168
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
168 points (93.3% liked)
World News
39026 readers
1275 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I think your comment illustrates one of the biggest problems with our foreign policy.
We appear to have completely lost our ability to think laterally or strategically. I get why my comment seems crazy when you think our only options are "ATTACK" and "surrender".
We need a strategic solution. The Houthis WANT a direct confrontation. They've said so, and their behavior is consistent with that. To figure out how to get them to stop, we need to ask: why on god's green earth do a group of Yemeni rebels WANT a fight with the United States??
The short answer is that they hate us deeply for the incredible violence and destruction we inflicted on them and continue to inflict on them and the people they sympathize with. And we've destroyed so much of Yemen that they have nothing to lose. We turned it into a hellscape wasteland, so there is nothing more we can really threaten them with, and dying a proud and defiant death is pretty much the best offer on the menu. Plus, they know that if we fight, it'll hurt us badly, just like all the last few wars have. We'll spend too much, probably send troops eventually, and ultimately leave having accomplished nothing. And any surviving militants will declare victory and rule over ashes. Afghanistan provided a very appealing model of how to defeat the US.
So, strategically, what if... they had a reason to not want to die? What if ... I don't know, we negotiated with partners in the region to help them grow some crops, and maybe provide them with a new security arrangement where we don't just sweep in every 10 years and light all their children and grandparents on fire? And concurrently, what if we tried to find ways to reduce their access to weapons?
Violence is not going to work. The region is spiraling out of control, and blowing everything up is easier for all the desperate radicals we've created across multiple nations than protecting our shipping lanes is for us. If violence no longer carries deterrence, it's only utility is extermination. And if we embrace extermination, we radicalize more people. You can't eradicate out of that situation, and trying just turns you into another of history's great monsters.
It's bad. We need to rediscover the concept of strategy.
Okay, our strategy in Yemen was to oppose Saleh, far right dictator who ruled Yemen from 1979 to 2012. The US lent support to plans to organize a popular revolution against Saleh starting in 2011. The people won and Saleh left office disgraced.
Yemen might have been okay, if after democratically electing a new president twice, the Houthi's had not tried to assassinate him, seized control of the government, and completed a successful coup. Perhaps there would have been no civil war if the Houthis did not have such hatred for democracy and such love of authoritarian theocracy and religious rule. That's when America came for them. They were already terrorists.
From the position trying to secure the best strategic outcome, though, what does that tell us? That sounds like a lot of opinions on the past, but what guidance do you take from all that?
Direct confrontation still fulfills their strategic objectives, and presents a nearly unwinnable situation. Instead, what would limit their willingness and ability to fight?
One thing would be ending our support for Israel's wildly unpopular violent occupation. I hear people say that the Houthis are just cynically seizing on this morally and emotionally powerful cause to maintain popularity among the people of Yemen. And even if that's true, it still serves our strategic interest to take that valuable asset away from them.
The Houthis assisted in the planning and carrying out of the October 7 attack. They've been Iranian proxies and ideological allies of all sorts of fundamentalist terrorists since they came into existence.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_movement
Nothing will limit their willingness to fight. But drone strikes can end their ability to threaten their neighbors. Push them back into their hole, let them scream "death to America" into an increasingly smaller spit of empty desert with dwindling prospects for continued habitability. Maybe their people will get tired of not having nice things or will realize "death to America" won't put food on the table. Maybe not, and eventually their neighbor is going to get sick of their bullshit and swallow them up.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_proxy_conflict
This feels like a bunch of Bush era talking points.
They aren't orcs. There's this notion that our adversaries are unable to demonstrate the self control they need to make environments safe to raise kids but possess motivation for self destruction that is inexaustible.
After exclusively putting more and more weight on the boot on their collective neck with nothing buts decades of successive failure, let's try something else.
For those unmotivated by Christian mercy, I suggest what I am going to call "Machiavellian kindness".
What if their appetite for death is actually weaker than advertised? What if we try to give them a taste of comfort and security with the diabolical awareness that people who become accustomed to weekends of rest and full bellies, who watch their kids reach milestones lose their edge. They get gluttonous and lazy. They become attached to material comforts and the expectations of retirement and grandkids.
Perhaps my cynical machinations are too wicked. But in desperate times when all else has failed, I think they've given us no other choice.
This feels like a bunch of Bush era talking points.
They aren't orcs. There's this notion that our adversaries are unable to demonstrate the self control they need to make environments safe to raise kids but possess motivation for self destruction that is inexaustible.
After exclusively putting more and more weight on the boot on their collective neck with nothing buts decades of successive failure, let's try something else.
For those unmotivated by Christian mercy, I suggest what I am going to call "Machiavellian kindness".
What if their appetite for death is actually weaker than advertised? What if we try to give them a taste of comfort and security with the diabolical awareness that people who become accustomed to weekends of rest and full bellies, who watch their kids reach milestones lose their edge. They get gluttonous and lazy. They become attached to material comforts and the expectations of retirement and grandkids.
Perhaps my cynical machinations are too wicked. But in desperate times when all else has failed, I think they've given us no other choice.
If you let them do this with no response every idiot nation with a coastline is going to think shooting civilian sailors is a good way to get shit done.
Allowing them to get away with it is escalatory for the world.
First, the logic works in reverse, too. If they are trying to pull us into a confrontation that they believe benefits them, allowing them to do so also demonstrates a tool for controlling the US that others will be motivated to use, and is also escalatory.
The problem is that we only think in personal, school yard fight terms. We're act sad though each country has a singular, logically operating decision making process. In reality, international actors are much more like natural phenomena, like mold growth or rabbit populations.
I'm not saying the school yard logic is baseless. When the US flinches, that definitely affects how Xi Jinping assesses our willingness to respond with force to a recapture of Taiwan, for instance. But: whether he decides to do that is not based primarily on whether he thinks the country as a whole has balls or not. It's based on a combination of benefits and draw backs.
So in the long run, if we wanted to prevent unification by force, we're far better off engineering conditions that make unification a bad deal, even if we look weak rather than make it appealing enough to go to war even if we seem likely to destabilize the whole world over it