OptimisticCynic

@JamesSurowiecki NATO saves America money and vastly increases our ability to spend in R and D since we have allies to sell weapons to.

We do not spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on NATO. We spend less than ten billion dollars a year on it. Trump's implicit claim here is that if we weren't a member of NATO, we would slash our defense budget by hundreds of billions. But that's nonsense. We don't spend almost a trillion dollars a year on defense because of NATO. We do it because the US wants to be able to project its power wherever and whenever it wants.

@ProfessorPape @MalcolmNance There us only one thing that will determine if the US enters a ground war: Trump And he has multiple ways he could be pulled in: 1) severe loss of American life 2) terrorist attack in the US 3) irreparable damage Gulf oil infrastructure 4) personal humiliation

In Iran war: Everyone is watching troop numbers They’re missing the signal that actually determines whether the U.S. enters a ground war New: escalationtrap.substack.com/p/the-marine-t…

@MalcolmNance Trump just wants to make sure that any Thanksgiving argument between relatives over whether or not Trump is an egomaniac can be settled quickly.

No fucking way.

@Rep_Stansbury @anders_aslund Vance is so unpopular that this trip is just backstabbing Orban.

OK, so let me get this straight—the Vice President of the United States is going to Hungary to actively campaign for an autocrat….k got it.

@JewsFightBack The Soviet Union was occupying all of Eastern Europe for a half century, but they gave it back.

47 years ago today, Israel gave Egypt the Sinai. Three times the size of Israel today. Given up for peace. Show me another country willing to compromise this much for peace. I’ll wait.

@factsforupsc Russians took Tehran and the north half of Iran in 1941 while the British occupied the south.

This is How Natural Fortress look like Iran Ground invasion is not easy

@MalcolmNance The Russian invasion of Ukraine involved more than 150000 Russian soldiers from bases on Russian and Belarusian soil. Gulf War, 500k Americans plus allies. So 10k Americans will do what?

Your assessment is quite wrong. Strategic deception would not involve 10,000 troops. Where we attack is different but this op is a Go. Trump is painted himself into a corner. He’s gonna take the leap. And Land in paint.

@Mylovanov Why not make the reaction to Russia’s current invasion devastating if you want to teach Russia a lesson?

Rutte: Ukraine's NATO membership is not on the cards for now. When the war stops, Putin must know the reaction will be devastating if he tries again. In Paris in January, a coalition of the willing agreed on what Ukraine's security guarantees should look like. 1/

@TrashPanda08x We can’t have this because city folk don’t want this coming into their downtown through their single family zoned neighborhoods.

We can't have this in the US because a farmer will lose 0.5% of their land and less people would drive which would be bad for oil companies. :(

@IndiaTales7 Israeli mob is the Russian mob is the New York mob.

Vladimir Putin was asked why he was not assisting Iran in the conflict with Israel 🇮🇱 He replied: “Israel today is almost a Russian-speaking country, two million people from the Soviet Union and Russia live there. We take that into account.”

@TrentTelenko Taking shelter in mosques or praying in mosques as their religion calls them to do. Potato, potato.

The US-Israeli air campaign needs to be inflicting 20 times that number a day to collapse Iranian Regime Security Forces control over the Iranian population in ~3 months.

@MulhollandL0ver The North was also very racially and culturally segregated, and initially the former slaves had hopes of integrating in the South. Reconstruction doesn’t end until 1877, and legalized segregation takes 20 more years to take hold. By the mid 1910s The Great Migration has begun.

It’s still pretty perplexing how many freed slaves didn’t migrate North after slavery. And if not then, then definitely during Jim Crow. I would’ve been on the first smoking train to Chicago

@dqveed North Korea is more willing to have a female leader than America?!?

If true this would be a huge win for feminism. Women are grossly underrepresented in the dictatorship and authoritarianism fields.

@GeraldoRivera Or maybe nothing will come of this.

Somebody in Iran is negotiating with the US. Maybe as soon as tomorrow in Pakistan. Not everybody in Tehran is happy about that. Maybe they will turn on each other.

@Riley_Gaines_ Female sports were created because women wanted to compete and society wouldn’t let them.

"Female bodies are just as strong and fast and capable as male bodies." - State Senator Lindsay Williams in PA today If this were the case, why were women's sports created in the first place? They just say words and expect us to nod along.

@TansuYegen Or you could have ladders.

In South Korea, some tall buildings now have small gravity escape systems where you clip in, release a brake, and gently lower yourself to safety without electricity 🪂

@KingOffX_ @TrentTelenko Iran is not in a trap. They believe Trump will not commit ground troops and without that the US can’t break Iran’s stranglehold on world oil. If the US attacks, Iran can force a ceasefire with strikes on oil and gas infrastructure—which is what brought Trump to the table now.

The Iranian regime is walking straight into a U.S. trap by rejecting the proposal. Let me explain, if the U.S. sent in ground troops without a clear trigger, like Iran rejecting a 15-point ceasefire, the global backlash would tilt toward Iran. Trump knows that. He’s set it up so that if Iran refuses, he has the pretext to escalate to save the people of Iran, if it accepts, Washington still comes out ahead. Either way, the regime loses.

@ColMoeDavis “The pilot can’t fly worth a damn, but if I see someone I don’t like, he’s happy to pick a fight with him… and he doesn’t even need a reason why.”

“The pilot may not know much about how to fly the plane, but he’s great with the passengers.”

@Aviation_Intel Until the tech for automatic drone defenses works…

M1E3 Next-Gen Abrams Tank Production Could Begin Next Year Test units will soon start experimenting with early M1E3 prototypes, with the Army now hoping production could kick off in 2027. twz.com/land/m1e3-next…

@nicholadrummond The 1st Gulf War involved 700,000 allied troops including 500,000 Americans. The US needed 5 months to build up the forces and had cooperation from the Gulf states to stage them. Iraq had minimal leverage on world oil in the meantime. 7k US troops gonna do what?

I'm old enough to remember the Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003. At the time, the doom-mongers amongst us suggested that any land attack against Saddam Hussein's forces, especially his elite Republican Guard units, would end in disaster. They said we would sustain unacceptable casualties, that oil prices would spike, and the world economy would be plunged into recession. But Operation Desert Storm was an outstanding success. George Bush Sr. could have so easily driven to Baghdad to remove Saddam from power. But he left that job to his son. Today, with Iran, I'm seeing all of the same fears being recycled. Sure, Iran has a more capable military than Iraq had and is better prepared to resist a US attack. So, yes, it will likely take longer to dismantle the regime. But the fact that factions within Iran have requested talks shows that results are being achieved. This won't be a "forever war. " What makes sensible discussion about this difficult is what some people are calling "Trump Derangement Syndrome." The idea that someone so outspoken, bombastic, and egotistical as DJT could possibly do something good is anathema to his enemies. They hate the idea that Trump could succeed - by ridding the world of a major sponsor of terrorism and a regime that has slaughtered thousands of its own people - so much, that they happily defend the Ayatollah. I make no comment pro or against Trump. Instead, I note that any Western power might try to do the same thing if it had the means. Of course, it could go wrong, and it could take longer. And, yes, DJT could have consulted his allies first, and, yes, we can review his approach later, and suggest a different course of action, but sometimes the ends justify the means.