You don’t seem to understand the argument I am making. The fact that “the land of Israel” existed more than a thousand years ago, does not give any rights to European settlers to come and claim this land for them, while deporting the local Arab population under protection of a colonial power. The argument is…

Who hasn’t been persecuted at some point in history? Partial list of people persecuted for hundreds of years and eventually deported from native land or homeland: a lot of Native American tribes, specially in North America, Armenians, Greeks, Pontic Greeks, and other Balkan peoples. Also to be fair to the muslims,…

Your explanation is far too complex. Putin knows he can't win this war for the Assad regime. So what does he do? He exits the war while his side is winning with his chin up.

They're burning through these funds so fast, that economists are saying that this money will last one, maybe two years if Russia does not make major adjustments. The problem right now is that the Russian economy is in free fall. At the same time Kremlin committed itself to very high level of military and social…

Putin just made a brilliant move indeed. The major thing that Russia's sudden exit accomplishes is making sure that Syria doesn't turn into Afghanistan v2.0. There were a lot of analysts predicting that Russians will bog down in Syria, because they'd eventually need to expand their ground troops, etc. Not only Putin…

Prior to 1940 there were only a minority of Jews in Palestine, allowed to settle only under the protection of the British troops, and in 19th century, there were virtually almost no jews in Panestine. Indeed, the Israel was created by _European_ Jewish settlers who were allowed to come and settle in Palestine against…

Israel does not have a historical claim to the lands because the European settlers who practiced Judaism had no historical claim that that land. Notice the term “European Settlers”. Just because these people practiced Judaism does not they had some kind of a historical claim to a land that other unrelated people who…

Exactly my thoughts. The teams and manufacturers on the committee can’t agree on any real reform or changes, so they keep screwing around with rather inconsequential rules, as if trying to throw a bone to Bernie and others who demand to have something changed.

Exactly my thoughts. The teams and manufacturers on the committee can’t agree on any real reform on changes, so they keep screwing around with rather inconsequential rules, as if throwing the bone to Bernie and others who demand to have something changed.

F-16 at 47M a pop is pretty affordable. Remember that 17M was in 1980s dollars. In 1980s, you could also buy a Mercedes Benz 190E, which was built like a tank, for something like 15K USD. Today, the C-class costs upwards of 40K USD. The F-22 was never priced at 400 millions a pop. In fact it was said that if F-22…

Assad is a damn bastard, and his father was too. However, it is not clear which force exactly going to hold Syria together after he is gone. Just look at Iraq and Libya. Shouldn’t the world be on the side of the regime that has the best chance of re-establishing order in Syria?

What surprises me is that Russia is ferrying such advanced aircraft like TU-22M and Su-24M at such long distances simply to drop those dumb bombs. I understand that Russia may have plenty of such bomb in ammunition depots, but what about the wear and tear experienced by the aircraft? Granted, the Su-24M already has a…

I’d disagree. Just look at those massive engine intakes. Each the size of the entire cockpit. Looks brutal.

While I hate to see the tradition of open cockpit racing going away, I do think such important changes must be done with the concent of the drivers. Since they seem to agree that they need these cockpits, I have no problems with such decision.

They’re using the old fashioned Russian method of killing terrorists by the simple means of killing everyone.. Same strategy like bombing of Grozny, the theater siege in Moscow, Beslan, etc.

No, A-10's main gun does not fire explosive shells. It fires armor piercing rounds (in the same way that the armor piercing rounds fired by many tanks are not exactly explosive).

“4th largest army” is the term invented by US war hawks who were trying to amplify their military exploits. In reality, Iraq’s army was basically a very large third world army that was also sucked dry after a 10 year long war with Iran. Please don’t tell me that Iraq’s army was “significant” in any way if they…

Please do not try to justify this particular slaughter with your poetic analogy. The Iraqi forces were retreating into Iraq, just like they were being requested to, as they were being annihilated. I would have understood the reason for their annihilation if the war was supposed to continue until Saddam regime was…

The guys on the highway were already retreating into Iraq, just like it was originally requested of them. Their annihilation was utterly pointless.

Saddam was far more than an ordinary despot. He proved to be a someone who can destabilize the regional peace. Two invasions of sovereign countries within a decade. That’s quite something.