when Mossad is awful

but sometimes they hit awful people and you just can’t bring yourself to care

Regardless of his guilt, the death penalty should only be levied when there is no other viable option. This is a travesty.

Lol, I we were talking about justifications, not “war without a cause”.

Do you think the civil wars and revolts you linked to occurred… without justification? Because otherwise you were just posting a link of Roman conflicts with utterly no relevance to the conversation at hand, which is about what I’ve come to expect over the course of this conversation.

How about a paper over the topic of your claim?

Sure.

Here’s one briefly covering the very Roman origins of the concept of Just War and the contrast with Greeks and other civilizations of antiquity, as well as covering how the concept of just war primary had a resurgence with the Enlightenment, not as some eternal and intrinsic value held by mankind as you seem to think. Though I could go through considerable dispute with their view on Just War in the medieval period

Here’s one covering the importance of justifications for war in Roman culture and its origins

Here’s one covering the abhorrence of Romans at what they saw as an unjust war waged by one of their own

Here’s one covering the common and brutal amoral realpolitik espoused by Thucydides in examining and explaining the Greek wars of his time, including the attitudes of the actors involved

Here’s one on the very nakedly self-interested justifications of the Hellenic Macedonians in the conquests of Phillip and Alexander and how utterly unremarkable they were in context of contemporary societies

Here’s one on Germanic legal and moral thought regarding violence and war in antiquity

Here’s one on the Germanic ethos of violence for personal gain in late antiquity/early medieval period

But, you know, fuck all those, they’re reliant on the writing of elites and ethnic authors. What the fuck do they know?

Fuck’s sake.

Me, waking up and having another reason to hate farmers: “Must be a day ending in y”

What ideological shift occurred between the time of the first and second gulf war?

… do you think the First Gulf War wasn’t waged on ideological grounds…?

Lol, you’re saying going to war over a God’s will only happened after the Romans? You do know some of the earliest recordings of wars occured in ancient mesopotamia utilizing capturing the idols of gods as a pretext.

I would say it’s astounding that you’re so goddamn close to the point yet missing it, but it’s really not. Do I have to outline why stealing idols is different from religiously justified wars, or is naked theft a justification in your mind?

I never claimed that it was only the Romans…that’s your argument which I am rebutting.

This you?

How exactly are we determining this? Thats probably what the Romans thought of the Germanic tribes and the Gauls, but we don’t exactly have a lot of primary sources from the people we’re talking about. Of course the empire is going to boil down their enemies motives while guiding their own.

I am saying that sources need to be examined within their historical context.

This you?

Lastly, you are utilizing examples of societies where the only people who were writing within the historical context were part of the ruling structure. Thats akin to getting acess to the email of Dick Cheney’s actual motivations for invading Iraq vs the story they told the media.

Ahh yes, everyone else is the problem…not me, the only common denominator.

Me: “Give me your criteria for valid sources and I’ll gladly provide them.”

Wow, yes, clearly I am the one being unreasonable. Excuse me while I go fetch a dozen quotes so you can say something brilliant like “Well, those were the ELITES, of COURSE they would say that” or “Well, that’s a ROMAN source, of COURSE they would say that” or “It’s just one/two/ten/twenty quotes, you can’t just extrapolate from that!” You know, things you’ve already fucking said. Things I’ve literally quoted you fucking saying.

Excuse me for not being a fucking moron without pattern recognition skills for how people with no fucking foundation on a topic argue for their ‘intuitive’ preconceptions.

Lol, so salty that I provided a source despite your baffled “What?”

Salty is when I outline why the incident doesn’t say what you think it does and you have no actual response to that. Okay. Fantastic.

There are plenty of examples of similar events throughout the history of Rome.

Holy shit, are you really sitting here saying “War without cause is when there’s a revolt or civil war, and the more revolt or civil war there is, the less justification is used for it”?

I forgot I was talking to the dictator of cultures… I so glad you could make that opinion of your official.

“Dictatorship is when you say something that contradicts my assertion” - A Very Brilliant Commenter, apparently

Oh, in that case, yeah, we are mostly in agreement. I would argue that both the Sovs and the Americans attempted to form a firm national government, that both the monarchy and the Afghan Republic preceding them also attempted it, and the Taliban has (twice now) in their own grotesque way attempted the same. The Mujahideen were more interested in just not falling apart into civil war again, a very ‘symptomatic’ government of the ‘leave the locals to their affairs’ attitude that Afghanistan governments struggle to fight.

I don’t think I would say it’s impossible or prevented completely, but I would say that it’s… definitely not something that any one factor can fix or resolve. Whatever route Afghanistan takes to modernity, it will take… considerable overhaul, and that’s something only the people of the region itself can make progress on.

They wanted GOOD wings

Feel free to crosspost it! I’m always wary of posting in more places myself because I feel like I’m too omnipresent in the communities I already post in, lol.

Right, But you also claimed that other societies at the time didn’t do the same…

My point was that all societies thinly veil their self interest.

How many quotes will it take from societies not veiling their self-interest and, in fact, taking great pride in their naked self-interest, would it take to change your mind? Or is that a lost cause?

Lol, a bit of a pedantic argument. It and Afghanistan were obviously marketed as a stand for “freedom” at the time.

Jesus Christ.

You’re asking what self interest the Bush administration had for invading Iraq…? How much time do you have?

Enough time to easily show that ideological concerns were major, and national interest was minimal, despite the claims peddled.

First of all, Persians and Greek often justified their conquest via the gods, or nationalism.

Holy shit. We’re really just applying the casus belli of much later periods to antiquity, because it ‘feels right’, huh?

Secondly Motivation and justifications can be the same thing depending on the social mores of the society.

That’s an excellent way of saying nothing useful at all.

Lastly, you are utilizing examples of societies where the only people who were writing within the historical context were part of the ruling structure. Thats akin to getting acess to the email of Dick Cheney’s actual motivations for invading Iraq vs the story they told the media.

Oh, okay, so we’re changing our argument from “It was only the Romans who wrote about the matter!” to “All pre-modern writing is untrustworthy!”, cool cool cool.

Any would be a good start?

Why would I fetch anything without criteria for what would be regarded as a valid counterargument? I’ve done this stupid fucking dance with too many fucking people to count - people who come in with bizarre preconceptions about the past and have no interest in re-examining them, who freely dismiss any evidence given and delight in pissing away time and effort.

Tell me what you’ll accept as valid, or there’s no point in me playing dumb games for you to move the goalposts like you did with the judgement of written sources in general already.

During the year of 4 emperors Cremona was occupied by vitellian troops, they battled an army outside Cremona led by Antonius and lost. Cremona immediately surrendered and was subsequently raped and pillaged for no good reason.

“A city during the first civil war in almost 100 years was looted by out-of-control troops hailing from the other side of the Empire against their commander’s orders and was roundly condemned by the histories”, clearly, you have proven that the Romans loved looting their own cities for no reason.

This is kinda ridiculous considering that our legal and political bodies are highly influenced specifically by the Romans, who were in turn highly influenced by the Greek and Persians.

I can trace Roman legal influence in the West through some 1500 years, and let me fucking tell you, that’s a very far cry from being culturally similar to the fucking Romans at any point, much less the diverse sources Western influence of some 500 years of Roman law drew from.

Yes not everything is down to ecominics, the bombs and bullets are probably a more significant factor. Being unable to feed your family is bad, burying your family is worse.

And burying someone else’s family for local disagreements is even worse.

And yes, the middle class Afghanis can’t put up a fight for many reasons, one of which is that they largely stopped existing. The moment they are locked out of their personal and business savings, they become poor desperate Afghanis.

Would you like to elaborate how the US freezing assets after the Taliban overran the country and seized control of its institutions stopped the Afghani middle class from putting up a fight against the Taliban from overrunning their country?

If the US hadn’t frozen the assets, what would have happened is that the Taliban, then controlling the levers of government, would have had access to them. But even if we assume that wasn’t an issue, what the fuck is the middle class supposed to do in the midst of a mass offensive by regional Islamist warlords? The development of a middle class is essential to democratic development, but it’s not a wall against the use of all force - the middle class alone doesn’t fight or lead wars. The middle class is glue; an ongoing war is a fucking sledgehammer. Feeding the Afghan middle class all the money in the world after the Taliban offensive started up wouldn’t have changed that.

Can you explain your disagreement or argument? I dont understand what you are getting at, and “elaborate on pre-2001 afghanistan” is a very broad topic.

The two-decades of US occupation were not some outbreak of brutality which damaged Afghanistan. Afghanistan had been in far greater unbroken turmoil since the early 1970s, and the Taliban regime which preceded the US invasion (and, now, has resumed) is far more brutal. Even the Mujahideen government which preceded the Taliban was more brutal than the US-backed national government. Afghanistan’s essential problems are not something that can be chalked up to “Bad things happened in the past five historical minutes”.

This isn’t a matter of happenstance - Afghanistan is simply not in a good position to become a functioning state - not culturally, not demographically, not economically. The ethnic conflicts are too deep and the imbalance of power too pronounced - every goddamn attempt at making a firm national government has utterly failed because the realities on the ground favor extreme decentralization of power, and not in a democratic sense - in a ‘local elites and ethnic loyalties’ sense.

The Arctic is the northernmost point on Earth and includes territory belonging to eight nations: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Canada, the United States, Iceland and Russia. All except Russia are NATO members.

tbf, that wasn’t true before the current phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War.

For real, though, from a purely realpolitik perspective, what a fucking disaster this has been for Russia. Fuck them, though. And fuck them even harder than they’re currently getting fucked, until they get the fuck out of Ukraine.

That’s no fun though.

https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Q'orl I believe

They were waiting for the opportunity

(or this was a common typo and they had this pic saved for just the next occasion it came up)

As opposed to now? I think believing we are inherently different than ancient people is a byproduct of how we record and review historical context.

… believing that we’re culturally similar to ancient peoples is an incredibly dangerous and distorting way to view the past.

When the US invaded Iraq, it was professing to “spread freedom”. A couple decades later and it’s pretty apparent that freedom was a pretext to fulfill thinly veiled self interest.

Where to begin?

1. “Obfuscated self-interest” was specified.

2. The justification for the illegal invasion of Iraq wasn’t to ‘spread freedom’, it was a (false) allegation of violation of international law regarding possession of WMDs.

3. What self-interest was fulfilled by invading Iraq? Ideology was a bigger factor there than any conception of national self-interest.

How exactly are we determining this? Thats probably what the Romans thought of the Germanic tribes and the Gauls, but we don’t exactly have a lot of primary sources from the people we’re talking about. Of course the empire is going to boil down their enemies motives while guiding their own.

Because the Greeks and the Persians wrote of their own motivations in largely the same way - largely sans justification. Because both later and earlier European civilizations wrote of their motivations in the same way. Because just-war theory doesn’t re-emerge until the ascendency of Christianity and Islam, and even then, it is usually ignored in internecine faith conflicts until the 16th century AD.

I don’t really see any evidence of this… Most of their justifications were just to convince others in the ruling class to get on board with one person’s or a groups personal vendetta or get rich quick scheme.

What evidence would you accept? How much should I fetch for you?

The Romans didn’t really need a justification to rape and pillage their own cities, let alone others.

What

Or maybe the two decades-long invasions did extreme damage and brought insane brutality to a poor population?

Would you like to elaborate on the situation of Afghanistan before 2001?

The middle class, the opposition to the Taliban, were growing.

Funny, then, that they didn’t put up the least bit of a fight when the Taliban came knocking.

Not everything is down to economics.

In 1916 France and the UK create the Sykes-Picot secret agreement with agreement of Russia and Italy to divide the middle east in a way so they would never be able to pose any threat and could be easily manipulated into their spheres of influence, by cutting through areas of ethnic and religious affiliations.

Sykes-Picot didn’t concern Afghanistan in the least.

108 years later on Lemmy “Afghanistan actively rejects civilization”. It’s just unfair to say such a thing when so many civilizations have contributed so much to ensure Afghanistan would never be able to be politically and economically stable.

In this much, there’s agreement - Afghanistan has never had a foundation that could be regarded as politically or economically stable, and the constant attempts to convert it into a politically or economically stable state have been utterly unsuccessful because of the actual conditions of the country.

We all know Germans reject all water that doesn’t have its papers properly filled out and signed in triplicate.

Don’t forget the reverse, so many people shocked when Trump won the first time.

In our defense, he literally lost the popular vote.

Getting some sleep for the first time in three decades is wack, man.