This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm not the most familar with the story here, but I'm pretty sure the Houthis are the Iranian proxies. The Saudis were fighting a war with the Houthis until the Biden administration removed their designation as terrorists and loudly brokered a ceasefire. While I'm not going to question that terrible humanitarian things were going on, this seems like another example of poor statecraft by Biden (or his advisors) coming home to roost. The choice to weaken sanctions on Iran sure has made everyone involved play nicely.
I really don't like violence. It's always a terrible option, but it does feel like for all our advanced weapons (see "Prosperity Guardian"), we -- or at least our current leadership -- are unwilling or unable to actually bring them to bear to serve The Greater Good (or at least Pax Americana, which I'd argue is a pretty great good) against various powers that largely sell themselves as fetishistic death cults, because someone might get hurt. I don't like people getting hurt. I really don't. But to allow the enemies of Peace-Loving Western Civilization to dictate the terms of conflicts because of it might produce some tearjerking journalism seems like it's demonstrably causing worse outcomes for everyone.
It seems to me with a growing frequency that a willingness to wield The Big Stick and strike back hard, rather than dribbling out anti-materiel strikes peacemeal might sometimes be a better strategy. If you want to put "Death To America" on your flag and take pot shots at US-flagged warships, nobody should be surprised when we return the favor. In spades. If you want to invade foreign nations, why should we trickle in aid while the body counts stack up? At some point, it saves lives to swing the stick around more heavily: say, mass forces at the border, issue an ultimatum to withdraw, or we send you Back to God. If you want to take American (or Western, more broadly) citizens hostage, you should be prepared for a reckoning from a civilization that cares about its own -- because that's what I'd want my leaders to do for me in that situation.
But that doesn't seem to be the times we live in: our mealy-mouthed leadership, and to be honest, a decent fraction of the electorate, seem more interested in de-escalation and appeasement even at the cost of actual peaceful outcomes. It doesn't feel like it's working: it feels like we're spending lots of effort tracking local focus groups opining on faraway violence and choosing the action that polls best, and pat ourselves on the back while conflicts simmer and boil over.
I'm not here to endorse any particular candidate or platform, merely voicing frustration. I don't want an aggressive foreign policy, but I'm also tired of what feels like peaceful overtures being taken advantage of.
I'm generally quite skeptical that American leadership is actually that upset about civilian casualties (beyond those happening purely for cruelty's/gross negligences's own sake). I can't imagine you get to the top of the political system by being squeamish about what history has abundantly demonstrated is often necessary to protect your national interests, or those of your allies. My read is that the US judges the Houthis as too unimportant to really bother making an effort with, or to risk antagonising Iran over.
More options
Context Copy link
All that is at stake for America is some small fraction of wealth that the blockade represents, and ultimately that wealth is of little importance for a country as glutted on it as America, and in any case it's probably mostly at stake for the well-off investor class rather than the broad populace.
It is in most people's best interests for state power and particularly the power of the world's elite to be constrained by various laws and conventions. Houthis are fighting against powerful and malign forces represented by Israel and the US. It is in most peoples' interests that they win over their adversaries, as this will weaken elite power and the power of the militaries they control.
I don't give a shit about America, at least, not more of an extent than America gives a shit about me, and I think what the Houthis are doing is terrible. Not on a wealth terms, but on a value destruction terms.
Wealth, at least in fiscal terms, is not my concern, and to Americans least of all given that they can just print their way out of it. But value, actual value, is fucked.
Real, genuine productivity not counted in dollars I believe is on a firm downtrend and inflating the money supply or bean counter supply doesn't have much to do with it. You can have as much money as you want but that won't turn one block of steel into two without a whole supply chain of people who are willing to mine, process and machine that block. By which count the Houthis are directly damaging value that exists in this chain and applying their own war tax on significant portions of the world economy.
If Egypt decided to use chemical weapons on the Houthis tomorrow, I wouldn't condone it. But I'd understand.
If various ecologically-inspired political parties decided to advocate for bombing Houthis, I'd understand as well. Fuel burned in global shipping is a significant contributor to climate change, and a lengthening of vessel trade routes and logistics chains stand to do more damage than several million lifetimes of plastic straws.
More options
Context Copy link
To be replaced by what? Get rid of one elite or overarching entity, and what replaces that? Revolutionaries get lined up against the wall by apparatchiks who then set themselves as the new elite.
Investor classes and wealthy elites and all the other preferred terms of derogation are precisely that: descriptors meant to evoke disdain for a victim and thus give moral cover to the perpetuator. The israeli kids raped and murdered on telegram live by armed men were not people, they were colonizers. The businesses looted and burned during the minneapolis riots were not citizens, they were gentrifiers. The peasants who didn't drink away their money and who were executed under collectivization were not people, they were kulaks or antirevolutionaries.
Speaking of laws and conventions as if they are not constraining the hated west is itself a misrepresentation. There is nothing lawful about shooting missiles at civilian ships in international waters. Giving moral support to houthis impoverishes everyone except the internal enemies of 'the west' who wish to seize the reigns of power for their own specific set of hands. Most of these revolutionaries are just too stupid and lazy to take up the arms themselves and blindly trust the word of populists who shout false promises freely, confident that when the power actually resides in their own hands they will find their grips surprisongly unrestrained and unbeholden to those who ostensibly granted them such power in the first place.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
But for the Houthis you don't need precise power. You need USS Iowa and the three others. They deliver 1000kg of explosives, 20 miles inland from the shore on the cheap. Almost everything worth flattening in yemen is that close. I don't understand why war moved to "Use one million USD missile launched from two hundred million plane that costs three hundred thousand dollars to keep in the air for one hour to destroy a Toyota Hilux that costs four thousand dollars" when sometimes you just need to throw a shitload of tnt on the cheap.
I can see why it benefits the US military industrial complex profits. And decapitating strikes are fun - but the last conventional war was the gulf one. Since then there was rarely adversary that was easy to decapitate. And if you are going to kill civilians anyway - because your adversary uses them as shields or because they are intermingled - do it on the cheap. The international outrage price you will pay for killing 40 000 Palestinians in Gaza is the same you will pay for killing 400000 - there is non linear response to civilian casualties.
If you're asking seriously, it's because, while their shells were comparatively cheap, battleships were really expensive, big targets. There's some argument just how far USA procurement has gone to the expensive, precise, and hard-to-produce end of the scale. It should tell us something that most countries that can value technology and precision highly when procuring to fight peers or near peers. Ideally precision ends engagements faster, with more certainty, and are less costly. Which make wars against near peers faster, more sure, and less costly.
During GWOT the US did do some economic "value" option procurement.
Rail guns were supposed to be the more economical gun replacement, but Navy seems to have petered out on pursuing that technology? Someone can correct me. I just looked and the the newer 'small' 5 in. guns on US destroyers can 'officially' reach out to 37km with certain ammunitions. Which was the effective range of the USS Iowa's guns anyway.
I suspect the reason we haven't seen more action against the Houthis is not for a want of options. It's mostly a political, executive decision. This administration has zero desire for any sort of action that may end with escalation in an election year. Maybe they are planning to deal with it in 2025 after a win, or maybe they think the Red Sea isn't that important to US efforts and stability. Stuff like intercepting arms shipments to the Houthis is a simple, defensible action USA and allied ships could take.
That decision makers think the risk of doing so is unacceptable might tell us they really believe Iran is inkling for a major war, it might tell us they are risk averse to the extreme, that the Commander-in-Chief won't accept conflict for domestic reasons, or perhaps they just aren't that interested in the ME anymore. Could be they're right, and it's a no win situation to escalate against the Houthis. Although, it's a bit strange to send ships to patrol a place with missiles flying around, and not take sufficient efforts to deter missile shooters. I think there is a real cost imposed on risk aversion (Ukraine 2014 leading to Ukraine 2022 for recent example) but I don't think the behavior is too out of the norm for a D Whitehouse with a weak, aging leader worried about re-election.
What argument? US military procurement is full of corruption and various other concerns that have long since taken priority over actual combat effectiveness and efficiency. China has 232 times the shipbuilding capacity of the US and the US military supply chain is full of Chinese products - if there's an actual conflict between the USA and the Global South, the US would lose the ability to repair or even maintain their current fleet of ships, let alone manufacture new ones. In the USA-vs-Russia proxy war that's happening right now the west is being dramatically outcompeted in terms of ammunition supply/manufacturing, and on top of that there's a technological gap between the US and Russia - the US still hasn't bridged the hypersonic weapons gap.
The West isn't falling completely behind there: the Army opened a new artillery shell plant in May, and within the last month the US announced operational deployment of long-range air-launched SM-6 missiles and Lockheed announced a hypersonic missile (I haven't seen any claims of deployments, though).
Yeah, Western munition production capacity is going to rise at least 4-500% over 2019 levels in the next 5 years. Whether that’s enough remains to be seen.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I was thinking of certain missile stocks. My understanding makes me suspect something close to a "232 times" number would be net raw tonnage of all things built to float. And that would be accounted for in shipyards (most of them) building civilian cargo ships. Big cargo shipyards are important. A shipyard pumping out cargo ships is closer to being retrofitted to produce new frigates than a non-existent shipyard, but maybe not that close. US shipbuilding capacity is anemic regardless, and it could not rebuild a fleet in any reasonable amount of time. China is building many ships and will build many more! But I'm not sure any nation, even China, will be able to replace a fleet in an amount of time that a conflict may requires. You never know, though. Hopefully by the time a nation needs to rebuild a fleet of a conflict would be resolved so the world can get better. I do not look forward to such a world.
If you mean Russia pumps out more artillery shells than the EU and the US, that is true. It will still be true even when both entities reach new production quotas. But, I'm not super interested in a dick measuring contest. Regardless of how capable or wunderwaffe-y hypersonic missiles may be, or how much stronker Russia artillery production is, neither appear to be capable of stopping more droves of poor slavs from dying in the foreseeable future. And that's sad, but also indicative that all weapons carry limitations, and much of what they can do relies on many other things going right in the right places.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Is it that strange? They can claim they're taking bold action, without running the risks of actually taking bold action.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Peace comes through cessation of conflict, and belligerents need to get smacked over the head enough to realize it isn't worth it to continue fighting someone who is able to ruin you effortlessly. Armenia stopped resisting when Azerbaijan overran Nagarno-Karabakh effortlessly, Gaddafi died ignobly following NATO airstrikes, Serbia got its shit pushed in. Peace IS achievable through war; you just have to hit hard enough. A different conversation on whether someone is actually capable of hitting hard enough against a sufficiently motivated target does exist, but it does remain that surgery is less effective than amputation for decisive deescalation.
An enduring mentality in a large number of liberal-minded circles is that everyone globally actually wants peace, and that all they need to embrace peace is to feel safe, for once there are no guns pointed at them they will put the guns down themselves. Jeremy Corbyn, Yanis Varoufakis and other ostensibly well-meaning socialists likely do sincerely believe that peace is hindered by warmongering westerners who have the agency to choose to war, and by choosing not to war all other parties can therefore be free to choose peace.
This is, quite obviously, untrue. Plenty of people choose to signal conflict against the West not because the West is bellicose, but precisely because the West is restrained and limited by its internal forces. Screaming 'DEATH TO AMERICA' on your flag wins plaudits from the american political establishment tripping over themselves to justify why the houthis might think that way, screaming 'DEATH TO RUSSIA' would see Lavrov threaten nukes and FSB contractors magically installing windows right in front of you to fall out of. The West is powerful but restrained, a perfect enemy to rail against to rally internal actors to ones own agenda. The Houthis signal opposition to USA and Israel not to actually hit back at them - that is a fanciful andd fevered objective - but to rally more of the internal population to their ranks against the true enemy, the Yemeni government in Aden.
That is perhaps the greatest blind spot of liberals regarding all the various bellicose agents all over the world that strike against USA or Britain or Australia or whoever opportunistically - the moral cover they cite of grievance-originated warmongering is just the excuse which sticks in the actual local conflicts they are intent on prosecuting, with or without the involvement of externals. Plenty of people are willing to commit crimes against their neighbors without the shadow of the West, so the restraint of the West is not facilitating any peace.
The problem with this comes when you have belligerents who can't win but also won't ever realize that no matter how often they get smacked over the head. The only way to get peace there is to permanently remove their ability to wage war, which means fairly oppressive occupation or genocide. I don't know if the Houthis are that stubborn, but the Palestinians in Gaza sure seem to be.
We still don't have much evidence of their resolve absent the ability to appeal to western aid orgs. If NGOs had cut them off Oct 7 and said, "we are never coming back, in fact, we are taking any group who does straight to the Hauge in irons" I think it would be over. Hamas endures because they know trading Gazans for photo ops is a successful strategy.
As much as I like to castigate the western cheerleaders who help hamas, those are ultimately only good for optics. Qatar, Iran and the normal networks of fixers all across the middle east are perfectly capable of supplying hamas with shitbottles, knives and guns. There won't be nice fancy hospitals to be photo ops after the command center underneath is bombed and there won't be images of NGO ambulances being blasted open after Hamas uses them to evacuate fighters and weapons, but there will still be kinetic action eternally from the hamas terrorists. There are enough mosques globally spreading unlimitedly hate against jews and hawalla networks to drive donations into arms purchases.
Optics are what matters. They are losing completely the actual conflict because they are backwards barbarians inting at the windmill that is a technologically and tactically superior enemy on the battlefield.
The former is ineffective without the latter. All you are doing is funding a thousand embarrassingly ineffective versions of Pickett's Charge. Without the West funding the equivalent of the Lost Cause narrative for Hamas they are just losers constantly throwing away their lives into pillbox fire.
Preach! If we had serious leaders all of these places in the West would already be shut down or facing RICO/Terrorism charges and we'd be engaged in a systemic campaign to treat the heads of international operations similarly to how Trump treated Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The west funds Hamas.
Indeed
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I keep going back in my mind to the scenes of Gazans cheering as Israeli hostages were dragged through the streets last October.
And, now, 9 months later, Gaza is in ruins. Tens of thousands are dead. Food and clean water are scarce, and they cry to the international community for help.
Regardless of what you think of the morality of the situation, it's hard not to see just how incredibly stupid the Gazans are. What did they think would happen? The consequences to the attack were inevitable.
And when Israeli finally washes its hands of the situation and leaves Gaza, it will probably happen all again.
Israel SHOULD wash its hands entirely. Give a two or three state solution to Gaza and West Bank. At this time Gaza subsists entirely off Israeli power and water supplies, with Egypt contributing water. West Bank has water but their people keep undermining the water table with illegal wells, and domestic power generation is anemic.
Both territories literally exist off the Israeli provided resources. When Israel cuts off power to Gaza, I always ask why the fuck is Gaza taking power from the jews they hate so much in the first place and why Israel is obligated to continue giving free food water and electricity to a population that enthusiastically showed their desire to rape and murder civilians.
Palestinians have in fact been betrayed, but by their Arab allies and not the Jews. The arabs made promises to drive away the jew (to seize palestine for themselves in a carveup), but a combination of incapability and self-preservation saw continued action against Israel as ineffective. The betrayal is that the arabs left the palestinians in the care of the hated jew, insteaf of taking them in for themselves as per the 1948 borders, and creating the UNRWA which gives palestinians permanent refugee status so palestinians in lebanon, syria and egypt will never receive citizenship.
WHY the palestinians were betrayed is quite obviously because the palestinians are chaotic terrorist dicks who fomented terrorism and conflicts which ravaged the sinai and lebanon and jordan, but that doesn't change the fact that the arabs still washed their hands of 'their own' people. Arab israelis live far better lives than the arab populations of the other countries, and if the gazans/palestinians were not irredentist incompetent dickheads the semisecular cooperative jewish muslim utopia of progressive dreams might actually emerge. As it stands that dream is just a wistful ancient instastory rotting in the cupboard of abandoned dreams, one of many delusions that wither under the slightest exposure to reality.
This is one thing that gives me pause when people advocate for UBI: I'm sure it could be done better, but our examples in the world of populations that are entirely supported by unconditioned aid seem to, by most objective metrics, fare really poorly (see also Haiti). At some point, it seems like having at least a bit of skin in the game incentivizes thinking on something other than how to destroy the hand that feeds. There is probably an interesting dystopian novel to be written there, somewhere.
Not that the existing systems are otherwise perfect, either.
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, I agree with all of this. But it won't fix the problem long term.
Maybe in a year or two the current conflict will simmer down. Hamas will be defeated. They'll give back a few token hostages and kill the rest. The US and Europe will give Gaza like $100 billion dollars to rebuild. President Harris will win the Nobel Peace Prize. Things will approach normalcy. A round of back pats all around. Blue-eyed European aristocrats will give talks at Davos about how great the international system is.
Then Iran or someone else will give Gaza weapons, they will attack Israel, and the cycle will repeat. They just keep doing the same stupid things over and over and getting the same results. They hate Israel more than they love their own country. Until the world recognizes this there can be no peace.
More options
Context Copy link
Soon after they do, they're in a war with both, and end up more or less back where they started.
Exactly, but now it's a war against belligerent states instead of a heavy handed action by an occupying power. Egypt was begging to be allowed at a peace table after Israels counterattack in the Yom Kippur war, and so will the gazans when they discover the jew is not in fact a weak coward.
Why would it make a difference that they're a de jure state rather than merely a de facto one? Gaza was not occupied in any real sense before 10/7.
Gaza was getting power and water and open borders for aid from Israel because Israel is an 'occupying power'. As a foreign state it is entitled to nothing, much less as a hostile one.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's kind of the same with the Houthis with their recent escalation attacking Tel Aviv. Did they expect that Benjamin Netanyahu wasn't going to respond?
Retaliation falls on the idiots pulling the triggers and civillians downstream The other Houthis don't care, the people suffering are peasants. These people do not care about each other, that's why they have a civil war!
Hamas is full of well fed young men, Houthis gorge while Yemenis starve, Kim Jong Un GAINED weight while Norks slave to preserve every head of cabbage. All these claims of humanitarian crises being inflicted by big meanie western sanctions or kinetic action are levelled by actors who hate the west and are using any excuse possible to castigate the west.
Since impoverished foreign peasants burning Chinese-made US flags have zero impact on western government actions, it falls on western internal dissidents to effect change in policy. Calling a kinetic strike against dual-purpose military targets is only a humanitarian punishment, not a response to a fucking INTERNATIONAL ATTACK.
Not like the houthis themselves complain about their ports being targeted. The excuses being generated are made by westerners, not houthis. It is the internal dissident who can really create change when the kinetic capabilities of the houthis are so anemic. The USA couldn't burn Southeast Asia enough to destroy the North Vietnamese, there is zero chance a few dozen shitbottles will drive out the jews.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That’s all well and good but ever since Al Qaeda the strategy of roping the behemoth into a long and costly quagmire has been shown to be effective, particularly for Islamist groups who can play the insurgency game against a superior foe year after year. That’s what the Houthis are, that’s what all the other Iran proxies are. Going in with the attitude you describe makes it easy for these types to rope a dope into another forever conflict. Israel lives in all this and has no choice in the matter. But the US is wise to only intervene in small ways like if international shipping is affected. Stay out of it. There’s bigger threats elsewhere that are more pressing to actual American interests. It might be naive of me but I feel that we could forget about the entire region and it probably wouldn’t even matter that much.
Isn't the placement of the Roosevelt in the line of fire shooting down anti-ship missiles with even more expensive missiles already a "long and costly quagmire"? International shipping is effected, but we're choosing to ignore it because it would question our Glorious Leadership's choices a couple years back. It would make The Good Guys look bad.
I'm not even dead set that action is necessary, but if it were it should look more like Operations Praying Mantis or El Dorado Canyon (one-time, rapid, hard strikes), not Iraqi Freedom.
More options
Context Copy link
I think the point being made was that our ship-based artillery would be enough to neuter Houthi capabilities and make them reconsider the ROI of trying to rope the West into their local conflict.
And it would be relatively cheap. Though artillery rounds themselves are about $10,000 each, which at first I found shocking until realizing they’re about 100 pounds, and 100 pounds of HEI ammo would cost about that much as well.
No munition is cheap. Artillery cheaper is cheaper than a missile only due to scale of production and complexity, but if you need 60 shells to decisively destroy a target you're shit outta luck compared to a high precision shell. CEP for GPS guided artillery is still not great, so precision missiles are best. The problem of course is that precision missiles are very hard to even get deployed in the area of operations, what with pilot skill and airframe being a very substantial barrier to entry.
Right now the meta is for cheap kamikaze drones, especially COTS DJI FPV kits which have the best in class flight controllers. These drones are all super vulnerable to electronic warfare, but even if that is solved the issue is that you need 1 operator per killshot. Max flight time is about 20mins per drone, so it is 1 guy for 2 shots per hour at best. An absolutely insane ROI by current military standards, but it is actually super taxing on the pilots. If you want to experience how draining it can be to be an FPV pilot try playing any flight sim game on oculus - the headset weight and physical disorientation can be extremely taxing.
A cost is borne to kill someone else. If it falls to a container full of sweaty dudes in killpods chugging DMD and an army of minions prepping new killdrones, it may be more expensive than a single fighter pilot with a full loadout.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link