With respect, this is such a terrible position. This view basically suggests you should bomb civilians in terrorist countries, because that reduces terrorism somehow. Despite the whole GWOT making that lie obvious to everyone.
I mean, theres meant to be intangibles, and some financial support. Most of the financial support got cut by doge and the rest would go with leaving NATO. The intangibles literally never eventuate. Australia tried to invoke ANZUS with East Timor and got brushed off, despite the various US facilities in Aus being sold to the australian voter as insurance that the US would help if requested.
Honestly the US as a strategic partner is just a joke. its nothing but sigint.
I don't disagree with you, but just pushing back on this high-and-mighty "we let you be here" sensibility from the OP. For some reason folks seem to have become convinced the opposite way from MAGA that these bases only serve American interests which is certainly not the case. Likewise the bases also don't only serve the interest of others, they allow us to have more flexibility in our objectives and responses to issues that we see.
Its equally misleading to pretend like the bases have just a couple small benefits for the US. Come on, please. You dont believe it either. Ah yes, the post world war doctrine has been so that the us can have more flexibility. Sure thing. What a waste it has been for European Nations to have sacrificed lives for Americas wars the last decades.
I agree with you, it is misleading. But there are two sides who are both being misleading - that's all I'm calling out here.
> What a waste it has been for European Nations to have sacrificed lives for Americas wars the last decades.
I personally don't support any comment suggesting that Europe hasn't at times been there for us in these conflicts or that their sacrifices weren't meaningful. But that's only part of the equation. We're in a different world from where we were in 2001 and things change and so you can't just hang your hat on this one thing, else we (Americans) get to hang our hat on any time period we want to as well where Americans sacrificed for Europe.
The whole "we did this then" is driving a lot of folks into lunacy, but there does seem to be material differences and that is concerning if you believe in these alliance systems which I generally do.
You have folks on this website who would tell you the US is actively working with Russia against Ukraine, and then in the same breath defend Iran from the US blowing up drone factories that Iran is using to manufacture drones for Russia to use to go murder Ukrainians! Kind of hard to have a conversation or an alliance if a population is being convinced of absolutely crazy things like this.
Yes but if you spend some billions of dollars to replace the Taliban with the Taliban, you have only demonstrated that you are willing to make your own citizens suffer with diminished resources for no outcome.
>If you're walking home from work and some person tries to mug you, even if they are unsuccessful, that will permanently change your behavior as if they had successfully robbed you anyway. Maybe you'll change your route. Maybe you won't walk and drive instead.
In global politics, this tends to make you want to increase your defenses so it doesn't happen again, and find local partners for that defense. This usually comes at the cost of US influence, not its increase.
Like Iran is looking at its current situation and going "The literal only deterrence we could have to prevent this is to develop a nuclear capability. The US cannot be trusted to deal with, and it is pointless to try."
A nuclear Iran can now only be avoided by scorched earth. Scorched earth will now just cause an already partly US hating population to hate them more and create matyrs. Theres no possible upside to this conflict.
With Afghanistan, I think people fixate on the fact that the Taliban is still there and while that's true, Al Qaeda has completely been wiped out (except fringe groups that have adopted the name) and OBL, the person most responsible for 9/11, was successfully killed by an attack launched out of Afghanistan. The current Taliban and whatever terrorist groups remain in that region no longer have an interest in hurting the US directly. The current Taliban is also very different from the one in 2001, almost geopolitically flipped in some ways (allied with India instead of Pakistan, and almost certainly responsible for majorly disrupting China's OBOR project in that region, another win for the US.
Not to mention, 20 years of no Taliban. An entire generation of Afghans grew up without being under a Taliban government.
They very nearly gave Elon Musk a controlling interest in the company. Their justification for not doing so was entirely vibes based. "Stupid" is a broad categorization, someone can be smart in some areas and do dumb things. You shouldn't let your personal appraisal for someones talent color the actual results they produce.
Not entirely a doomer, but I would wait to grandstand until after the crew is returned safely, considering the allegations regarding the capsule heat shield.
The issue is that the administration has kicked the bee hive, and is now claiming that securing passers by from angry bees has nothing to do with them.
Its a great way to diminish what lingering shreds of trust the (hopefully) former allies of the US may still have had.
The US has better ways to decrease oil prices internally that commit to losing boats in the strait.
> On Thursday, the Justice Department announced it had indicted 71-year-old co-founder Wally Liaw, along with a Supermicro sales manager in Taiwan, Ruei-Tsang "Steven" Chang, and a contractor Ting-Wei "Willy" Sun for conspiring to smuggle the GPUs starting in 2024.
> Prosecutors allege that Mr Liaw used brokers to order servers containing advanced Nvidia chips on behalf of a “pass-through” entity in South-East Asia; many were assembled in America and shipped to that entity, then repackaged in unmarked boxes and sent on to China. To fool customs inspectors, those involved allegedly created thousands of “dummy” servers to sit in the warehouses where the buyer claimed to store the equipment.
It's not at all a similar analogy, and you know it. China is a threat. I assume you personally don't care about it, but it is in our interests that it does not dominate the AI industry.
China is a threat, if you live in Taiwan. They lack the ability to project force any further than that. You pin down IR guys on this issue they eventually relent and suggest actually the biggest issue with China is that their claimed zone of control includes a lot of ocean trade routes. But honestly, Xi has been better for international trade than any US admin in the last 15 years, I don't see them doing anything but protecting it. They are like 100 times less threatening than the USA, and that was before president tantrum, who has acted (quite recently) to destabilize global trade.
Unless you think there is some reason why those running that same federal government are free to commit any type of federal crimes they wish with no repercussions...
Your assertion is that we should stop enforcing all laws?
Or only this specific crime? Why this crime, and not others? If it's because you don't "like" this law, then aren't you Mr Double Standards, not I? Aren't I saying "it's a law, enforce it" and aren't you saying "We need a separate standard for laws I personally don't like"?
Are you traveling around the country, uttering this at all court actions? Or do you just lambast random people on the internet, for random laws?
I'm not interested in your country's weird left/right, team player, inane politics. Injecting politics into every conversation is literally what's wrong with your country.
No, laws should be imposed top to bottom. If those at the top who are making the laws can do absolutely anything with no repercussions while everyone else is punished that severely decreases the trust anyone has in the system and weakens it long-term.
Also an extreme misallocation of resources, maybe you should not prioritize the people who are.
> then aren't you Mr Double Standards, not I? Aren't I saying "it's a law, enforce it" and aren't you saying
Nope, rather just not impose it arbitrarily and only punish the people who haven't paid off the right set of politicians.
I know there's some tort caselaw in Australia towards both parties actual understanding of the contract vs written word. We went over a few of these cases in high school commerce. Its been further enshrined by the ACCC, which tends to take the view that the verbal understanding provided at the point of sale can often supercede terms and conditions.
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