You sound like a neocon fwiw.
"It's about making correct smart decisions" for what? Projecting American power in the mideast?

If anyone is actually following this, he attacked someone else's post, claims he devastated the evidence, so now I need "a different source" to defend said poster. But this was some other conversation I never commented on, much less moved goal posts. So now he ignores the comments I actually made 'cuz brain gap, and pretends he responded by talking something about MSNBC.

Stay classy Mr. Intelligence Analyst.

Indeed. This is a serious problem when talking defence and geopolitics. What is the aim? It's not remotely obvious what the answer to that question so we try to evaluate quality of decisions. But we have nowhere near sufficient information to make that evaluation so we often rely on our assessment of the decision maker.

Basically, many of us wouldn't trust trump to make a good decision about this even if, in this case, we allow he had ok aims from our perspective. [Of course he probably isn't making the decisions anywhere near as much as he thinks he is].

You responded to my response to another poster concerning a statement made by some random on MSNBC who used inaccurate info in support your and their assertion/assessment of Iran not being subversive against the US during the Nuclear agreement. You said "I was not even trying". However, the information I provided (from 2013) directly contradicted the information provided by the MSNBC guy that was used to support the assessment/assertion you/they were making, and 57's post. The information provided to support that assessment was incorrect, consequently invalidating the assertion/assessment. What's untrue about this? You can't hijack my response and it's context to someone else, then try and make me fight some other fight. It's not my fault you took my response to someone else, and applied it to a different context (i.e. 2015-2018, when the information the MSNBC guy reported and relied on was between 2011-2018 to which I was countering). You were critical of information I posted that discredited the MSNBC report, in which I was responding. Further, I also provided a report from 2016.

You ****ed up, not me. Instead of talking ****, just acknowledge you made a mistake. You want to pretend you were not talking about MSNBC post, but this entire tangent of yours was based on my response to the MSNBC post, and now want to claim the MSNBC report was irrelevant.

i Is this your long winded way of saying Trump should kill Syrians but not Iranians? Interesting.

A soldier getting killed on the battlefield, that's the cost of doing business. Purposely attacking an embassy, which is where diplomats work, is attacking the sovereignty of the nation. There has to be consequences. The US showing that it is now willing to target Iranian HVT's, is a deterrent. It may not be effective. I have not seen any of you, or any democrat propose what POTUS should have done. You can not let an attack on a US embassy go unchecked. If you think that, we just have very different understanding what national defense means. If Trump was crazy, he would of bombed targets inside of Iran, then you all would have a valid case. Incidentally, the person we killed was also a solider in a designated warzone.

It isn't remotely clear that any attack on our sovereignty requires killing anyone or any act of aggression. Let alone whether the particular attack was well directed or a sound tactical or strategic decision

But we cant (well I can't) view these things in such glorious isolation. The response to 9/11 was an unmitigated disaster which is still unfolding. The appalling nature of the 9/11 attack does not and can never justify doing something so obviously stupid and counterproductive. I hope the consequences of the latest killings have been evaluated by more competent (or well motivated) people but because of trump I seriously doubt it.

That's true but I don't know and nor do I have any way of knowing. We have to rely on people with expertise and access to the best information and analysis. All we can really do is a) judge the abilities/character of the leaders and b) go by some heuristics - the bar on the action taken is pretty high which makes it less likely it was a good decision and one that would require very fine judgement.

Do you have any source for this claim except the people who killed him?

(I'm not claiming he was a good guy, or defending him, simply asking if you have any reason to believe anything you read about him except reflexive trust of your favorite authorities).

We know damn little besides what our commander in chief and his people tell us.

Shot down a civilian airliner once, but it's convenient to forget that because it was a long time ago.

Think it also supported Saddam Hussein in a war against Iran.

(I'm not saying those weregood or bad decisions, but they might be relevant.)

How WW1 Made the Middle East What it is Today

Actually depends on how far back you go. Check out the 1914 map, there was no country called Iraq.

I started reading the article, and got this far, and that was good enough.

So yes, Soleimani has fueled a lot of nasty conflicts and killed a lot of people, directly or indirectly, many of them American soldiers

Someone who is a better writer than me could probably right a real compelling story why you, Huehuecoyoti, are actually just as evil as Soleimani and Cheney, because of your tacit support for the American imperial machine, just by contributing to the economy, paying taxes, living on stolen Indian land, whatever.

At the end of the day, most of the rationalizations are just that, rationalizations. And the truth is it is just tribalism all the way down. And the western intellectual leftist is the only species of human that has perhaps ever existed that doesn't get this, and will reflexively turn to whataboutism to support anyone or anything that is against their tribe.

Do you think the author of that article has ever written a piece that wasn't critical of the US in some way? Do you think he has ever written anything critical of anyone or anything that he perceived to be anti-US? The answer to both of those questions is probably no. At some point maybe you are just a hater, and that is all there is to it.

Life isn't a JRR Tolkien novel or a Star Wars movie. It isn't an archetypal tale of good versus evil. There is just tribes. And rationale people will normally find a way to rationalize why their side is the good guys and the other side is the bad guys, even thought it is probably never this simple. That is how we are hardwired.

I think it is perfectly fine to realize this and understand why the other guy thinks he is the good guy and you are the bad guy. But if you are just reflexively unconditionally hating on your own tribe as a matter of principle, this isn't understanding or enlightenment at all; this is just being confused and understanding less about how the world works than the average 9 year old.

Why do those consequences have to involve the risk of maximum blowback? Whatever the response will be, we should be sure that it be worse than whatever attack was reportedly thwarted. Take the good and evil judgments out of this and we still have no reason to believe the assassination had sound strategy behind it.

Kelhus, the question of tribes is more constitutive than existential.

It is not whether there are tribes or whether tribes matter.

It is a question of who belongs, and if you're expecting to see the next year, given the conflict inherent in tribalism, you may seek to ask who can be brought in (and how).

from here https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/w...t/us-iraq.html

i think that’s basically the essence here. if this means the us forced to leave iraq, either because they’re told to leave or because they’re pushed out by future attacks, then this is all a big iran win

The US has been at war for over 20 years, mostly based on lies cooked up to start the war and many of the same people are out there lying again in justification of violence and war. Hard to say that it's just reflexive hating rather than just looking at all the evidence in from of us and saying, "hey maybe we shouldn't kill thousands of civilians for no reason?" . Not hard to take the next step and say that people who kill thousands of people for no reason and/or under false pretenses are bad people.

That number was provided by the state department, long before he was killed (2018, maybe even earlier). Most of the deaths were during attributed to combat operations while we still were actively involved. You can do a search on "603 killed" and you can find stuff.

What blowback? The potential for blowback is mitigated by the fact Iran is not equipped to do so. Their doctrine is not designed for anything that would be described as "maximum blowback". Iran engages in terrorism, and they've been trying to hit the US consistently for a very long time, and so far have failed. Killing this guy does not increase the risk of an Iranian attack much. If they did, it will be an IED type of attack against US targets in the region.

People ignore the fact that the US has been restrained from engaging Iran, militarily. The handwringing on this is overblown. Iran is cognizant of the fact US had to respond to the embassy provocation. They probably did not expect that type of response, though.

The only real leverage Iran has is the Straight of Hormuz. Iran is not stupid, in the grand scheme of things, one dead guy is not worth provoking the US further. They will continue their asymmetric warfare, and attempt to gain more influence...like they always have.

The fact we reached out and touched one of their big boys will undoubtedly have some impact on what they target in the future. Only time will tell if killing this guy stops Iran from targeting sensitive things, like embassies.

So Iran pulls backs their terror ops in light of this assassination.

jlawok.gif

Read it again. Don't ask me a question, and I take the time to answer it, for you incorrectly paraphrase what I wrote. It's rude, and ignorant.

Also, the jury is still out on how suicidal Iran is. The leaders may have realist tinges to them, but the IRGC is a death cult.

Maximum blowback is probably activating every ME cell on American troops and an invasion of Iraq, so the risk is small for that that you may be right it isn't worth discussing, but not for the cells and splinters to surround troops.

Commanders are not fungible.

This guy's death is a loss for Iran's operational capability.

So you agree that Iran likely ups their terror ops?

You seem only interested in incorrectly paraphrasing...try again. I gave you a hint in my last post.

Dude had decades of tactical experience and clandestine networking at his disposal.