• AeonFelis@lemmy.world
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    15 minutes ago

    I wonder how much better would he fare had he assisted the protester, in time, like he promised, instead of letting them get massacred only to start his own thing a few months later.

  • acargitz@lemmy.ca
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    2 hours ago

    You yanks REALLY need to lose this one. Your noses need to be rubbed in it. You need to feel the SHIT you put the rest of us though. And you need to get seriously angry at the Israelis and rub THEIR noses in it. You need a big enough shock to CHANGE.

    (Like I know most of the people on Lemmy are not Republican idiots. I’m obviously not talking about you personally, but about the «general public opinion» in the US, especially the Republican idiots.)

  • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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    10 hours ago

    In Afghanistan, Trump unconditionally surrendered to the Taliban, but left Biden to complete the withdrawal. Before that, Iraq was either a loss or a stalemate, depending on what the poorly articulated objectives actually were.

    • 8oow3291d@feddit.dk
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      The wars were won in both cases. Decisively.

      Hearts and minds were not won, in either case. There is a good question whether the nationbuilding could even theoretically have succeeded, given how tribal and divided the countries were. IMO it was stupid to try in the first place, especially in Afghanistan.

  • quick_snail@feddit.nl
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    14 hours ago

    Every $10 increase in crude translates to roughly 24 cents per gallon at the pump. So we’re looking at 25 to 45 cents per gallon — baked in, structural, not going away when the war ends, not going away when the headlines fade, not going away ever.

    Can we stop with this narrative that this is somehow a bad thing?

    The price of oil has been too low. calculate the cost if externalities, and the price should be close to infinity.

    Just stop oil.

    • 8oow3291d@feddit.dk
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      2 hours ago

      Food prices are still tied to fossil fuel prices. This will cause a lot of very real pain, among the poorest in the world.

      So yes, we need to get to net zero carbon. But there has to be a more humane way than unplanned cold turkey.

      • quick_snail@feddit.nl
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        2 hours ago

        That time has passed. It was supposed to be a slow transition since 1970s.

        Now the only option is to just stop now.

        And most of the world’s food is produced locally. For those few heavily industrialized countries that chose to centralize their food systems to be dependent on fossil fuels, they have enough wealth to give free food to their poor populations.

        • 8oow3291d@feddit.dk
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          2 hours ago

          And most of the world’s food is produced locally.

          …With imported nitrogen fertilizer made from fossil fuel. And with farm machines burning imported oil. And transported even to local market using imported fuel.

          • quick_snail@feddit.nl
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            1 hour ago

            Nope. False misinformation (though common misconception).

            Most of the world’s food systems never adopted the broken “green revolution”. They’re local and mostly organic.

  • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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    17 hours ago

    While somehow Biden get’s blamed for the fiasco, Trump did order the full withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, essentially a surrender to the Taliban, though he did keep their US bank account held treasury.

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    No one wins when people start shooting at each other. There are only different degrees of losing. There is no glory in war, only suffering of the poor for the rich.

    • yesman@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      Nixon was not decent. The difference was that a Senator (Goldwater) told Nixon point blank that he was getting impeached and the senate had the votes to convict and remove.

      Like most government officials “retirement” is getting fired.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        They also didn’t have Faux “News”, hate radio, or the Internet back then, either.

        What’s so fucked up is that POS of a FCC chairman just celebrated making it even worse than it already was for truth.

        • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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          10 hours ago

          Fox was started precisely because the moneybags never wanted a Republican president held to account again.

      • I_Jedi@lemmy.today
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        22 hours ago

        I’m pretty sure Trump would give the order to launch the nukes and kill us all in that situation.

        • switcheroo@lemmy.world
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          22 hours ago

          That’s why he’s firing the top military people. They won’t follow illegal (and reprehensible) orders, so he knows they won’t bomb blue states.

          • Mulligrubs@lemmy.world
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            18 hours ago

            absurd claim even as a die-hard cynic.

            He won’t nuke his top money makers, California and NY pay for half of the US military already

            • Stern@lemmy.world
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              12 hours ago

              Trump 100% does not think that way.

              Man bankrupted casinos, he has failed upwards most of his life and I don’t doubt he’d try some shit on CA and NY if he thought he could get away with it. It’s not their economies stopping him, its knowledge he might have to face consrquences if he did something too excessive, and as his brain liquifies I find myself wondering how long before he thinks the odds are okay.

          • Napster153@lemmy.world
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            19 hours ago

            By that point, if Americans STILL think they can vote and avoid violence then the American public really us beyond hope.

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      I genuinely think he’s by far the most likely president in this country’s history to launch ICBMs if he knows he is fucked. Which was a conclusion myself and any non-moron also came to in 2015.

  • hume_lemmy@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    I think this article forgets how Trump effectively surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban the last time around.

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        23 hours ago

        Which is really weird considering wasn’t he literally following the timeline Trump set out? A timeline that was almost certainly concocted to screw over the Democrat if Trump lost and that Trump wouldn’t have actually stuck to if he won?

        • 3abas@lemmy.world
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          16 hours ago

          Trump wouldn’t have actually stuck to if he won?

          Funny how you say that…

          It is on Biden, he didn’t have to stick to Trump’s controversial deal with the Taliban, he could have had a spine and given a statement about how he supports bringing the troops home but that leaving Afghanistan in the hands of the Taliban will only put them at more risk in the future and how Trump made a fool of us by dealing with them. But no, every liberal has to treat Biden like he has no agency, like he didn’t continue negotiating with the Taliban and eventually gave the final withdrawl orders leaving locals who helped the US to fend for themselves.

          • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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            8 hours ago

            This thread is full of the most absolutely bizarre takes imaginable.

            The war in Afghanistan was a complete failure from start to finish and was only ever about making more money for arms manufacturers and oil companies. At literally any point in the decades long occupation, the best thing to do would be to immediately withdraw. The decision to withdraw was one of the best policy decisions any president has made in my lifetime (an admittedly low bar). I was hoping and praying for that decision for literally 20 years of my life. Personally, I’d tend to credit Biden with it since he was the one who actually followed through and accepted the political fallout from all the psychopathic hawks in the media.

            And I come in here and the two sides are, “Biden good because [incredibly good and necessary decision] was actually Trump’s fault!” vs “Biden bad because [incredibly good and necessary decision] was Biden’s fault!”

            How on earth has everyone in here come to this conclusion that if we prolonged the war even another 20 years, we could accomplish something we completely and utterly failed to do in that time? Even our own puppet government was telling us to leave. If you want to blame someone for losing the war, blame Bush, because the war was already lost within the first year at most. I literally cannot comprehend how anyone could look at that situation and want us to stay unless they were directly profiting from it.

            Rationally, I know that liberals are bloodthirsty warmongerers who worship Khorne and want to build mountains of skulls and all, but like aren’t you supposed to keep up some kind of pretence of not just wanting to turn a country into a perpetual slaughterhouse?

          • Macchi_the_Slime@piefed.blahaj.zone
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            6 hours ago

            But no, every liberal has to treat Biden like he has no agency, like he didn’t continue negotiating with the Taliban and eventually gave the final withdrawl orders leaving locals who helped the US to fend for themselves.

            So I didn’t go into everything in my comment because I was specifically only commenting on that one aspect. But I’m actually mad at Biden because I know he had agency in the process and didn’t have to hang all those interpreters out to dry, or leave a ton of fully functional hardware for the Taliban to use. I’m not trying to excuse Biden for his actions, I’m saying it’s weird that he chose to step on the landmine that Trump left for him rather than do anything to make leaving not a disaster and then just chose to eat the criticism after.

            Like I’m glad that he did actually leave rather than staying and occupying Afghanistan forever. But I agree with what was said in that other comment that basically it was a no-win situation and Biden chose the worst possible way he could have left.

          • Furbag@lemmy.world
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            13 hours ago

            It was a no-win situation. If he stayed, the Republicans who pretended to care about war being a bad thing would have raked him over the coals about throwing out future FIFA peace prize recipient Donald Trump’s flawless exit strategy.

            And we see that when he went through with it anyway what a fucking mess it was, and they blamed him for it imploding anyway.

            I’m of the firm opinion that we could have occupied Afghanistan for a century and the result upon exiting would have resulted in the exact same outcome. There were perhaps better ways to do a drawdown that wouldn’t result in leaving billions of dollars worth of military hardware, vehicles and munitions behind for the Taliban to sieze and use for themselves, but it still eventually had to happen and we got what we got.

            Democracy can’t be given to someone else. It must be hard fought for and won by the people themselves, or it’s value will never become apparent to them.

            • 3abas@lemmy.world
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              9 hours ago

              I agree, and think you summarized it well. There was no win, and somehow Biden chose the worst way possible, leave the Taliban with billions of military equipment and abandoning everyone who helped the US, despite NOT sticking to Trump’s original timeline so be couldn’t even use that excuse.

              He was under massive pressure to pull out because everyone was tired of this costly losing occupation, and he fucked up the pullout. That’s on him.

          • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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            10 hours ago

            he didn’t have to stick to Trump’s controversial deal with the Taliban

            Trump had already given away anything that would given Biden bargaining power. It was a deliberate setup.

  • kmartburrito@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    He’s never been anything but a silver spoon total loser. He’s not even a skilled criminal. Fucking bush league in every measure.

    • hume_lemmy@lemmy.ca
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      23 hours ago

      He expected to lose the first election. He wanted to be able to use it as proof that the system was against him, to fire up the Fox News rubes and jumpstart his new TV network. He basically wanted to lose, and instead he won.

      It’s amazing. He’s such a failure he failed at failing.

      • runner_g@piefed.blahaj.zone
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        23 hours ago

        nobody loses as good as me, I’m not saying but everyone else is saying it. the best loser, the BIGGLIEST loser. Arnold Palmer, now he was a great loser, you know they say he had a really big penis, I never saw it myself it’s what people tell me, tremendous dong and tremendous loser.

        thank you for your attention to this matter.

  • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    a) This headline forgets W losing Afghanistan

    b) Fuck Nixon, but Eisenhower deserves the blame for Vietnam (admittedly one of the reasons he did that was because he thought it would give him political cover to shut McCarthyism down, but still)

    • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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      10 hours ago

      Eisenhower deserves the blame for Vietnam

      Eisenhower sent a small number of “advisors.” JFK sent more. The big escalation happened under Johnson, who was furious at how the Pentagon outmaneuvered him.

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      17 hours ago

      Nixon continuing horrible foreign policy doesn’t absolve him. Also he conspired with Hanoi to sabotage LBJ which is straight up treason and extended the war another five years

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      admittedly one of the reasons he did that was because he thought it would give him political cover to shut McCarthyism down

      I want to learn more about that. Got a recommendation?

    • Krono@lemmy.today
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      19 hours ago

      That really comes down to what you mean by “war” and “won”.

      We won the Korean war by achieving our strategic objectives- we bombed NK back to the stone age, and effectively isolated them from the rest of the world.

      Our wars in Central America achieved their objectives- US trained death squads raped and murdered the local populations into submission; US corporations have been free to dominate ever since.

      On the list of 80+ countries we have invaded since WWII, I would say well over half of these misadventures have achieved their strategic objectives.

      • Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        When you leave with the same kind of people in charge as there were when you arrived then you lost. The ‘strategic objectives’ started to revolve around how much money you could fleece from the US government and it made every conflict a loss.

      • Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        Did we really win? We went in there and killed a bunch of people but even today the country hates us. The truth is the US hasn’t won a war since WWII. In order to really win you have to make peace with the population after you take over. The US doesn’t do that anymore. We just kill and create more enemies.

        • toddestan@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          If the goal of Desert Storm was to get Iraq to withdraw out of Kuwait, then it could be considered a success. There was no intent to make friends with the Iraqi people or remove Saddam from power. That was the second Bush’s mess.

          • Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            Its been pointed out multiple times over the years that they stopped the conflict at a hundred hours for a media headlines. They didn’t finish the job so they didn’t achieve any real victory. So baby bush used afghanistan as a excuse to go in to disrupt the entire region again so oil companies could make more money in iraq to keep saddam hussein from moving to the euro. Its never as cut and dried as stated objectives. Its always about who makes the money. Its been that way since korea and Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us.

            Put simply the US isn’t interested in winning wars so they haven’t since WWII. They are interested in putting a lot of money in to as few pockets as they can. Stated objectives are a joke when the truth is its always about who makes the money. There is no way you are going to convince me otherwise. The US doesn’t win wars anymore. We go in and murder people. Creating more enemies so some fat rich degenerates whose only skill is a utter lack of decency make a lot of money off of the death and destruction.

            The US hasn’t won a war since WWII.

          • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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            10 hours ago

            Yeah, that was the objective of Desert Storm: to force Iraq back to within its own borders.

            Bush Jr thought that was too narrow a goal and when he found a convenient though irrational excuse in 9/11, killed half a million Iraqi civilians in a pointless bloodbath. By comparison, the homicidal maniac Saddam and his regime killed a few thousand Iraqi civilians during his entire time in power (not counting the war of aggression against Iran, which led to about half a million casualties on each side).

        • quick_snail@feddit.nl
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          15 hours ago

          I think the ones making the wars would consider it a win if they make a lot of money.

          In almost every war, the US extracted a lot of money/resources, not to mention the killings made by military industries

            • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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              10 hours ago

              That’s all very idealistic, but in real life, containment is often a legitimate war aim. And if you’re invaded, ending the invasion is often victory. Wars are not fought to make people stop being your enemy, and there are only a few rare cases of post-war reconstruction where that has been achieved.

    • DomeGuy@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      The “global war on terror” ended with a rather dramatic raid that killed bin laden. And the war part of Gulf war 2 was an obvious victory.

      But winning a peace is a fuckton harder. And we haven’t done that since Vietnam.

      • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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        10 hours ago

        And the war part of Gulf war 2 was an obvious victory.

        Really? What were the objectives? Kill a bunch of civilians and hand Saddam over to a lynch mob? Because the end state in Iraq was collapse, chaos and a massive increase in Iranian influence.

        • DomeGuy@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          You nailed it in one.

          Wars are fought to knock down opponents. No war has ever had an actual goal of “make that country happy”.

          As I said before, the war part of Gulf War 2 was a resounding success that ended the Bathist tyranny in Iraq. That chaos replaced it was not a failure of war fighting which might have been solved by more bullets and bombs, but rather a failure of the post-war peace.

          If Gulf war 2 was a “loss” because it led to chaos and civil war, then WW1 was the biggest loss in history since its end led directly to.tne Nazis. Which i suppose is a reasonable philosophy., except that it would utterly neuter statements about the USA not winning many wars with “nobody else does either.”

      • Jay101@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        The “global war on terror” ended with a rather dramatic raid that killed bin laden.

        No, they executed an accused without a trial or prosecution. In India, they had a multiyear fair trial before the terrorist was executed. Difference between democracy and not a democracy.

        • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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          10 hours ago

          No, they executed an accused without a trial or prosecution.

          Binladen got what he deserved, and there was little chance that it was safe to capture him and transport him back to the US for trial.

          • ohulancutash@feddit.uk
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            2 hours ago

            Or rather any trial would be unconstitutional as it would rely heavily on “evidence” gained by torture. To save itself the embarrassment, America did what it always does and kill with impunity.

          • Jay101@lemmy.world
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            8 hours ago

            Well of course he got what he deserved. But they’re was no trial though. There was also no Trial for Kissinger, Bush. There won’t be one for Nethanyahu, Biden, Trump, etc too.

    • Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca
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      23 hours ago

      Like on their own? If so, then not even Gulf War 1 counts, b/c they were part of the UN coalition. I think maybe the invasion of Panama?

    • GalacticSushi@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      21 hours ago

      He got to resign with a presidential pension/benefits and enjoy a full pardon for all his crimes. Personally, I don’t think “retiring early and people generally don’t think highly of you” is an appropriate amount of justice to be served.

      • quick_snail@feddit.nl
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        15 hours ago

        Wait. We pay pensions to presidents?

        They’re all war criminals! How much do they continue to burden tax payers?!?