Not gonna watch a video with sound at work, but I will check this out later.

Of course that’s what the rear echelon of terrorist movements believes. They have to justify it that way (not least to themselves) lest they come off as insufficiently committed, weak in the eyes of the people they’re trying to frighten, or able to be bought off by pragmatic, secular policy changes.  If anything, that…

However, much of the lessons learned often gets forgotten with each new administration, especially arrogant ones.

Imagining that our policies don’t encourage regular Muslims to become radicals is idiotic.  Some number of people will always be discontented and furious, but we can take steps to prevent them from becoming popular.  Thinking otherwise is abdicating responsibility.

The modern-day classic meme format of this Argument:

Yeah, I don’t see how it’s an outlandishly Stalinist claim to look at the numbers and the campaigns and the maps and come to the conclusion that the USSR was pretty essential to stopping the Nazis.

My iron is yours!

The US has done stupid things and we do need to reevaluate our policies in that regard, but that and a weapon to minimize collateral damage are separate issues.

Fully embracing my inner pedantic asshole: Due to insufficient support and command structure in the Army, the U.S. Army Air Corps became completely superfluous and existing-in-name-only in March 1942. By the time we were in the thick of the war, airmen served in the U.S. Army Air Force(s). While technically the AAC…

Where did I say anything like that?

After a year and a half of thinkpieces in which you could replace hockey terms with basketball ones and Bergeron with Al Horford, it makes perfect sense.

And I’d prefer to be called “generalissimo,” but wishing don’t make it so!

They may want to take a page from a successful team’s playbook: https://sports.theonion.com/terry-francona-sends-eric-gagne-down-to-made-up-triple-1819569404

Articles 4, 5, and 6 (i.e. half of the numbered paragraphs) in that article relate directly to “crimes against Islam;” and I’m not sure how including a picture of a BUFF dropping ordnance taking up half the fourth page gives you the impression that “it has almost nothing to do with foreign policy.” Yeah, the…

I didn’t know anyone still believed that Dubya line about freedom. To the extent that that’s true of anyone outside of the religious elite, it’s because we preach freedom while hypocritically supporting dictators worldwide. Liberty for me, but not for thee. You don’t get people whipped into a killing frenzy because…

Yes. The act of creating a precision killing weapon is the most moral way to conduct national affairs - once the nation has made the immoral decision that it will no longer even pay lip service to the possibility of making sufficiently permanent peace not to have to be the world’s foremost network of assassins. As I…

Seems to ride a bit low for ~20 mi/day of dirt roads. Now, for my city-slicker ass, hell yeah!  But it sounds like they need something a bit liftier.

The more efficient we become at killing terrorists without harming innocent bystanders, the less incentive we have to change the policies that result in people becoming terrorists (mainly the support for backwards, corrupt, or sometimes outright murderous regimes because they’re friendly to our investors, allied…

I’m definitely in favor of reducing civilian casualties, but if creating and deploying this device were part of the plot of a James Bond film it would totally fit the dynamic. I swear this is the result of a CIA internal memo to the effect of Hey, what if Odd Job were the CEO of Rockwell or Boston Dynamics???

sweet potato fries (or sweet potatoes in general) from most restaurants