Doomsought
Well-known member
I've long believed that state secrets should be require judicial approval, similar to a warrant during war time, but much more strict outside of war.
United States Trump 2nd Term - Planning and Beyond
- Thread starter bullethead
- Start date
I've long believed that state secrets should be require judicial approval, similar to a warrant during war time, but much more strict outside of war.
Nope, the US has tons of laws about stuff being 'Born Secret' for a lot of stuff that could be of military value, as well as the FISA court which is effectively beyond the public's knowledge/ability to see into or effect via judicial appointments, and plenty of intel agencies rules that allow things like the JFK/RFK/MLK documents to be hidden to protect the reps of public officials or LEO/intel protect informants and methods for decades after the fact.
The same sort of backroom shit used to push Oppenheimer out of the Manhattan Project is used regularly to ensure the US public is kept in the dark about domestic fuckery that our government get's up to.
Crow gotta eat
That peckish, patriotic, Protestant passerine.
I would not call any of the EU members a loyal friend other than maybe Poland and some other Eastern European countries.
They have their own interests, some of which involves them cozying up with the CCP which Trump is trying to cut off the reason for the CCP doing that with Greenland, sea-lane control and rare earth minerals.
Many of them are quite hostile Trump's nationalists leanings, as they defy globalist leanings of the Neocons and Democrats they are used to dealing with and they more politically align with in general. They are allies in terms of containing Russia, and have closer trade relations, but they are not exactly Trump's or America's "friends" outside of that.
Many of the EU is WEF aligned.
You're basically saying it is impossible to win any offensive war ever, and that no country or insurgent/guerilla group is able to ever lose a defensive war.
TheRejectionist
TheRejectionist
As someone who is Latino, or you want to be pedantic, Iberoamerican, as long as the US army or whoever actually helps with the problem created by Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan administration or their CIA buddies or both, they are welcome.
Now, the ways it can backfire are the following : total or partial annexation (which becomes a wet dream and fresh new voters for the Dems) or you guys decide to act like Blackwater and start massacring Mexicans like the Iraqis after you liberated them from Saddam or like the Japanese minor raped by an Okinawan-stationed US soldier.
Other than that, plenty of Mexicans won't say it loudly in their neighborhood but they will be gladly reading the obituaries of cartel members with smiles on their faces.
But if they fuck up, well...FAFO. It's going to get really bad for Americans South of the border. No matter if someone is right wing or left wing, fuck up in Mexico and no one, except maybe (and this is a big maybe) Bolsonaro and the Colombian right, and you will have close to six hundred million and half people who want or fantasize getting "back and the greengos".
I have a positive outlook. But... I don't expect it to go completely rosy as many here seems to think.
Crow gotta eat
That peckish, patriotic, Protestant passerine.
I suppose a lot of it is literally just on how the Mexican government responds, either they help us or we would be forced to wage a war with them as well. If the government invites us in, or we force them to "invite" us in, then we're probably going to have a lot easier time, because once again, a primary win condition is giving the Mexican government more power to enforce their control over the country and enforce their laws.
TheRejectionist
TheRejectionist
Italy is not, Greece as well and Portugal and Spain might join the nationalist club as well.
Same as above.
Well, you guys haven't won many conflicts since 1945.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
...And we aren't talking about conquest or annexation of Mexico, in part or full. Stop making up imaginary positions to argue against.
We went into all of these places to fight criminal cartels smuggling people and drugs across our borders, did we, hm?
You aren't even talking about the same things as the rest of us. Why are you bothering to get involved in a conversation, if you aren't paying any attention to what people are actually talking about?
We won't annex Mexico, we will just make sure the cartel problems are reduced to such a degree the Mexican gov can handle them in house.
Of course we'll probably have to clean out part of the Mexican gov as well, given how much the cartels have infil'd it, but we won't take over Mexico or try to stay there longer than needed.
A stable, prosperous Mexico is good for the US.
Crow gotta eat
That peckish, patriotic, Protestant passerine.
Most of them are/were regional conflicts that didn't actually majorly threaten the US directly. But we do have a quite a few wins for us, even if they don't stay as long term wins. Not even counting all the UN conflicts I didn't list, which would add to both the wins and losses when we were involved directly. But here are some of the "wins"
- Korean War, while ongoing, can be considered a win since we stopped North Korea from taking control of South Korea.
- We supported the winning side in the 1958 Lebanon crisis.
- We accomplished our objective in the Operation Dragon Rouge and the Democratic Republic of Congo and Belgium won against Simba rebellion as whole.
- We successfully supported the Loyalist faction in the Dominican Civil War.
- Had another smaller conflict in the Korean DMZ which basically meant things stayed the same still.
- Successfully invaded Grenada in 1983.
- Had the Tanker War against Iran while they were fighting Iraq, which ended in a UN ceasefire, and we didn't really do much but attack a bunch of military installations they used to attack our shipping and then also one civilian airliner by apparent mistake.
- Invaded Panama and installed a government friendly to our interests from between December 20, 1989 - January 31, 1990
- Gulf War was a victory even if later stuff basically messed everything up and then enforced a no fly zone over Iraq pretty successfully depleting Iraqi air defense assets. Then the Iraq war was when things start getting to be "inconclusive"
- Invaded Haiti to reinstall a president after a coup ousted him.
- Then we did have numerous conflicts with ISIS which basically ended with some nation's or another's government retaking territory that was occupied by ISIS, so however you want to measure that.
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Arch Dornan
Oh, lovely. They've sent me a mo-ron.
Very quick response.
No more aid effectively.
Largo
Well-known member
How old are you? Because I'm someone who has a relatively positive view of the decision to go into Iraq compared to most people and think this is the most ridiculous thing I've read in this thead so far and that's saying something. 90% of our total Iraqi casualties were from 2003-2007, the period where shit didn't go down the toilet according to you. Why do you think the Iraqi war became unpopular under Bush's term?
I have enough faith there wouldn't be a deliberate massacre. But who wants to bet there will be an incident where we drone strike a wedding, or blow up a building, or conduct an operation which ends up having excessive collateral damage? Or a few soldiers end up doing actual heinous shit.
AnimalNoodles
Well-known member
The Mexicans wont see it that way. They'll see Yankees occupying their country.
The second bit is lie and misrepresentation by both Politico, and the person/outlet quoting them, and a misrepresentation of what the directive from Trump/Rubio means.
Ukraine aid has not been affected, nor cancelled, and is exempt from the stop-work order.
In fact, no military aid has been affected, only development aid.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
I was living in the Middle East during the invasion of Iraq. I got rained on by the results of the battlefield smoke.
As to why the Iraqi war became unpopular?
Same reason as the Vietnam war, at that point. Incessant attacks by leftist-controlled media. It wouldn't be until well into the Obama administration that it'd become clear that the American political establishment didn't have a real conception of 'victory' that was capable of manifesting in the real world.
Also, I'm still waiting for you to give a single reason why the cartels would be difficult to crush.
Oh, and what's your special expertise on Mexico that tells you this?
As far as I'm aware, Bukele crushing the gangs in El Salvador is the closest equivalent we've seen, and his people love him for it.
AnimalNoodles
Well-known member
Because Bukele is an elected leader of El Salvador, not a foreign occupier
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
...You're really leaning very heavily on the assumption that Mexicans at large would care more about where the person taking the boot off of their neck comes from, than the fact that the boot is being taken off of their neck.
Why?
Do you have any grounds for it being other than a pure, ex-nihilo assumption?
Because America Bad, everyone against America Good, that's all.
Pretty sure if someone ran an IP trace on Noodles, they'd come back with a Russian IP address.
Basileus_Komnenos
Imperator Romanorum Βασιλεύς των Ρωμαίων
That's kind of my issue with the GOP though tbh I never was a fan of them to begin with. They were utterly terrible as a so-called "Conservative" party, but just barely palatable as they weren't as stupid as the Tories (in many respects even the left wing Democrats have positions that are considered further to the right than what's considered "right-wing" in European nations like France or the UK).
There aren't any good Conservative thought leaders at all. Rush Limbaugh was not really that great and he was more of a radio guy for older people and even then his audience was more narrow and appealed to more of a select group. William Buckley was a major force in shaping politics from back in the day, and in this modern era there isn't really a Conservative equivalent of a similar sort of public figure or intellectual.
Until Trump, all Republicans were still simping over Reagan tying themselves to his legacy which only really worked in the 90's and maybe the very early 2000's. It was until Trump that their slide into irrelevancy got arrested, but even then he's not really a Conservative, but a populist taking over the almost comatose GOP. It's basically a shot of a stimulant, a temporary fix, but the crash will probably be hard and there are many long-term issues that would need to be addressed.
If I were Vance I wouldn't have showed up lol. As far as Catholics are concerned there's only one true Apostolic Church. And as far as women priests, the "Orthdox" Protestants, the Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox Churches are all concerned, its fundamentally impossible for a woman to be a priest to begin with.
And then Elon sperged out at the Inauguration. I hate to say it but the dude is clearly unwell. While its fine to be supportive of Trump, his stunt was basically a liability for Trump as it does eerily look like a Nazi Salute. Even if that wasn't what he intended, the fact he doubled down isn't really a good look for him.
He really needs a good PR team, and someone to talk him down. The last major faux pas he had was when had a tantrum and called one of the people helping trapped in a cave, a pedophile without any cause all because he politely refused Elon's offer to send a submarine to help (the guy said he appreciated the gesture but it was impractical for what they needed).
Yeah as an Indian American myself he lost me when he began decrying Americans. There's nothing wrong with wanting decent working conditions and a proper work life balance. And the fact you want to hire foreigners for cheap who feel so grateful being brought here that they'd do whatever you asked is fundamentally exploitative.
That's one of my issues with illegal immigration and migrant workers. Sure they are indeed making a lot of money compared to what they did at home, but there's no you'd get away with that sort of exploitation with an american.
It was kinda sad seeing one of JFK's grandson's rip on Trump for doing that. Politics have gotten so polarized that you can't give anyone credit where credit is due. And even if you don't like Trump, this is a good thing.
Obama despite being the Democrat wonderkid couldn't have been bothered to do this and neither did Biden.
Let's be realistic. Trump wants to serve his full term, not die in office lol. There are so many powerful people implicated in it, that I doubt such a list would ever see the light of day until say like several decades later when most of the people on the list are dead or too old to really prosecute.
I don't think its an act of war. That's a really skewed way of looking at it. Its more that the government is powerless to do anything about it. If an opportunity presented itself to be rid of the rival faction threatening its power, the mexican government would jump on that weakness and rid themselves of that headache.
The US coming down to destroy them would indeed ideally involve cooperation with the Mexican government. It gives legitimacy to the US intervention as well as PR points while also doing the same for the Mexican government promoting whoever in charge on the national spotlight as an anti-cartel criminal crusader.
What really began to get the ball rolling for Escobar's downfall was when he tried to run for president. Up until then he was tacitly tolerated, but the sheer collective outcry from the public triggered a patriotic response that helped build momentum to take him down.
Bruh ... not everyone is perfect. And even if he was a socialist .... so what?
He was championing civil rights in a non-violent manner that was indeed effective championing equality and reconciliation between whites and minorities rather than some sort of violent struggle. As for the socialist accusations, I doubt he was tbh, and considering how he was a Christian, his values were probably more in line with "distributism" and Christian social teachings which put an emphasis on charity and service.
Socialists sometimes use and distort these parts of the Bible to try and make a religious appeal for their ideology. This was what Liberation Theology was in the Catholic Church which got rightfully denounced and quashed as a heresy.
Bruh .... this timeline is nothing but peak comedy lol.
How the heck did we even get here?
Arch Dornan
Oh, lovely. They've sent me a mo-ron.
Roasted.
His MAGA hat is now blinged out.
The problem is, the Mexican government is damn near a cartel itself these days, with how heavily infil'd it is by cartel agents and people who are bribed/controlled by the cartels.
And some of those cartels are also effective proxies for foreign adversaries of the US, like the CCP, Russia, Iran, the Cuban Regime, and Maduro, so we aren't just dealing with Mexico's influence/desires when we deal with the cartels.
I am not kidding when I say a partial blockade of Mexico may be required to successfully gut the cartels, otherwise their foreign backers will send them aid that will extend the fighting/clean out operations.