The List

[canpakes]

Doesn't Binger live in Idaho now? Can he help clear trees or something with his tractor collection for the new base?

Not according to my GPS tracker. : D

[Jersey Girl]

Offering large open spaces for military training …

You’re not wrong about this. The air base at Mountain Home feels like it’s in the middle of nowhere. The town itself takes about 60 seconds to drive through.

Maybe the new Quatari pilot contingent will take a liking to the local Singaporean eating hole. They have some good stuff.

I think it basically IS in the middle of nowhere. I used to do commisary ordering for AFCOMS to include McChord AFB, Hill AFB and...Mt Home AFB...though if memory serves Mt. Home was an AFS back then. From what I could tell by their inventory turnover it was a small base that housed a small force on big spread of land.

[Whiskey]

Doesn't Binger live in Idaho now? Can he help clear trees or something with his tractor collection for the new base?

Who is the subject of this post?

[Gadianton]

Who is the subject of this post?

Binger

[Hound of Heaven]

Who is the subject of this post?

Binger

You sure are obsessed with this Binger fellow!

[Gadianton]

Trump did not win the Peace Prize today. Nothing he's done until the Gaza ceasefire would have warranted it, and it's too soon to see how much peace this deal for Gaza will bring.

If things in Palestine are good a year from now, however, Trump would be a serious candidate. It's possible that his bullheaded bullying strategy, dumb as it is for other issues, may have been the right way to deal with Netanyahu and Hamas.

It may still turn out that Trump's ignorance and negligence have only made a doomed deal. I'm hoping otherwise, though. We should all join Trump himself, in fact, in hoping that he will win the Nobel Peace Prize next year, for bringing peace to Gaza when it seemed as though no-one else could.

While I admire your contrarian spirit, I'm going to disagree. The prize committee said that 2025's winner Maria Machado "keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness." Machado can't win the prize in 2025 for keeping the flame of democracy alive when the most significant agent of darkness gathered against democracy is the winner in 2026.

What you're suggesting is akin to Hannibal Lecter winning a prize because only he could understand the perverse minds of his fellow serial killers. There certainly may be truth to the suggestion. Perhaps everything from personally seating Netanyahu at the table to his own authoritarian domestic policy, including persecution of immigrants, has bought a certain credibility that allows him to pressure Netanyahu where others couldn't or wouldn't. Of course, it could also just be that now Gaza is all but wiped off the map, the chances at temporary peace are much higher than they were a year ago and so he gets lucky.

An obvious objection might be that geopolitics is a dirty business, one that only controversial figures navigate well. Nelson Mandela was no saint. The 4-d chess argument, this unique time required this unique leader who had a ton of faults that ironically made it all possible. If that's all true, then what "peace" itself means is questionable. And I would probably be one the first to accept an argument that questions the possibility of dividing up the world into good and bad so easily, such as to award prizes for the good parts.

[Kishkumen]

While I admire your contrarian spirit, I'm going to disagree. The prize committee said that 2025's winner Maria Machado "keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness." Machado can't win the prize in 2025 for keeping the flame of democracy alive when the most significant agent of darkness gathered against democracy is the winner in 2026.

Yeah, I don't seriously think Trump has a shot at winning. I just don't really care that much. I was puzzled as to why Obama won just a few months into his presidency. In the end, Obama turned out to be pretty militaristic. I think he was the first presidency to summarily execute a US citizen who had joined an Islamic terrorist group (Al-Alwaki in 2011). I thought that was a really ominous development and that it helped paved the way for our current predicament--Trump labeling citizens terrorists because they are allegedly "Antifa" and sending the military after them. He hasn't deliberately killed any of these alleged Antifa folk, but we may not be far off from such a thing happening, and I don't believe Obama is blameless in bringing us to this point.

[Whiskey]

An obvious objection might be that geopolitics is a dirty business, one that only controversial figures navigate well. Nelson Mandela was no saint. The 4-d chess argument, this unique time required this unique leader who had a ton of faults that ironically made it all possible. If that's all true, then what "peace" itself means is questionable. And I would probably be one the first to accept an argument that questions the possibility of dividing up the world into good and bad so easily, such as to award prizes for the good parts.

Without some amount of isolation, or even a large amount, there would be no peace prize if there were any amounts of un-peace anywhere.

I don't think Trump will get one either. And, I don't give a damn. Obama got one for winning a US election and I believe they gave one to Clinton for something in Ireland.

Though... damn. That Irish deal was something. I was walking through a library with one of those Irish blokes that Clinton brought to the US to stop them from playing IRA games. This dude stopped, grabbed a book off the shelf, flipped the page directly to a picture of the Brighton Hotel and said, "We did that. I did that. Shoulda got the bitch."

Now, did this dude really do it? Who knows. Unlikely. Easy to take credit after the fact. Though, it is absolutely true that part of the deal with the IRA was that those dudes could all come to the US to major cities, continue in their trades, get training and be Irishmen in the USA. If you have never been in an Irish Pub when these IRA Irishmen are on their game - find a way to do it. It is a spectacle. And man can they serve up some great food. It all tastes like shepherd's pie and corned beef and potatoes, but it somehow always is just perfect and fun.

[Chap]

Perhaps this point has already been made on this thread.

But since the US is the major supplier of weapons to Israel, could Trump not have stopped this war a long, long time ago, before many tens of thousands of Gaza's civilians were killed by the IDF for crimes which seem to have amounted to no more than being within bomb blast range of someone who might possibly have been a Hamas terrorist? (That is, of course, taking a charitable view of IDF actions under which there was some justification for the civilian casualties inflicted, rather than suggesting that they just killed Gazan civilians because "Heck, why not? The only good Palestinian is a dead Palestinian. Who needs an excuse?")

As things stand Trump seems to have waited until Israel had achieved pretty well all the war aims that Netanyahu's more fanatical cabinet members could have desired, including killing many thousands of children, before saying "OK Bibi, time to knock it off."

For the avoidance of doubt, the October 7th massacre was an appalling act of terrorism that killed or otherwise harmed thousands of innocent people.

Now can we get back to discussing Trump's merits as a peacemaker?

[canpakes]

Perhaps this point has already been made on this thread.

But since the US is the major supplier of weapons to Israel, could Trump not have stopped this war a long, long time ago, before many tens of thousands of Gaza's civilians were killed by the IDF for crimes which seem to have amounted to no more than being within bomb blast range of someone who might possibly have been a Hamas terrorist?

There were some attempts to limit sales and/or transfers of weapons and ordnance to Israel during the previous Administration based on concerns that they would be used against innocent civilians, but the initiative was resisted or criticized by many in Congress. That effort became an opportunity for Republicans to pillory Biden as ‘supporting Hamas’, but some Democrats were also against it.

https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/spot ... d-to-gaza/

Now can we get back to discussing Trump's merits as a peacemaker?

Those merits would be easier to identify if he hadn’t spent the better part of the last decade trying daily to pit Americans against Americans.