Bear in mind that “doing the reading”, sitting exams, & getting good grades, is what this guy does (& probably a happy past for him because he hasn’t had much of a career before politics)
It’s just that once he’s “unleashed” & isn’t writing what he think the professor wants to read, he’s whacky.
Correct
He gathers information and thinks deeply about it
He just has some extremely whacky normative preferences that will skew some of his conclusions very badly (& alongside that he has a naive/immature sense of the world)
He’s a Persian Christian remember ? His cousin made a family tree!
I think it’s very clear Sunak writes this himself and enjoys doing so
He isn’t shallow at all - but he is naive & very ideological on any topic that matters
There’s zero prospect of Labour becoming a rational capable median left of centre European party while Blair has any place in public life or influence over Labour
19 years out of office & he’s still trying to manipulate events for a war
All these claims that opinion of him can be revised are dumb
What’s funny about these idiots is that there are genuine experts in this field and they really don’t believe what the fanboys say (& to be clear many of the tech CEOs might have that expertise - but I’m going to suggest they maybe don’t believe it either - it’s a sales patter for their pay packet)
That Israel has started bombing Iranian oil storage facilities is strongly indicative of Israel believing Trump is going to wrap up the war no matter what relatively soon, so they’re going to just cause Iran financial pain that will last after the war ends
He comes across as a smart, detailed oriented guy who is mostly pragmatic but has a small number of quite extreme ideological blindspots - & he just has bad judgment for decision-making & risk management - someone without much life experience who got over promoted
I think the Tory position is more revealing of the shortcomings of the Tory MPs now than that of Reform who are cheerfully dishonest (& focused on vibes not policy) - & I suspect like Brexit they will regard anyone who critiques the flaws with facts to be a kind of traitor: they’re theologians.
The capacity also isn’t there
Even putting aside Russia & Ukraine, Britain’s military is in a different place than where it was in 2003
Many of these rightwingers need to look up the retreat from East of Suez and consider why it happened
Good observation
It’s the government of Dubai paying you
It’s also just ridiculous that Sunak thinks the UK joining from day one could have shaped this project
Blair failed to shape the substance of Dubya’s project & Dubya cared a lot more about the UK & a bit less about Israel than Trump does, so it’s absurd to think anyone could shape this plan
The opening of Jarhead where he recalls before deployment they watch Vietnam war films - all of them, including obviously anti war ones like Platoon & Full Metal Jacket - in a sort of pseudo snuff way
Fight Club was very consciously a satire & a warning - but perhaps proving Truffaut’s point about the impossibility of making some kinds of “anti”film, Fight Club ends up having a following amongst young men who find it aspirational
Every prime minister before and after Blair went to cabinet before deciding whether or not to go to war
That Blair’s kitchen cabinet became treated as the norm - like his running commentary on foreign policy - is his most baleful legacy
Yeah he’s playing “the hits”
An underconsidered possibility is that Iranian hardliners dont hold on to a much weakened state but do lose to domestic pragmatic rivals - but the process of losing means they melt away into lawless parts of Iran & Iraq & the rest of the Middle East as transnational terrorist force
I agree but I’m afraid it’s no longer so simple in political terms because of Blair’s intervention
Blair is going to get done very badly in reputational terms by appointing Andrew coupled with the Epstein scandal and the scandal is going to spread into the PLP via all the MPs associated with Blair
@johnmct.bsky.social @alastaircampbell2.bsky.social
and there we are boys - your old master is up for it
Yes - and Greece and Cyprus who were never comfortable with supporting Ukraine and sanctioning Russia
Fundamentally the eastern Mediterranean is not strategically aligned with western & Central Europe
They know they won’t degrade anything for now
Like Hezbollah they shift to “survival = victory”
So your theory is they just want to do damage as an end unto itself
That isn’t really a sustainable claim
You have to explain who the audience is and what the goal of said damage is
The stuff about “pariah state” is whack - Europeans care about school girls being killed, the Arab world doesn’t because the Arab world already regards the US as mass murdering & bad - but an unavoidable & necessary evil
Iran’s audience is the Arab world & the goal is “the US couldn’t defeat us”
I mean, the hurting America is an end - to get it to stop
There’s books and articles on what they want and how they think
They very strongly believe that if they survive without concession that’s both a strategic victory but also a domestic political one (it’ll demoralise their opponents)
Their audience is regional terrorists & regional neutral
And the intra-regime stakeholders who want to give up on resistance were all sidelined 5 years ago so the decision makers remain resistance theorists
Israel needs to kill approx 40 more leadership figures to disempower resistance…
end
They do want Trump to stop tho
But they think if he stops without them conceding a deal, they can declare victory & reinvigorate “resistance” - if US airpower can’t destroy them, nothing can & everyone “knows” the US won’t ever send ground troops again
Romans on to something
Ukraine and Iran to join the commonwealth is honestly an award winningly mental thing to say
