A war with Iran would have to be all or nothing - meaning, a draft would be necessary. We could launch every Tomahawk we have in the region and they wouldn’t make a dent, and then all of the places on this map would find themselves under attack by Iranian missiles. It would be prohibitively dangerous for the US Navy to try to force an opposed entry to the Gulf. Saudi oil refineries would be hit. The Iraq embassy would probably be overrun. Kuwait and the other places where we’ve previously staged our invasions would be under continuous missile and drone attack. Turkey probably wouldn’t allow us to use that country as a base. Coming from the east means driving over 1,000 miles of barren desert before reaching a meaningful human settlement.
Is it impossible? No. But it would be a real war, requiring consistent commitment, which I think (hope?) even the Biden admin knows is beyond us right now.
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This list assumes you know the History Channel version of the war, and are looking to understand it from different angles. None of these authors are dreaded revisionists, and buying these will not land you on whatever lists I'm now on. /1
1. Churchill, Hitler, and The Unnecessary War, by Pat Buchanan
In the early 20th century, Britain was 'the empire on which the sun never set'; by 1945, she was a 2nd-rate power in a world dominated by the US & USSR. This book documents the blunders that lost Britain her empire.
2. Human Smoke, by Nicholson Baker
This book consists of a series of chronologically-ordered snapshots and moments-in-time that manage to generate a narrative momentum that, by the end, somehow makes the war seem both inevitable and unavoidable. Highly recommended.
Time for a Churchill thread? Time for a Churchill thread. Let's do this.
Why I think Churchill was a chief villain of World War 2. /0
I know that sounds like hyperbole. Churchill didn’t order the most deaths, oversee the most atrocities, or commit the worst crimes. But most of those crimes could not have been committed if the war had not happened, and Churchill was the leader most intent on making it happen. /1
You'll think, "But Darryl, everyone knows the war started after Germany invaded Poland, + Austria & Czechoslovakia before that. It could have been prevented if only people had listened to Churchill , and taken a tougher line against Hitler." And you might be right. Sort of. /2
Because they insist on the primacy of words, and reject as irrational the idea that both are happier when the man sees his job is not to achieve a meeting of minds, but to manage her emotional state, keep her calm, content, optimistic… less like your bro, more like your horse.
She won’t like hearing that, so don’t say it to her. But make that shift and thank me later.
Yes, but she has to learn to treat you like a child in some ways, too, like “aw, he thinks the sounds coming out of his mouth mean things and are important…”
This is a list of science/engineering achievements, but also a description of capital flows. The way to make big $ in the 2000s was through finance and tech, and too many of our best brains were wasted creating CDOs and dick pic apps.
Add in that labor & regulatory arbitrage provided industry w/an easy way to drive up the bottom line without the risky business of innovation, and you get what we have now, secular stagnation or whatever.
In the most recent MartyrMade Substack essay on slavery and the leadup to the Civil War, I describe some of the bizarre practices of societies encountered by Europeans during the Age of Exploration, to try to put the European response in perspective.
Thread.
J.G Frazer, in his book, The Golden Bough, summarizes an Aztec ritual dedicated to the Maize Goddess, Chicomecohuatl. A young girl was chosen to play the role of the goddess, and was paraded around town to be worshipped by the people. Then came the festival's climax:
The conquistadores were hard men, accustomed to violence, but what they found in Mexico shook them to their core.
After the ‘93 Oslo Accords made it increasingly difficult to legally establish settlements in the West Bank, settlers began to employ increasingly sophisticated means to work around Israeli law.
This is Antenna Hill in the West Bank:
Settlements continued to expand, with right wing Israeli politicians helping to to skirt Israel’s own laws. Despite being there illegally, the govt decided it was necessary to construct a cell phone tower on a nearby hilltop to fill a blind spot at a bend on the highway.
It was determined to be a security need, since it was unacceptable that Israelis might be caught in a bad situation w/o cell service. The hilltop, owned by Palestinian farmers, was seized and connected to the grid and water supply to facilitate construction.