William C

@HAPPY889123 What American values? Unless @RNicholasBurns means the American value of war-mongering, illegal sanctions on foreign countries, illegal confiscation of sovereign assets, aiding & abetting gen0cide, rampant violation of Intl Law. Then he's right, US will hv to fight for that.

Funniest part is what would America compete with❓Knuckles? 198 Gender Pronouns? A country OVERCAPACITY in Math-Illiteracy, Science-Illiteracy, HISTORY-Illiteracy (like he), Foreign-Language Illiteracy, Literature-Illiteracy, folks with cognitive IQ 2 Wechlster SD below median, folks who can't read with comprehension beyond 6th grade? Worst, it has evicted affirmatively or constructively ["constructive" is a legal term] the top research talents in science in the country who are Chinese on false charges of espionage, reversing 5 decades of brain-drain. Man has so much pathological jealousy in him he can eat it for gummies. Meantime not one shred of insight on how America has singlehandedly created its own catastrophic decline.

@jonathan2hale @PhillipsPOBrien Already making excuses for yet another US military failure. The fastest failure in its entire history. Btw, decapitation strikes on a sovereign nation's leadership is illegal in International Law. And only the most blinkered unthinking mind will see attacking Iran as self-defense

I’ve seen a lot of moronic takes like this. The US military and its ally achieved operational victory on day one with a mass decapitation strike. What follows can be a political decision to withdraw, but that is not the same as military defeat. Mixing the two is analytically useless.

If the US war on Iran ends up with the Iranian regime still in power and Iran able to charge tolls in the Straits of Hormuz, it will be the quickest and most comprehensive defeat that the US has ever suffered—and alarms bells should start ringing loudly about the future of US power.

@AyshaSusmaz I would like to remind people that in surveys and polls, 70+% of Israeli civilians support the gen0cide in Gaza, and 40% think the IDF hasn't gone far enough with the killings. This isn't just the early weeks of the gen0cide, but consistent till late 2025 (1yr after it started).

Anti-war Israelis? Majority supported war on Iran. If they weren’t under attack, these “anti-war” protests wouldn’t exist. They’re protesting because they’re scared, not because they love peace.

@timand2037 This is so heartbreaking. Anyone with small children knows how precious they are. To lose so many to such wanton cruel attack is devastating. And some ppl still wonder why the war-mongers/mass-murderers 🇺🇲 + 🇮🇱 are despised around the World.

Mothers of Minab are camped next to their daughters' graves.

@mariocavolo 2/2 soc-media with a seemingly wide-range of knowledge & explanations (incl. background context or history) on geo-politics. But he jumps to conclusions, and ignore inconvenient details, rarely engages in debate. A 5min lazy-man takeaway is what he's going for. In service of who?

@mariocavolo 100%. It is increasingly clear that Prof Jiang (he is not a faculty in any University, never has been, as far as I'm aware, so his Prof title is dubious) has an agenda that is strikingly pro-Liberalist Globalist and subtlely anti-China. An articulate Chinese person on ... 1/2

I didnt see it before I was wrong...Unfortunately Jiang XueJin joins many other voices who are quite good until they open their mouths about China and then they get it completely wrong and start off the cliff...Oh well he's having his moment of fame for a few weeks. #China #JiangXueJin #CounterPointGlobal

@EmekaCryptoNG @satinghostrider 7/n against US-Israel. It didn't even invoke joint security agreements with Russia. It has Russian & Chinese support, but only indirectly. A reshaping of West Asia's security is happening, but the swing is decidedly Away from Israel & US. Only question is, by how much?

@EmekaCryptoNG @satinghostrider 6/n and this has shaken Arab faith in their US-reliant security rubric. How will GCC countries shift? That warrant further observation, but a diversification of security partners could be a new paradigm. As for Iran, it hasn't counted on Sunni support in its existential war ..6/n

Just had dinner with a friend who works in Gulf diplomacy. Smart guy. 20 years in the region. Something felt off though. He kept circling back to one phrase: "They're not seeing the board." Finally asked what he meant. His response floored me. "Israel bombs Iran's gas field — Iran retaliates by bombing Qatar's gas field. Israel bombs Iran's steel plants — Iran retaliates by bombing UAE's aluminum facility. Every single time, Iran hits a neighbor instead of hitting back at Israel. And nobody in the region is connecting the dots." He'd been watching this pattern for weeks. Iran keeps getting provoked into attacking the very countries it should be allied with. And the coalition that could challenge Israel is tearing itself apart from the inside. Made me think about chess. The best players don't beat you by attacking your king directly. They turn your own pieces against each other. But maybe no one in the region has realized they're the pieces. We're watching one of the most effective divide-and-conquer strategies play out in real time. Classic geopolitics, ancient playbook. Don't get me wrong — every country involved has agency and makes their own decisions. But thinking out loud, if Iran keeps retaliating against Gulf neighbors instead of the country that actually attacked them first… the region is doing Israel's work for them.

They called Hồ Chí Minh a tyrant. A man who spent decades in exile, in prison, living in poverty, organizing resistance to colonial occupation. Who wrote poetry. Who quoted the American Declaration of Independence in Vietnam’s own declaration of independence, word for word, because he believed those words meant something. He believed America, of all countries, would understand what it meant to fight a colonial power for the right to self-governance. America sent bombers. Think about the layers of that humiliation. A Vietnamese revolutionary quoted Jefferson and Madison to appeal to American values. And the American response was napalm. Because it was never about freedom. It was never about democracy. It was about control. It was about which countries get to be self-determining and which countries exist to serve someone else's interests. It was about making sure that when Washington said "jump," the government in Hanoi would ask "how high." Hồ Chí Minh was not willing to ask that question. So they tried to destroy him. They destroyed nothing. He died in 1969, before the war ended. And the country he gave his life for won anyway. His face is still on the currency. Theirs is not.

@dmayombwe @YDimitre What you are likely to find is, the US will be thoroughly defeated, not only on strategic (regime change, etc) objectives, but on every metric except No. bldgs destroyed & No. lives lost. But you wouldn't know it, because everything will be spun as a win, such is the fake media.

@YDimitre That’s exactly the point; that winning militarily will not achieve the regime change objective as there’d still be a void of governance to fill. And the Americans would have to prop up/ protect such a puppet, imposed government at a great cost. So, expect no ground war.

The most difficult subject in War School was Iran, you know why? No one, even my Professors who were former intelligence operatives couldn’t tell Irans military strategy. Militarily, Iran did what no country has done. The decentralization of it Forces, a well organized a formidable units with its own brain around defense. You can embed the CIA and Mossad as much as you want in Iran, but there’s a place where everything stops. So let me give you a little lesson about Iran, It is Not a country. Not really. More like a living labyrinth, designed not to win wars the way empires do but to outlive them. You see, in the grand theaters of war, where men like Napoleon Bonaparte chased glory and where doctrine is etched into polished marble halls, Iran chose a different scripture entirely. They studied collapse. They watched the fate of men like Saddam Hussein, a towering army, centralized, proud and decapitated in weeks. They watched Libya. They watched Afghanistan. And somewhere in the ashes of those fallen regimes, Iran asked a far more dangerous question: “What survives when the head is cut off?” And so, they removed the head. No single brain. No single nerve center. Instead, a thousand smaller minds, each capable of thought, of violence, of continuation. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is not merely a military force. It is a philosophy with weapons. A hydra. You don’t defeat it, you inconvenience it. Cut one arm, another recalibrates. Silence one commander, ten more adjust without ceremony, without pause. No dramatic funerals in the command chain. No operational paralysis. Just continuity. And then there’s the illusion, the one that keeps intelligence officers awake at night. You can penetrate a system, yes. The Central Intelligence Agency has. The Mossad certainly has. They’ve turned assets, intercepted signals, even reached into places once thought untouchable. But Iran doesn’t build for secrecy alone. It builds for betrayal. Every layer watched by another. Every agent suspected before he proves loyal. Every corridor lined not just with doors but with mirrors. You think you’re inside the system until you realize the system anticipated you long before you arrived. Now, about the dead. Spies, operatives, assets: men and women who stepped into that maze believing tradecraft could save them. Some vanished quietly. Others, not so quietly. Iran has made examples of those it accuses of espionage, broadcasting confessions, staging executions, sending messages carved not in ink but in consequence. But here’s the truth no agency will print: The real number? The real cost? Buried. Because in that world, numbers are not statistics, they’re vulnerabilities. You see, my friend, most nations prepare for war. Iran prepares for endurance. It doesn’t ask, “How do we defeat our enemy?” It asks, “How do we remain when they have exhausted themselves trying?” And that, that is a far more terrifying strategy. Because history has a peculiar habit of remembering not the strongest, but the last one standing.

I’ve always known this. The very first time I heard of ISIS on BBC Radio 4 I knew it was just another CIA terrorism front like Al Qaeda.

We all agree that Iran & Co have very precise missiles, yes? So why do we not hear of them hitting hospitals and schools every day? Even "by accident" ? Ask yourself why this is the case, and what this says about their military doctrine, their values, and their mindset.

@MndyMrningBlues @raptorsringszn2 @nxt888 Here's a stat for you, over a Qtr of a million Vietnam Vets suffer from PTSD decades after the war. It's the gift that keeps giving. For these Americans, the war never ended. Drugs, alcohol, depression, domestic violence, destitution and suicide were constant companions.

@Will_apprentice @raptorsringszn2 @nxt888 William, how many U.S. Combat Troops were in Vietnam in 1975? It wasn't anything like Biden's Retreat from Afghanistan. But the US Military consider it a loss & study it. It is very concerning that is not happening with Afghanistan which was a true loss.

There is a particular type of American who, when confronted with Vietnam, says: "We could have won if the politicians hadn't tied our hands." Let us examine this claim with the respect it deserves. Which is none. At peak deployment, the United States had 543,000 troops in Vietnam. It flew more than 5.2 million combat sorties. It used weapons so advanced that Vietnamese forces had never seen anything like them. It had total air superiority for most of the war. It had naval dominance of the entire coastline. It had satellite intelligence, chemical defoliation, electronic surveillance. It had the full industrial capacity of the wealthiest nation in the history of the world pointed at a country where most people farmed rice by hand. And it lost. Not barely lost. Not lost-on-a-technicality. Lost so completely that the last image of American presence in Vietnam is a helicopter on a rooftop in Saigon and desperate people climbing the walls trying to get on it as the American empire evacuated its failure in real time. Broadcast live. On television. Watched by the entire world. "They tied our hands." With what? What hand was left untied? What weapon was withheld? What tactic was forbidden? The truth is too simple and too brutal for that excuse to cover: You cannot win a war against people willing to fight forever for their own land. You were never going to win. The politicians didn't lose Vietnam. The logic of empire lost Vietnam. Because empire always eventually loses when it meets people who refuse to accept that they are supposed to lose.

@academic_la 2/2 a fellow BRICS member nation and an SCO member nation. Iran is a civilizational state, like China, it deserves respect. Chinese equipment, where suitable, will support Iran's lawful fight to defend its sovereignty and is consistent with what's allowed in Intl Law.

@academic_la You'd be wrong. China collects data on US weaponry systems every chance it gets, where ever the US deploys. In Ukraine, the Russians do the same. It'll be negligent not to. As for China loving this war, I doubt it. China cannot stop the US waging war in Iran, but she'll help 1/2

I talked to a source in Beijing yesterday about news reports that China was selling Iran various chips and missiles. He would not confirm specifics. But what he said was very interesting. To China, what is happening in the Persian Gulf is a laboratory of their policies of sea denial: 1) He said that China is collecting field data from Iranian conflict zones to identify the radar and thermal signatures of American, and weapons. 2) They are waiting to see how Iran's chokepoint warfare in the Strait of Hormuz works. They plan to use similar swarming tactics near their shores and around Taiwan. 3) China managed the Iranian transition to the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System. This allows China to evaluate the performance and precision of its encrypted military signals in a contested electronic warfare environment. 4) By providing intelligence, radar, and electronic warfare support, China can assess the effectiveness of its technology against Western platforms like the F-35 without direct military engagement. He hinted that this has been more successful than expected. The bottom line (this is my interpretation and not what my source said): is China is loving this war. It is not only weakening the US and depleting their missile and interceptor stocks, but is also giving China examples of what works and allowing it to test its weapon systems while killing American soldiers and destroying American equipment. All without putting a single Chinese soldier at risk.