In any case, the US and Israel already broke the seal on targeting embassies. Fair game now.

People like Hegseth like to think that the rules of warfare are woke gay bullshit designed by losers to hamper the natural winners (i.e. them), but they don’t understand that prior to being codified by the Geneva convention, the rules of war were customary, and existed for reasons other than purely humanitarian ones.

For instance, when surrendering a city or fort, the defenders would be typically given something called honours of war, in which they would be permitted to march out bearing their arms and waving their flags, thus avoiding humiliation. They would then surrender their arms and be taken as prisoners of war, or, supposing that the attacking army doesn’t have the facilities to keep POWs, would be granted free passage. Now you could simply let them march out and then massacre them, thus avoiding either having to care for POWs or having a bunch of enemy troops that you have to deal with in a future battle, but you can only pull that trick once - the next time, the defenders will fight to the death rather than be massacred. So you pull a dirty trick to win this battle, but it makes every future battle harder, and it also means that they will not be likely to take you prisoner. Even the Mongols would typically honour the surrender of a city (provided no resistance was offered after the ultimatum), because besieging or storming a city is much costlier than making it surrender.

You see this effect in action in the present war, where the US twice used diplomatic talks as cover for suprise attacks, and thus Iran no longer has any reason to see any diplomacy with the US as legitimate, so even as Trump wants to pull out, he can’t.You can assassinate their civilian leaders, but now you have to keep your head on a swivel as you’re also suddenly a legitimate target. You can sink their defenceless ship and leave the survivors to drown, but now they have no reciprocal obligation towards your crews. You can strike their embassies, but now your embassies are struck in return. You can launch attacks on them from nominally neutral countries, but now those countries are legitimate targets.

Germany in 1939: Poland has capitulated in a month. The Reich grows larger.

Germany in 1940: France has capitulated in a month. Our invincible troops march from victory to victory!

Germany in 1942: We’ve been fighting over this grain silo for a week now

Removed by mod

WITNESS ME

It’s playable!

Elon Musk uses so much ketamine he ruined his bladder. He’s also a nazi pedophile, but that isn’t related

John Fetterman lives under a bridge and eats any traveller who can’t answer his riddles

I once had an idea that it would be funny if Trump got hit on the head and turned woke: We’re gonna add so many genders your head’s gonna spin. You’ll say, “Donald, there’s too many genders, we can’t keep track of them all!” Too bad, we just added 10 more genders

In WW2, America had segregation, the UK and France had brutally oppressive overseas colonies, and the USSR had gulags. The Axis were still much worse.

Credit where credit’s due, then. They did a fantastic job and they couldn’t have picked a better guy to destroy America

You could presumably program them to self-detonate after a few weeks or months, but it would still present an unexploded ordnance hazard. I’m also hoping that they’re got proper anchored mines, with detailed records of locations for postwar minesweeping, but given the situation they could just be throwing them all out there as quick as they can. It is after all an existential war for national survival on Iran’s side.

So Trump is a deep cover Soviet sleeper agent who has infiltrated all the way to the top rungs of power in the United States, and is using that power to destroy America? Fuck yeah, that rules.

So like, was George Bush a Russian puppet too? The Iraq war harmed America. Was Obama a Russian puppet for cancelling the public option and letting the bankers get away with crashing the economy?Was Biden a Russian puppet, since he was sleepy and feckless?

I’m a lot more inclined that your problems are due to institutional and societal rot, accumulated failures, a lack of planning, etc., rather than a grand Russian conspiracy. But if that’s true and you’re penetrated to the point where your government is just secretly controlled by Russia, I think you should just ask China to annex you. That way you at least could have a functioning country.

I’m going to have to look into it further. If it’s a drifting mine, it could be a lot more compact and still do a lot of damage to ships. They would be less effective in theory, but all they really need is for the strait to be nominally mined.

I remember thinking it was a silly idea in 2016, too. Like, the supposed “interference” was facebook ads featuring buff Bernie, stuff like that. It just seems like it’s a way to make an excuse for the US (and more specifically the Democrats), like their problems aren’t of their own making and everything is Russia’s fault. Linking it all the way back to Kruschev is especially ridiculous.

But, supposing it is actually a plot that goes all the way back to the Krushchev era, good for them. It worked perfectly. The gameshow man is radpidly destroying America.

As far as I know, they have the capability to deploy minefields by rocket from long range. I’m not sure if we’re talking the bigger MLRS or the smaller ballistic missiles, but it’s certainly possible.

Lmao, what fucking reality do you live in. The war is already going on, they’ve been attacking iran for like 2 weeks now. What is this “the USA can DESTROY them if they DARE target our ships” shit? Strait’s closed. try and open it, removed

That would have been true like 20 years ago, but the PLAN is absolutely a bluewater navy capable of projecting power. Their focus is on their backyard, but they have 3 aircraft carriers, 64 destroyers (with two more of the advanced type 55 commissioned a couple days ago), and 69 submarines.

A sea mine is like a land mine in that you always have a safe path through that you know and can communicate to allies. Even if enemies know the location of the minefields, you’re still forcing them to go through an area of your choosing rather than allowing them free movement. Most likely, Iran will have mined the areas closer to the UAE side of the strait, forcing any ships to hug Iran’s coastline and allowing them to strike with even their shortest range missiles.