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Thump! posted:Yeah, it sucks. I’m one of those troops in country at the moment. I can’t relate too many specifics but uh, yeah we have no clue what the hell is going on. poo poo, goon friend. stay safe. i will ask is it as tense as it looks like it is? because i feel like poo poo could pop at any moment.
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Jan 7, 2020 03:17
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Count Roland posted:On the other hand, its possible Trump does actually withdraw all at once, drat the consquences. He could say its a victory, that he's bringing the troops home, no more ME wars, peace maker and all that jazz. It makes a certain sort of sense in the short term: US troops in Iraq are the ones likeliest to come under fire as part of an Iranian response, but you can't target them if they all leave. It has some issues that would have to be ironed out but the US completely leaving the middle east would be an unobjective Good Thing. Let Russia and China take their turn playing around in the graveyard of empires.
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Jan 7, 2020 03:18
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Thump! posted:Yeah, it sucks. I’m one of those troops in country at the moment. I can’t relate too many specifics but uh, yeah we have no clue what the hell is going on. I hope it works out for you. Stay safe but don't commit any war crimes!
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Jan 7, 2020 03:21
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Count Roland posted:No, I'd say quite the opposite. KSA wants a war between the US and Iran, because Iran is its arch-nemesis but it is far too weak to fight Iran on its own. Yes, KSA will likely take some hits if things escalate, but for damage being done to Iran the Saudis would pay a high price indeed. MBS is probably egging Trump on. The Saudis are going 'whoa, whoa, slow down.' I think that refinery strike reminded them of just how fragile their country is. https://twitter.com/lizsly/status/1213974129000534018?s=21
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Jan 7, 2020 03:23
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Feldegast42 posted:It has some issues that would have to be ironed out but the US completely leaving the middle east would be an unobjective Good Thing. Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, not the middle east. The ME is like the natural home of empires; its unusual for there not to be a powerful based there. A great deal of the chaos there is a result of the power vacuum caused by the fall of the Ottoman Empire, which has yet to be really filled.
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Jan 7, 2020 03:25
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The fact that all of the international buddies that Trump must have been sure would be right behind him in any Iran conflict are telling him to loving stop will hopefully give the whole situation some pause.
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Jan 7, 2020 03:26
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Count Roland posted:Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, not the middle east. It’s telling that the Ottoman Empire only needed a small contingent to garrison Iraq, whereas the us needs a whole army
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Jan 7, 2020 03:35
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:The fact that all of the international buddies that Trump must have been sure would be right behind him in any Iran conflict are telling him to loving stop will hopefully give the whole situation some pause. Oh I bet at least a couple buddies are egging him on.
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Jan 7, 2020 03:40
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:The fact that all of the international buddies that Trump must have been sure would be right behind him in any Iran conflict are telling him to loving stop will hopefully give the whole situation some pause. i am mixed. i think a bunch of the cabinent and advisors are telling him to loving DO IT. but bibi and House Saude are smart enough to realize they will get hosed if this goes off. i think trump got himself stuck in this dumb hell situation. and he is gonna get hell from the assholes of the world either move he does.
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Jan 7, 2020 03:47
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Jel Shaker posted:It’s telling that the Ottoman Empire only needed a small contingent to garrison Iraq, whereas the us needs a whole army The US is really, really good at getting people to hate our loving guts, and then sticking a bunch of soldiers in their countries for target practice.
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Jan 7, 2020 03:55
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Dapper_Swindler posted:poo poo, goon friend. stay safe. i will ask is it as tense as it looks like it is? because i feel like poo poo could pop at any moment. Everyone is kind of on edge, and we’re in and out of bunkers constantly, but we’re ready for whatever happens. We’re mostly waiting on word to boogie out of the country. 1glitch0 posted:I hope it works out for you. Stay safe but don't commit any war crimes! Haha, will do. I’m not a SEAL or predator pilot or nothing, so I don’t really have any desire or opportunities to do war crimes. I’m mostly pissed that all of this stuff is going on with Iran (because of Trump) instead of us doing the mission we were sent here for. I came here to fight ISIS, not Iran or Iraq.
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Jan 7, 2020 04:16
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https://twitter.com/NewsBreaking/status/1214373489441792001 https://twitter.com/NewsBreaking/status/1214426452243832832 https://twitter.com/AmichaiStein1/status/1214440318189416451 Dante80 fucked around with this message at 08:40 on Jan 7, 2020 |
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Jan 7, 2020 08:38
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Darth Walrus posted:The Saudis are going 'whoa, whoa, slow down.' I think that refinery strike reminded them of just how fragile their country is. loving hilarious. All the Chickenhawk bullshit Bibi spent a decade and MBS spent the last 4ish years doing to murder any tiny fragment of detente with Iran that was managed in the Obama years, and now that the dogs have caught the car they realized its going to rip their entire spine out when they bite down. In a just world those two bastards would be hung for their parts in bringing their nations this close to oblivion for nothing. Also all their other crimes, but this one is the most immediately pertinent.
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Jan 7, 2020 09:10
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You know you hosed up when even Saudi Arabia and Israel, two absolutely insane governments who lust for Iran's destruction are saying "whoa hey let's not get too hasty here."
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Jan 7, 2020 09:32
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I bet bibi is still chanting in the background "Fight! Fight! Fight! ".
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Jan 7, 2020 09:48
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exquisite tea posted:You know you hosed up when even Saudi Arabia and Israel, two absolutely insane governments who lust for Iran's destruction are saying "whoa hey let's not get too hasty here." I doubt that sentiment has changed. Looking less like the aggressor in a fight with Iran will only help their cause. Words from any of these governments aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, will have to see what actions they take.
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Jan 7, 2020 09:50
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Jel Shaker posted:It’s telling that the Ottoman Empire only needed a small contingent to garrison Iraq, whereas the us needs a whole army I see what you're trying to do, but people (regular people and historians making assumptions it seems) have to stop portraying Ottoman history this way, because it really isn't based in reality, but only a simplistic portrayal based on limited use of sources and ignorance. For pretty much the entirety of the 18th and 19th century the Ottoman Empire was engaged in constant low intensity warfare that put a tremendous strain on the army and the society, in particular this was in the Balkans and Albania, in southern and costal Syria and especially in Yemen. The government may as well not have existed in the peripheral and tribal areas and any attempt to change this typically ended in violence, this also went for the Kurdish tribal areas which were a bit more friendly (compared to the Bedouin, Alawites and Druze at least) and had more of an "allied" relationship to the government and army (though were also committed to ruling themselves). Iraq wasn't the trouble spot it is today a century ago, but this was also before the true onset of nationalism in the Middle East and a time when the population of Iraq (and the Middle East as a whole) was significantly lower than it is today also, going back the 18th century and back, Iraq had spent quite alot of time being a battleground that frequently switched sides in the battle between the Ottomans and their Iranian rivals. e: Alawites not Yazidis (well, kind of Yazidis as well, but the Alawites or Nusayris as they were often known back then were a lot of trouble for the Ottoman central and provincial authorities). Randarkman fucked around with this message at 11:08 on Jan 7, 2020 |
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Jan 7, 2020 10:05
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https://twitter.com/TheSpense/status/1214336525896495104
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Jan 7, 2020 10:32
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 if the us need to back a coup to stay in Irak because of that poo poo.
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Jan 7, 2020 10:35
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Jel Shaker posted:It’s telling that the Ottoman Empire only needed a small contingent to garrison Iraq, whereas the us needs a whole army The Ottoman Empire didn’t have any particularly firm grip on Iraq, they were limited to a few garrisons in Mosul and Baghdad and Basra, and caravan guards and the post office crew. Getting from Harran to Mosul is probably safer today than at basically any point in Ottoman times. They were never able to stop the annual Bedouin raids from the Hejaz, and regular Yazidi and Kurdish raids on the plains, and caravans always had to travel in large numbers and heavy guard. There was no sort of "Pax Ottomania" in what is currently Iraq.They controlled Iraq in the way that European powers controlled most African countries in the early 1900s. Turkish rule was always garrison driven and unstable, at least from 1750-on. I haven’t read (or heard of) much written about Mesopotamia between like 1600 and when the Europeans first started getting there through Basra. They only used a small garrison but it’s not like they were really in anything besides nominal control of the country either. Regional rulers in the Ottoman Empire had the real power, even in places more nominally accessible like Lebanon, where rulers like Bashir Shihab were far more relevant than whoever the sultan was. At least until the Tanzimat, but that centralization caused no shortage of civil war within the empire.
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Jan 7, 2020 10:42
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1glitch0 posted:I have no love for THE TROOPS! but imagine being a troop in this situation where you literally don't know what the gently caress is happening? Are we packing our bags to evacuate or... go to war? The Trump administration is so loving incompetent it's almost beyond belief. Just smoke a lot of weed to calm yourself and get discharged from duty.
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Jan 7, 2020 10:58
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Saladman posted:I haven’t read (or heard of) much written about Mesopotamia between like 1600 and when the Europeans first started getting there through Basra. Well in the 16th and 17th century (and beyond) it really was stuff like this that sticks through as the most significant when it comes to Mesopotamia (and eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus). Ottoman-Safavid War 1532-1555 Ottoman-Safavid War 1578-1590 Ottoman-Safavid War 1603-1618 Ottoman-Safavid War 1623-1639 Though this series of wars eventually ended up in the Ottomans wresting control of Iraq (and in the 17th century the Safavids began to disintegrate, which is part of the reason you don't see another war with Iran until Nader Shah takes control in the 18th century), it seems to have had a drastic impact on the population and agriculture and resulted in nomads encroaching on and seizing control of what used to be agricultural lands, nomads the Ottomans never really managed to effectively control. Though they did attempt, with varying degrees of success, to more or less forcibly settle nomads as agricultarlists in the 19th century after they wrested back some actual degree of control from a Mamluk dynasty which had effectively controlled Iraq from the mid-18th century (who had also undertaken attempts at modernization, settlement and agricultural reform). e: The last war in the list above is important because it's essentially the basis of the modern day borders between Iran, Iraq and Turkey. Also kind of interesting to note that it effectively ended a very long trend of Iranian empires controlling (and typically ruling from) Mesopotamia, even though it was never considered an actual part of Iran. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Jan 7, 2020 |
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Jan 7, 2020 11:33
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Terrible news, not just for the dead and their families, but I feel like this puts more pressure on their government to take major action. https://twitter.com/AP/status/1214484923702239233
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Jan 7, 2020 12:05
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Randarkman posted:Well in the 16th and 17th century (and beyond) it really was stuff like this that sticks through as the most significant when it comes to Mesopotamia (and eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus). Thanks, I hadn't even read much Wiki about it and I'm reading through those now. I've read a lot of books about Ottoman Mesopotamia from the 1750s onward, but any particular books you'd recommend, or should I just look at the sources on those Wiki pages? Of course Iraq has had some golden periods where it was super stable and safe for long periods of time, but that seems to have not been the case at any point since like... the Mongol invasions?
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Jan 7, 2020 12:06
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I haven't look into the actual map so I am just asking in the dark. Was the dominance of the various Persian empire aided by the geography? Did the Persians dominanted the surrounding area because their had easy to defense hilly terrain and also easy to invade the Mesopotamian plates?
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Jan 7, 2020 12:07
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Without knowing anything specific about Iran amd history, I think I'd mention that the polisci types that I know hold "Geography is destiny" as a maxim. As in, your geography is going to determine your entire foreign policy. So I'd say, very tentatively, that yes, the geography did a lot to help the Persians.
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Jan 7, 2020 12:31
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Saladman posted:Thanks, I hadn't even read much Wiki about it and I'm reading through those now. I've read a lot of books about Ottoman Mesopotamia from the 1750s onward, but any particular books you'd recommend, or should I just look at the sources on those Wiki pages? Of course Iraq has had some golden periods where it was super stable and safe for long periods of time, but that seems to have not been the case at any point since like... the Mongol invasions? Try earlier actually. Alot of stuff attributed to the Mongol invasion (which was violent to be sure) such as depopulation, the decline of the canal system and loss of agricultural lands actually happened back in the 10th century when the Abbasid Empire was falling apart, and though things had recovered to some extent by the time the Mongols came around (and did again between the Mongols seizing control and that falling apart and Tamerlanes sack in 1401) Iraq remained politicallly irrelevant (in terms of having power) and relatively impoverished, caught between rival empires or successor states. It seems to be a widespread statement that the Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258 at the height of its splendor, but this is just plain wrong. Again we're probably dealing with historians not specializing in the area and not being aware of sources to inform them on it just making the sweeping assumption that because they aren't aware of things that happened that means everything must have been nice and stable and resembling the glory days they at least have heard of. As for books. I've never read anything particularly about Iraq in the early modern (or medieval for that sake), but I'll recommend one of my all time favorite books which is A History of Islamic Societies by Ira M. Lapidus which is essentially a social history for the entire Islamic world (split up into sections dealing with specific regions, states, and areas as well as subjects such as political history and social-religious history). It's general, but it's also very big and manages to convey alot of information in relatively short terms. If you're at all interested in the history of the Islamic world it's a great book to look up something and get you going from there. Another one I'll recommend which deals more specifically with the Ottoman Empire and its wars in Ottoman Wars , 1700-1870 by Virginia Aksan. It's a book intended for an academic audience, so it's not the most riveting of reads but I think it does a good job of looking at Ottoman attempts at administrative and military reform in the midst of the challenges faced in this period, especially of trying to introduce reforms in the provinces and fighting wars with a barely functioning conscription system (in 19th century). Randarkman fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Jan 7, 2020 |
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Jan 7, 2020 12:53
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I'd note though, that it's not as though Persian/Iranian dominance of the region has been some sort of historical constant - after the Arab conquest, Persia would be under foreign rule for almost nine centuries, under the Caliphate, the Seljuk Empire, the Mongols, the Timurids, and any number of minor Turkic and Mongol rulers.
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Jan 7, 2020 12:53
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https://twitter.com/IbnRiad/status/1214409010780221441?s=19 https://twitter.com/IbnRiad/status/1214411063724322816?s=19 https://twitter.com/IbnRiad/status/1214411827821588480?s=19 https://twitter.com/IbnRiad/status/1214414398728613888?s=19 https://twitter.com/IbnRiad/status/1214414628500979713?s=19 https://twitter.com/IbnRiad/status/1214416652151984130?s=19 Still looking for more sources to verify this but if this thread is true, it's jawdropping  .
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Jan 7, 2020 12:56
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Holy poo poo
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Jan 7, 2020 13:03
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bowser posted:Still looking for more sources to verify this but if this thread is true, it's jawdropping This would be really easy to deny by Trump by just saying "nope", I hope Abdul-Mahdi can present something concrete to support his statement. An actual recording would be golden. e: oops, didn't mean to make a  joke 
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Jan 7, 2020 13:09
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The allegations are pretty wild. quote:> So to summarise, & to get this straight, the US has:
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Jan 7, 2020 13:12
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Angry Salami posted:I'd note though, that it's not as though Persian/Iranian dominance of the region has been some sort of historical constant - after the Arab conquest, Persia would be under foreign rule for almost nine centuries, under the Caliphate, the Seljuk Empire, the Mongols, the Timurids, and any number of minor Turkic and Mongol rulers. There's a lot of similiarities in geographical extent and administration between the Abbasid Empire and the preceding Sassanid Empire, down to ruling from Baghdad which was built very close to the site of Ctesiphon, the Sassanid administrative capital (which was built close to Seleuceia, which was built close to Babylon). The Seljuks also were essentially based out of Western Iran when they established their empire (ruling mostly out of Isfahan and Hamadan). The Safavids themselves who are regarded as a native dynasty were of mixed Kurdish and Turkish descent and came from Azerbayjian by way of Eastern Anatolia. There's also a reason the term "Persia" is inaccurate and doesn't simply refer to older history, Persia is really only one region in Iran, in the south, called "Fars" (which just means Persia), and Persian-speakers themselves make up around 60% of the country, with around 20% being Azeris (that is Turks) and another 10% being Kurds, and then you have a smattering of other groups (including Arabs, both because several were settled in Khorasan way back when and because Iran still controls a part of Iraq they held onto during the wars with Turkey). I think the thing with Iraq though has more to do with Near Eastern empires in general and the suitability of Mesopotamia as the center of a large, sprawling empire, than any sort of geographic determinance as regards Iran, because there's been many other empires who were not Iranian natives (or natives of Mesopotamia) who ruled empires in the Near East and ruled them out of one or more capital cities in Mesopotamia.* *I think you could say that this sort of ends with the collapse of the Abbasid Empire, which sees the center of power moving east towards Iran and Central Asia. Probably due to the impoverishment of Iraq and the conversion and migration of the Turkic tribes in Central Asia. This is also when you have the Persian literary renaissance which sees Persian firmly established as a language of poetry and administration which spreads into Central Asia and India, by way of patronage by Turkic dynasties. This is not something that was the case before. The Persian language was not very widespread before this, the Achaemenids' primary administrative language was Aramaic, with Greek also being important in Anatolia, the Parthians ruled their empire using Greek. The Sassanids used Persian (and Aramaic), but this never really penetrated out of Western Iran, and in Eastern Iran their control was always very tenuous to begin with, and local eastern Iranian languages predominated (Persian is a western Iranian language), especially Sogdian as a language of trade, while Aramaic and Greek still remained in use as administrative languages to varying degrees. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Jan 7, 2020 |
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Jan 7, 2020 13:13
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1glitch0 posted:I have no love for THE TROOPS! but imagine being a troop in this situation where you literally don't know what the gently caress is happening? Are we packing our bags to evacuate or... go to war? The Trump administration is so loving incompetent it's almost beyond belief. Still not as bad as that time they heard they had to get the gently caress out of Syria forthwith over twitter.
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Jan 7, 2020 13:14
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Demiurge4 posted:The allegations are pretty wild. Although I have my doubts purely because from all available evidence it seems extremely unlikely that a coward like Trump would have the balls to directly threaten to kill someone he was talking to.
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Jan 7, 2020 13:17
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Flayer posted:If these allegations are evenly partly true you can see why Trump loves Gallagher. It’s not so hard to believe when you remember that brown people aren’t people and cant be allowed to stand up to a rich white guy.
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Jan 7, 2020 13:23
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Bel Shazar posted:It’s not so hard to believe when you remember that brown people aren’t people and cant be allowed to stand up to a rich white guy.
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Jan 7, 2020 13:29
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bowser posted:Still looking for more sources to verify this but if this thread is true, it's jawdropping So here's what the US empire looks like with it's mask off. If you enjoyed this, I recommend also reading Killing Hope.
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Jan 7, 2020 13:30
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Flayer posted:I'd also question how the US would foment rioting/protests seeing as everyone in the region hates them and I think that is more likely to have happened organically. That's definitely the thing that has me the most skeptical. These were huge protests over legitimate issues.
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Jan 7, 2020 13:31
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Orange Devil posted:So here's what the US empire looks like with it's mask off. If this is true, it's no wonder Trump has been burying his call records in a codeword level NSA server.
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Jan 7, 2020 14:04
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