Jurjen Smies

"Unjielding"?

You can tell this is happening in European courts rather than American ones, where some family in Louisiana owns the trademark of a Mexican state (Tabasco), and some rice-growing conglomerate was able to trademark "basmati" excluding Indian farmers growing the real thing.

No. The Geneva Conventions are an example of ius in bello: how you're allowed to fight. The outcomes of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and the UN Charter are examples of ius ad bellum: when and why you're allowed to fight.

After last June, *of course* the Iranians set up retaliatory strikes in the event they got attacked again. Of course they'd dust off the plans to throttle the Strait of Hormuz. They'd be crazy not to, and in military planning, you don't get to count on the enemy being crazy.

A phrase I heard earlier this week, but realized I'd known the truth of before, is that the enemy gets a vote in the success of your plan. And if you didn't factor in how the enemy might respond, you're setting yourself up for failure.

I can only guess as to the motivations and thought (🤣) processes of the regime. I think they keep thinking that they can engage in several days of bombing, the enemy will say "uncle," crisis resolved! Mission accomplished! Behold the strength of Dear Leader Trump!

Ius ad bellum translates (sort of) to "law towards war" (law about war, something like that). It's about the circumstances under which war is declared.

Ius in bello is "law within war"; we're fighting, and whether or not our motives are pure, are we fighting cleanly?

[...] you're still violating ius in bello.

If you invade and occupy another country without provocation, but your troops behave in an exemplary fashion, you might be good on ius in bello but still violate ius ad bellum.

Ius ad bellum concerns your justification in going to war at all.

Ius in bello concerns your behavior while at war, whether or not you're justified in being at war.

Say your country is invaded and you're good on ius ad bellum, if you round up and kill the other country's civilian nationals [...]

For my part, I'm amazed by how threatened English people felt by Quakers. Both High Church and Low Church hated them. And they might be annoying but they're pacifists; they're not going to make you join them by force!

Hegseth probably doesn't realize that his church probably wouldn't even exist if government hadn't been prevented from meddling in religion.

At the time of the Framing, there were at least four major branches of Protestantism in the US, each of whom regarded the others as heretics and didn't want them to be able to wield the power of the federal government to spread their heresy. Hence the compromise of separating church and state. [...]

There is no "Department of War" and acquiescing to that term is bending the knee in itself.

And that was when the crisis wasn't directly precipitated by the administration, giving them every opportunity to put measures in place.

This is just such a complete and utter clusterfuck.

A huge plexiglas barrier against hurricanes, constructed in the western Atlantic. Noem will serve as a sacrifice to any sea monsters that may come along.

An excellent argument for abolishing DHS in its entirety, including the TSA.

Shades of the sinking of the General Belgrano.

And now you've given them casus belli and embroiled is in a war, even though that wasn't what you wanted, because unfortunately the enemy gets a vote in how your plans play out.

[...] target country casus belli" and thus risks causing a war even if you hoped they'd fold. Sure, Trump doesn't want wars, he wants to burn a hundred million in munitions, kill some brown people, and declare victory. Problem arises when the brown people give the Rage Against The Machine answer.

There's been plenty of debate over the decades as to what makes an armed confrontation a war, as opposed to a clash or skirmish or whatnot, especially since formally declaring war has gone out of style. Still, there's an "act of war" which might be defined as "doing something that gives the [...]

Roc & roll, baby!

To someone like Hegseth, it's not about how many people you lose, it's about how many non-combatants you're unconcerned about killing.

Why read past headlines: you get to enjoy the use of words like "redound" and "dastardly."

I think what we're seeing right now, with drones flying at targets in the Gulf States and Israel, is the maximum of what Iran can do, and they can't sustain it. (Neither can the US and Israel, mind you.)

[...] that nobody really likes the mullahs, not even many Iranians. They're not an existential threat to the US. They probably can't manage to be an existential threat to Israel, and I'm not sure they'd actually want to eradicate Israel because then there'd be no common ground with the H-militias.

Iran has been using these proxy militias for the past couple of decades for a reason. They're quite capable of defending their home turf but they don't have the capabilities to go on the offensive unless someone can bleed for them (Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis). This is not aided by the fact [...]

[...] Fine, Khamenei's dead and it couldn't have happened to a nicer person, but he was ancient. We could have achieved the same result with a modicum of patience and let the Grim Reaper do the job.

[...] because that's not how Trump likes to do things. He just wants to drop some bombs to "show strength" and declare victory after a few days, because his attention span doesn't go further.

And then we'll go back to poking at each other like we've been doing since the mid-1980s. [...]

Well, I'm sure it won't be endless because neither side has the capability to keep going that long. Trump is already burning through our munitions stocks at an alarming rate, more so if we have to keep the Kheil HaAvir supplied as well. And it's not like we're going to get into a ground war [...]