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Brian Fantana

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Everything posted by Brian Fantana

  1. Thanks for the useless ass non-updates from Moscow, dipshit.
  2. Went to HS/played football with this dickhead, couldn't stand him then, can't stand him now.
  3. If I died like that, I'd hope my friends would meme about it.
  4. Hmm where have I heard something like this before???
  5. I've never seen a poster with more personal grievances and so self assured that he's not the problem.
  6. He's a big ass pussy, best to ignore him
  7. A lot of people like to compare it to hitting a bullet with a bullet, but it's a lot more impressive than that. Ballistic missiles travel faster than that. I've done some RF work on telemetry systems used by our THAAD and Patriot defense systems. It's an open secret that there is a strategic gap between the two systems that we've unsuccessfully been trying to close for a long time. I had a couple buddies stationed at Al Udeid and everyone knew that if Iran decided to actually throw down and launch on the base that they were pretty much fucked.
  8. Yeah I wouldn't expect any of them to get through. Iran running scared though.
  9. Yep yep, I wholeheartedly agree with all of this. Especially the bit about Afghanistan.
  10. Agreed, I'm just slightly pushing back on the implication that democracy is incompatible with Islam. It's only incompatible with extremists and/or authoritarians. Also, the number is closer to 20% but that's just quibbling.
  11. Support for democracy in the Arab world has steadily increased year over year, and remains very popular. Only a small percentage believe that Islam is incompatible with democracy, according to the largest public opinion surveys in the Arab world. But, of course, it doesn't really make a shit what the people want or believe, and the situation is far more complicated than that. The reality is, allowing functional democracies in the Middle East runs counter to US interests. Excluding Israel's [very] flawed democracy, Iraq is the closest, and it leans heavily toward the "very authoritarian" side of the scale. Our past/current actions and the policies we maintain on the region, while not explicitly, effectively prohibit such a thing from ever occurring. We allow Israel to present itself a sort of beacon of democracy, and maintain the facade that we represent some sort of a bulwark against authoritarian forces, but it's basically all a lie. A functioning Middle East democracy can act autonomously against US interests, and that cannot be allowed. Our history in the region entirely backs up that assertion, and you can bet your ass the minute Israel started acting in a way contrary to US interests, their leaders would discover what FAFO really means, really quickly. I'm not saying they're ever going to do that, but I'm just using them as an example of how shit can go south real quick for any Middle Eastern country that crosses us in the wrong way. People think that Israel is the real darling over there, but the only country that can really get away with shit like that is Saudi Arabia. For now. At any rate, you're right, the whole world could see through the lie about Afghanistan and Iraq. It was goofy as hell to try and pretend we gave a shit about establishing democracy. I share your pessimism, albeit for different reasons it seems. e: I will also say that there's a lot of CR in this post [and yours] and I don't give a single shit. You can't discuss this kind of thing without delving into regional geopolitics, so whoever's going to cry about that, suck my dick.
  12. Yeah, this is what I mean when I say that terrorist groups ultimately have to be defeated politically, and why I've often said it's a difficult path but a feasible one. Good post, thank you.
  13. Then why are you even posting in this thread and what are we arguing about?
  14. Man I wish Rex the CR poster would stop shitting up the thread
  15. It probably has something to do with the ads but it's not a big deal. Can always just use another browser for this site since I refuse to use Tapa.
  16. Again, this is just a lazy, unserious, blanket justification for anything Israel does. It's the same kind of tepid bullshit diarrhea we had to listen to coming out of George W. Bush's mouth to justify the Iraq war. Not a single person in this thread is saying they shouldn't go after Hezbollah, just that if their goal is to actually end that organization, doing the exact same shit that caused it to form in the first place might not be a great idea.
  17. Hezbollah exists as a direct response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Decapitating their leadership is a good thing, and Israel has been doing a good job of doing so with these targeted operations. Yet another invasion of Lebanon would likely ultimately be counterproductive.
  18. Shit like this is so funny, because it's always the same 3-4 posters that post absolutely pudding brained nonsense like this in this thread and then run to immamac when the "CR posters" "ruin the thread" by offering painfully obvious rebuttals like "Hey, maybe if you altered the environment that caused the terrorists to exist in the first place, then they wouldn't come back - see, for example, the IRA".
  19. This topic would be so much better if certain posters read just one or two history books after high school. I was trying to hammer this point home in the CR thread months ago about how defeating (perhaps destroying is a better word) terrorist organizations militarily is next to impossible for the reasons you're outlining here, in addition to some other stuff. It just doesn't sink in to some people that direct, even overwhelming force can't end every conflict.
  20. Why can't Megan Fox be as obsessed with me as Rex is?
  21. Agreed! But my point was I hope that Israel has learned from the mistakes of the past. Previous invasions of Lebanon haven't yielded good results. So far, they're killing it going after Hezbollah leadership. It's still possible to fumble this, though, so they need to keep executing.
  22. How can anyone possibly be this stupid and not have Trump as a last name?
  23. You seem to be confused.
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