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Post by jdredd on Apr 6, 2015 21:16:47 GMT -5
I think I mentioned "war is fun" in another thread, and I thought it might be fun having a thread for this subject. I'm sure you all know the story how Europe's proletariat signed up in masses in 1914 to escape the boredom of factory work. Unfortunately for them, it turned out to be not so fun. But still, we have had some fun wars since. Vietnam started out fun, but it dragged on too long, as wars are usually a lot harder to end than to start. Israel had a fun war in 1967 as it rolled over a lame opposition, but 1973 was not so much fun. Desert Storm was lots of fun (remember the "Highway of Death"? Still makes me ckle), but sadly the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq started fun (knocking down Saddam statues, etc.) but soon lost all their charm. War on Iran? Aww, that could be lots of laughs! Air wars are always fun (look at Serbia), lots of explosions without all the hard work of ground invasions. Just look how much fun the CIA's drone assassination campaign has been! All the blood on their side, none on ours. Am I wrong?
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Post by jdredd on Apr 7, 2015 21:31:11 GMT -5
Come to think of it, in WWII, the Germans were having tons of ass-kicking fun at least until the Autumn of '41.
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Post by Turk on Apr 11, 2015 9:43:59 GMT -5
I don’t remember the name of the movie but it was a group of American soldiers with a mission to save art from the German’s that had fun destroying history. The Germans lost, fun over. Good movie.
It just came to me "The Monuments Men" Worth watching
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Post by jdredd on Apr 11, 2015 15:50:30 GMT -5
I completely forgot about how much fun war movies are. Heck, who doesn't like "Star Wars"? Or "The Alamo" (both versions)? Come to think of it, the Mexican-American War was loads of fun, for the Americans at least.
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Post by jdredd on May 19, 2015 2:48:31 GMT -5
www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/05/thousands-flee-shia-militias-mass-ramadi-150519043255874.html"The UN says nearly 25,000 people have fled from Ramadi since fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) captured the Iraqi city from government forces over the past few days. Residents continue to flee, mainly towards the capital, Baghdad, as thousands of Shia militias were massing around Ramadi to retake the Anbar province's capital city. ISIL fighters seem defiant as they spread out in the anticipation of the fight with Shia militias, who were asked to deploy by the government in the wake of the government forces' defeat. Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr, reporting from Baghdad, said on Tuesday that ISIL fighters in Ramadi were "still very much defiant". All right! In this corner we have Iran-backed Shia militias, supported by US airpower. And in the other corner we have the folks everyone loves to hate, ISIS! Grab your popcorn and flop in your Lazy Boy, this could be more fun than Merrywether vs Paquio!
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Post by jdredd on May 26, 2015 16:41:33 GMT -5
www.militarytimes.com/story/military/pentagon/2015/05/21/ramadi-battle/27721581/"It began with that dust storm, which enabled militants to launch a wave of suicide bomb attacks at a moment when the city streets were shrouded in orange haze. Iraqi troops had limited visibility and feared their American ally's capability to provide air cover might be compromised. The initial attack targeted Ramadi's governing center, where the Iraqi army maintained a heavily fortified headquarters. "There was an armored bulldozer which knocked over the T-wall perimeters, which then was the first explosion. They then had an armored dump truck, an armored Humvee," one senior State Department official said in describing the initial attack. That was the first in a series of about 30 car bombs, about 10 of which packed "the explosive capacity of an Oklahoma City-type attack," the State Department official said, referring to the 1995 domestic terrorist attack on a federal office building that killed 168 people. "They took out entire city blocks," said the official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity." Arab kamikaze armored vehicles! How fun is that! And then you have soldiers whose bravery is dependent on air strikes, and is hiding out in forts. No wonder they were routed by a much smaller force.
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Post by jdredd on Jun 4, 2015 13:26:39 GMT -5
america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/6/4/sunni-tribes-in-anbar-iraq-pledge-support-to-isil.html"A number of Sunni tribal sheikhs and tribes in Iraq's Anbar province have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a defection that comes as a major blow to the Iraqi government as it struggles to roll the Sunni insurgents back. The sheikhs and tribal leaders made the pledge in a statement read out by influential Sheikh Ahmed Dara al-Jumaili, after a meeting in Fallujah on Wednesday. It was not yet clear if the tribes had been forced to pledge allegiance by ISIL fighters, who control Fallujah and most of Anbar province, and have been known to massacre even fellow Sunnis who stand against them. The sheikhs’ statement said the only way peace would come to Anbar province would be if the tribes joined ISIL. They said they were joining ISIL’s self-declared “caliphate” in order to “fight the infidels, apostates and Shias,” using a derogatory term to refer to them. If the statement was given freely, the move would be very worrying for the Iraqi government. The inclusion of the al-Jumaili tribe in Wednesday’s pledge was of particular concern for Iraqi authorities, given the tribe's influence in the contested Anbar province. But the pledge comes after a number of Sunni leaders in Anbar publicly criticized the involvement of hardline Shia militias in the fight to retake areas of the province from ISIL, including the provincial capital city of Ramadi, which fell last month." And this comes just a day after the American Secretary of Defense was crowing how we had "killed 10,000 ISIS fighters"! But we still have our new Shia/Iranian allies to go after these guys too.
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Post by jdredd on Jul 1, 2015 14:42:02 GMT -5
www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/05/25/asia-pacific/china-state-media-warns-war-south-china-sea-unless-u-s-backs/#.VZRBAlLwq0J"BEIJING – A Chinese state-owned newspaper said Monday that “war is inevitable” between China and the United States over the South China Sea unless Washington stops demanding Beijing halt the building of artificial islands in the disputed waterway. The Global Times, an influential nationalist tabloid owned by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily newspaper, said in an editorial that China was determined to finish its construction work, calling it the country’s “most important bottom line.” The editorial comes amid rising tensions over China’s land reclamation in the Spratly archipelago of the South China Sea. China last week said it was “strongly dissatisfied” after a U.S. spy plane flew over areas near the reefs, with both sides accusing each other of stoking instability." Well, now that we've liberated Iraq and Afghanistan and defeated ISIS, who's next? China? Russia? Iran? Bring 'em on!
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Post by jdredd on Jul 14, 2015 13:37:24 GMT -5
america.aljazeera.com/?utm_source=aje&utm_medium=redirect"Iran and a United States-led consortium of the world’s top powers have achieved a historic agreement that should keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons for at least a decade and potentially lay the basis for broader cooperation on the multiple crises roiling the Middle East. U.S. officials were quick to underline that other differences with Iran remain, over its support for groups on the State Department’s terrorism list, its human rights abuses and its challenge of Israel’s right to exist. But there was no disguising the sense that the tectonic plates of international relations are shifting in promising if, for many old U.S. regional allies, unsettling ways." Aw, what fun is this? Look at all the videos of things being blown up we will miss now. Hopefully, though, the right people and countries, including some of our so-called "allies", will hate this agreement. How else will you know it's good?
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Post by jdredd on Jul 14, 2015 23:06:04 GMT -5
Gosh, Gen X bimbo Megyn Kelly is telling me the new deal with Iran is a big mistake! I'm sure she's an expert.
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Post by jdredd on Jul 15, 2015 0:18:32 GMT -5
As I said, I will know if the Iran deal is good by those who hate it, and Hannity had Dick Cheney on. He hates it. Case closed.
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Post by jdredd on Jul 15, 2015 23:03:12 GMT -5
www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/07/14/krauthammer-obama-gave-in-to-iran/"Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer charged Tuesday on "Special Report with Bret Baier," that the United States “gave in” to Iran, as he criticized President Obama’s deal with the Islamic republic over its nuclear program. “We gave in on the idea of them having to dismantle their enrichment,” Krauthammer told viewers. “But even worse is the final capitulation, which was a giving in to a lifting of the embargo on ballistic missiles and conventional arms. I think even skeptics of the deal have been shocked by the degree of the capitulation,” Krauthammer said." Krauthammer hates it. It must really be good.
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Post by jdredd on Jul 16, 2015 12:49:46 GMT -5
www.nationalreview.com/article/421235/iran-obamas-vietnam "Iran’s Supreme Leader reeks of blood. Obama’s treaty reeks of disgrace and surrender. Vietnam did disastrous damage to America’s military, its intelligence services, and its international standing — damage compounded by Richard Nixon’s crookery and Jimmy Carter’s entire presidency. It took Ronald Reagan to repair the wreckage. Will there be a Reagan to clean up after Obama? — to the extent the damage is reparable? Reagan was the man he was because he was unbudging at the core, and because his s unniness and cheerful decency lifted the nation’s spirits. Have we got a candidate today with an unbudgeable core and a winning, sunny, gigantic personality? Those are the criteria that matter at this sobering low point in modern American history." "Iran's Supreme Leader reeks of blood"? And we don't? Whatever. Also, I wonder at what point "Sunniness and cheerful decency" becomes buffoonery. Rather quickly, I suspect. But we all get to remember things the way we want. Sadly for the GOP, probably there can never be another Reagan. The odds that the combination of circumstances that produced him can be repeated is pretty slim. Plus, the way he has been inflated to god-like proportions makes it even harder for someone to live up to.
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Post by jdredd on Aug 16, 2015 2:46:20 GMT -5
There is a full-page ad in today's NYT that I would normally find really amusing. It's trying to pressure Senator Cory Booker into opposing the Iran deal using the crudest and wildly over-the-top propaganda, claiming that deal must be defeated "Before Iranian nukes kill millions of Americans". Unfortunately today I just feel indifferent to the bullshit. Maybe it's the weather.
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Post by jdredd on Aug 16, 2015 13:45:23 GMT -5
www.politico.com/story/2015/08/carson-suggests-obama-is-anti-semitic-with-iran-deal-121406.html?hp=l3_4Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson says he believes some of President Barack Obama’s actions are anti-semitic. “I think anything is anti-Semitic if it’s against the survival of a state that is surrounded by enemies and by people who want to destroy them and to sort of ignore that and to act like everything is normal there and that these people are paranoid is anti-Semitic,” Carson said on “ Fox News Sunday.” Carson did not specifically mention the Iran nuclear agreement, but said during a recent visit to Israel he could not find a single person who “didn’t think this administration has turned its back on Israel.” Same old tired smear: Anyone who puts America's interests over that of Israel is "anti-Semitic". Sorry, Turk, but Carson is just parroting a Fox talking point here. Nobody's perfect.
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