a recruiting station up the road somewhere. Off you go.

So would you be signing up for the house-to-house, room-to-room fighting through Mosul and Raqqa and Deir Ezzor and Tikrit and Fallujah (again!) and the Triangle of Death and (since I know your list of "anti-American entities" to be destroyed by the crusading zeal of Some Poor Bastard Who Signed...

Not that racism isn't a problem in football hiring (it obviously is), but I don't particularly like this argument whenever it's raised. Being good at a sport doesn't make you good at coaching and vice versa, and that goes triple when it's something hyperspecialized with tons of moving parts like...

That's what the career diplomats would say, but they don't get a say and the politicians and political appointees, as we've seen repeatedly, don't really care what the career guys want - or perhaps they can't even be bothered to find out. Ten years down the line I'm hopeful that particular...

The Israelis would say it didn't count, cause you can't invoke Article 5 when you start it, and the American right wing would start frothing at the mouth (well, frothing more) about how Turkey's gone Islamofascist and pro-terrorist and so on, the US would veto anything the UN tried, and we'd...