- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- world@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- world@lemmy.world
An oil tanker is on fire in the Gulf of Aden, its operator says, after Houthis said they hit it with a missile.
US officials told the BBC’s US partner CBS the tanker was hit by an anti-ship ballistic missile and a naval ship was responding to its distress signal.
There were no injuries reported, the US officials said.
Houthi military spokesman Yaha Sarea said the group used “a number of appropriate naval missiles” and Friday’s strike was “direct”.
How about instead of violence we give the people a comfortable life so they don’t feel compelled to do dumb shit like this?
No, let’s just keep killing. This time will be different!
All (but one?) of the 9/11 hijackers came from comfortable, middleclass, Saudi families. The vast majority of 01/06 insurrections came from at least middleclass incomes, and often higher.
You’re insulting these people acting like they’re just too poor and uneducated to know better.
As a planet, we cannot allow a major disruption of a major trade route. This is both terrorism and piracy. It cannot stand.
OTOH, I have no idea how to fight terrorists embedded in the civilian population.
I’m not saying give these individuals money. I’m saying maybe we build some social structures that elevate the population out of poverty?
50 million in bombs but not 50 million in schools, why?
But as the above commenter pointed out, poverty is no cure to the kind of ideological terrorism pursued by these people - the middle class is just as vulnerable to the madness as the poor.
You mean like in Afghanistan? Where they proceeded to close these schools and sell the infrastructure the second the military left?
What compels those people to act is America fucking around in the middle east. They didn’t wake up and think “Oh let’s bomb some people today”.
Yep, definitely. Before us the Middle East was a harmonious paradise.
Ugh these people again. Yes, it was about as good of a place as anywhere else outside of Europe and America.
People who know history and don’t have the racist presumption that only Westerners have moral agency?
Alright, I’m going to have to challenge that. Would you care to elaborate on how the Middle East, before American meddling, was as good as anywhere else outside of Europe and America?
America started meddling in The Middle East in the 50s, almost exactly after colonialism ended (using the term “ended” liberally). The pre-colonialism Middle East was mostly ruled by the Ottoman empire, which aside from their last years were bad but normal rulers. I seriously doubt the Middle East was a worse place to be than Russia, China.
“the Ottoman empire, which aside from their last years were bad but normal rulers.”
Holy fuck.
Are you going to stand by that statement? Because if so, I have a very long list of exceptional crimes by the Ottoman Empire.
Alright, it’s the early 20th century, just after the First World War. We have open slavery in the Arabian peninsula and North Africa, the Saudis have consolidated their rule by murdering the tribes that stood against them, Iran is playing coup musical chairs, the first Zionist and anti-Zionist massacres in Palestine have begun, Turkiye is musing turning on the Kurds after having genocided some Armenians previously, Libya is being genocided by the Italians, Egypt is being ruled by an autocratic king, Jordan is embroiled in sectarian conflict that the British are quietly ignoring, and Syria is being played divide-and-conquer style by the French.
Yeah, I’d take the Russian civil war and early Soviets, or China’s warlord era over that.
You… Just ignored what I said about the Ottomans and keep bringing up colonial-era examples. You know what I don’t care enough about this conversation.
This is kinda racist, as much as you might not want to admit it the people in this world with darker skin are actually real whole people - they have emotions and feel pain and yes sometimes they have a bloodthirsty hunger for power no matter the human expense. They’re people and sometimes people are like that.
Your knowledge of history might only involve things from the European perspective so yes nothing happened before we got there and everything that does happen there we’re at the center of - that’s not actual reality though, read history from their perspective and often we’re just not that important.
The middle East conflicts are painfully complicated, different factions of Islam with different factions in those factions all with their own power struggles and conspiracies and political needs… Just like everywhere else,
I know history from both perspectives (I’m from the Middle East), and I know that the motivation for organizations like Al-Qaeda is usually the state of places like Palestine, Iraq and Syria. That’s why they target the West; they look at places where the West came in, killed a few hundred thousand people, damaged the place beyond repair and left and want some kind of justice.
You say the West isn’t that important in Middle Eastern history, but that’s wrong in many ways. Let me tell you as someone who lives here: When it comes to politics, America is basically a synonym for evil over here (could be different in Gulf countries).
Well, yeah they did actually. They probably didn’t see it in their 5 year plan though
Why would rewarding people who are blowing up civilian vessels make it stop? Rewarding a behavior simply encourages more of it.
Surprising as it seems, not all problems can be fixed with bombs.
The saudis have been lobbing american weapons at the houthis on an off for a decade or more and still the capital and almost every population center fell. Yet more brutal urban ground-fighting is in no-one’s interests. It’s only getting easier, cheaper and safer to threaten soft targets, and more expensive to defend against.
It could equally be argued that our empire is in the finding out stage of our decades of fucking around. There are no ‘goodies’ here.
But I suppose when our country is a giant gun factory every problem looks like a target.
Yes and other problems cannot be solved through bargaining or appeasement, sometimes such an approach only exacerbates the situation.
Appeasement? They’re not demanding Poland. There are no real demands to appease.
The closest thing to a ‘demand’ is for Israel to stop killing Palestinians. I doubt that’s really the issue, but if stopping war crimes in Gaza is appeasement, let’s try appeasement!
Jokes aside, we know bombing won’t solve this. Maybe bargaining won’t, maybe diplomacy won’t, maybe developing new regional security arrangements won’t, maybe exerting pressure on regional allies won’t.
But as painful as it may be for our arms manufacturers, we’re going to have to try something other than more bombing.
How about we give our own people a comfortable life before worrying about the feelings of fascist Islamist terrorists half way across the world?
Like, did we not just spent the last 20 years “nation building” in Afghanistan to the tune of >$2 trillion, including not only military training but also building schools and other civilian infrastructure, only to have them just piss it away and let the Taliban walk back in and impose strict theocratic law upon their society in the span of just a few months. Now Afghani girls aren’t even allowed to attend the schools that we built.
Contrary to what white guilt might have one believe, there is plenty of money in the Middle East. Unfortunately it’s all in the hands of royals, oligarchs and warlords. There are powerful Houthi’s at the top of the chain of command who have a lot more spending money than any of us. We aren’t the world police, nor are we Santa Claus. It’s not our responsibility to improve their lives, just as they wouldn’t ever consider doing anything for us if roles were reversed.
If the Houthis want to attack international trade ships, even after a month of warnings and wrist-slaps, they should expect nothing more than counter-attacks from the nations who are interested in preserving global order. We aren’t going to fix them no matter how much money we give them, and so the best we can hope for is that they eventually learn not to fuck with us or our allies.
If we should stop anything, it should be the military support we give to Israel. We are literally fueling their ethnic cleansing. If we cared less about them then we would be doing more good.
Agreed
Okay. So where does Yemen, which is currently in a civil war, start? And what is our proposed role in helping achieve their comfortable life in the next few months?
Laying down and putting a gun to our head and saying “Please, pull the trigger if you feel so inclined” isn’t an alternative.
When you’re shot at, it is generally accepted that you’re allowed to shoot back.
A good start would be to stop selling weapons to the Saudis that then use them to commit genocide in Yemen.
And that will lead to Yemen having a comfortable life where they don’t feel compelled to do ‘dumb shit’ like this?
For the record, I am completely in support of cutting off the Saudis entirely from US arms sales. But it’s not a solution to the immediate, or, for that matter, the long-term problem here. Though arguably the long-term problem isn’t our concern, considering the amount of vitriol the US gets for ‘meddling’ in the affairs of foreign countries.
It’s hard to have a good life getting bombed to shit
Okay. Now the Saudis aren’t sold any more US weapons. The Yemeni civil war continues, with sectarian groups funded by the Saudis and Iranians bombing each other to shit.
What next?
We invade Iraq
I fail to see how that solves anything.
See, you already forgot about Yemen! Problem solved!
Is the US not selling weapons to the Saudis? I’d love to see evidence of that.
We’re discussing a hypothetical. Please read the conversation before commenting.
In that case it’d help if SA doesn’t have a superpower backing it.
Yep, I’m sure they’re dirt poor, starving, lacking clean water and medicine, but compelled to take pot shots at random shops passing by. If it weren’t for “donations” from Iran to “the peace loving poor folk ….” How would they even afford the missiles to shoot?
This is like bringing up arguments of the US civil war and claiming it’s about states rights
That would be an option, if they weren’t fucking with global food and energy supply lines.