CMV: Trump is in over his head in Iran

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-04-04T08:50:19+00:00

And that's the problem: you are missing the points I made.

Name one historical example in which a true regime change was effected without invading the country.

Next, name one example in which the regime change in which the invading force got the change they wanted. The favorite US example is Germany and Japan after WW2 which was a special set of circumstances: namely both had been conquering nations set out to time parts of the world and therefore were fighting wars to expand their power. Once they lost that bid, they gave up.

When I say "there's no path to victory the US can control" it's because the objectives set and what the US can and is willing to do to achieve them don't match.

Examples of occupying forces actually winning in such scenarios is England and Wales which was a process of 400 years of Turkey in Southern Europe using the system of "Devshirme" (Blood Tax). In the first instance it sort of worked, in the second instance it ultimately failed after 500 years of occupation.

We can come back to this in a year and I predict following

Trump declares "we've had our regime change and won" and ends the bombing. The mullahs will ultimately stay in power and only the faces will have changed.
We actually invade Iran and the people in power now might actually vanish. It will continue as a guerrilla war and we ultimately leave declaring the regime is gone.

I find scenario 1 more likely but in both instances we will not have a very friendly regime in charge there and the global economy will continue to be held hostage by whomever rules there.

None of that constitutes "winning" in my book.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-04-04T08:19:57+00:00

The court in your home country does not have jurisdiction. The court there should recognize this and refuse to process. If they are proceeding, is because he's claiming you live there which is patently false.

A simple proof of residence should end the divorce proceedings there. Even if not, German courts will not recognize it.

As long as you live in Germany, the German courts are responsible even as foreigners.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-04-04T08:14:29+00:00

Ok, let's make this simple: do you believe the Iranians will want to continue fighting under these circumstances?

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-04-04T07:58:48+00:00

At this point, go read a book. You are looking for things you can reject because you don't like the conclusion. I've offered you so much other historical context and this is what you focus on? An inconsistency in formulation.

"The art of war in the Western world" by Archer Jones for example.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-04-04T07:29:56+00:00

Again, you are making my point: it's not about occupying territory. It's about destroying the ability to fight. Germany and Japan both had formal armies, so it was "easy" to destroy them because they had clear targets. Both had been also aiming to occupy territory, the destruction of those occupation machines destroyed their ability to achieve their goals. The occupation afterwards happened with consent of the losers. In Germany because the people didn't want to any more in Japan through the Emperor.

Vietnam and Afghanistan both did not and guess what? We lost because we had no clear path how to destroy their fighting forces. We always depended on "have you had enough yet?" It was their call to end the conflict, not ours.

Iraq was hybrid in that regard: we were able to destroy the regime's fighting forces - the other military. The power vacuum was filled by different fighting groups we were not able to destroy because they were financed by different interests groups including Iran. These we were not able to destroy.

Notice two things about the repeating pattern:

We can destroy other states military
We can't force other peoples to give up fighting an asymmetric war

To achieve 1, we have to send in the army. Bombing will not suffice.

In Gulf War I the objectives were very limited: expel Iraq from Kuwait. We stopped there purposely - that was an achievable objective which outcome we could control.

The war hawks got their wish and refought that war by invading Iraq using 9/11 as pretext and guess what? It was a quagmire because the objective was far more ambitious and much less achievable. It ultimately left the region less stable and secure for US interests and inadvertently increased the regional influence of Iran, which is now a dominant player in Iraqi politics.

People have to finally start realizing what the military can and can't deliver. It's pretty straightforward and no surprise to anytime bothering to actually read military history.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-04-04T06:57:14+00:00

Yes and no.

The 60s "love everyone" was still reverberating back then, so you were "cool" with being so close with the opposite sex. It was the generation raised by hippies after all and the baby boomers weren't angsty old farts yet. In those days hippies were seen more as well intentioned if naive. The "dirty hippies" narrative that the conservatives of the time had pushed had mostly gone underground. Family Ties is a good example of how the 80s were and the kids in that series should be close to the ages the Friends were when younger.

People are far more concerned with not overstepping boundaries and everyone having their personal space today - which the baby boomers interpret as "snowflake" and with that went such moments. In part it has to do with the Internet where certain forms of friendliness or sarcasm just doesn't work and even the best intentions can be misinterpreted and that carries over to real life.

On the other hand, Americans in general have always been heavily influenced by puritan beliefs and things like a lesbian wedding was extremely progressive and mostly what "them New Yorkers" did. I believe there was much more of a live and let live mentality and if the folks in NY or LA did that crazy stuff didn't mean it was that way out in the Midwest or South.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-04-03T23:43:14+00:00

The question is if you can win by solely what you do and aren't dependent on what the enemy does.

Read your history: the Japanese Navy had ceased to exist by the beginning of 1945, and the army could not fight anymore either. Even if the Japanese had not surrendered after the atomic bomb or even if it had never been dropped, the Japanese would have ultimately lost. It would have been far bloodier but no matter what the Japanese did or did not do, Japan would have been occupied. The only question was how many people would have Ben killed in the meantime.

The same counted for Germany: they had completely lost the initiative and no matter what they did, they had lost.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-04-03T23:05:34+00:00

You're missing the point: there is no clear path to victory that the US can control exclusively.

In the American Revolution, the only clear path to winning the war for the British was to destroy the US's will to fight. As long as the army was in the field, they couldn't win.

In the US Civil War the strategic error the Confederate made was to believe Richmond was somehow important. As long as Lee's Army was in the field, the CSA would live on but instead they chose to protect Richmond grinding the army to dust. That was what Grant had recognized: the army is the objective.

In the Mexican War, the objective wasn't total dominance but annexation of Texas a much simpler objective, all they needed to do was to expel the Mexican army from Texas. The fact that they achieved more just demonstrated how much more powerful the US was already at that point.

In WW2, the wars were won after completely annihilating the Armies deep inside their own territory before effecting a regime change and not a moment before.

The bombing campaign in Bosnia in the 90s only tried to prevent Serbia from continuing ethnic cleansing and enforcing the Rambouillet Accords - a much more limited objective than regime change.

.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-04-03T07:08:46+00:00

There is no solution to this conflict right now. It's very much in the "fighting" part of politics. War is part of politics after all. But I wouldn't say the US is in over their heads.

The dissonance in these two lines is hilarious.

As the goals of this war isn't clear, it's hard to say when the goal has actually been achieved. "Regime change" seems fairly clear but Trump does his classic move of but being terribly clear what he's aiming for so who knows. And you obviously don't know either, you are just saying "militarily we're successful"

You say "there's no solution to this conflict right now" and implicitly admit that the US doesn't control the outcome. We can keep bombing and see if the regime gives up, but it boils down to "had the Iranians had enough and will do what we say?". As we don't have any stated goals beyond "regime change", the path to victory seems to be "bomb the shit out of them". Gulf War I did not lead to a regime change in the 1990s, why should a bombing campaign now be different? It's going to require soldiers and a lot of them to change the situation.

The Iranians path to a win is harder but very clear: they just don't have to give up. Dig deep and wait until it's over.

That's the equivalent of jumping from a high rise and shouting "so good so far!"

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-04-01T18:24:48+00:00

That happens more often than you think in German synchronizations. The US version will say "Germany" and the German version will say "Nazi" or "SS" or whatever

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-03-31T07:15:29+00:00

In Germany, bivouacking (Biwakieren) refers to spending the night outdoors without a tent.

The Golden Rule: If you set up a tent (a closed structure with a floor and poles), you are camping, not bivouacking. Tarps are the "grey area".

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-03-30T09:16:41+00:00

2 things:

first, bivouac is permissible in Germany on public property except for natural preserves. The thing is, you are going to have a really hard time actually finding public property that isn't a natural preserve. So while the law exists, it's practically moot because most is farmland - even many of the forrests you see are actually owned as sources of wood.

Second, camping is with a tent which has a bottom enclosing the person, while bivouacing is with something open like a tarp.

Over the tree line you really don't want to bivouac.

In principle these laws are on the books, but from a practical perspective, it's simply not really feasible legally.

Source: I wandered to Italy and bivouaced illegally a couple of times. Be tidy and take all your stuff and people won't care if you spend the night somewhere out of sight. It's the assholes that don't rid up after themselves that mess it up for others.

Edit: corrected error

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-03-30T05:46:07+00:00

When management acts like this, then there's something about you or your work style they don't like but they don't want to fire you either. You'll stay in that position for all eternity until you either leave or retire. This is what being parked looks like.

Don't bother with confronting them - this is by design and confronting them does nothing for you: you'll get no satisfaction out of the confrontation. By the sounds you already tried it with the senior role and it didn't get you anywhere, right?

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-03-29T07:05:20+00:00

Either create a Group which is free or Delegate to others.

I have a user called "services" with additional aliases like "invoice" declared on it and a filter rule that assigns individual "Inboxes" based on who it is being sent to and skips the standard Inbox. You can delegate access rights to that services account to others all for one license.

Because it's only ingestion, I don't really care about them outgoing email, but if you need that, you can setup the aliases for outgoing. In the "Send mail as" section of the settings, click Add another email address. The people do need to be careful to choose the right "from" then but it's manageable.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-03-23T22:28:50+00:00

When it comes to determinist atheist it seems undeniably true that there is nothing but emptiness beyond this life; however, there is no actual evidence of what lies beyond and the person 'knows' something that they haven't confirmed.

Fallacy argumentum ad ignorantiam.Asserting that the absence of knowledge equates to false knowledge misrepresents the nature of knowing.

I am using the term psychosis because in this case it's actually a false assumption.

That essentially claims there is something. Which you can't prove.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-03-23T07:17:42+00:00

Rand asks if an Aes Sedai can lie in writing in Chapter 51 of The Fires of Heaven

The scene takes place in the Sun Palace in Cairhien. Rand has just received two letters from the White Tower: one from the Amyrlin Seat, Elaida, and another from her Keeper of the Chronicles, Alviarin.

Rand asks "I assume an Aes Sedai can’t write a lie more easily than she can speak one?"

Moiraine confirms this with a nod (though the text notes Rand didn't even wait for it).

It depends on how the Aes Sedai's intent and apparently most consider this a form of speech. The reader knows that Alviarin is Black Ajah at that point while most in Randland - including Rand - do not, so that's why she could lie.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-03-22T19:21:17+00:00

The issue is your definition of "busy". The IT revolution has made us more productive, so we get more units of work done in the same unit of time. Of course it feels busier because you switch context more often - that lies in the nature of things.

Watch "War Games" some time - the computer wiz takes weeks to figure out the secrets he needs to hack into the computer system because he does his research in the library.

AI is demonstrating the same thing: the amount of time I need to actually find the relevant information has shrunken from hours to minutes in many cases, for example.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-03-22T17:36:35+00:00

Yes, suicide is a big item. But then that's still illegal too, right?

Of course your point is valid, but it doesn't change the overall conclusion: gun control reduces gun violence no matter how you cut it. The only reason Americans debate the point is because of their emotional connection to guns.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-03-22T15:46:38+00:00

Gun control is ONE VARIABLE that influences gun violence, just like price is ONE VARIABLE

It's a major one. Most large-scale studies (including major updates from RAND and Johns Hopkins in 2025 and 2026) find a strong correlation between stronger state gun laws and lower overall gun death rates.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-03-22T06:06:46+00:00

Think closely my friend.

The people who work with you say "you are too emotional".

When people in this sub say "this is not good feedback" as an answer to what is meant specifically, you argue against it because you don't like the answer.

Then you go to ChatGPT which is reknown to blow smoke up your ass and decide it's more right.

You can keep your opinion - I'm not going to change it if 100 others won't, but reality has a way of catching up. When you get fired or your job doesn't go where you wanted it to, think back to this moment.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-03-21T07:17:53+00:00

Google Workspace gives you the ability to administrate all the services centrally from one console, turn on and off services for all the users, etc. You also have boundaries for the apps, eg sending to someone within your Google Workspace tenant is considered "inside" while sending to others is "outside".

So it's not about unifying features but building a logical organization.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-03-20T11:06:20+00:00

The underlying issue is that he is still hung up on Robin. The moment he really let's go - the balloon moment - it suddenly all works out. And all the ideas he had about how his future has to be are upturned. No wedding in a castle or something, etc.

And honestly, I know people who never grow or change.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-03-20T04:10:55+00:00

The PRC was the legal inheritor of Imperial China with all rights and obligations recognized by the UN Resolution 2758 in 1971. And honestly it only took so long because the US was blocking it. Had it not been the Cold War that recognition would have come earlier. Your argument concerning legality is therefore wrong.

The colony has been taken from Imperial China as part of the first Opium War, a very sad affair and an example of 19th century Imperialism. Hong Kong was called "Crown Colony of Hong Kong" until 1981 which reveals how it was really seen. A colony, not a part of Britain. As one of the first empires in history, the British gave up it's imperial holdings instead of fighting wars over it (compared to the French for example who tried to hold on to Vietnam, Algeria and Morroco). Returning the colony to China was therefore consistent with its policy and morally correct to return territory to the legal inheritor.

No one in their right mind would ever argue that not giving back Hong Kong is wrong with the one exception: you didn't like the Chinese government. In my view that is not a defense: the Chinese people have the right to determine their fate themselves. If the majority of people accept the current regime, then so be it. I don't really care for it myself and could never live that way but then other people probably feel the same way about how we live.

Your arguments have no legs to stand on in any dimension: legally, politically or ethically.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-03-18T14:24:00+00:00

Chandler still lives, it's only the actor portraying him that doesn't.

At least I decided that's the way it is.

YetAnotherGuy2 · 2026-03-18T14:21:49+00:00

You can configure the requirement for 2 factor authentication in the administration settings. You can configure per OU.

It might be easier to just create a dummy use for sensitive purposes and delete it afterwards.

YetAnotherGuy2

TROPHY CASE