Is it the case that if someone doesn't do something some time then they can't do that thing? Like, if you were playing basketball and Lebron James walked by and you threw the ball to him and said "dunk this!' and Lebron said "no, I'm not willing to" does this mean Lebron can't dunk?

Because personally, I'd still take Lebron on a basketball team even if he wasn't willing to dunk the ball that one time.

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runako 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> if you were playing basketball and Lebron James walked by and you threw the ball to him

Yes, this is a terrible analogy for the war in Iran. Hugely unpopular, costing Americans vast sums of money daily, headed for possible catastrophe. Very much not a low-stakes "Lebron walks by" situation.

Better analogy with Lebron would be: championship game with a title on the line. He gets possession as time runs down and the team needs him to score or make a play that scores. It's not okay for him to then say he's fully capable of scoring but doesn't want to at just that moment for reasons.

NB: this is not to say the US military couldn't cause untold damage on the region. This is obvious, anybody can look at recent history to see that the US military is more than capable of destroying a country in the region.

Rather, this is an object lesson that war is politics by other means, and here we tried to do war without any politics and it has not gone well for us.

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urams an hour ago | parent [-]

I will remember from now on that you can compare war to Lebron playing in a championship game but not to him playing in a pickup game.

But to be clear, the comment I replied to was one in which you made an abstract point that it doesn't make a difference to someone if you can do something but in practice don't/aren't willing to and I think that this is obviously wrong (just because Lebron didn't dunk doesn't mean he can't or is a bad ball player). You don't like the Lebron analogy, that's fine. Let's use a war analogy: in 2025 Pakistan and India, two nuclear armed countries, exchanged significant fire. Neither was willing to use their nuclear arsenals. Should we now conclude from this that they can't use their nuclear arsenals and are therefore equivalent to being non-nuclear countries? I mean who cares if they have nuclear weapons which can (can't?) kill millions if this one time their political will wasn't there for them to use them in their defense?

> Rather, this is an object lesson that war is politics by other means, and here we tried to do war without any politics and it has not gone well for us.

Be careful not to trip over your rhetoric in an attempt do display profundity. If war is politics by other means, then doing war is always done with politics. This whole statement is word salad nonsense.

	▲	runako 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> I will remember from now on that you can compare war to Lebron playing in a championship game but not to him playing in a pickup game. The stakes of a given situation matter to the disposition of the participants. Is this not obvious? I'm really confused as to what your larger point is. Nobody disagrees that the US military can kill untold numbers of people and cause untold damage in Iran and the wider region. Was this the point you wanted to make? Yes, the US military is capable of killing everyone in the region, which would make the Strait "open" again. > If war is politics by other means, then doing war is always done with politics. The problem is doing so has not/does not appear to be on a path to achieve the stated political aims of the administration, inasmuch as they have been willing to articulate aims. Anyway, you're being insulting and not making coherent points. Good evening/morning/afternoon.