Mastodawn

kim_harding ✅3d ago

May you live in interesting times... https://no01.substack.com/p/march-19-21-god-is-a-comedian Three weeks into the Iran war, reality has passed through the looking glass, out the other side, and is now selling tickets to the gift shop. What follows is not satire. Satire requires exaggeration, and you cannot exaggerate something that is already operating at maximum absurdity. This is simply the news, and nothing but the news. Told straight, in a universe that has clearly stopped taking its medication.

March, 19-21: God is a comedian

A stiff drink is recommended

Gold and Geopolitics

@kim_harding
> The USS Gerald R. Ford, meanwhile, the most expensive warship in human history, is retreating to Crete. The official reason is a “laundry fire”. 266 consecutive days at sea, 28 days short of the Vietnam-era deployment record, and the crown jewel of the US Navy is fleeing the theatre, not because of being damaged in combat, not because missiles are flying around it… But because someone's skivvies got too hot.

This is either ignorant, or written in bad faith.

Wolf480pl 2d ago

@kim_harding
The ship is going to port for maintenance *because* of those 266 consecutive days at sea.

It was long overdue, and when your maintenance is long overdue, shit starts to break. That happens to almost every machine. Nothing to make fun of.

If the author wants to make fun of sth, make fun of US not putting another carrier in the Gulf immediately after Ford left for Venezuela.

Cat Poníčková 2d ago

@wolf480pl @kim_harding rotation is expected, but then exactly the idiocy is at starting the war knowing the key component of your battlegroup will have to be rotated out two weeks into it, wtf

Wolf480pl 2d ago

@poni @kim_harding
AFAIK its scheduled maintenance time was in the middle of the Special Maduro Operation.

Also, the US did not exactly choose when to start a war - AFAIU they were in a rush to start it while there's still a potential for protests in Iran.

It seems they're 1 carrier short - if they had one more, they could've sent it to the Gulf to replace Ford, and be able to intervene when the protests were happening, instead of doing that 1.5 months later.

Cat Poníčková 2d ago

@wolf480pl @kim_harding i don't think it'd be very controversial to say that exactly nothing in this entire operation screams "good planning"

Wolf480pl 2d ago

@poni @kim_harding
Yeah, but I don't get why getting damaged in combat would be somehow more virtuous.

And in general, I don't like the surface-level mockery - it seems to imply that US has to be utterly incompetent to let those things happen, which I disagree with.

I think the US is pushing its luck to seize a once-in-a-decade opportunity.

Now, if someone were to argue that there was no chance this would succeed, and US should've known it from the start, that'd be another story.

Cat Poníčková 2d ago

@wolf480pl @kim_harding getting damaged in combat with iran would not be virtuous, that would be an absolute disaster if they let it happen (or could not avoid)

Wolf480pl 2d ago

@poni @kim_harding
right?

Yet the article somehow makes it sound like it would've been less worthy of mockery.

Cat Poníčková 2d ago

@wolf480pl @kim_harding there is more surface idiocy in the article, like the F-35 bit

Wolf480pl 2d ago

@poni @kim_harding
I didn't get that far

kim_harding ✅2d ago

@wolf480pl there is no chance this would succeed, and US should've known it from the start! End of.

kim_harding ✅2d ago

@wolf480pl That is the point of the article, there was no prior planning or any form of competency from the US Commander in Chief...

Wolf480pl 2d ago

@kim_harding
If there was no prior planning whatsoever we'd be seeing far worse results.

Most countries have contingency plans for all kinds of wars, and regularly update them.
I think it's highly unlikely that US did not have a contingency plan for a war with Iran.

They probably didn't have a comprehensive plan titled "War with Iran in February 2026", because they likely didn't know the protests would break out in Iran until the protests broke out.

Wolf480pl 2d ago

@kim_harding
Also, it's not the POTUS's job to make plans for military operations.

It's the Pentagon's job.

And the Pentagon probably came to the president and asked: "Here's as much of a plan as we could come up with, here are the risks, here are the benefits if we succeed. Is this a gamble you want to take?"

1/

Wolf480pl 2d ago

If the Pentagon had every information needed to correctly predict the risks, and somehow predicted it wrong, then yeah, that's incompetence.

But what if Pentagon and POTUS knew exactly that this is what would be happening, and POTUS decided it's a price US is willing to pay?
That's a difference in how much POTUS values various things, or in risk tolerance.

A surface-level mockery won't help us tell these two apart.

2/2