(June 22, 2025 at 9:53 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: I had a similar experience. Military units being a giant shitshow from the inside looking out. I was always anxious for the eventuality of some fuckup I was technically responsible for.
They say they dropped a few dozen.
Yes, I am also glad that the whole experience is far away in the past and living only in my memories

This brings us to the point that boots are not the solution to anything. I’ve already mentioned Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Lebanon or even Vietnam. Maybe there was a time in the past (in the 1940’ or 1950’s) when you could bring down dictators and create democratic countries instead. For some reason, this doesn’t work in our time anymore. It only makes everything worse.
Also I happen to live in a country in which soldiers tried to straighten up democracy every once in a while (with their own jar-headed methods). And these were the foundation of the strengthening of political Islamist movements since the mid - 90’s.
Ideally, there should be no army and the right for citizens to be armed with fire-guns. That didn’t work perfectly either but the idea was good. The next best option is to have soldiers who don’t do anything except to sit in their barracks, just wait there until some sort of threat shows up

No one else buy D. Trump could have done what he and Netanyahu have just achieved. As I said, there is a whole range of options between letting the IRI do whatever it wants and bombing it back into the Stone Age. The main one being to isolate the regime entirely (not negotiating with them on any issue anymore) and talking to the Iranian civil society instead. And making sure that no one is buying their oil and gas anymore.
China is currently buying their fuel and reselling it to Europe. My country is still buying their oil and gas and no one is even asking us why.
And I need to talk of all the infrastructure. When those basiji leaders will be spending their petro-dollars in some Arab Emirate in the Persian Gulf, it will be the survivors of the US and Israeli bombings who will be trying to rebuild these schools, roads, hospitals etc.
Also 200 million $ is a huge amount of money. This means that one week of war is enough to solve all of the homelessness issue in all the cities of North-America.
Still I am going to finish with this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Berkin_Elvan
This dude was going probably going to get his University degree this year or last year if he had been allowed to live. It’s not just Mahsa Amini. Political Islamists are merciless murderers who could do just about anything just to get political power and keep it.
So there are still rules that exist in this universe. I don’t believe that such people can just do stuff and keep doing these stuff without expecting anything to happen. So at some point, things will happen (always) and no one really cares if it’s fair or not.
So I also agree with D. Trump on that. If these guys has any cerebral tissue left they would have already raised the white flag by now. But they can’t / they won’t. So this is happening now

![[Image: 7151bc275de2d3d422106a4008215efe.jpg]](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/71/51/bc/7151bc275de2d3d422106a4008215efe.jpg)