Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

Labour has a much lower chance than 12% of winning a majority – politicalbetting.com

13

Comments

  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    South Korea was a dictatorship too until the mid Eighties, and North Korea had a higher GDP per capita into the late 1960s.

    The Korean War ended almost exactly where it began, with the Chinese having pushed the UN forces back to the start line from the Yalu River. It was a costly stalemate.

    Obviously the Vietcong and NLF won the Vietnam war. Americans like to pretend they were not defeated in the field, just by a stab in the back at home, with more than a whiff of a1920s Germany blame game. It is the new Noble Cause narrative, and in popular culture the American forces treated like martyred victims. The reality is that they routinely killed civilians, destroyed villages, made people destitute and homeless. Is it any wonder that they didn't win over the locals?

    My father's cousin was a Colonel there with the Australian Army. He was appalled at the conduct of the war, and quit the army in 1970 very disillusioned. He later developed a painful neuropathy that made his life a misery, thought to be due to exposure to Agent Orange.
    Just because war can be brutal does not mean the US were defeated on the battlefield. Again they went to war to prevent North Vietnam and the Vietcong taking over South Vietnam. That only occurred after the US forces had withdrawn
    Your support of the US right wing "Noble Cause" narrative of being undefeated on the battlefield is simply not true.

    America retreated from South Vietnam and Cambodia because the Vietnamese were inflicting too many casualties on them. That is what constitutes a defeat.
    No it is what constitutes losing a PR war and withdrawing your troops from the fight, not being defeated in battle
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,728
    ...

    Please queue for your Brexit foodstamps in a manner that says "Sovereignty"...
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    South Korea was liberated which was why the US and UN went to war, to keep North Korea out of South Korea.

    Farnham is a good songwriter but another wet leftist politically
    And he’s right and you’re wrong. As you rather too often are. The goals of the UN were somewhat more complex than you make them out to be. They achieved one - liberating Seoul - but to suggest that was a ‘win’ compared to what they wanted to do is fanciful.

    It has to be said it was largely McArthur and Truman’s fault that it went wahoonie shaped. One telegram to China guaranteeing they would stop at the Yalu River and they would have successfully liberated the whole Korean Peninsula.

    But quite the contrary, they openly discussed invading China too. Bad error.
    Of course it was a win, the only reason they went to war was to liberate South Korea after North Korean invasion. Which was achieved.

    The fact MacArthur as the war progressed stupidly decided to try and free North Korea and beyond from the Communists too does not mean that was an original war aim and therefore does not count when deciding whether the war was won or not based on the original reason it was fought
    I’m beginning to think foxy is a fucking commie
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    South Korea was a dictatorship too until the mid Eighties, and North Korea had a higher GDP per capita into the late 1960s.

    The Korean War ended almost exactly where it began, with the Chinese having pushed the UN forces back to the start line from the Yalu River. It was a costly stalemate.

    Obviously the Vietcong and NLF won the Vietnam war. Americans like to pretend they were not defeated in the field, just by a stab in the back at home, with more than a whiff of a1920s Germany blame game. It is the new Noble Cause narrative, and in popular culture the American forces treated like martyred victims. The reality is that they routinely killed civilians, destroyed villages, made people destitute and homeless. Is it any wonder that they didn't win over the locals?

    My father's cousin was a Colonel there with the Australian Army. He was appalled at the conduct of the war, and quit the army in 1970 very disillusioned. He later developed a painful neuropathy that made his life a misery, thought to be due to exposure to Agent Orange.
    Just because war can be brutal does not mean the US were defeated on the battlefield. Again they went to war to prevent North Vietnam and the Vietcong taking over South Vietnam. That only occurred after the US forces had withdrawn
    Your support of the US right wing "Noble Cause" narrative of being undefeated on the battlefield is simply not true.

    America retreated from South Vietnam and Cambodia because the Vietnamese were inflicting too many casualties on them. That is what constitutes a defeat.
    No it is what constitutes losing a PR war and withdrawing your troops from the fight, not being defeated in battle
    Think of the American/Vietnam War as a PB argument. As long as you continue the fight, no amount of logical defeat matters, if you still participate, while your opponent gives up and goes home, you are the victor.

    The simplist, albeit extremely costly in terms of casualties, way to win a war is to keep fighting despite defeat. The Soviets did this in 1941-42, Mao did it on his long march, the Vietcong did it and so has the Taliban.
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092
    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    South Korea was liberated which was why the US and UN went to war, to keep North Korea out of South Korea.

    Farnham is a good songwriter but another wet leftist politically
    And he’s right and you’re wrong. As you rather too often are. The goals of the UN were somewhat more complex than you make them out to be. They achieved one - liberating Seoul - but to suggest that was a ‘win’ compared to what they wanted to do is fanciful.

    It has to be said it was largely McArthur and Truman’s fault that it went wahoonie shaped. One telegram to China guaranteeing they would stop at the Yalu River and they would have successfully liberated the whole Korean Peninsula.

    But quite the contrary, they openly discussed invading China too. Bad error.
    Of course it was a win, the only reason they went to war was to liberate South Korea after North Korean invasion. Which was achieved.

    The fact MacArthur as the war progressed stupidly decided to try and free North Korea and beyond from the Communists too does not mean that was an original war aim and therefore does not count when deciding whether the war was won or not based on the original reason it was fought
    I’m beginning to think foxy is a fucking commie
    Are you General Buck Turgidson?
  • If you want to improve the Brexit deal then that's fine.

    But then Brexit isn't done - and you claiming it was in 2019 was a lie. And you claiming that the deal would resolve Brexit was also a lie.

    The deal has not done either, NI remains completely unresolved and pretending that a deal you said was great is now needing to be changed less than a year later suggests total dishonesty when you say the old deal wasn't rubbish. You implied it was above.

    No!

    Johnson has got Brexit done, he said so. The deal was oven ready for the microwave, he said so. If Brexit needs renegotiation he must be a massive liar because he said it was done, and "done" doesn't mean Brexit needs renogiation.

    If Brexit isn't infact "done", the RedWall must be told!
    Brexit is done.

    Done does require renegotiation because politics never ends. But that's post-Brexit now.
    Brexit is either "done" or not "done". Which is it? I'll take your word for which it is, but it is one or the other. If it is "done" it doesn't need renegotiation.
    Its done.

    Any renegotiation now is not about Brexit but post-Brexit.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    South Korea was liberated which was why the US and UN went to war, to keep North Korea out of South Korea.

    Farnham is a good songwriter but another wet leftist politically
    And he’s right and you’re wrong. As you rather too often are. The goals of the UN were somewhat more complex than you make them out to be. They achieved one - liberating Seoul - but to suggest that was a ‘win’ compared to what they wanted to do is fanciful.

    It has to be said it was largely McArthur and Truman’s fault that it went wahoonie shaped. One telegram to China guaranteeing they would stop at the Yalu River and they would have successfully liberated the whole Korean Peninsula.

    But quite the contrary, they openly discussed invading China too. Bad error.
    Of course it was a win, the only reason they went to war was to liberate South Korea after North Korean invasion. Which was achieved.

    The fact MacArthur as the war progressed stupidly decided to try and free North Korea and beyond from the Communists too does not mean that was an original war aim and therefore does not count when deciding whether the war was won or not based on the original reason it was fought
    I’m beginning to think foxy is a fucking commie
    No, a Lib Dem if you please. I am not and never have been a Communist. Though I do have a fondness for Bakunin and other Anarcho-Syndicalists.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    DougSeal said:

    Leon said:

    Roger said:

    OT. The Afghan women are much the best advocates for Afghanistan. Keir Starmer and Boris Johnon are an absolute embarrassment. The fact that those two are our leader and potential leader is a ghastly reality

    A superb intervention. Sometimes, Roger, you remind me of the greatest Roman senators

    Just a few lines of oratory - like yours - can change an entire debate, perhaps for generations
    Can you imagine how enhanced the Roman Senate would have been with Roger and Malc? Wow! Cicero would have cowered in humiliation when faced with such titanic eloquence. Indeed I doubt Rome would ever have fallen with its legions spurred by the rousing oratory of those two masters of the art. Western Civilisation may have taken a different, and dare I say better, course if led by Roger and Malc, perhaps in a Triumverate with HYUFD.
    Julius Caesar est per mediam fibram rapi!
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    At current rates in about 3 weeks time as many Floridians will die of Covid as died in 9/11

    Once again I renew my calls to invade Florida for the good of America.
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092
    Alistair said:

    At current rates in about 3 weeks time as many Floridians will die of Covid as died in 9/11

    Once again I renew my calls to invade Florida for the good of America.

    How many Floridians died in 9/11?

  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,786
    Alistair said:

    Once again I renew my calls to invade Florida for the good of America.

    Could be a new Darien scheme for Scotland?
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,262
    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    If in the second world war we had stopped hitler invading britain and left it at that would you claim britain won?

    Tough question. Also irrelevant
    If in the second world war we had stopped Hitler invading britain and left it at that we would very quickly have become a subject state of the Third Reich.

    C.J. Samson's alt-history novel Dominion paints a convincing picture of what that would have looked like.
    In Dominion Britain surrendered to the Nazis
    Do yo seriously think there was any other possible outcome of WW2 than either total defeat of Nazi Germany or British subjugation?
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,728
    edited August 2021
    THE OBSERVER: Afghans flee Kabul in panic as Taliban forces close in
    #TomorrowsPapersToday https://twitter.com/MsHelicat/status/1426637968069046274/photo/1

  • stodge said:

    stodge said:


    It's rare I agree with you but you're absolutely right.

    However, while I thought at the time it made a huge difference and empowered Johnson to victory, with hindsight I'm a bit less convinced.

    How long could or would May have continued? She has said she would have quit had the third Meaningful Vote been passed in late March. Had that happened, would Johnson still not have been in pole position to become Conservative leader and Prime Minister?

    Yes but we would have been legally trapped in the Single Market and Customs Union until the EU agreed to let us out of the backstop, without a unilateral exit.
    Yes but that would have been the will of the majority of the Commons at that time. I understand your opposition but @isam made the point the pro-Remain MPs committed political suicide by continually refusing the will of the people.

    Had they agreed to May's deal (with all your imperfections), the charge of resisting the will of the people could not have stuck.

    That might well have led to an existential struggle between the Conservatives and the Brexit Party who would have accused the Conservatives of "betraying the spirit of the vote".

    However, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and that in itself always gives the Conservatives a chance and of course Covid would still have happened so we'd have the Conservatives under Hunt or Javid looking head to a 2022 election and asking Brexit party supporters whether, by voting against the Conservatives, they would be happy to see Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister.

    That's how it seems to be with the Conservatives - heads we win, tails you lose.
    Oh you're right that May managed to find a form of "Brexit" that was Remain in all but name. We would have still been in the Single Market, still been in the Customs Union. On no issue that we'd debated in 2016 would we have left. And it was torpedoed largely by Remain MPs voting with hardcore Brexiteers, absolutely remarkable.

    I agree with almost every line with your post except that its not the Tories fault that Labour chose Corbyn as their leader. That's not on the Conservatives.

    But if the Remain MPs hadn't been so silly then they'd have seen us Remain in practice even though not in name despite losing the referendum. That would've been a true "heads we win, tails you lose".
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583
    .

    If you want to improve the Brexit deal then that's fine.

    But then Brexit isn't done - and you claiming it was in 2019 was a lie. And you claiming that the deal would resolve Brexit was also a lie.

    The deal has not done either, NI remains completely unresolved and pretending that a deal you said was great is now needing to be changed less than a year later suggests total dishonesty when you say the old deal wasn't rubbish. You implied it was above.

    No!

    Johnson has got Brexit done, he said so. The deal was oven ready for the microwave, he said so. If Brexit needs renegotiation he must be a massive liar because he said it was done, and "done" doesn't mean Brexit needs renogiation.

    If Brexit isn't infact "done", the RedWall must be told!
    Brexit is done.

    Done does require renegotiation because politics never ends. But that's post-Brexit now.
    Brexit is either "done" or not "done". Which is it? I'll take your word for which it is, but it is one or the other. If it is "done" it doesn't need renegotiation.
    Its done.

    Any renegotiation now is not about Brexit but post-Brexit.
    So in a nutshell, it's done, but it's not done.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Not a huge fan of the weird five-balls-an-over thingy, but there’s one hell of a party going down at the Oval tonight…
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    South Korea was a dictatorship too until the mid Eighties, and North Korea had a higher GDP per capita into the late 1960s.

    The Korean War ended almost exactly where it began, with the Chinese having pushed the UN forces back to the start line from the Yalu River. It was a costly stalemate.

    Obviously the Vietcong and NLF won the Vietnam war. Americans like to pretend they were not defeated in the field, just by a stab in the back at home, with more than a whiff of a1920s Germany blame game. It is the new Noble Cause narrative, and in popular culture the American forces treated like martyred victims. The reality is that they routinely killed civilians, destroyed villages, made people destitute and homeless. Is it any wonder that they didn't win over the locals?

    My father's cousin was a Colonel there with the Australian Army. He was appalled at the conduct of the war, and quit the army in 1970 very disillusioned. He later developed a painful neuropathy that made his life a misery, thought to be due to exposure to Agent Orange.
    Just because war can be brutal does not mean the US were defeated on the battlefield. Again they went to war to prevent North Vietnam and the Vietcong taking over South Vietnam. That only occurred after the US forces had withdrawn
    Your support of the US right wing "Noble Cause" narrative of being undefeated on the battlefield is simply not true.

    America retreated from South Vietnam and Cambodia because the Vietnamese were inflicting too many casualties on them. That is what constitutes a defeat.
    No it is what constitutes losing a PR war and withdrawing your troops from the fight, not being defeated in battle
    Think of the American/Vietnam War as a PB argument. As long as you continue the fight, no amount of logical defeat matters, if you still participate, while your opponent gives up and goes home, you are the victor.

    The simplist, albeit extremely costly in terms of casualties, way to win a war is to keep fighting despite defeat. The Soviets did this in 1941-42, Mao did it on his long march, the Vietcong did it and so has the Taliban.
    Yes but the Soviets not only forced the Nazis out of Russia, they also forced them out of Eastern Europe too and even captured Berlin.

    Mao also forced the Nationalists out of mainland China and into Taiwan
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164
    Sandpit said:

    Not a huge fan of the weird five-balls-an-over thingy, but there’s one hell of a party going down at the Oval tonight…

    It’s called a set not an over...
  • .

    If you want to improve the Brexit deal then that's fine.

    But then Brexit isn't done - and you claiming it was in 2019 was a lie. And you claiming that the deal would resolve Brexit was also a lie.

    The deal has not done either, NI remains completely unresolved and pretending that a deal you said was great is now needing to be changed less than a year later suggests total dishonesty when you say the old deal wasn't rubbish. You implied it was above.

    No!

    Johnson has got Brexit done, he said so. The deal was oven ready for the microwave, he said so. If Brexit needs renegotiation he must be a massive liar because he said it was done, and "done" doesn't mean Brexit needs renogiation.

    If Brexit isn't infact "done", the RedWall must be told!
    Brexit is done.

    Done does require renegotiation because politics never ends. But that's post-Brexit now.
    Brexit is either "done" or not "done". Which is it? I'll take your word for which it is, but it is one or the other. If it is "done" it doesn't need renegotiation.
    Its done.

    Any renegotiation now is not about Brexit but post-Brexit.
    So in a nutshell, it's done, but it's not done.
    Its done but not life is not over.

    The 2020-21 Premier League season is done. There's no reason why there can't be Premier League games today though, that's post that season its not a part of it.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    South Korea was a dictatorship too until the mid Eighties, and North Korea had a higher GDP per capita into the late 1960s.

    The Korean War ended almost exactly where it began, with the Chinese having pushed the UN forces back to the start line from the Yalu River. It was a costly stalemate.

    Obviously the Vietcong and NLF won the Vietnam war. Americans like to pretend they were not defeated in the field, just by a stab in the back at home, with more than a whiff of a1920s Germany blame game. It is the new Noble Cause narrative, and in popular culture the American forces treated like martyred victims. The reality is that they routinely killed civilians, destroyed villages, made people destitute and homeless. Is it any wonder that they didn't win over the locals?

    My father's cousin was a Colonel there with the Australian Army. He was appalled at the conduct of the war, and quit the army in 1970 very disillusioned. He later developed a painful neuropathy that made his life a misery, thought to be due to exposure to Agent Orange.
    Just because war can be brutal does not mean the US were defeated on the battlefield. Again they went to war to prevent North Vietnam and the Vietcong taking over South Vietnam. That only occurred after the US forces had withdrawn
    Your support of the US right wing "Noble Cause" narrative of being undefeated on the battlefield is simply not true.

    America retreated from South Vietnam and Cambodia because the Vietnamese were inflicting too many casualties on them. That is what constitutes a defeat.
    No it is what constitutes losing a PR war and withdrawing your troops from the fight, not being defeated in battle
    Think of the American/Vietnam War as a PB argument. As long as you continue the fight, no amount of logical defeat matters, if you still participate, while your opponent gives up and goes home, you are the victor.

    The simplist, albeit extremely costly in terms of casualties, way to win a war is to keep fighting despite defeat. The Soviets did this in 1941-42, Mao did it on his long march, the Vietcong did it and so has the Taliban.
    Yes but the Soviets not only forced the Nazis out of Russia, they also forced them out of Eastern Europe too and even captured Berlin.

    Mao also forced the Nationalists out of mainland China and into Taiwan
    Yes, much as the Vietcong forced America out of Vietnam.
  • If you want to improve the Brexit deal then that's fine.

    But then Brexit isn't done - and you claiming it was in 2019 was a lie. And you claiming that the deal would resolve Brexit was also a lie.

    The deal has not done either, NI remains completely unresolved and pretending that a deal you said was great is now needing to be changed less than a year later suggests total dishonesty when you say the old deal wasn't rubbish. You implied it was above.

    No!

    Johnson has got Brexit done, he said so. The deal was oven ready for the microwave, he said so. If Brexit needs renegotiation he must be a massive liar because he said it was done, and "done" doesn't mean Brexit needs renogiation.

    If Brexit isn't infact "done", the RedWall must be told!
    Brexit is done.

    Done does require renegotiation because politics never ends. But that's post-Brexit now.
    Brexit is either "done" or not "done". Which is it? I'll take your word for which it is, but it is one or the other. If it is "done" it doesn't need renegotiation.
    Philip can't believe this rubbish, he must be on a wind up. Done now doesn't mean done.

    I have done my eating for the day, done though involves another trip to the fridge
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    South Korea was a dictatorship too until the mid Eighties, and North Korea had a higher GDP per capita into the late 1960s.

    The Korean War ended almost exactly where it began, with the Chinese having pushed the UN forces back to the start line from the Yalu River. It was a costly stalemate.

    Obviously the Vietcong and NLF won the Vietnam war. Americans like to pretend they were not defeated in the field, just by a stab in the back at home, with more than a whiff of a1920s Germany blame game. It is the new Noble Cause narrative, and in popular culture the American forces treated like martyred victims. The reality is that they routinely killed civilians, destroyed villages, made people destitute and homeless. Is it any wonder that they didn't win over the locals?

    My father's cousin was a Colonel there with the Australian Army. He was appalled at the conduct of the war, and quit the army in 1970 very disillusioned. He later developed a painful neuropathy that made his life a misery, thought to be due to exposure to Agent Orange.
    Just because war can be brutal does not mean the US were defeated on the battlefield. Again they went to war to prevent North Vietnam and the Vietcong taking over South Vietnam. That only occurred after the US forces had withdrawn
    Your support of the US right wing "Noble Cause" narrative of being undefeated on the battlefield is simply not true.

    America retreated from South Vietnam and Cambodia because the Vietnamese were inflicting too many casualties on them. That is what constitutes a defeat.
    No it is what constitutes losing a PR war and withdrawing your troops from the fight, not being defeated in battle
    Think of the American/Vietnam War as a PB argument. As long as you continue the fight, no amount of logical defeat matters, if you still participate, while your opponent gives up and goes home, you are the victor.

    The simplist, albeit extremely costly in terms of casualties, way to win a war is to keep fighting despite defeat. The Soviets did this in 1941-42, Mao did it on his long march, the Vietcong did it and so has the Taliban.
    An interesting point, not without merit. Just keep fighting until everyone gets so bored and weary they say Oh fuck it, here you go. Yes that happens, for sure. ‘The best lack all conviction’

    However I point you to the recent counter-example of the Remoaners. Such as our own Scott. Their extreme mulish stupidity and endless feuding grievance is not just pointless, it is counter-productive. They have already kicked away the chance of a compromise they might have tolerated, they are tarnishing their brand forever

    Rejoin = Nutters
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    geoffw said:

    Alistair said:

    At current rates in about 3 weeks time as many Floridians will die of Covid as died in 9/11

    Once again I renew my calls to invade Florida for the good of America.

    How many Floridians died in 9/11?

    Damn it.

    Missed Americans from that sentence.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,728

    So in a nutshell, it's done, but it's not done.

    It's not done.

    We have failed to implement much of it. And some of the bits we have, BoZo wants to abandon.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited August 2021

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    If in the second world war we had stopped hitler invading britain and left it at that would you claim britain won?

    Tough question. Also irrelevant
    If in the second world war we had stopped Hitler invading britain and left it at that we would very quickly have become a subject state of the Third Reich.

    C.J. Samson's alt-history novel Dominion paints a convincing picture of what that would have looked like.
    In Dominion Britain surrendered to the Nazis
    Do yo seriously think there was any other possible outcome of WW2 than either total defeat of Nazi Germany or British subjugation?
    It is quite possible Halifax could have done a deal with Hitler allowing him full control of continental Europe and the British to keep the Empire and remain independent. Whether that would have lasted the course we will never know, it would certainly have been less secure than keeping up the fight with the Nazis
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,728

    Philip can't believe this rubbish, he must be on a wind up.

    Performative stupidity.

    Don't feed the troll...
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    Scott_xP said:

    THE OBSERVER: Afghans flee Kabul in panic as Taliban forces close in
    #TomorrowsPapersToday https://twitter.com/MsHelicat/status/1426637968069046274/photo/1

    Once the Taliban can shell the Kabul airport, the only way out for refugees would be by chopper. Let's hope our Paras don't get stuck there.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,728
    Leon said:

    They have already kicked away the chance of a compromise they might have tolerated, they are tarnishing their brand forever

    What is the "brand" and with whom is it "tarnished" ?

    If you mean the people who voted for Brexit will never understand or respect those who didn't, that's hardly a revelation, but it is a comfort.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,728
    Foxy said:

    Once the Taliban can shell the Kabul airport, the only way out for refugees would be by chopper. Let's hope our Paras don't get stuck there.

    British troops began moving key staff out of Afghanistan this evening as the Taliban closed in on Kabul and senior officials warned that the escape route may remain open for just “a few days” https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/britons-flee-afghanistan-as-taliban-close-in-q99sth9bz?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1628963409
  • I've just done eating my pudding, so I will now have another pudding
  • If you want to improve the Brexit deal then that's fine.

    But then Brexit isn't done - and you claiming it was in 2019 was a lie. And you claiming that the deal would resolve Brexit was also a lie.

    The deal has not done either, NI remains completely unresolved and pretending that a deal you said was great is now needing to be changed less than a year later suggests total dishonesty when you say the old deal wasn't rubbish. You implied it was above.

    No!

    Johnson has got Brexit done, he said so. The deal was oven ready for the microwave, he said so. If Brexit needs renegotiation he must be a massive liar because he said it was done, and "done" doesn't mean Brexit needs renogiation.

    If Brexit isn't infact "done", the RedWall must be told!
    Brexit is done.

    Done does require renegotiation because politics never ends. But that's post-Brexit now.
    Brexit is either "done" or not "done". Which is it? I'll take your word for which it is, but it is one or the other. If it is "done" it doesn't need renegotiation.
    Philip can't believe this rubbish, he must be on a wind up. Done now doesn't mean done.

    I have done my eating for the day, done though involves another trip to the fridge
    So because you've done eating your dinner for the day, you're not going to eat any dinner tomorrow?

    Or eat any dinner next week, or next year? That was the last dinner of your life?
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,728
    🔴 "Britain's ambassador is to be airlifted from Afghanistan by Sunday evening amid fears that the Taliban could imminently take Kabul and seize the airport"

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/08/14/uk-envoy-afghanistan-airlifted-talibans-arrival/?utm_content=telegraph&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1628971651
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    Scott_xP said:

    So in a nutshell, it's done, but it's not done.

    It's not done.

    We have failed to implement much of it. And some of the bits we have, BoZo wants to abandon.
    Indeed, when we shortly start to apply the inward customs checks mandated by Brexit it will start to become obvious again.

    At the moment the EU can export freely to us, but we have customs barriers to our exports. Take Back Control? My arse!
  • I've just done eating my pudding, so I will now have another pudding

    Using your logic you're done eating your pudding so you won't ever have another pudding for the rest of your life. You'd better not consider having a pudding years from now.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,262
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    If in the second world war we had stopped hitler invading britain and left it at that would you claim britain won?

    Tough question. Also irrelevant
    If in the second world war we had stopped Hitler invading britain and left it at that we would very quickly have become a subject state of the Third Reich.

    C.J. Samson's alt-history novel Dominion paints a convincing picture of what that would have looked like.
    In Dominion Britain surrendered to the Nazis
    Do yo seriously think there was any other possible outcome of WW2 than either total defeat of Nazi Germany or British subjugation?
    It is quite possible Halifax could have done a deal with Hitler allowing him full control of continental Europe and the British to keep the Empire and remain independent. Whether that would have lasted the course we will never know, it would certainly have been less secure than keeping up the fight with the Nazis
    No, you are deeply misguided here. Please tell me which agreement Hitler ever made that he stuck to.

    The recent film Darkest Hour is pretty good on this, fiction though it is, because at one point you find yourself thinking (at least I did) that seeking terms with Hitler is the only sensible thing to do with the British army trapped by the Wehrmacht in Northern France. But as Churchill is rightly made to say in the film, you cannot negotiate with a tiger when your head is in its mouth.

    There was only one alternative in 1940 to fighting to the end: subjugation to a Nazi dictatorship.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited August 2021
    My mind suddenly flashes back to a BBC news report, which must have been from around 2002, and on or around from when the Taliban had just been ousted from Kabul. There were queues of men lining up at a barber's to cut off their very long beards, which they'd been forced to wear at regulation length by the Taliban.

    There was some footage of smiling, palpably excited and elated young men , staring in disbelief into the barber's mirrors as the huge amounts of hair gradually started to fall off and to the floor. It was part ecstatic ritual, and part teenagers excited to get their latest trendy haircut at the barbers.

    I wonder where they are now.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,728
    President Biden announces the deployment of an additional 5,000 troops to Afghanistan, “to make sure we can have an orderly and safe drawdown of US personnel and other allied personnel and an orderly and safe evacuation of Afghans who helped our troops during our mission..."
    https://twitter.com/ZoraSuleman/status/1426640516234588161
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,262
    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    South Korea was a dictatorship too until the mid Eighties, and North Korea had a higher GDP per capita into the late 1960s.

    The Korean War ended almost exactly where it began, with the Chinese having pushed the UN forces back to the start line from the Yalu River. It was a costly stalemate.

    Obviously the Vietcong and NLF won the Vietnam war. Americans like to pretend they were not defeated in the field, just by a stab in the back at home, with more than a whiff of a1920s Germany blame game. It is the new Noble Cause narrative, and in popular culture the American forces treated like martyred victims. The reality is that they routinely killed civilians, destroyed villages, made people destitute and homeless. Is it any wonder that they didn't win over the locals?

    My father's cousin was a Colonel there with the Australian Army. He was appalled at the conduct of the war, and quit the army in 1970 very disillusioned. He later developed a painful neuropathy that made his life a misery, thought to be due to exposure to Agent Orange.
    Just because war can be brutal does not mean the US were defeated on the battlefield. Again they went to war to prevent North Vietnam and the Vietcong taking over South Vietnam. That only occurred after the US forces had withdrawn
    Your support of the US right wing "Noble Cause" narrative of being undefeated on the battlefield is simply not true.

    America retreated from South Vietnam and Cambodia because the Vietnamese were inflicting too many casualties on them. That is what constitutes a defeat.
    No it is what constitutes losing a PR war and withdrawing your troops from the fight, not being defeated in battle
    Think of the American/Vietnam War as a PB argument. As long as you continue the fight, no amount of logical defeat matters, if you still participate, while your opponent gives up and goes home, you are the victor.

    The simplist, albeit extremely costly in terms of casualties, way to win a war is to keep fighting despite defeat. The Soviets did this in 1941-42, Mao did it on his long march, the Vietcong did it and so has the Taliban.
    An interesting point, not without merit. Just keep fighting until everyone gets so bored and weary they say Oh fuck it, here you go. Yes that happens, for sure. ‘The best lack all conviction’

    However I point you to the recent counter-example of the Remoaners. Such as our own Scott. Their extreme mulish stupidity and endless feuding grievance is not just pointless, it is counter-productive. They have already kicked away the chance of a compromise they might have tolerated, they are tarnishing their brand forever

    Rejoin = Nutters
    Nothing is forever.
  • RazedabodeRazedabode Posts: 2,973
    Scott_xP said:

    🔴 "Britain's ambassador is to be airlifted from Afghanistan by Sunday evening amid fears that the Taliban could imminently take Kabul and seize the airport"

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/08/14/uk-envoy-afghanistan-airlifted-talibans-arrival/?utm_content=telegraph&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1628971651

    What an absolute shitshow from Biden
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,262

    My mind suddenly flashes back to a BBC news report, which must have been from around 2002, and on or around from when the Taliban had just been ousted from Kabul. There were queues of men lining up at a barber's to cut off their very long beards, which they'd been forced to wear at regulation length by the Taliban.

    There was some footage of smiling, palpably excited and elated young men staring in disbelief at the barber's mirrors as the huge amounts of hair started to fall off and round to the floor. It was part ecstatic ritual, and part teenagers excited to get their latest trendy haircut at the barbers.

    I wonder where they are tonight.

    Not at the barbers, that's for sure :-(
  • Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    South Korea was a dictatorship too until the mid Eighties, and North Korea had a higher GDP per capita into the late 1960s.

    The Korean War ended almost exactly where it began, with the Chinese having pushed the UN forces back to the start line from the Yalu River. It was a costly stalemate.

    Obviously the Vietcong and NLF won the Vietnam war. Americans like to pretend they were not defeated in the field, just by a stab in the back at home, with more than a whiff of a1920s Germany blame game. It is the new Noble Cause narrative, and in popular culture the American forces treated like martyred victims. The reality is that they routinely killed civilians, destroyed villages, made people destitute and homeless. Is it any wonder that they didn't win over the locals?

    My father's cousin was a Colonel there with the Australian Army. He was appalled at the conduct of the war, and quit the army in 1970 very disillusioned. He later developed a painful neuropathy that made his life a misery, thought to be due to exposure to Agent Orange.
    Just because war can be brutal does not mean the US were defeated on the battlefield. Again they went to war to prevent North Vietnam and the Vietcong taking over South Vietnam. That only occurred after the US forces had withdrawn
    Your support of the US right wing "Noble Cause" narrative of being undefeated on the battlefield is simply not true.

    America retreated from South Vietnam and Cambodia because the Vietnamese were inflicting too many casualties on them. That is what constitutes a defeat.
    No it is what constitutes losing a PR war and withdrawing your troops from the fight, not being defeated in battle
    Think of the American/Vietnam War as a PB argument. As long as you continue the fight, no amount of logical defeat matters, if you still participate, while your opponent gives up and goes home, you are the victor.

    The simplist, albeit extremely costly in terms of casualties, way to win a war is to keep fighting despite defeat. The Soviets did this in 1941-42, Mao did it on his long march, the Vietcong did it and so has the Taliban.
    An interesting point, not without merit. Just keep fighting until everyone gets so bored and weary they say Oh fuck it, here you go. Yes that happens, for sure. ‘The best lack all conviction’

    However I point you to the recent counter-example of the Remoaners. Such as our own Scott. Their extreme mulish stupidity and endless feuding grievance is not just pointless, it is counter-productive. They have already kicked away the chance of a compromise they might have tolerated, they are tarnishing their brand forever

    Rejoin = Nutters
    Nothing is forever.
    Explain that to @CorrectHorseBattery

    He thinks that if your dinner today is done, then you can't have dinner tomorrow. He doesn't understand that tomorrow's dinner will be a new dinner and not today's dinner.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583

    .

    If you want to improve the Brexit deal then that's fine.

    But then Brexit isn't done - and you claiming it was in 2019 was a lie. And you claiming that the deal would resolve Brexit was also a lie.

    The deal has not done either, NI remains completely unresolved and pretending that a deal you said was great is now needing to be changed less than a year later suggests total dishonesty when you say the old deal wasn't rubbish. You implied it was above.

    No!

    Johnson has got Brexit done, he said so. The deal was oven ready for the microwave, he said so. If Brexit needs renegotiation he must be a massive liar because he said it was done, and "done" doesn't mean Brexit needs renogiation.

    If Brexit isn't infact "done", the RedWall must be told!
    Brexit is done.

    Done does require renegotiation because politics never ends. But that's post-Brexit now.
    Brexit is either "done" or not "done". Which is it? I'll take your word for which it is, but it is one or the other. If it is "done" it doesn't need renegotiation.
    Its done.

    Any renegotiation now is not about Brexit but post-Brexit.
    So in a nutshell, it's done, but it's not done.
    Its done but not life is not over.

    The 2020-21 Premier League season is done. There's no reason why there can't be Premier League games today though, that's post that season its not a part of it.
    Yes it's done and the Baggies are in the Championship. No replays for those lost games before Allardyce arrived. No reneotiations, the 2020/21 season is done.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    The story of Kabul reminds me of a student friend who went on a very cheap flight to India with Aeroflot in the late Eighties.

    He hadn't realised that the plane stopped in Kabul on the way, and was slightly alarmed when two Russian Migs arrived alongside for the descent, and began dropping flares and decoys. The stewardess brusquely explained that this was routine since the Mujahuddein fired heat seeking missiles at the airliners sometimes. He was flying back the same route, which rather unnerved him while seeing the sights of India.

  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,557
    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    It wasn't, it was just the US decided to withdraw in 1973. They kept North Vietnam out of South Vietnam for over a decade and had they stuck the course South Vietnam might be what South Korea is today
    Er, Tet offensive?
    Militarily the Tet was actually a horrible failure, the Viet Cong expected to do much better. They were roundly defeated everywhere

    However it succeeded in one significant arena: American public opinion. As it came out of the blue, and shocked the American TV-watching public, it fatally unnerved American voters - and led to Saigon in 1973
    Yes the US were never defeated on the battlefield in Vietnam, just wet McGovernite leftists won the PR war by 1973 and the US public did not have the stomach for more casualties. Same as now unfortunately, wet leftists are winning the PR war on both sides of the Atlantic and potentially allowing Afghanistan to become a haven for terrorist Jihadis again as the US and UK withdraw.

    However war has casualties, it comes with the territory unfortunately, even if you win
    Sometimes you talk utter shit.
    This is one of them.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,262
    edited August 2021

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    South Korea was a dictatorship too until the mid Eighties, and North Korea had a higher GDP per capita into the late 1960s.

    The Korean War ended almost exactly where it began, with the Chinese having pushed the UN forces back to the start line from the Yalu River. It was a costly stalemate.

    Obviously the Vietcong and NLF won the Vietnam war. Americans like to pretend they were not defeated in the field, just by a stab in the back at home, with more than a whiff of a1920s Germany blame game. It is the new Noble Cause narrative, and in popular culture the American forces treated like martyred victims. The reality is that they routinely killed civilians, destroyed villages, made people destitute and homeless. Is it any wonder that they didn't win over the locals?

    My father's cousin was a Colonel there with the Australian Army. He was appalled at the conduct of the war, and quit the army in 1970 very disillusioned. He later developed a painful neuropathy that made his life a misery, thought to be due to exposure to Agent Orange.
    Just because war can be brutal does not mean the US were defeated on the battlefield. Again they went to war to prevent North Vietnam and the Vietcong taking over South Vietnam. That only occurred after the US forces had withdrawn
    Your support of the US right wing "Noble Cause" narrative of being undefeated on the battlefield is simply not true.

    America retreated from South Vietnam and Cambodia because the Vietnamese were inflicting too many casualties on them. That is what constitutes a defeat.
    No it is what constitutes losing a PR war and withdrawing your troops from the fight, not being defeated in battle
    Think of the American/Vietnam War as a PB argument. As long as you continue the fight, no amount of logical defeat matters, if you still participate, while your opponent gives up and goes home, you are the victor.

    The simplist, albeit extremely costly in terms of casualties, way to win a war is to keep fighting despite defeat. The Soviets did this in 1941-42, Mao did it on his long march, the Vietcong did it and so has the Taliban.
    An interesting point, not without merit. Just keep fighting until everyone gets so bored and weary they say Oh fuck it, here you go. Yes that happens, for sure. ‘The best lack all conviction’

    However I point you to the recent counter-example of the Remoaners. Such as our own Scott. Their extreme mulish stupidity and endless feuding grievance is not just pointless, it is counter-productive. They have already kicked away the chance of a compromise they might have tolerated, they are tarnishing their brand forever

    Rejoin = Nutters
    Nothing is forever.
    Explain that to @CorrectHorseBattery

    He thinks that if your dinner today is done, then you can't have dinner tomorrow. He doesn't understand that tomorrow's dinner will be a new dinner and not today's dinner.
    Yes, let me explain @CorrectHorseBattery:

    In Borisland just because we have negotiated and signed up to an agreement that doesn't mean we are going to stick to it tomorrow.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Owen Jones Rose
    @OwenJones84
    ·
    7h
    Labour have kicked out Ken Loach, Britain's greatest living film maker, whose films have moved and inspired millions, while readmitting Trevor Phillips.

    That tells you all you need to know about the state of the current Labour party.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,262
    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    HYUFD said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    It wasn't, it was just the US decided to withdraw in 1973. They kept North Vietnam out of South Vietnam for over a decade and had they stuck the course South Vietnam might be what South Korea is today
    Er, Tet offensive?
    Militarily the Tet was actually a horrible failure, the Viet Cong expected to do much better. They were roundly defeated everywhere

    However it succeeded in one significant arena: American public opinion. As it came out of the blue, and shocked the American TV-watching public, it fatally unnerved American voters - and led to Saigon in 1973
    Yes the US were never defeated on the battlefield in Vietnam, just wet McGovernite leftists won the PR war by 1973 and the US public did not have the stomach for more casualties. Same as now unfortunately, wet leftists are winning the PR war on both sides of the Atlantic and potentially allowing Afghanistan to become a haven for terrorist Jihadis again as the US and UK withdraw.

    However war has casualties, it comes with the territory unfortunately, even if you win
    Sometimes you talk utter shit.
    This is one of them.
    For 'sometimes' read 'usually'.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    I had an absolutely brilliant day today. I woke in my deeply soothing hotel at 10.30am. The perfect time to wake, as Burlington Bertie well knew

    I am staying here


    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/greece/athens/hotels/the-modernist-athens-hotel/

    £100 a night. Insanely good value

    I had two strong coffees then set to some flint knapping. When the bulk was done I let the maids clean my room by retiring to the sun lashed roof terrace, where I had a prawn saganaki brunch, with some fine cold beers. With a view of the Acropolis.

    Then - thanks to the great advice of PB - I took a €4 Uber (which arrived in 2 minutes) from my hotel to the National Archaeological Museum. Took 6 minutes. Athens is empty. No queues.

    There I saw the Antikythera Mechanism, the most startling and provoking scientific artifact I have ever encountered in my life. No exaggeration. And I also saw the great hoards of Mycenaean gold unearthed by Schliemann. So I learned that noble Mycenaens would bury their dead babies in clothes of pure gold. Exquisitely sad yet somehow enriching

    Then I had a fucking big jug of ouzo in the museum gardens. Got another Uber home (4 minutes). I worked out on a weird wooden modernist peloton. Showered. Went to buy fine Cretan wine. Had a chat with locals.

    Then I ate ‘freakfish with seasonal greens’ in a streetside solonaki taverna under the plane trees - no idea what it was. But yummy. Also ‘soft Arcadian feta’. And then I argued with you guys about Vietnam.

    Now I lie abed, with Venus conspicuous overhead. Of such days is happiness made
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    Some of the arguments are below usual standard this evening.
    The meaning of the words "done" and "defeated".
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 3,865

    My mind suddenly flashes back to a BBC news report, which must have been from around 2002, and on or around from when the Taliban had just been ousted from Kabul. There were queues of men lining up at a barber's to cut off their very long beards, which they'd been forced to wear at regulation length by the Taliban.

    There was some footage of smiling, palpably excited and elated young men , staring in disbelief into the barber's mirrors as the huge amounts of hair gradually started to fall off and to the floor. It was part ecstatic ritual, and part teenagers excited to get their latest trendy haircut at the barbers.

    I wonder where they are now.

    No longer young men. Probably wondering how they’re going to protect their families, whilst their sons are now the young men.
  • Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    South Korea was a dictatorship too until the mid Eighties, and North Korea had a higher GDP per capita into the late 1960s.

    The Korean War ended almost exactly where it began, with the Chinese having pushed the UN forces back to the start line from the Yalu River. It was a costly stalemate.

    Obviously the Vietcong and NLF won the Vietnam war. Americans like to pretend they were not defeated in the field, just by a stab in the back at home, with more than a whiff of a1920s Germany blame game. It is the new Noble Cause narrative, and in popular culture the American forces treated like martyred victims. The reality is that they routinely killed civilians, destroyed villages, made people destitute and homeless. Is it any wonder that they didn't win over the locals?

    My father's cousin was a Colonel there with the Australian Army. He was appalled at the conduct of the war, and quit the army in 1970 very disillusioned. He later developed a painful neuropathy that made his life a misery, thought to be due to exposure to Agent Orange.
    Just because war can be brutal does not mean the US were defeated on the battlefield. Again they went to war to prevent North Vietnam and the Vietcong taking over South Vietnam. That only occurred after the US forces had withdrawn
    Your support of the US right wing "Noble Cause" narrative of being undefeated on the battlefield is simply not true.

    America retreated from South Vietnam and Cambodia because the Vietnamese were inflicting too many casualties on them. That is what constitutes a defeat.
    No it is what constitutes losing a PR war and withdrawing your troops from the fight, not being defeated in battle
    Think of the American/Vietnam War as a PB argument. As long as you continue the fight, no amount of logical defeat matters, if you still participate, while your opponent gives up and goes home, you are the victor.

    The simplist, albeit extremely costly in terms of casualties, way to win a war is to keep fighting despite defeat. The Soviets did this in 1941-42, Mao did it on his long march, the Vietcong did it and so has the Taliban.
    An interesting point, not without merit. Just keep fighting until everyone gets so bored and weary they say Oh fuck it, here you go. Yes that happens, for sure. ‘The best lack all conviction’

    However I point you to the recent counter-example of the Remoaners. Such as our own Scott. Their extreme mulish stupidity and endless feuding grievance is not just pointless, it is counter-productive. They have already kicked away the chance of a compromise they might have tolerated, they are tarnishing their brand forever

    Rejoin = Nutters
    Nothing is forever.
    Explain that to @CorrectHorseBattery

    He thinks that if your dinner today is done, then you can't have dinner tomorrow. He doesn't understand that tomorrow's dinner will be a new dinner and not today's dinner.
    Yes, let me explain @CorrectHorseBattery:

    In Borisland just because we have negotiated and signed up to an agreement that doesn't mean we are going to stick to it tomorrow.
    With a steel chair!
  • .

    If you want to improve the Brexit deal then that's fine.

    But then Brexit isn't done - and you claiming it was in 2019 was a lie. And you claiming that the deal would resolve Brexit was also a lie.

    The deal has not done either, NI remains completely unresolved and pretending that a deal you said was great is now needing to be changed less than a year later suggests total dishonesty when you say the old deal wasn't rubbish. You implied it was above.

    No!

    Johnson has got Brexit done, he said so. The deal was oven ready for the microwave, he said so. If Brexit needs renegotiation he must be a massive liar because he said it was done, and "done" doesn't mean Brexit needs renogiation.

    If Brexit isn't infact "done", the RedWall must be told!
    Brexit is done.

    Done does require renegotiation because politics never ends. But that's post-Brexit now.
    Brexit is either "done" or not "done". Which is it? I'll take your word for which it is, but it is one or the other. If it is "done" it doesn't need renegotiation.
    Its done.

    Any renegotiation now is not about Brexit but post-Brexit.
    So in a nutshell, it's done, but it's not done.
    Its done but not life is not over.

    The 2020-21 Premier League season is done. There's no reason why there can't be Premier League games today though, that's post that season its not a part of it.
    Yes it's done and the Baggies are in the Championship. No replays for those lost games before Allardyce arrived. No reneotiations, the 2020/21 season is done.
    Precisely. The 2020/21 season is done, long live the 2021/22 season.
  • Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    South Korea was a dictatorship too until the mid Eighties, and North Korea had a higher GDP per capita into the late 1960s.

    The Korean War ended almost exactly where it began, with the Chinese having pushed the UN forces back to the start line from the Yalu River. It was a costly stalemate.

    Obviously the Vietcong and NLF won the Vietnam war. Americans like to pretend they were not defeated in the field, just by a stab in the back at home, with more than a whiff of a1920s Germany blame game. It is the new Noble Cause narrative, and in popular culture the American forces treated like martyred victims. The reality is that they routinely killed civilians, destroyed villages, made people destitute and homeless. Is it any wonder that they didn't win over the locals?

    My father's cousin was a Colonel there with the Australian Army. He was appalled at the conduct of the war, and quit the army in 1970 very disillusioned. He later developed a painful neuropathy that made his life a misery, thought to be due to exposure to Agent Orange.
    Just because war can be brutal does not mean the US were defeated on the battlefield. Again they went to war to prevent North Vietnam and the Vietcong taking over South Vietnam. That only occurred after the US forces had withdrawn
    Your support of the US right wing "Noble Cause" narrative of being undefeated on the battlefield is simply not true.

    America retreated from South Vietnam and Cambodia because the Vietnamese were inflicting too many casualties on them. That is what constitutes a defeat.
    No it is what constitutes losing a PR war and withdrawing your troops from the fight, not being defeated in battle
    Think of the American/Vietnam War as a PB argument. As long as you continue the fight, no amount of logical defeat matters, if you still participate, while your opponent gives up and goes home, you are the victor.

    The simplist, albeit extremely costly in terms of casualties, way to win a war is to keep fighting despite defeat. The Soviets did this in 1941-42, Mao did it on his long march, the Vietcong did it and so has the Taliban.
    An interesting point, not without merit. Just keep fighting until everyone gets so bored and weary they say Oh fuck it, here you go. Yes that happens, for sure. ‘The best lack all conviction’

    However I point you to the recent counter-example of the Remoaners. Such as our own Scott. Their extreme mulish stupidity and endless feuding grievance is not just pointless, it is counter-productive. They have already kicked away the chance of a compromise they might have tolerated, they are tarnishing their brand forever

    Rejoin = Nutters
    Nothing is forever.
    Explain that to @CorrectHorseBattery

    He thinks that if your dinner today is done, then you can't have dinner tomorrow. He doesn't understand that tomorrow's dinner will be a new dinner and not today's dinner.
    Yes, let me explain @CorrectHorseBattery:

    In Borisland just because we have negotiated and signed up to an agreement that doesn't mean we are going to stick to it tomorrow.
    Precisely.
  • Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    South Korea was a dictatorship too until the mid Eighties, and North Korea had a higher GDP per capita into the late 1960s.

    The Korean War ended almost exactly where it began, with the Chinese having pushed the UN forces back to the start line from the Yalu River. It was a costly stalemate.

    Obviously the Vietcong and NLF won the Vietnam war. Americans like to pretend they were not defeated in the field, just by a stab in the back at home, with more than a whiff of a1920s Germany blame game. It is the new Noble Cause narrative, and in popular culture the American forces treated like martyred victims. The reality is that they routinely killed civilians, destroyed villages, made people destitute and homeless. Is it any wonder that they didn't win over the locals?

    My father's cousin was a Colonel there with the Australian Army. He was appalled at the conduct of the war, and quit the army in 1970 very disillusioned. He later developed a painful neuropathy that made his life a misery, thought to be due to exposure to Agent Orange.
    Just because war can be brutal does not mean the US were defeated on the battlefield. Again they went to war to prevent North Vietnam and the Vietcong taking over South Vietnam. That only occurred after the US forces had withdrawn
    Your support of the US right wing "Noble Cause" narrative of being undefeated on the battlefield is simply not true.

    America retreated from South Vietnam and Cambodia because the Vietnamese were inflicting too many casualties on them. That is what constitutes a defeat.
    No it is what constitutes losing a PR war and withdrawing your troops from the fight, not being defeated in battle
    Think of the American/Vietnam War as a PB argument. As long as you continue the fight, no amount of logical defeat matters, if you still participate, while your opponent gives up and goes home, you are the victor.

    The simplist, albeit extremely costly in terms of casualties, way to win a war is to keep fighting despite defeat. The Soviets did this in 1941-42, Mao did it on his long march, the Vietcong did it and so has the Taliban.
    An interesting point, not without merit. Just keep fighting until everyone gets so bored and weary they say Oh fuck it, here you go. Yes that happens, for sure. ‘The best lack all conviction’

    However I point you to the recent counter-example of the Remoaners. Such as our own Scott. Their extreme mulish stupidity and endless feuding grievance is not just pointless, it is counter-productive. They have already kicked away the chance of a compromise they might have tolerated, they are tarnishing their brand forever

    Rejoin = Nutters
    Nothing is forever.
    Explain that to @CorrectHorseBattery

    He thinks that if your dinner today is done, then you can't have dinner tomorrow. He doesn't understand that tomorrow's dinner will be a new dinner and not today's dinner.
    Yes, let me explain @CorrectHorseBattery:

    In Borisland just because we have negotiated and signed up to an agreement that doesn't mean we are going to stick to it tomorrow.
    Precisely.
    There we have it folks!
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 3,334

    If you want to improve the Brexit deal then that's fine.

    But then Brexit isn't done - and you claiming it was in 2019 was a lie. And you claiming that the deal would resolve Brexit was also a lie.

    The deal has not done either, NI remains completely unresolved and pretending that a deal you said was great is now needing to be changed less than a year later suggests total dishonesty when you say the old deal wasn't rubbish. You implied it was above.

    No!

    Johnson has got Brexit done, he said so. The deal was oven ready for the microwave, he said so. If Brexit needs renegotiation he must be a massive liar because he said it was done, and "done" doesn't mean Brexit needs renogiation.

    If Brexit isn't infact "done", the RedWall must be told!
    Brexit is done.

    Done does require renegotiation because politics never ends. But that's post-Brexit now.
    I's not easy negotiating with a liar and someone who won't stick to the rules.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    South Korea was a dictatorship too until the mid Eighties, and North Korea had a higher GDP per capita into the late 1960s.

    The Korean War ended almost exactly where it began, with the Chinese having pushed the UN forces back to the start line from the Yalu River. It was a costly stalemate.

    Obviously the Vietcong and NLF won the Vietnam war. Americans like to pretend they were not defeated in the field, just by a stab in the back at home, with more than a whiff of a1920s Germany blame game. It is the new Noble Cause narrative, and in popular culture the American forces treated like martyred victims. The reality is that they routinely killed civilians, destroyed villages, made people destitute and homeless. Is it any wonder that they didn't win over the locals?

    My father's cousin was a Colonel there with the Australian Army. He was appalled at the conduct of the war, and quit the army in 1970 very disillusioned. He later developed a painful neuropathy that made his life a misery, thought to be due to exposure to Agent Orange.
    Just because war can be brutal does not mean the US were defeated on the battlefield. Again they went to war to prevent North Vietnam and the Vietcong taking over South Vietnam. That only occurred after the US forces had withdrawn
    Your support of the US right wing "Noble Cause" narrative of being undefeated on the battlefield is simply not true.

    America retreated from South Vietnam and Cambodia because the Vietnamese were inflicting too many casualties on them. That is what constitutes a defeat.
    No it is what constitutes losing a PR war and withdrawing your troops from the fight, not being defeated in battle
    Think of the American/Vietnam War as a PB argument. As long as you continue the fight, no amount of logical defeat matters, if you still participate, while your opponent gives up and goes home, you are the victor.

    The simplist, albeit extremely costly in terms of casualties, way to win a war is to keep fighting despite defeat. The Soviets did this in 1941-42, Mao did it on his long march, the Vietcong did it and so has the Taliban.
    An interesting point, not without merit. Just keep fighting until everyone gets so bored and weary they say Oh fuck it, here you go. Yes that happens, for sure. ‘The best lack all conviction’

    However I point you to the recent counter-example of the Remoaners. Such as our own Scott. Their extreme mulish stupidity and endless feuding grievance is not just pointless, it is counter-productive. They have already kicked away the chance of a compromise they might have tolerated, they are tarnishing their brand forever

    Rejoin = Nutters
    Nothing is forever.
    Explain that to @CorrectHorseBattery

    He thinks that if your dinner today is done, then you can't have dinner tomorrow. He doesn't understand that tomorrow's dinner will be a new dinner and not today's dinner.
    What a stupid analogy.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,007
    Scott_xP said:

    President Biden announces the deployment of an additional 5,000 troops to Afghanistan, “to make sure we can have an orderly and safe drawdown of US personnel and other allied personnel and an orderly and safe evacuation of Afghans who helped our troops during our mission..."
    https://twitter.com/ZoraSuleman/status/1426640516234588161

    A non-withdrawal withdrawal?
  • Philip/Boris world:

    France should win the Euros.

    France win the Euros.

    Actually I didn't want France to win the Euros, England won the Euros.
  • Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    South Korea was a dictatorship too until the mid Eighties, and North Korea had a higher GDP per capita into the late 1960s.

    The Korean War ended almost exactly where it began, with the Chinese having pushed the UN forces back to the start line from the Yalu River. It was a costly stalemate.

    Obviously the Vietcong and NLF won the Vietnam war. Americans like to pretend they were not defeated in the field, just by a stab in the back at home, with more than a whiff of a1920s Germany blame game. It is the new Noble Cause narrative, and in popular culture the American forces treated like martyred victims. The reality is that they routinely killed civilians, destroyed villages, made people destitute and homeless. Is it any wonder that they didn't win over the locals?

    My father's cousin was a Colonel there with the Australian Army. He was appalled at the conduct of the war, and quit the army in 1970 very disillusioned. He later developed a painful neuropathy that made his life a misery, thought to be due to exposure to Agent Orange.
    Just because war can be brutal does not mean the US were defeated on the battlefield. Again they went to war to prevent North Vietnam and the Vietcong taking over South Vietnam. That only occurred after the US forces had withdrawn
    Your support of the US right wing "Noble Cause" narrative of being undefeated on the battlefield is simply not true.

    America retreated from South Vietnam and Cambodia because the Vietnamese were inflicting too many casualties on them. That is what constitutes a defeat.
    No it is what constitutes losing a PR war and withdrawing your troops from the fight, not being defeated in battle
    Think of the American/Vietnam War as a PB argument. As long as you continue the fight, no amount of logical defeat matters, if you still participate, while your opponent gives up and goes home, you are the victor.

    The simplist, albeit extremely costly in terms of casualties, way to win a war is to keep fighting despite defeat. The Soviets did this in 1941-42, Mao did it on his long march, the Vietcong did it and so has the Taliban.
    An interesting point, not without merit. Just keep fighting until everyone gets so bored and weary they say Oh fuck it, here you go. Yes that happens, for sure. ‘The best lack all conviction’

    However I point you to the recent counter-example of the Remoaners. Such as our own Scott. Their extreme mulish stupidity and endless feuding grievance is not just pointless, it is counter-productive. They have already kicked away the chance of a compromise they might have tolerated, they are tarnishing their brand forever

    Rejoin = Nutters
    Nothing is forever.
    Explain that to @CorrectHorseBattery

    He thinks that if your dinner today is done, then you can't have dinner tomorrow. He doesn't understand that tomorrow's dinner will be a new dinner and not today's dinner.
    Yes, let me explain @CorrectHorseBattery:

    In Borisland just because we have negotiated and signed up to an agreement that doesn't mean we are going to stick to it tomorrow.
    Precisely.
    There we have it folks!
    What we do tomorrow is for the people of tomorrow to decide.

    Why would you think anything lasts forever? We signed up to the Lisbon Treaty and now we aren't sticking to it anymore. If we sign up to anything it means we intend to stick to it today, no more and no less than that.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited August 2021
    Kabul in the 1960's. Like Tehran, miniskirts and freedoms .

    https://allthatsinteresting.com/1960s-afghanistan
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,007

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    If in the second world war we had stopped hitler invading britain and left it at that would you claim britain won?

    Tough question. Also irrelevant
    If in the second world war we had stopped Hitler invading britain and left it at that we would very quickly have become a subject state of the Third Reich.

    C.J. Samson's alt-history novel Dominion paints a convincing picture of what that would have looked like.
    In Dominion Britain surrendered to the Nazis
    Do yo seriously think there was any other possible outcome of WW2 than either total defeat of Nazi Germany or British subjugation?
    It is quite possible Halifax could have done a deal with Hitler allowing him full control of continental Europe and the British to keep the Empire and remain independent. Whether that would have lasted the course we will never know, it would certainly have been less secure than keeping up the fight with the Nazis
    No, you are deeply misguided here. Please tell me which agreement Hitler ever made that he stuck to.

    The recent film Darkest Hour is pretty good on this, fiction though it is, because at one point you find yourself thinking (at least I did) that seeking terms with Hitler is the only sensible thing to do with the British army trapped by the Wehrmacht in Northern France. But as Churchill is rightly made to say in the film, you cannot negotiate with a tiger when your head is in its mouth.

    There was only one alternative in 1940 to fighting to the end: subjugation to a Nazi dictatorship.
    A film totally ruined by that utterly stupid tube scene.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,262
    Leon said:

    I had an absolutely brilliant day today. I woke in my deeply soothing hotel at 10.30am. The perfect time to wake, as Burlington Bertie well knew

    I am staying here


    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/greece/athens/hotels/the-modernist-athens-hotel/

    £100 a night. Insanely good value

    I had two strong coffees then set to some flint knapping. When the bulk was done I let the maids clean my room by retiring to the sun lashed roof terrace, where I had a prawn saganaki brunch, with some fine cold beers. With a view of the Acropolis.

    Then - thanks to the great advice of PB - I took a €4 Uber (which arrived in 2 minutes) from my hotel to the National Archaeological Museum. Took 6 minutes. Athens is empty. No queues.

    There I saw the Antikythera Mechanism, the most startling and provoking scientific artifact I have ever encountered in my life. No exaggeration. And I also saw the great hoards of Mycenaean gold unearthed by Schliemann. So I learned that noble Mycenaens would bury their dead babies in clothes of pure gold. Exquisitely sad yet somehow enriching

    Then I had a fucking big jug of ouzo in the museum gardens. Got another Uber home (4 minutes). I worked out on a weird wooden modernist peloton. Showered. Went to buy fine Cretan wine. Had a chat with locals.

    Then I ate ‘freakfish with seasonal greens’ in a streetside solonaki taverna under the plane trees - no idea what it was. But yummy. Also ‘soft Arcadian feta’. And then I argued with you guys about Vietnam.

    Now I lie abed, with Venus conspicuous overhead. Of such days is happiness made

    I think you'll find that's Jupiter but don't let that spoil your lovely day - sounds divine either way.

    A very fine day here in Dorset too, plenty of sunshine. Topped the wild flower meadow then watched Man U wallop Leeds. Caprese salad (inspired by @Leon) followed by fish pie washed down with a nice white Rioja. Happy days.
  • Philip/Boris world:

    France should win the Euros.

    France win the Euros.

    Actually I didn't want France to win the Euros, England won the Euros.

    CorrectHorseBattery world:

    Portugal won the Euros.

    Why were England and Spain playing in the Euros this year? Portugal already won them years ago, don't they realise the Euros are done.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052

    Owen Jones Rose
    @OwenJones84
    ·
    7h
    Labour have kicked out Ken Loach, Britain's greatest living film maker, whose films have moved and inspired millions, while readmitting Trevor Phillips.

    That tells you all you need to know about the state of the current Labour party.

    Ken Loach left Labour in the mid nineties, and only rejoined in 2016 as I understand, and in the meantime campaigned for a number of hard left and Trotskyist factions including Socialist Resistance and the Scargillite Socialist Labour Party.

    The idea that he is some cuddly heart and soul of Labour old member doesn't match his story arc very well. He looks more like a Trotskyite entryist.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,741

    stodge said:



    Yes but that would have been the will of the majority of the Commons at that time. I understand your opposition but @isam made the point the pro-Remain MPs committed political suicide by continually refusing the will of the people.

    Had they agreed to May's deal (with all your imperfections), the charge of resisting the will of the people could not have stuck.

    That might well have led to an existential struggle between the Conservatives and the Brexit Party who would have accused the Conservatives of "betraying the spirit of the vote".

    However, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and that in itself always gives the Conservatives a chance and of course Covid would still have happened so we'd have the Conservatives under Hunt or Javid looking head to a 2022 election and asking Brexit party supporters whether, by voting against the Conservatives, they would be happy to see Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister.

    That's how it seems to be with the Conservatives - heads we win, tails you lose.

    Oh you're right that May managed to find a form of "Brexit" that was Remain in all but name. We would have still been in the Single Market, still been in the Customs Union. On no issue that we'd debated in 2016 would we have left. And it was torpedoed largely by Remain MPs voting with hardcore Brexiteers, absolutely remarkable.

    I agree with almost every line with your post except that its not the Tories fault that Labour chose Corbyn as their leader. That's not on the Conservatives.

    But if the Remain MPs hadn't been so silly then they'd have seen us Remain in practice even though not in name despite losing the referendum. That would've been a true "heads we win, tails you lose".
    I wasn't aware I had inferred it was the Conservatives fault Corbyn was Labour leader.

    The point I was trying to make was that whatever happened within the Conservative Party, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and that would always help the Conservatives a) stay united and b) persuade most people, including frustrated pro-Brexit individuals, the alternative to a Conservative-led Government was completely unpalatable.

    I'd go further and argue the greatest favour the Conservatives have done to Labour in recent years was to win the 2019 election and drive Corbyn from the leadership. In a timeline where May's Deal cleared Parliament and there hadn't been an election, Corbyn would still be LOTO.

    Your last sentence captures it - the pro-Remain MPs managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and, like @isam and yourself, I find their behaviour incomprehensible two years on.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,262

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    If in the second world war we had stopped hitler invading britain and left it at that would you claim britain won?

    Tough question. Also irrelevant
    If in the second world war we had stopped Hitler invading britain and left it at that we would very quickly have become a subject state of the Third Reich.

    C.J. Samson's alt-history novel Dominion paints a convincing picture of what that would have looked like.
    In Dominion Britain surrendered to the Nazis
    Do yo seriously think there was any other possible outcome of WW2 than either total defeat of Nazi Germany or British subjugation?
    It is quite possible Halifax could have done a deal with Hitler allowing him full control of continental Europe and the British to keep the Empire and remain independent. Whether that would have lasted the course we will never know, it would certainly have been less secure than keeping up the fight with the Nazis
    No, you are deeply misguided here. Please tell me which agreement Hitler ever made that he stuck to.

    The recent film Darkest Hour is pretty good on this, fiction though it is, because at one point you find yourself thinking (at least I did) that seeking terms with Hitler is the only sensible thing to do with the British army trapped by the Wehrmacht in Northern France. But as Churchill is rightly made to say in the film, you cannot negotiate with a tiger when your head is in its mouth.

    There was only one alternative in 1940 to fighting to the end: subjugation to a Nazi dictatorship.
    A film totally ruined by that utterly stupid tube scene.
    It was certainly cheesy, I'll give you that, but it didn't ruin the film for me.

    On which topic: which is the best Churchill film/TV portrayal?
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,262

    Philip/Boris world:

    France should win the Euros.

    France win the Euros.

    Actually I didn't want France to win the Euros, England won the Euros.

    CorrectHorseBattery world:

    Portugal won the Euros.

    Why were England and Spain playing in the Euros this year? Portugal already won them years ago, don't they realise the Euros are done.
    Enough already. You and @CorrectHorseBattery are disappearing up your own arses.
  • Philip/Boris world:

    France should win the Euros.

    France win the Euros.

    Actually I didn't want France to win the Euros, England won the Euros.

    CorrectHorseBattery world:

    Portugal won the Euros.

    Why were England and Spain playing in the Euros this year? Portugal already won them years ago, don't they realise the Euros are done.
    You must have been on the sauce earlier than me Philip!
  • Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    South Korea was a dictatorship too until the mid Eighties, and North Korea had a higher GDP per capita into the late 1960s.

    The Korean War ended almost exactly where it began, with the Chinese having pushed the UN forces back to the start line from the Yalu River. It was a costly stalemate.

    Obviously the Vietcong and NLF won the Vietnam war. Americans like to pretend they were not defeated in the field, just by a stab in the back at home, with more than a whiff of a1920s Germany blame game. It is the new Noble Cause narrative, and in popular culture the American forces treated like martyred victims. The reality is that they routinely killed civilians, destroyed villages, made people destitute and homeless. Is it any wonder that they didn't win over the locals?

    My father's cousin was a Colonel there with the Australian Army. He was appalled at the conduct of the war, and quit the army in 1970 very disillusioned. He later developed a painful neuropathy that made his life a misery, thought to be due to exposure to Agent Orange.
    Just because war can be brutal does not mean the US were defeated on the battlefield. Again they went to war to prevent North Vietnam and the Vietcong taking over South Vietnam. That only occurred after the US forces had withdrawn
    Your support of the US right wing "Noble Cause" narrative of being undefeated on the battlefield is simply not true.

    America retreated from South Vietnam and Cambodia because the Vietnamese were inflicting too many casualties on them. That is what constitutes a defeat.
    No it is what constitutes losing a PR war and withdrawing your troops from the fight, not being defeated in battle
    Think of the American/Vietnam War as a PB argument. As long as you continue the fight, no amount of logical defeat matters, if you still participate, while your opponent gives up and goes home, you are the victor.

    The simplist, albeit extremely costly in terms of casualties, way to win a war is to keep fighting despite defeat. The Soviets did this in 1941-42, Mao did it on his long march, the Vietcong did it and so has the Taliban.
    An interesting point, not without merit. Just keep fighting until everyone gets so bored and weary they say Oh fuck it, here you go. Yes that happens, for sure. ‘The best lack all conviction’

    However I point you to the recent counter-example of the Remoaners. Such as our own Scott. Their extreme mulish stupidity and endless feuding grievance is not just pointless, it is counter-productive. They have already kicked away the chance of a compromise they might have tolerated, they are tarnishing their brand forever

    Rejoin = Nutters
    Nothing is forever.
    Explain that to @CorrectHorseBattery

    He thinks that if your dinner today is done, then you can't have dinner tomorrow. He doesn't understand that tomorrow's dinner will be a new dinner and not today's dinner.
    What a stupid analogy.
    Its not my analogy it was @CorrectHorseBattery that chose to bring up dinner as an analogy.

    You have to wonder why @CorrectHorseBattery bothered eating dinner today, was he not done with his dinner back in 2019?

    Or maybe just maybe its possible to have a new dinner every day, even though prior dinners were done? Just as its possible for new political discussions to be occuring today even though Brexit was done.
  • Philip/Boris world:

    France should win the Euros.

    France win the Euros.

    Actually I didn't want France to win the Euros, England won the Euros.

    CorrectHorseBattery world:

    Portugal won the Euros.

    Why were England and Spain playing in the Euros this year? Portugal already won them years ago, don't they realise the Euros are done.
    You must have been on the sauce earlier than me Philip!
    Why you're acting as though because something was done in the past, there can't be new variants in the future.

    Just because dinner was done in the past, doesn't mean you can't have a new dinner today.
    Just because the Premier League was done in the past, doesn't mean a new season can't start today.
    Just because Brexit was done in the past, doesn't mean post-Brexit political debates can't happen today.

    Life doesn't end.
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 2,720
    edited August 2021

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Leon said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    If in the second world war we had stopped hitler invading britain and left it at that would you claim britain won?

    Tough question. Also irrelevant
    If in the second world war we had stopped Hitler invading britain and left it at that we would very quickly have become a subject state of the Third Reich.

    C.J. Samson's alt-history novel Dominion paints a convincing picture of what that would have looked like.
    In Dominion Britain surrendered to the Nazis
    Do yo seriously think there was any other possible outcome of WW2 than either total defeat of Nazi Germany or British subjugation?
    It is quite possible Halifax could have done a deal with Hitler allowing him full control of continental Europe and the British to keep the Empire and remain independent. Whether that would have lasted the course we will never know, it would certainly have been less secure than keeping up the fight with the Nazis
    No, you are deeply misguided here. Please tell me which agreement Hitler ever made that he stuck to.

    The recent film Darkest Hour is pretty good on this, fiction though it is, because at one point you find yourself thinking (at least I did) that seeking terms with Hitler is the only sensible thing to do with the British army trapped by the Wehrmacht in Northern France. But as Churchill is rightly made to say in the film, you cannot negotiate with a tiger when your head is in its mouth.

    There was only one alternative in 1940 to fighting to the end: subjugation to a Nazi dictatorship.
    A film totally ruined by that utterly stupid tube scene.
    It was certainly cheesy, I'll give you that, but it didn't ruin the film for me.

    On which topic: which is the best Churchill film/TV portrayal?
    John Lithgow in The Crown

    For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l353dLpyew
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    South Korea was a dictatorship too until the mid Eighties, and North Korea had a higher GDP per capita into the late 1960s.

    The Korean War ended almost exactly where it began, with the Chinese having pushed the UN forces back to the start line from the Yalu River. It was a costly stalemate.

    Obviously the Vietcong and NLF won the Vietnam war. Americans like to pretend they were not defeated in the field, just by a stab in the back at home, with more than a whiff of a1920s Germany blame game. It is the new Noble Cause narrative, and in popular culture the American forces treated like martyred victims. The reality is that they routinely killed civilians, destroyed villages, made people destitute and homeless. Is it any wonder that they didn't win over the locals?

    My father's cousin was a Colonel there with the Australian Army. He was appalled at the conduct of the war, and quit the army in 1970 very disillusioned. He later developed a painful neuropathy that made his life a misery, thought to be due to exposure to Agent Orange.
    Just because war can be brutal does not mean the US were defeated on the battlefield. Again they went to war to prevent North Vietnam and the Vietcong taking over South Vietnam. That only occurred after the US forces had withdrawn
    Your support of the US right wing "Noble Cause" narrative of being undefeated on the battlefield is simply not true.

    America retreated from South Vietnam and Cambodia because the Vietnamese were inflicting too many casualties on them. That is what constitutes a defeat.
    No it is what constitutes losing a PR war and withdrawing your troops from the fight, not being defeated in battle
    Think of the American/Vietnam War as a PB argument. As long as you continue the fight, no amount of logical defeat matters, if you still participate, while your opponent gives up and goes home, you are the victor.

    The simplist, albeit extremely costly in terms of casualties, way to win a war is to keep fighting despite defeat. The Soviets did this in 1941-42, Mao did it on his long march, the Vietcong did it and so has the Taliban.
    An interesting point, not without merit. Just keep fighting until everyone gets so bored and weary they say Oh fuck it, here you go. Yes that happens, for sure. ‘The best lack all conviction’

    However I point you to the recent counter-example of the Remoaners. Such as our own Scott. Their extreme mulish stupidity and endless feuding grievance is not just pointless, it is counter-productive. They have already kicked away the chance of a compromise they might have tolerated, they are tarnishing their brand forever

    Rejoin = Nutters
    Nothing is forever.
    Explain that to @CorrectHorseBattery

    He thinks that if your dinner today is done, then you can't have dinner tomorrow. He doesn't understand that tomorrow's dinner will be a new dinner and not today's dinner.
    Yes, let me explain @CorrectHorseBattery:

    In Borisland just because we have negotiated and signed up to an agreement that doesn't mean we are going to stick to it tomorrow.
    Precisely.
    There we have it folks!
    What we do tomorrow is for the people of tomorrow to decide.

    Why would you think anything lasts forever? We signed up to the Lisbon Treaty and now we aren't sticking to it anymore. If we sign up to anything it means we intend to stick to it today, no more and no less than that.
    You really are a prick.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Foxy said:

    Owen Jones Rose
    @OwenJones84
    ·
    7h
    Labour have kicked out Ken Loach, Britain's greatest living film maker, whose films have moved and inspired millions, while readmitting Trevor Phillips.

    That tells you all you need to know about the state of the current Labour party.

    Ken Loach left Labour in the mid nineties, and only rejoined in 2016 as I understand, and in the meantime campaigned for a number of hard left and Trotskyist factions including Socialist Resistance and the Scargillite Socialist Labour Party.

    The idea that he is some cuddly heart and soul of Labour old member doesn't match his story arc very well. He looks more like a Trotskyite entryist.
    Is he even Britain's greatest living film maker?

  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited August 2021
    Leon said:

    I had an absolutely brilliant day today. I woke in my deeply soothing hotel at 10.30am. The perfect time to wake, as Burlington Bertie well knew

    I am staying here


    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/greece/athens/hotels/the-modernist-athens-hotel/

    £100 a night. Insanely good value

    I had two strong coffees then set to some flint knapping. When the bulk was done I let the maids clean my room by retiring to the sun lashed roof terrace, where I had a prawn saganaki brunch, with some fine cold beers. With a view of the Acropolis.

    Then - thanks to the great advice of PB - I took a €4 Uber (which arrived in 2 minutes) from my hotel to the National Archaeological Museum. Took 6 minutes. Athens is empty. No queues.

    There I saw the Antikythera Mechanism, the most startling and provoking scientific artifact I have ever encountered in my life. No exaggeration. And I also saw the great hoards of Mycenaean gold unearthed by Schliemann. So I learned that noble Mycenaens would bury their dead babies in clothes of pure gold. Exquisitely sad yet somehow enriching

    Then I had a fucking big jug of ouzo in the museum gardens. Got another Uber home (4 minutes). I worked out on a weird wooden modernist peloton. Showered. Went to buy fine Cretan wine. Had a chat with locals.

    Then I ate ‘freakfish with seasonal greens’ in a streetside solonaki taverna under the plane trees - no idea what it was. But yummy. Also ‘soft Arcadian feta’. And then I argued with you guys about Vietnam.

    Now I lie abed, with Venus conspicuous overhead. Of such days is happiness made

    Sounds good. Souvlaki in Greece has come on in leaps and bounds in the last few years, as so many chefs have been to London and Paris. and back, and added in a few unpredictable influences too. I highly recommend a 'volta' down Dionysiou Aeropagitou at this time of night, with the Parthenon on one side, and the neoclassical avenue on the other. The new Acropolis museum is halfway down, glistening out at night.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Well, if you need six runs to win, then hitting the ball out of the ground is one way to do it!
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 3,865
    Leon said:

    I had an absolutely brilliant day today. I woke in my deeply soothing hotel at 10.30am. The perfect time to wake, as Burlington Bertie well knew

    I am staying here


    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/greece/athens/hotels/the-modernist-athens-hotel/

    £100 a night. Insanely good value

    I had two strong coffees then set to some flint knapping. When the bulk was done I let the maids clean my room by retiring to the sun lashed roof terrace, where I had a prawn saganaki brunch, with some fine cold beers. With a view of the Acropolis.

    Then - thanks to the great advice of PB - I took a €4 Uber (which arrived in 2 minutes) from my hotel to the National Archaeological Museum. Took 6 minutes. Athens is empty. No queues.

    There I saw the Antikythera Mechanism, the most startling and provoking scientific artifact I have ever encountered in my life. No exaggeration. And I also saw the great hoards of Mycenaean gold unearthed by Schliemann. So I learned that noble Mycenaens would bury their dead babies in clothes of pure gold. Exquisitely sad yet somehow enriching

    Then I had a fucking big jug of ouzo in the museum gardens. Got another Uber home (4 minutes). I worked out on a weird wooden modernist peloton. Showered. Went to buy fine Cretan wine. Had a chat with locals.

    Then I ate ‘freakfish with seasonal greens’ in a streetside solonaki taverna under the plane trees - no idea what it was. But yummy. Also ‘soft Arcadian feta’. And then I argued with you guys about Vietnam.

    Now I lie abed, with Venus conspicuous overhead. Of such days is happiness made

    In 2,500 year’s time, archaeologists will excavate the site of your hotel and speculate who knapped the flints, and how they got there, not being found in Greek rock formations.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206

    Leon said:

    I had an absolutely brilliant day today. I woke in my deeply soothing hotel at 10.30am. The perfect time to wake, as Burlington Bertie well knew

    I am staying here


    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/greece/athens/hotels/the-modernist-athens-hotel/

    £100 a night. Insanely good value

    I had two strong coffees then set to some flint knapping. When the bulk was done I let the maids clean my room by retiring to the sun lashed roof terrace, where I had a prawn saganaki brunch, with some fine cold beers. With a view of the Acropolis.

    Then - thanks to the great advice of PB - I took a €4 Uber (which arrived in 2 minutes) from my hotel to the National Archaeological Museum. Took 6 minutes. Athens is empty. No queues.

    There I saw the Antikythera Mechanism, the most startling and provoking scientific artifact I have ever encountered in my life. No exaggeration. And I also saw the great hoards of Mycenaean gold unearthed by Schliemann. So I learned that noble Mycenaens would bury their dead babies in clothes of pure gold. Exquisitely sad yet somehow enriching

    Then I had a fucking big jug of ouzo in the museum gardens. Got another Uber home (4 minutes). I worked out on a weird wooden modernist peloton. Showered. Went to buy fine Cretan wine. Had a chat with locals.

    Then I ate ‘freakfish with seasonal greens’ in a streetside solonaki taverna under the plane trees - no idea what it was. But yummy. Also ‘soft Arcadian feta’. And then I argued with you guys about Vietnam.

    Now I lie abed, with Venus conspicuous overhead. Of such days is happiness made

    I think you'll find that's Jupiter but don't let that spoil your lovely day - sounds divine either way.

    A very fine day here in Dorset too, plenty of sunshine. Topped the wild flower meadow then watched Man U wallop Leeds. Caprese salad (inspired by @Leon) followed by fish pie washed down with a nice white Rioja. Happy days.
    Indeed. If there is one upside to a deadly global plague, it is this: learn to live in the moment. Tomorrow might not arrive.

    I’ve always tried to live by this sensible rule but of late I take it much more seriously. We aren’t here forever. In fact, we’re only here for 80 summers or so, and of those we’re only capable, mobile, sentient and adult for about 50. It’s absolutely nothing. It’s a blink. I know this is all cliche but sometimes we ignore truths because they sound cliched.

    Covid-19 has made me appreciate al fresco ‘freak fish with boiled seasonal greens’ in a mildly boring but pleasant Athenian Neighborhood like never before

    Tomorrow, the Parthenon
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    Leon said:

    I had an absolutely brilliant day today. I woke in my deeply soothing hotel at 10.30am. The perfect time to wake, as Burlington Bertie well knew

    I am staying here


    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/greece/athens/hotels/the-modernist-athens-hotel/

    £100 a night. Insanely good value

    I had two strong coffees then set to some flint knapping. When the bulk was done I let the maids clean my room by retiring to the sun lashed roof terrace, where I had a prawn saganaki brunch, with some fine cold beers. With a view of the Acropolis.

    Then - thanks to the great advice of PB - I took a €4 Uber (which arrived in 2 minutes) from my hotel to the National Archaeological Museum. Took 6 minutes. Athens is empty. No queues.

    There I saw the Antikythera Mechanism, the most startling and provoking scientific artifact I have ever encountered in my life. No exaggeration. And I also saw the great hoards of Mycenaean gold unearthed by Schliemann. So I learned that noble Mycenaens would bury their dead babies in clothes of pure gold. Exquisitely sad yet somehow enriching

    Then I had a fucking big jug of ouzo in the museum gardens. Got another Uber home (4 minutes). I worked out on a weird wooden modernist peloton. Showered. Went to buy fine Cretan wine. Had a chat with locals.

    Then I ate ‘freakfish with seasonal greens’ in a streetside solonaki taverna under the plane trees - no idea what it was. But yummy. Also ‘soft Arcadian feta’. And then I argued with you guys about Vietnam.

    Now I lie abed, with Venus conspicuous overhead. Of such days is happiness made

    I had a good day too. A full stadium and a Leicester win, albeit a rather tense second half. Wolves are terrible finishers and should have had a couple. Traore is strong as an ox and as speedy as a greyhound, but has the shooting accuracy of a sheep. Trincao (summer signing from Barca) is greased lightning too, but no end product.

    I was one of only half a dozen wearing a mask (FFP3 in my case) and with probably several hundred covid positives in the stadium, likely to be quite a spreader event. There were no covid checks of any sort. Takeaway curry on the way home. Lovely Jubbly.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 3,865

    Philip/Boris world:

    France should win the Euros.

    France win the Euros.

    Actually I didn't want France to win the Euros, England won the Euros.

    CorrectHorseBattery world:

    Portugal won the Euros.

    Why were England and Spain playing in the Euros this year? Portugal already won them years ago, don't they realise the Euros are done.
    You must have been on the sauce earlier than me Philip!
    Why you're acting as though because something was done in the past, there can't be new variants in the future.

    Just because dinner was done in the past, doesn't mean you can't have a new dinner today.
    Just because the Premier League was done in the past, doesn't mean a new season can't start today.
    Just because Brexit was done in the past, doesn't mean post-Brexit political debates can't happen today.

    Life doesn't end.
    The only thing that can never happen again is a Scottish referendum.
  • Foxy said:

    Owen Jones Rose
    @OwenJones84
    ·
    7h
    Labour have kicked out Ken Loach, Britain's greatest living film maker, whose films have moved and inspired millions, while readmitting Trevor Phillips.

    That tells you all you need to know about the state of the current Labour party.

    Ken Loach left Labour in the mid nineties, and only rejoined in 2016 as I understand, and in the meantime campaigned for a number of hard left and Trotskyist factions including Socialist Resistance and the Scargillite Socialist Labour Party.

    The idea that he is some cuddly heart and soul of Labour old member doesn't match his story arc very well. He looks more like a Trotskyite entryist.
    Is he even Britain's greatest living film maker?

    Nah, Nolan is
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,728
    Have just received copy of email sent by @USAID to partners on "Deteriorating Situation in Afghanistan," instructing them to "destroy all personal identifiable information" and advising U.S. and 3rd country nationals to depart immediately — "Do not wait to be evacuated."
    https://twitter.com/AlterIgoe/status/1426626225162887174
  • If you want to improve the Brexit deal then that's fine.

    But then Brexit isn't done - and you claiming it was in 2019 was a lie. And you claiming that the deal would resolve Brexit was also a lie.

    The deal has not done either, NI remains completely unresolved and pretending that a deal you said was great is now needing to be changed less than a year later suggests total dishonesty when you say the old deal wasn't rubbish. You implied it was above.

    No!

    Johnson has got Brexit done, he said so. The deal was oven ready for the microwave, he said so. If Brexit needs renegotiation he must be a massive liar because he said it was done, and "done" doesn't mean Brexit needs renogiation.

    If Brexit isn't infact "done", the RedWall must be told!
    Brexit is done.

    Done does require renegotiation because politics never ends. But that's post-Brexit now.
    I's not easy negotiating with a liar and someone who won't stick to the rules.
    You mean like the EU agreeing to renegotiate CAP if we get rid of half of our rebate, only to then refuse to renegotiate CAP after we do so?

    You're right, it burns bridges. The EU's acted like that for years though and I don't see it changing any time soon, so them getting a taste of their own medicine is karmic justice.
  • IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    South Korea was a dictatorship too until the mid Eighties, and North Korea had a higher GDP per capita into the late 1960s.

    The Korean War ended almost exactly where it began, with the Chinese having pushed the UN forces back to the start line from the Yalu River. It was a costly stalemate.

    Obviously the Vietcong and NLF won the Vietnam war. Americans like to pretend they were not defeated in the field, just by a stab in the back at home, with more than a whiff of a1920s Germany blame game. It is the new Noble Cause narrative, and in popular culture the American forces treated like martyred victims. The reality is that they routinely killed civilians, destroyed villages, made people destitute and homeless. Is it any wonder that they didn't win over the locals?

    My father's cousin was a Colonel there with the Australian Army. He was appalled at the conduct of the war, and quit the army in 1970 very disillusioned. He later developed a painful neuropathy that made his life a misery, thought to be due to exposure to Agent Orange.
    Just because war can be brutal does not mean the US were defeated on the battlefield. Again they went to war to prevent North Vietnam and the Vietcong taking over South Vietnam. That only occurred after the US forces had withdrawn
    Your support of the US right wing "Noble Cause" narrative of being undefeated on the battlefield is simply not true.

    America retreated from South Vietnam and Cambodia because the Vietnamese were inflicting too many casualties on them. That is what constitutes a defeat.
    No it is what constitutes losing a PR war and withdrawing your troops from the fight, not being defeated in battle
    Think of the American/Vietnam War as a PB argument. As long as you continue the fight, no amount of logical defeat matters, if you still participate, while your opponent gives up and goes home, you are the victor.

    The simplist, albeit extremely costly in terms of casualties, way to win a war is to keep fighting despite defeat. The Soviets did this in 1941-42, Mao did it on his long march, the Vietcong did it and so has the Taliban.
    An interesting point, not without merit. Just keep fighting until everyone gets so bored and weary they say Oh fuck it, here you go. Yes that happens, for sure. ‘The best lack all conviction’

    However I point you to the recent counter-example of the Remoaners. Such as our own Scott. Their extreme mulish stupidity and endless feuding grievance is not just pointless, it is counter-productive. They have already kicked away the chance of a compromise they might have tolerated, they are tarnishing their brand forever

    Rejoin = Nutters
    Nothing is forever.
    Explain that to @CorrectHorseBattery

    He thinks that if your dinner today is done, then you can't have dinner tomorrow. He doesn't understand that tomorrow's dinner will be a new dinner and not today's dinner.
    Yes, let me explain @CorrectHorseBattery:

    In Borisland just because we have negotiated and signed up to an agreement that doesn't mean we are going to stick to it tomorrow.
    Precisely.
    There we have it folks!
    What we do tomorrow is for the people of tomorrow to decide.

    Why would you think anything lasts forever? We signed up to the Lisbon Treaty and now we aren't sticking to it anymore. If we sign up to anything it means we intend to stick to it today, no more and no less than that.
    You really are a prick.
    Just because I'm right and you can't answer the argument?

    Nothing lasts forever.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Seems to be a lot of tweets from the Left about Loach and comparing with Trevor Philips.

    Looks coordinated to me.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    South Korea was a dictatorship too until the mid Eighties, and North Korea had a higher GDP per capita into the late 1960s.

    The Korean War ended almost exactly where it began, with the Chinese having pushed the UN forces back to the start line from the Yalu River. It was a costly stalemate.

    Obviously the Vietcong and NLF won the Vietnam war. Americans like to pretend they were not defeated in the field, just by a stab in the back at home, with more than a whiff of a1920s Germany blame game. It is the new Noble Cause narrative, and in popular culture the American forces treated like martyred victims. The reality is that they routinely killed civilians, destroyed villages, made people destitute and homeless. Is it any wonder that they didn't win over the locals?

    My father's cousin was a Colonel there with the Australian Army. He was appalled at the conduct of the war, and quit the army in 1970 very disillusioned. He later developed a painful neuropathy that made his life a misery, thought to be due to exposure to Agent Orange.
    Just because war can be brutal does not mean the US were defeated on the battlefield. Again they went to war to prevent North Vietnam and the Vietcong taking over South Vietnam. That only occurred after the US forces had withdrawn
    Your support of the US right wing "Noble Cause" narrative of being undefeated on the battlefield is simply not true.

    America retreated from South Vietnam and Cambodia because the Vietnamese were inflicting too many casualties on them. That is what constitutes a defeat.
    No it is what constitutes losing a PR war and withdrawing your troops from the fight, not being defeated in battle
    Think of the American/Vietnam War as a PB argument. As long as you continue the fight, no amount of logical defeat matters, if you still participate, while your opponent gives up and goes home, you are the victor.

    The simplist, albeit extremely costly in terms of casualties, way to win a war is to keep fighting despite defeat. The Soviets did this in 1941-42, Mao did it on his long march, the Vietcong did it and so has the Taliban.
    An interesting point, not without merit. Just keep fighting until everyone gets so bored and weary they say Oh fuck it, here you go. Yes that happens, for sure. ‘The best lack all conviction’

    However I point you to the recent counter-example of the Remoaners. Such as our own Scott. Their extreme mulish stupidity and endless feuding grievance is not just pointless, it is counter-productive. They have already kicked away the chance of a compromise they might have tolerated, they are tarnishing their brand forever

    Rejoin = Nutters
    Nothing is forever.
    Explain that to @CorrectHorseBattery

    He thinks that if your dinner today is done, then you can't have dinner tomorrow. He doesn't understand that tomorrow's dinner will be a new dinner and not today's dinner.
    Yes, let me explain @CorrectHorseBattery:

    In Borisland just because we have negotiated and signed up to an agreement that doesn't mean we are going to stick to it tomorrow.
    Precisely.
    There we have it folks!
    What we do tomorrow is for the people of tomorrow to decide.

    Why would you think anything lasts forever? We signed up to the Lisbon Treaty and now we aren't sticking to it anymore. If we sign up to anything it means we intend to stick to it today, no more and no less than that.
    You really are a prick.
    Just because I'm right and you can't answer the argument?

    Nothing lasts forever.
    Except PB arguments...
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,728
    @MsHelicat: Sunday's INDEPENDENT: Poor parts of UK suffer £1bn Brexit black hole
    #TomorrowsPapersToday https://twitter.com/MsHelicat/status/1426647978236944389/photo/1
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038

    Foxy said:

    Owen Jones Rose
    @OwenJones84
    ·
    7h
    Labour have kicked out Ken Loach, Britain's greatest living film maker, whose films have moved and inspired millions, while readmitting Trevor Phillips.

    That tells you all you need to know about the state of the current Labour party.

    Ken Loach left Labour in the mid nineties, and only rejoined in 2016 as I understand, and in the meantime campaigned for a number of hard left and Trotskyist factions including Socialist Resistance and the Scargillite Socialist Labour Party.

    The idea that he is some cuddly heart and soul of Labour old member doesn't match his story arc very well. He looks more like a Trotskyite entryist.
    Is he even Britain's greatest living film maker?

    Nah, Nolan is
    Ridley Scott?
  • Rishi seems to be very against this war on woke crap, my respect for him grows
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    How can Gove be promoted? He runs everything in this government while Johnson looks at wallpaper pattern books and does visits in hi-viz jackets.
  • How can Gove be promoted? He runs everything in this government while Johnson looks at wallpaper pattern books and does visits in hi-viz jackets.
    They take it in turns, Govey PM on days ending in "day"
  • Stark_DawningStark_Dawning Posts: 9,232

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    South Korea was a dictatorship too until the mid Eighties, and North Korea had a higher GDP per capita into the late 1960s.

    The Korean War ended almost exactly where it began, with the Chinese having pushed the UN forces back to the start line from the Yalu River. It was a costly stalemate.

    Obviously the Vietcong and NLF won the Vietnam war. Americans like to pretend they were not defeated in the field, just by a stab in the back at home, with more than a whiff of a1920s Germany blame game. It is the new Noble Cause narrative, and in popular culture the American forces treated like martyred victims. The reality is that they routinely killed civilians, destroyed villages, made people destitute and homeless. Is it any wonder that they didn't win over the locals?

    My father's cousin was a Colonel there with the Australian Army. He was appalled at the conduct of the war, and quit the army in 1970 very disillusioned. He later developed a painful neuropathy that made his life a misery, thought to be due to exposure to Agent Orange.
    Just because war can be brutal does not mean the US were defeated on the battlefield. Again they went to war to prevent North Vietnam and the Vietcong taking over South Vietnam. That only occurred after the US forces had withdrawn
    Your support of the US right wing "Noble Cause" narrative of being undefeated on the battlefield is simply not true.

    America retreated from South Vietnam and Cambodia because the Vietnamese were inflicting too many casualties on them. That is what constitutes a defeat.
    No it is what constitutes losing a PR war and withdrawing your troops from the fight, not being defeated in battle
    Think of the American/Vietnam War as a PB argument. As long as you continue the fight, no amount of logical defeat matters, if you still participate, while your opponent gives up and goes home, you are the victor.

    The simplist, albeit extremely costly in terms of casualties, way to win a war is to keep fighting despite defeat. The Soviets did this in 1941-42, Mao did it on his long march, the Vietcong did it and so has the Taliban.
    An interesting point, not without merit. Just keep fighting until everyone gets so bored and weary they say Oh fuck it, here you go. Yes that happens, for sure. ‘The best lack all conviction’

    However I point you to the recent counter-example of the Remoaners. Such as our own Scott. Their extreme mulish stupidity and endless feuding grievance is not just pointless, it is counter-productive. They have already kicked away the chance of a compromise they might have tolerated, they are tarnishing their brand forever

    Rejoin = Nutters
    Nothing is forever.
    Explain that to @CorrectHorseBattery

    He thinks that if your dinner today is done, then you can't have dinner tomorrow. He doesn't understand that tomorrow's dinner will be a new dinner and not today's dinner.
    Yes, let me explain @CorrectHorseBattery:

    In Borisland just because we have negotiated and signed up to an agreement that doesn't mean we are going to stick to it tomorrow.
    Precisely.
    There we have it folks!
    What we do tomorrow is for the people of tomorrow to decide.

    Why would you think anything lasts forever? We signed up to the Lisbon Treaty and now we aren't sticking to it anymore. If we sign up to anything it means we intend to stick to it today, no more and no less than that.
    You really are a prick.
    Just because I'm right and you can't answer the argument?

    Nothing lasts forever.
    Wasn't your gripe with Theresa's deal that it crushed us beneath the EU yoke in perpetuity? Couldn't we have signed up and then just ignored it when it suited us then?
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited August 2021
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    I had an absolutely brilliant day today. I woke in my deeply soothing hotel at 10.30am. The perfect time to wake, as Burlington Bertie well knew

    I am staying here


    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/greece/athens/hotels/the-modernist-athens-hotel/

    £100 a night. Insanely good value

    I had two strong coffees then set to some flint knapping. When the bulk was done I let the maids clean my room by retiring to the sun lashed roof terrace, where I had a prawn saganaki brunch, with some fine cold beers. With a view of the Acropolis.

    Then - thanks to the great advice of PB - I took a €4 Uber (which arrived in 2 minutes) from my hotel to the National Archaeological Museum. Took 6 minutes. Athens is empty. No queues.

    There I saw the Antikythera Mechanism, the most startling and provoking scientific artifact I have ever encountered in my life. No exaggeration. And I also saw the great hoards of Mycenaean gold unearthed by Schliemann. So I learned that noble Mycenaens would bury their dead babies in clothes of pure gold. Exquisitely sad yet somehow enriching

    Then I had a fucking big jug of ouzo in the museum gardens. Got another Uber home (4 minutes). I worked out on a weird wooden modernist peloton. Showered. Went to buy fine Cretan wine. Had a chat with locals.

    Then I ate ‘freakfish with seasonal greens’ in a streetside solonaki taverna under the plane trees - no idea what it was. But yummy. Also ‘soft Arcadian feta’. And then I argued with you guys about Vietnam.

    Now I lie abed, with Venus conspicuous overhead. Of such days is happiness made

    I think you'll find that's Jupiter but don't let that spoil your lovely day - sounds divine either way.

    A very fine day here in Dorset too, plenty of sunshine. Topped the wild flower meadow then watched Man U wallop Leeds. Caprese salad (inspired by @Leon) followed by fish pie washed down with a nice white Rioja. Happy days.
    Indeed. If there is one upside to a deadly global plague, it is this: learn to live in the moment. Tomorrow might not arrive.

    I’ve always tried to live by this sensible rule but of late I take it much more seriously. We aren’t here forever. In fact, we’re only here for 80 summers or so, and of those we’re only capable, mobile, sentient and adult for about 50. It’s absolutely nothing. It’s a blink. I know this is all cliche but sometimes we ignore truths because they sound cliched.

    Covid-19 has made me appreciate al fresco ‘freak fish with boiled seasonal greens’ in a mildly boring but pleasant Athenian Neighborhood like never before

    Tomorrow, the Parthenon
    Go early or late to avoid the crowds and heat, I would recommend.
  • IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    "With all its might and hi-tech sophistication, the US has allowed itself to be beaten by medieval dogmatists on horseback."

    Rory Stewart

    I think we should just pay him a few billion and get him to sort it out. My guess is that he would mostly.
    He is unusually and impressively, genuinely connected with the region. He's also extremely articulate. It's such a shame that he was tossed aside..
    He chose to step aside. I rate him very highly. His specialist subject is Afghanistan, and I'd just let him try. Anything he wants in terms of funding. I'd guess not more than a 30% chance of success, but that's better than the current 0%.
    It should be noted that in Vietnam the US military machine was beaten effectively by a load of peasants on 1/2 bowl of rice a day and cheap rifles.
    This always amuses me

    This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's
    The US won the Korean War, North Korea was forced back out of South Korea after the North Korean invasion of the South and South Korea remains independent today
    That’s an extremely one-sided interpretation of the Korean War. It would be more accurate to say the UN (not the US, forces from 16 nations were involved) was not defeated.
    Not defeated is not the same as won though
    That was my point.
    Ah sorry thought you were supporting the they won argument
    I don’t think anyone can claim they ‘won’ the Korean War, although that didn’t stop Mao, Syngman and Kim from trying to.

    The most succinct summary of the outcome I ever came across was John Farnham. ‘It cost 2 million [actually more like 3 million] lives to get exactly nowhere.’
    The West very definitely won the Korean War. Look at South Korea and North Korea now. The latter is disowned even by the Chinese. The former is an economic powerhouse and cultural superpower. Western values prevailed. And yay

    The West lost the Vietnam war. Tho Vietnam is now virulently capitalist in all but name, and Ho Chi Minh City now calls itself Saigon, once again, and looks more to Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore than Beijing
    South Korea was a dictatorship too until the mid Eighties, and North Korea had a higher GDP per capita into the late 1960s.

    The Korean War ended almost exactly where it began, with the Chinese having pushed the UN forces back to the start line from the Yalu River. It was a costly stalemate.

    Obviously the Vietcong and NLF won the Vietnam war. Americans like to pretend they were not defeated in the field, just by a stab in the back at home, with more than a whiff of a1920s Germany blame game. It is the new Noble Cause narrative, and in popular culture the American forces treated like martyred victims. The reality is that they routinely killed civilians, destroyed villages, made people destitute and homeless. Is it any wonder that they didn't win over the locals?

    My father's cousin was a Colonel there with the Australian Army. He was appalled at the conduct of the war, and quit the army in 1970 very disillusioned. He later developed a painful neuropathy that made his life a misery, thought to be due to exposure to Agent Orange.
    Just because war can be brutal does not mean the US were defeated on the battlefield. Again they went to war to prevent North Vietnam and the Vietcong taking over South Vietnam. That only occurred after the US forces had withdrawn
    Your support of the US right wing "Noble Cause" narrative of being undefeated on the battlefield is simply not true.

    America retreated from South Vietnam and Cambodia because the Vietnamese were inflicting too many casualties on them. That is what constitutes a defeat.
    No it is what constitutes losing a PR war and withdrawing your troops from the fight, not being defeated in battle
    Think of the American/Vietnam War as a PB argument. As long as you continue the fight, no amount of logical defeat matters, if you still participate, while your opponent gives up and goes home, you are the victor.

    The simplist, albeit extremely costly in terms of casualties, way to win a war is to keep fighting despite defeat. The Soviets did this in 1941-42, Mao did it on his long march, the Vietcong did it and so has the Taliban.
    An interesting point, not without merit. Just keep fighting until everyone gets so bored and weary they say Oh fuck it, here you go. Yes that happens, for sure. ‘The best lack all conviction’

    However I point you to the recent counter-example of the Remoaners. Such as our own Scott. Their extreme mulish stupidity and endless feuding grievance is not just pointless, it is counter-productive. They have already kicked away the chance of a compromise they might have tolerated, they are tarnishing their brand forever

    Rejoin = Nutters
    Nothing is forever.
    Explain that to @CorrectHorseBattery

    He thinks that if your dinner today is done, then you can't have dinner tomorrow. He doesn't understand that tomorrow's dinner will be a new dinner and not today's dinner.
    Yes, let me explain @CorrectHorseBattery:

    In Borisland just because we have negotiated and signed up to an agreement that doesn't mean we are going to stick to it tomorrow.
    Precisely.
    There we have it folks!
    What we do tomorrow is for the people of tomorrow to decide.

    Why would you think anything lasts forever? We signed up to the Lisbon Treaty and now we aren't sticking to it anymore. If we sign up to anything it means we intend to stick to it today, no more and no less than that.
    You really are a prick.
    Just because I'm right and you can't answer the argument?

    Nothing lasts forever.
    Wasn't your gripe with Theresa's deal that it crushed us beneath the EU yoke in perpetuity? Couldn't we have signed up and then just ignored it when it suited us then?
    There was no unilateral exit to Theresa's deal.

    There is to the NI Protocol. Article 16.

    Had there been a unilateral exit to Theresa's deal then I'd have backed it.
  • AslanAslan Posts: 1,673
    Lol. Guy that works for Al Jazeera complaining about other TV channels "peddling in hate". These are the guys that refer to suicide terrorists as "martyrs".
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392

    Rishi seems to be very against this war on woke crap, my respect for him grows

    I think certain things percieved as overly 'woke' can be criticised or tackled organically, as something the majority see as silly gets attention, but trying to manufacture things into a full on culture war, so it can be an easy distraction whenever the party wants, is trying too hard and counter productive, as you are bound to pick a fight you won't win if you go looking for the fights like that.
  • https://twitter.com/trillingual/status/1426631700231168007

    And this is where the rhetoric against refugees ends, with people dying. Bravo BoJo
This discussion has been closed.