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Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

There are plenty of countries in the world that have questionable human rights records. Many of whom the "West" has quite strong relationships with e.g. China, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Russia.

Putting a blindfold on and pretending you can just contain or ignore certain countries has failed as a strategy and will continue to fail. So unless you want to do something about Iran militarily (not feasible) then you are looking at diplomacy.

And let's face it. The US is not good at wars.

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You're right. Israel has such a questionable human rights record that it has been condemned more by the UNHRC than all other countries combined[1]. That UNHRC currently contains such paragons as Saudi Arabia, China and Cuba.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Human_Rights_Co...

22 condemned on Israel

0 on Al Nusra (Al Qaida rebranded for leftists to love)

1 on ISIS.

It's not uncommon to hear Israel is worse than ISIS... in Sweden.

> The US is not good at wars.

What? We can kick pretty much any country's ass six ways from Sunday. We admittedly have trouble with having the political fortitude to fully break our adversary's will to fight back, but I think that is a systemic issue with a faster flow of information (starting with Vietnam). It's not necessarily a US-specific problem, and it certainly doesn't mean the US is not "good at war".

While we can agree to disagree on the feasibility of a military solution, I can assure you that it's the threat of that possibility that drives diplomacy. Diplomacy without the threat of war to back it is more akin to begging than anything else.

I'd read this as "The US is not good at cleaning up after wars" more than whether the US is good at "kicking ass"

It's the way things are. You have to subdue the opposing side completely, or the war never ends. Doing this means essentially beating them mercilessly until they have no choice to fully capitulate. It's not that we lack the capability, it's that soccer moms don't want to see that shit on CNN. War is an ugly business, and we seem to have lost our stomach for it. Time will tell if it is to our benefit or determent.

Well, ask the soviets how it worked out for them. I'm sorry, but your military is nowhere near as badass when it comes to subduction and ruthlessness. And the soviets failed spectacularly.

Oh really, so those Iraqi franc-tireurs and IEDs were just simulations then then? Maybe Baudrillard is still alive....winning a war involves having an endgame in line with victory objectives, and the US can't rule over countries that don't have a coherent political structure in place to dicker over costs and benefits upon exit.

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