While We Wait: Writer's Block & Other Lame Excuses

[Thlayli]

I mean, if you're asking about my personal willingness to die for my country, I've always had it, and I could consider no higher calling than to do so.

Is that why I'm willing to risk the lives of others who have already sworn of their own free will to do the same?

 

[Perfectionist]

I mean, if you're asking about my personal willingness to die for my country, I've always had it, and I could consider no higher calling than to do so.

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.

 

[Kozmos]

Well to be fair USMC do their best work when crushing small nations in Central America and the Pacific. They gain 50% more effectiveness when attacking from water. That's what it says on the card.

 

[North King]

If we don't intervene, we get a China. If we do, we get a Vietnam. And either way, thanks Obama. >=(

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 the NFL, or the NBA to a lesser extent. Elite players don't often become good coaches or GMs, and often seem to become awful ones who only get the job because of their playing career (Isiah Thomas, for instance), and elite coaches for the most part seem to either come from coaching (Pop, The Dark Lord Belichick, Tomlin, Spo, Thibs), or from marginal pros who spent a lot more time watching than playing (Zen Master, Riley, Dungy, Cowher). I mean, when it comes to playing nobody has ever had more basketball expertise than MJ, and he's still been actively terrible at running the Hornets.

Oh, I agree; I was just pointing out the disparity at those two levels of professional football.

Of course, I might just be sceptical of ex-players' ability to run a team because I'm a SABR guy and ex-ballplayers tend to actively denigrate sabermetrics.

Most coaches do, too.

 

[Thlayli]

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.

I should be doing so in about 1.5-2 years. I don't know about the likelihood of myself dying, but if it happens, it happens.

 

[Lord of Elves]

It is a strange day when the NES forum makes me agree with Thlayli. This "If you think war is such a great idea then go and get yourself shot," is poor debating and rather resembles some kind of argument in which you can't advocate for something without personally doing it, which has some unfortunate consequences vis a vis "If you think cancer is so awful why don't you just cure it yourself?"

Even so, it's eminently ridiculous that American foreign policy failed so dramatically at stopping Terrorism in Iraq that it actually empowered more terrorists.

 

[North King]

Well, it does highlight how those advocating war tend to be well-off, fairly well-educated people, while those doing the fighting and dying are usually not the Americans low-income, poorly-educated, etc.

 

[Perfectionist]

This "If you think war is such a great idea then go and get yourself shot," is poor debating

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 crusaders. Skin in the game, as that lot are so fond of saying in a different context.

"If you think cancer is so awful why don't you just cure it yourself?"

Terrible analogy. Better one: someone advocating that, in light of the current crisis, we try experimental ebola vaccines immediately on healthy humans, ignoring all the usual morality of clinical trials and skipping all the rest of the stages with no regard to the potential side-effects or efficacy and inevitably getting a lot of the test subjects killed or gravely hurt, and then fobbing off when asked why, if this is so vitally important, he doesn't volunteer himself as a subect to be injected with ebola.

 

[Symphony D.]

I wonder how long until the US realizes that the IS isn't going to go *anywhere* without a ground war. Or rather it knows that already, but how long until it grapples with that reality in a serious way? Ain't like Turkey or Iran's going to commit their armored columns to sweep down the Euphrates.

Iraq can learn to fight them or die. Their current problem is that we pampered them too much, like we did ARVN. They require actual experience on their own. Also, there actually are likely IRGC forces already in Iraq.

It's not like we have to win the peace again, we can let Arab League/UN troops do that. But a brief, comprehensive ground war to eliminate all of these anti-American entities in the Middle East and lay the stages for a comprehensive series of plebiscites under some international authority would be a good thing for everyone.

Would definitely not create more anti-American entities in the process, creating a permanent self-sustaining reason to stay as occupiers. A problem, unless that was the whole point to begin with...

Yes yes, complain that I'm a warmonger, but the only other alternative is an effectively permanent Islamic State which is a horror for millions of people to live in. Iraq and Assad and Iran working together aren't nearly enough to overthrow them, setting aside that it might be bad for the Middle East in an entirely different way if they do.

... which it clearly is. Also, actually those three together are far and away more than enough. The IRGC isn't something to mess around with.

I mean, if you're asking about my personal willingness to die for my country, I've always had it, and I could consider no higher calling than to do so.

"I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country." -Patton (1970)

I should be doing so in about 1.5-2 years. I don't know about the likelihood of myself dying, but if it happens, it happens.

Doctors: famed for killing people on the field of battle.

 

[Perfectionist]

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

 

[Symphony D.]

Even so, it's eminently ridiculous that American foreign policy failed so dramatically at stopping Terrorism in Iraq that it actually empowered more terrorists.

Terrorists has gained cores in Iraq. [Internet Foreign Policy Experience +1]

 

[Wrymouth3]

Like most people, New Gingrich states the dangers of groups he discovered two weeks ago: http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/08/opinion/gingrich-isis-boko-haram-hamas/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

 

[Symphony D.]

A brief timeline of important thoughts about Iraq since the end of the Cold War:

1991-2002: "[George H.W.] Bush was an idiot and should've invaded and occupied Iraq during the Gulf War!"
2003: "Of course we're invading Iraq for justifiable reasons!"
2003-2004: "Of course we should disband the Republican Guard and the rest of the Iraqi Army!"
2004-2011: "We're going to stay in Iraq for a hundred years, but of course they'll develop a professional military and not utterly rely on us as a crutch!"
2011-2014: "How dare we leave Iraq!?"
2014: "How dare we not commit ground forces to Iraq!"
Here-Eternity: "What do you mean there's a risk in changing a bad situation because you might get something even worse?! That's defeatist!"

 

[Thlayli]

Doctors: famed for killing people on the field of battle.

I'm not sure this is the tack you want to take. The point being considered, anyhow, is willingness to die, not willingness to kill. And if you don't think medical personnel suffer casualties, you're both belittling their contribution to our military and misinformed as to our military's history.

 

[Wrymouth3]

I'm not sure this is the tack you want to take. The point being considered, anyhow, is willingness to die, not willingness to kill. And if you don't think medical personnel suffer casualties, you're both belittling their contribution to our military and misinformed as to our military's history.

Up until WWI, if you were severely wounded, you DID NOT want to take a visit to the doctor. Your chances of survival from a ruptured scrotum and bleeding out from the severed hip-joint area were just as good as if you decided to visit the mad scientists at field hospital #113.

 

[m.t.cicero]

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

Having a healthy respect for the capabilities of people who are generally hostile to US interests? Preposterous!

 

[Symphony D.]

I'm not sure this is the tack you want to take. The point being considered, anyhow, is willingness to die, not willingness to kill. And if you don't think medical personnel suffer casualties, you're both belittling their contribution to our military and misinformed as to our military's history.

I had just made the point willingness to die is not a significant factor in winning wars, simply an inevitability in waging them. I mean, you did say this a few days ago:

I'd support the troops more if I knew most of them didn't play couch jockey like you most likely did. But if you were an infantry grunt that saw combat, COMMENT RESCINDED.

So you're gonna apply to be a Corpsman or be attached to a frontline infantry unit, not even a field hospital let alone someplace stateside, right? I mean really, since you're unwilling to kill for your country, you're really no different from a desk jockey either way. As we see from all these green-on-blue shootings, proliferation of stand-off weapons, and so on, willingness to die is just part of the job no matter what position one has. It's the willingness to kill that separates front line troops from the logistical support you so easily dismissed, and you don't have that. So where did you get off on criticizing me again?

Here's the thing. Had the forum in question not vanished from the internet, I could go back and find you posts I had made in 2004 earnestly and sincerely advocating that were it capable of doing so, the United States should invade each and every single dictatorship and other nefarious ne'er-do-well nation in the world in order to make the world a better place. I dedicated several dozen hours and burned several bridges arguing passionately for the Neoconservative position. There are two key differences between myself then and you now: 1. I was 18; 2. I got better. Lord of Elves gets a pass (albeit only just) because he's also at the age where he doesn't actually know any better. You should possess just the tiniest modicum of wisdom.

 

[Lord of Elves]

I'm not sure why I'm being brought up in this castigation of Thlayli in regards to the Second Gulf War, as I am and have been very opposed to that, although really, I was all of seven when it started. Similarly, I have never argued that all the poor decisions made after Saddam's ouster (especially the dismissal of the Ba'athists in entirety and the functional disbanding of the previously extant Iraqi army and its infrastructure) were somehow not strategic blunders. Ergo my comment about what a failure the whole venture was for American foreign policy that we actually managed to empower a far more significant and cogent "terrorist" organization, having gone in to kill terrorists or stop terrorism or make the world safe for freedom or something.

I think I barely even argued that committing ground troops to stopping ISIS was a good idea, except in the context that it would further expose what a truly terrible decision the Second Gulf War was, that we had to go back in years later and clean up the mess all over again.

 

[Symphony D.]

Ergo my comment about what a failure the whole venture was for American foreign policy that we actually managed to empower a far more significant and cogent "terrorist" organization, having gone in to kill terrorists or stop terrorism or make the world safe for freedom or something.

The Iraq War was about liberating oil supplies to reduce the global price of oil. We did not go to Iraq to kill terrorists or stop terrorism or make the world a safer place, although that was how the public was sold on the affair. Nothing about the rise of ISIS or Al Qaeda in Iraq or any of the other groups has any reflection on the success, or lack thereof, of our policy objectives in Iraq. The intended mission was in fact accomplished (and also totally unnecessary).

 

[Lord of Elves]

American policymakers are very shortsighted not-smart people if they really think achieving cheaper access to oil in the short term using military force willy-nilly (wotwot) will not create an unsustainable situation in the long term which will be destructive to American interests and necessitate even more brown people-killing.

But I guess we all already knew this.