machiabelly [she/her]

  • 5 Posts
  • 127 Comments
Joined 6 years ago
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Cake day: November 1st, 2020

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  • From a young age I thought about going to war and what that would be like. My father was quite nationalistic and even asked me once (when I was like 10 or 12 or 13) if I would enlist in a defensive war against the USA, if I was 18. When I said yes he was as proud as I’d ever seen him. I watched band of brothers with him and my brother quite often, also from a young age, I spent a lot of time trying to get inside the minds of the soldiers there, so as to understand if I could perform in that kind of environment, and what it would take to do so.

    When I hear, Green Fields of France, John McDermott, it reminds me of the fear I had as a kid watching those movies/shows, wondering if one of those soldiers might be me. Through the tragedy I saw on screen I learned to steel my heart, and this song returns me to what I encased within, the innocence I buried because that’s what I thought being a man was. I’ve been a woman my whole life, but I didn’t know then. What I did know was that manhood was something I had to perform. On some level I knew being a man wasn’t inherent to me, so I constructed one inside of me.

    The first time I heard this song I was riding in my Dad’s car, younger than the above, and so hearing the song connects me to that time, and how scary it was when I first started to reckon with the idea of whether I’d go to war in the future.













  • Its hard to know exactly but one thing to consider is the difference in conditions for victory for each side. In order for the USA to win they need to put in place an entirely new government in Tehran. At this point it seems likely that the only way for them to do that would be with a successful boots on the ground invasion. Invading a country halfway across the world, with supply lines exposed to missile fire, the size of Alaska, with the geography of Switzerland, just doesn’t seem realistic. Especially considering the US couldn’t even produce enough materiel for fucking Ukraine.

    Iran’s condition for total victory is to take away the US’s ability to project power into the middle east. If Iran can force the US to abandon its bases and force its allies abandon the cause, they will win, resoundingly. While still a huge ask this seems much more realistic on its surface. The US doesn’t have the ability to handle losses on the homefront, they’re running out of munitions, and their economy is teetering on the brink.

    The big scary is the US’s nuclear arsenal. If they use nukes against Iran everything goes to shit and I have no idea how things will end up. Certainly terrible for Iran but also likely terrible for the US in the long run.

    Its possible for Iran’s tactical outlook to be bleak, but still have the better strategic position, unless the US uses nukes.

    (Though there are certainly people more knowledgeable than me)