Big diff I’ve noticed b/t how I perceive these world events vs. normie/Smart commentators is I tend to think states of war exist for far longer, & w/more places, than they do. For example, my recurrent claim that Iran & US have been at war since at least Jimmy Carter.
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I guess in normieville that sounds dumb because no photogenic, cinematic thing resembling Saving Private Ryan’s opening scenes has been taking place between us in that time. Which is a different way of defining it, I grant
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So in normieville, even tho Iran took our diplomats hostage (an act of war), and has waged proxy attacks on our soldiers (an act of war), and we’ve retaliated by stuff like sanctions (an act of war)...we haven’t been at war with Iran, & there’s everpresent risk of one ‘starting’.
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They kill our soldiers, and/or sponsor irregulars who kill our soldiers, and attack our shipping, and capture our materiel. We attempt to circumscribe them with blockades (‘sanctions’) and such. But God forbid anyone ‘start’ a war with Iran! I dunno, idgi
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But so whether I’m right or wrong, this lens obviously colors my perception Similar is true of ‘The Iraq War’ which (in normieville) we ‘started’ in 2003. In my world, we’d been at war with Iraq since ‘91 (there was a ceasefire status, but we were still blockading continuously).
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I honestly don’t know if my way is better. You might critique me by saying it gives me a dangerously-low bar for accepting ‘starting a war’ (=seriously escalating hostilities, making them ‘hot’) so in the end I just end up being objectively-superhawkish. Yes, possibly.
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OTOH I think the normie perception is also super-dangerous because it lowers the bar for stuff like ‘sanctions’. Normies have settled on this easy assumption that ‘sanctions’ are just a nice peaceful tool in our foreign policy toolkit for Smart People to implement & play with.
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This gives them what seem, to me, to be complete blinders to the fact that ‘sanctions’ are still acts of war. So we’ve ended up with a ‘nice’, ‘civilized’ diplo/bureaucratic class that throws around acts of war willy-nilly w/o realizing that’s what they’re doing. Better??
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I mean hey, we’d had sanctions against Iraq for 12 years, enforced ‘no-fly zones’, even bombed them occasionally...but at least we weren’t At War With Iraq till dumb warmonger Bush came along. Right?? Sorry, just sounded stupid to me. As does the analogous claim today re: Iran.
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You saw this in the last presidential campaign when Hillary "reasonably" wanted to enforce a no-fly zone over Syria. IOW - send American fighter jets to control the airspace of another nation; one allied with Russia - insanity if you consider that an overt act of war.
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Replying to @CovfefeAnon @soncharm
Of course the only hidden premise that makes sense of this is if you believe that the State Department has the authority to rule every country on the planet.
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Replying to @CovfefeAnon
There seems to be this running conceit that they are skillfully and peacefully ‘managing’ all these places, when the reality of the underlying actions involves aggression that then ensnares us in all sorts of conflicts. ‘But don’t Start A War!’ for crying out loud
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