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| ▲ | TheOtherHobbes 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Iraq and Afghanistan might disagree with your first point. Last time I looked Iran and the UK are quite some distance from each other, and Iran has inexplicably neither been launching missiles at the UK, nor threatening to, and is apparently not even capable of it. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crm120x4lzxo So the justification for these "defensive" bombing runs on Iranian mountain sites from Fairford remains mysterious. The UK's arms industry is - like most things associated with the establishment - an exercise in turning privilege into cash, so it's not a surprise to see Senior Figures doing the media rounds in establishment narrative factories like The Telegraph and The Daily Mail. Readers with the money and connections to make a difference already know how the game is played. Readers who don't should perhaps be allowed to keep their happy fantasy that the UK isn't one of the most corrupt countries in the world, as a mercy. | | |
| ▲ | cryo32 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Iran has been funding terrorist networks who are active in the UK and has taken direct action against UK citizens before on numerous occasions. They are also allied with Russia who are doing the same. They aren't some innocent party here. Geopolitics is complicated and not some black and white good guy bad guy mechanics. | | | |
| ▲ | graemep an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Iran attacked the British base in Cyprus with drones so has directly attacked British territory more than once. Iran has also been sponsoring terrorism in the UK. Iran has also attacked an American base on British territory. > one of the most corrupt countries in the world A ridiculous exaggeration given what a lot of other countries are like. |
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| ▲ | roenxi 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > In the current Iranian war the UK is only allowing it's bases to launch defensive missions, i.e. strike offensive capability or incoming missiles. Claiming that the UK doesn't support diplomacy through violence then transitioning into this gem has to be one of the wildest juxtapositions I've seen this year. Do you classify the US strikes on Iran as uniformly offensive or defensive in nature? Or do you think there is a mix? How would you classify a US bombing run on anti-air defences in the opening phase of the conflict? | |
| ▲ | themgt 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > In the current Iranian war the UK is only allowing it's bases to launch defensive missions, i.e. strike offensive capability ... Reminds of the old joke, "What propaganda? We don't have propaganda." | |
| ▲ | CrzyLngPwd 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Iran. It didn't attack anyone until it was attacked. It has been defending itself. | | |
| ▲ | cryo32 an hour ago | parent [-] | | They have been trying to kill people in the UK for years. And have been funding proxies everywhere, some of whom have attacked the UK. We're not really even involved and I find it hard to agree with this point. However it should have been dealt with earlier rather than latent bombing. | | |
| ▲ | CrzyLngPwd an hour ago | parent [-] | | You could easily be describing the UK, Israel, and the USA, lol. Anyway, I live in the UK, and I don't swallow the same propaganda as you. | | |
| ▲ | cryo32 35 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Which bit is the propaganda? Do you know any actual Iranians? I do! | | |
| ▲ | jeltz 20 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I do and I agree with him. Iran is just one of many on a long list of supporters of terrorism which includes the US, the UK and Israel, plus many more countries like Turkey and Russia. | | |
| ▲ | cryo32 14 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I made exactly no comments about other countries or a comparison. That is a different argument. |
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| ▲ | tardedmeme an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > In the current Iranian war the UK is only allowing it's bases to launch defensive missions, i.e. strike offensive capability If Iran struck all of the UK's missile factories and military bases, would it be considered a defensive or offensive action? | | | |
| ▲ | anonymousDan 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I can't tell if your first sentence is a joke or not... | |
| ▲ | RobotToaster 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Defending those launching illegal strikes is still offensive, in both meanings of the term. | |
| ▲ | keybored 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They still own Falkland Islands. | |
| ▲ | throawayonthe an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | war is peace etc etc | | |
| ▲ | Npovview an hour ago | parent [-] | | "Department of War" was renamed as "Department of Defense" because Edward Bernays (the greatest propagandist who ever lived) said so. | | |
| ▲ | enoint 35 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Maybe not directly. In 1947, it became the Department of the Army, and in 1949 the Department of Defense. Bernays was working on Engineering of Consent at the time, and applied psychoanalysis was very subtle compared to simple Orwellian name changes. For example, Bernays wanted to get women to smoke cigarettes. |
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| ▲ | pbiggar 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Defensive missions? Was the UK under attack? | | |
| ▲ | subscribed 5 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I guess schoolgirls were naughty and saying bad words about the UK, hence arming the American planes with bombs to use on civilians and civilian infrastructure. |
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| ▲ | juanani 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [dead] | |
| ▲ | coldtea 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >The UK doesn't have some imperialist policy of land grabs It has centuries of exactly that at a global scale, and continued post-war neo-colonial land grabbing and pressuring, plus eager participation in all the imperialist games of its larger brother. I mean, just mentioning "Tony Blair" is enough... | | |
| ▲ | 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | happymellon 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 20 years since he was in power... | |
| ▲ | thrownthatway 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Your biases are hanging out. Like hemorrhoids. The British empire has been completely wound down, other than a handful of small overseas territories. How long do you plan on holding the currency set of British people responsible for things they didn’t do? | | |
| ▲ | coldtea 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | >The British empire has been completely wound down, other than a handful of small overseas territories. Just because Britain couldn't afford it anymore. And after bloodshed, in India, Kenya, Cyprus, Malaysia, and elsewhere. Not out of the bigness of their heart. And the post-colonialism never ended. The same grabby hands get everywhere they can get. And why exactly are those "small overseas territories" unquestionably retained? "No biggie, just an island here, an island there, and island there, some land in here" | |
| ▲ | znort_ 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | oh, i see you misunderstanding. he obviously meant the ruling class, those epsteinites. nobody cares about british people, they're just ... people! |
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| ▲ | foldr 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What land did Tony Blair grab? You can disagree with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq without making the exaggerated claim that this was part of some kind of long-term imperialist occupation. The UK currently has fewer military personnel in Iraq than it has in, say, Germany. And Britain doesn’t control the Iraqi government. | | |
| ▲ | specproc 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I think something Brits don't fully understand is the extent of our vassalage under the US. We do, as you rightly note have quite the history of a policy of imperialist land grabs, now we just play a support function to somebody else's empire. | | |
| ▲ | foldr 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Ok, but you can say the same for the US. It also has vastly more troops in Germany than Iraq, and it also does not control the Iraqi government. And the less said about Afghanistan the better. So where is the land grab? | | |
| ▲ | specproc an hour ago | parent [-] | | One does not need to dictate every item of policy to control a country, one just needs to ensure that there's alignment on strategic issues. I think this was America's key point of learning when it took over the reins of the European empires after WW2. In Germany, historically the strategic issue was anti-communism, but now it serves as a military logistics hub; in Iraq, it's about trade in oil in dollars and access to Iraqi oil fields for US companies. The UK is more complex and more total, ranging from support in the security council, to access to markets for US goods and services, to stationing of US troops and hardware. Most of our economy is geared up for the benefit of US investment funds. Any government, whether it be Germany, Iraq or the UK, which tries to alter any of these fundamentals will quickly find out the extent to which their land has been grabbed. | | |
| ▲ | foldr an hour ago | parent [-] | | Or, to put it more succinctly, Iraq is occupied by the US in about the same sense that Germany is. And while the US no doubt exerts influence over Germany in part via its military power, I think the position that the US military presence in Germany is part of a “land grab” would be a rather fringe one. | | |
| ▲ | specproc 44 minutes ago | parent [-] | | It depends where you're sat and when. It's almost certainly a fringe perspective in the US, because I don't believe American's really think about it that much. Whether troop presence is viewed as occupation or not in each of the >50 [1] countries currently "hosting" troops is very much a matter of personal perspective, the fringeness of which will vary from country to country. I don't believe that it really changes the fact that yes, US troops occupy the UK, Germany and Iraq, and many more. The most substantial deployments, e.g., Germany, Japan, South Korea, and until recently Iraq and Afghanistan, were very much the product of invasions. At the time of those invasions, many of those on the receiving end would have very much felt on the receiving end of a land grab. It's just their grandchildren have been conditioned to view this state of affairs as natural. The general pattern is "bomb the bejesus" [2] out of a country. Plant base. Install a friendly government and ensure a favourable operating environment for US interests. The UK is an exception in that it wasn't bombed by the US, but the upshot is the same. We're a wholely-owned subsidiary of corporate America, and a giant aircraft carrier on the other side of the Atlantic -- as the US's latest adventure in Iran has clearly demonstrated. You may quibble over the "land" in land-grab, but the strategic bits (e.g., oil fields, bases) are very much owned, and the territory as a whole controlled by pliant governments. [^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_oversea... [^2]: Kissenger, 1972 |
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| ▲ | coldtea 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >What land did Tony Blair grab? You can disagree with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq without making the exaggerated claim that this was part of some kind of long-term imperialist occupation. Yeah, just a few decades years, to secure oil deals and/or keep control of the region. No biggie. That this can be said with a straight face about invasions to two countries that created civil war, suffering, hundreds of thousands of deaths, displacement, etc, is telling of the ever-present colonialist mindset. | | |
| ▲ | foldr 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | My post wasn’t defending the Iraq war. It was just pointing out that the war was not a land grab. Iraq is not now a part of the UK or US (in contrast to the situation with Russia and Crimea, for example). | | |
| ▲ | roenxi 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military... For anyone else interested, negotiations that could lead to the US leaving Iraq and fully returning control to the Iraqi people are also going swimmingly, according to reports. | | |
| ▲ | foldr an hour ago | parent [-] | | The US military presence in Iraq is already far smaller than its presence in Germany and many other countries. Certainly, the US is a global superpower (albeit a declining one) that exerts influence via its military strength. But Iraq is not occupied by the US any more than Germany is. | | |
| ▲ | roenxi an hour ago | parent [-] | | If Germany wants the US to leave, do they have to negotiate to get that to happen? |
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| ▲ | dgroshev 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Saying that it's the invasions that created civil wars and suffering in Afghanistan and Iraq is just exceptionally ignorant. Here's a taster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Ba%27athist_Ir... For all their failures, the allies never bombed cities with nerve agents. | | |
| ▲ | ZeroGravitas 6 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Your page says: > Saddam committed crimes of aggression during the Iran–Iraq War Which links to a page about the war: > Iraq was aided by [...] the United States, the United Kingdom, > After years of military and economic losses, decreasing morale, intensifying Iran–U.S. relations, and little international action against Iraqi attacks on Iranian civilians, Iran agreed to a ceasefire with Iraq under United Nations Security Council Resolution 598. So they basically did. |
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