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On January 11 2020 05:37 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2020 05:31 BlueBird. wrote:On January 11 2020 05:30 Mohdoo wrote:
Reminder: Iran wants people to believe they should be allowed to have nuclear weapons and yet they also accidentally shot down a plane that left their own airport. Come on... we have nukes yet flight 655 happened. Making a mistake 30 years ago is very different from making the same mistake current day. Especially with all that was learned from that. Chernoybl happened and yet modern nuclear reactors based on uranium are safer than coal. Things change. Chernobyl happening today would be an amazing failure whereas Chernobyl at the time was a result of rushing progress and insufficient budgeting. When the world learns together, then someone makes a significantly worse mistake 30 years later, it does a good job at framing capability. The level of incompetence it takes to shoot down a plane in your own country can't be understated.
Seriously? Fukushima? Also Russia has Nukes and had nukes during the 90s. Pakistan has nukes. Name one thing in Iran that makes them look more incompetent or evil. And have you seen Last week tonight about your nuclear arsenal? By your own argument about how progress makes everything safer, Iran building a new nuke with current technology should be x times safer then your current arsenal...
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On January 11 2020 07:38 Erasme wrote:
Trump might be losing some republicans with this whole 'imminent attack'. Could it impact the vote in the senate ?
Very hard to say at this point, but the fissures in Trump's legislative support have never been greater than they are now.
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On January 11 2020 07:38 Erasme wrote:
Trump might be losing some republicans with this whole 'imminent attack'. Could it impact the vote in the senate ?
The war powers vote or the impeachment vote?
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On January 11 2020 08:38 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2020 07:38 Erasme wrote:
Trump might be losing some republicans with this whole 'imminent attack'. Could it impact the vote in the senate ? The war powers vote or the impeachment vote?
Is the war powers vote in question? Pretty sure that will pass.
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On January 11 2020 10:24 IyMoon wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2020 08:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On January 11 2020 07:38 Erasme wrote:
Trump might be losing some republicans with this whole 'imminent attack'. Could it impact the vote in the senate ? The war powers vote or the impeachment vote? Is the war powers vote in question? Pretty sure that will pass.
For real or for show? Meaning veto-proof or like Yemen?
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On January 11 2020 07:48 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2020 07:38 Erasme wrote:
Trump might be losing some republicans with this whole 'imminent attack'. Could it impact the vote in the senate ? Very hard to say at this point, but the fissures in Trump's legislative support have never been greater than they are now.
We've seen that nothing is going to break them from him. What more will it take?
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Iran apparently officially admitted shooting down that plane.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/world/middleeast/missile-iran-plane-crash.html
Iran announced early Saturday that it had accidentally shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet, blaming human error because of what it called the plane’s sharp, unexpected turn toward a sensitive military base, according to a statement issued by the country’s military.
The announcement reversed Iran’s claims that mechanical issues caused the crash of the aircraft on Wednesday, which killed all 176 people aboard. It had persistently denied that Iranian military defenses had downed the aircraft, a Boeing 737-800.
The Iranian military's statement said the plane “took the flying posture and altitude of an enemy target” as it came close to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps base. It said that “under these circumstances, because of human error,” the plane “came under fire.”
Flight 665 all over again. Literally. Some dumb dick not checking what's happening, and pressing the boom button. It's pretty much 1 to 1 the "excuse" that was given by the US for Flight 665.
edit: though, there's one key difference here.
Iran is officially regretting and apologising, accepting that it was a mistake and with that, responsibility.
Not that it'd make it any less tragic, but i bet that feels better than the US' "deal with it lol" while giving the captain a medal.
Don't know what else to say there, thought that tweet adds value.
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Extremely tragic, but good to see them admit it. Much better than Russia's eternal denial and propganda spin campaigns.
I really don't understand how they failed to identify the plane given that it launched from Teheran...but I guess anti air crews were stressed out of their minds, given that the very first thing the US would bomb in a retaliation strike would be anti-air.
Still a huge mess with catastrophic consequences for a lot of families. I wonder how the missile crew will be treated given that they killed their own people too.
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The missile crew is getting shot out of a cannon as scapegoats, I imagine.
Fairly major backflip after such strident denials. Guess they realised it just wasn't possible to hide the evidence. I wonder if they actually did bulldoze the crash site first like a lot of places are reporting.
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On January 11 2020 14:22 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:
Extremely tragic, but good to see them admit it. Much better than Russia's eternal denial.
I really don't understand how they failed to identify the plane given that it launched from Teheran...but I guess anti air crews were stressed out of their minds, given that the very first thing the US would bomb in a retaliation strike would be anti-air.
Still a huge mess with catastrophic consequences for a lot of families. I wonder how the missile crew will be treated given that they killed their own people too.
I don't think the crew was even thinking about retaliation by the US. For that they'd need to have known that Iran launched missiles against US bases, and that's not entirely likely. Much like some boots on the ground in Iraq didn't know that a drone attack was initiated by the US.
They probably just got put into high alert, freaking out over the prospect that they're actually at war now - expecting a US air raid.
It's not an excuse, i'm of the opinion that a soldier always should be able to deal with pressure and not have it cloud his judgement (that's how civilians die). Just what i think has happened.
In regards to the plane itself: i think the problem was indeed that it was coming from Teheran airport. Which meant it was very low in altitude (which is where fighter jets operate).
Still absolutely tragic. If a mistake of that magnitude would've happened to me (and thank god, while i was operator of quite some firepower, even running amok i couldn't have done this kind of damage), as a soldier with a weapon in my holster.. I don't know.
The missile crew is getting shot out of a cannon as scapegoats, I imagine.
Erm.. Who else would be to blame if not the guy who targeted and fired the missile? They don't wait for an invitation or fire command from the president if they're on high alert. They alone make the call, and in this case it was tragically the wrong one.
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On January 11 2020 14:31 m4ini wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2020 14:22 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:
Extremely tragic, but good to see them admit it. Much better than Russia's eternal denial.
I really don't understand how they failed to identify the plane given that it launched from Teheran...but I guess anti air crews were stressed out of their minds, given that the very first thing the US would bomb in a retaliation strike would be anti-air.
Still a huge mess with catastrophic consequences for a lot of families. I wonder how the missile crew will be treated given that they killed their own people too.
I don't think the crew was even thinking about retaliation by the US.
Trump publicly stated a very large amount of Iranian targets would be hit if anything happened. Unless its all long range missiles, if using planes you need to take out enemy anti air first thing. It had to be in the back of their minds that there was real danger of them being taken out in these strikes promised by Trump.
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On January 11 2020 14:42 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2020 14:31 m4ini wrote:On January 11 2020 14:22 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:
Extremely tragic, but good to see them admit it. Much better than Russia's eternal denial.
I really don't understand how they failed to identify the plane given that it launched from Teheran...but I guess anti air crews were stressed out of their minds, given that the very first thing the US would bomb in a retaliation strike would be anti-air.
Still a huge mess with catastrophic consequences for a lot of families. I wonder how the missile crew will be treated given that they killed their own people too.
I don't think the crew was even thinking about retaliation by the US. Trump publicly stated a very large amount of Iranian targets would be hit if anything happened. Unless its all long range missiles, if using planes you need to take out enemy anti air first thing. It had to be in the back of their minds that there was real danger of them being taken out in these strikes promised by Trump.
Eh?
That implies that the air defense crew knew that they launched ballistic missiles. Again, i don't think they did if they weren't in the flight path.
But i see what you mean, and yeah, that's probably correct either way. Still doesn't excuse it, i'm 100% certain that it could've been avoided just by "looking at the data" (much like flight 665).
Soldiers need to be able to handle this kind of pressure. Doesn't matter if it's iranian military, US military, german, french or british. If you're in a position where a wrong decision can kill hundreds of civilians, you have to be level headed even if under fire (especially on weapons without chain of command when on high alert, where the operator has to make the call). Otherwise, this happens.
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I'm not trying to excuse them, it's clear incompetence and reckless behavior and they should be tried for it. I'm just trying to figure out how you end up not identifying something launched from your own airport and the only thing I can come up with is that they were in some state of panic.
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On January 11 2020 15:19 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:
I'm not trying to excuse them, it's clear incompetence and reckless behavior and they should be tried for it. I'm just trying to figure out how you end up not identifying something launched from your own airport and the only thing I can come up with is that they were in some state of panic.
Thing suddenly shows up on scope on a fast bearing towards you where you have no time to make a decision, you have to react.
A, it just lifted and thus shows up now.
B, you just broke its stealth due to it coming near enough.
A is what happened, B is probably what the person thought happened in the 1s or whatever he took to make the decision. Assuming it wasn't programmed in and hit the trigger points for automatic launch.
There is also the suicide bomber scenario to consider. The example in the US from 2001 is probably still taught when considering if you should shoot or not.
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On January 11 2020 14:22 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:
Extremely tragic, but good to see them admit it. Much better than Russia's eternal denial and propganda spin campaigns.
I really don't understand how they failed to identify the plane given that it launched from Teheran...but I guess anti air crews were stressed out of their minds, given that the very first thing the US would bomb in a retaliation strike would be anti-air.
Still a huge mess with catastrophic consequences for a lot of families. I wonder how the missile crew will be treated given that they killed their own people too.
Official explanation states that :
The plane was mistaken for a hostile target after it turned towards a sensitive military centre of the Revolutionary Guard, the military statement carried on the offical IRNA news agency said.
There's no excuse for not shutting down the airport that day. The US shares some responsibility imo (largely less than half, but a little.)
At least they admitted. Better late than never.
It also seems that another assassination of the financier of that Iranian group was planned on the same day in Yemen, but no further explanation on the attempt or the reasons for the failure if they tried to carry it out was given.
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Now, I have been lurking on these forums since sc2 came out, so close to 10 years....and this might be the weirdest thing to actually motivate me to make a post, but I just can't help myself I guess:
On January 11 2020 02:13 Mohdoo wrote:
I can describe political and cultural differences between a wide variety of countries in Europe. I don't know which shape is which on a map, but I know the general'ish of where they are. I am not going to pretend knowing which shape is which on a map is more important than the culture/military/history/economy/politics of a country.
Knowledge of geography and the history of borders is - at least according to my own limited experiences of trying to follow world politics and being interested in history  - fundamentally important for developing an actual understanding of a people's culture/military/history/economy and politics.
Infact even at school I had already been sort of interested in history, but only had the vagueish geographical knowledge you describe. I could've for example found Cairo on a map and would've been able to point into the general direction of Syria or Iran, but I would have been able to do this by logical deduction ("ah here is a big river, this should probably be the Nile ergo Egypt", "Syria is somwhere around Israel but not in Turkey right?", "Iran is a sort of big country to the north east of the arabian peninsula") and not because I actually was comfortable with a region's geography and the ebb and flow of borders. So much changes though when you actively "know" how the Levant relates to Egypt, Turkey and, to the east, connects with Mesopotamia and how Mesopotamia then is bordered by mountain ranges and vast arid areas. It, for example, becomes immediately obvious why the "European" empires like the Romans, the Byzantines or the Ottomans tried (sometimes successfully) to conquer Mesopotamia (Iraq) but never could go further.
Or, lets say if you want to understand the current geopolitical and cultural situation of India. So much becomes clear about the tensions that exist between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh if you know how, after the dissolution of the British Raj, borders were actually drafted (e.g. that Bangladesh=East Pakistan was actually a part of Pakistan even though it is to the east of India in the Bengali delta and shares no border with Pakistan at all) If you then go further back in history to the time when a muslim (timurid) warlord started his conquest of the Indian subcontinent (now Pakistan, India and Bangladesh) from the mountains of Afghanistan and formed the Mughal empire, you can see how the Brits could later pick up the ruins of this empire and build their Raj and why then, after the spread of nationalism and religious tensions, 2 (and a half) countries sprang out of India..
I don't know I am probably not expressing myself all that well.. to put it simply: for me when I got to know the geography of a region better so much of its past history/current politics etc etc just started to "click", to make sense..(I could give endless examples of that).
Most of that I simply learned by extensively consulting maps (online) while listening to some history podcast (there are so many fantastic ones out there, and they are so much better than the education you get a school...).
Now, in many ways I am quite happy with what I learned at school (Maths, Physics, English, French etc) but when I look back at my history lessons I am deeply disappointed. I actually think I had fine (history) teachers, it is simply the way history was taught a school that I find extremely lacking and I have always wondered how it could have been improved..one way: maps!
So while I advocate against maps, I advocate FOR culture etc
So when sb advocates against maps, I have to firmly disagree. You never should have to memorize maps for its own sake, but you should look at them (a wide variety of them), constantly (while learning about history or politics), and with time you will have memorized them...in the right context maps are fun and bring history to life 
Also go play Europa Universalis, you will become an expert at geography
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This is very valuable and true observation. Geography shapes politics, military, culture. I also second the Europa Universalis part i already suggested this before to some people in this very thread
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Norway28735 Posts
as a history/sociology teacher, I always make a point out of showing where we are on maps, whether it's history or contemporary stuff.
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I don't really think borders and maps take that much place in my head, I just know where shit is that's all. That being said you can know that there is border conflict between two groups without knowing where exactly the border is.
One thing that I still find amazing is I still sometimes hear of a town in Russia or China that I've never heard of before and more than 1 million people live there.
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I just want to say that a particular aspect of my argument that got a little obscured is that general knowledge about foreign places can be low without much of a problem, the issue is then it shouldn't be followed by blind agreement with killing the people living there.
Wanting to kill people one has never met or interacted with should inspire people to at least clear the bar of knowing where in the world they are imo.
Their geographical location (rather than cultural, economic, etc... position) is the absolute bare minimum imo.
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EPT
