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I mean, he also said there that they didn't start that war. Hagseth is a politician saying things he knows are untrue for domestic political consumption.
It's possible he believes some of this stuff in private, and Trump earnestly believes all kinds of crazy stuff. The generals and officers that pick targets and run strikes are still the same ones from Afghanistan, though.
Sure. Unless they were fired for being "woke" and replaced by people who think bombing Iran will help usher in Armageddon and the second coming of Christ.
What has he done to make you think he deserves the benefit of the doubt? What in this administration makes you remain confident that somewhere deep down there's a responsible adult who'll calm things down? They bragged about letting Elon musk fire all those people.
Why do you think the people who ran Afghanistan wouldn't bomb a school? They bombed weddings. Hospitals. Shot children.
Yes, no guarantee it will stay that way going into the future.
Who's "he"? Hagseth is assumed to be an average red-flavour grifter, Trump is Trump and gets no benefit of anything.
What makes you think I want to try and prove a negative against someone who's about to whip out a bunch of isolated anecdotes?
I don't, I'm just going to ignore any further inquiries on this.
I mean, they're already replaced people with people like I was describing. That's not a hypothetical.
"he" referred to hegseth, who you seemed to be assuming probably didn't believe the rhetoric he was using.
No one asked you to prove a negative. You expressed that the war being waged by the people who were in Afghanistan was a reassurance that they cared about the optics of brutality. I asked why you think that, given the things that happened in Afghanistan. "Things they've done" aren't somehow irrelevant anecdotes.
We're talking about the distinction between people who think civilian casualties are justifiable as opposed to those who think it's a tool.
Well, what are you asking me to prove about Afghanistan, then? 95% chance that was going to segue into "clean war exists and happened there" vs. a specific conspiratorial worldview. I'm not going to play that.
He has no actual relevant background besides Fox News shill. Some of those guys are progressive in private, they just like the money.
Hell, even if that wasn't true, politician is a sales job, left or right. Source: Do politics in real life, too.
I didn't ask you to prove anything. You were reassured that the people in Afghanistan being in charge here meant there was someone who would cut off any of the idiocy certain types of people think make a good war. I wondered why, given the administrations rhetoric, their willingness to fire people who might push back, who they've put in charge, and what those people have done.
What specific conspiratorial world view do you think I'm going to express?
I think some people think we could have won in Vietnam or Afghanistan if we just hadn't "held back". They're not secretive about that opinion. I think those people have political power right now because I see no reason not to believe them when they say so and they seem to be behaving in line with that belief.
I'm unsure why you think him having no relevant experience makes him less likely to hold a profoundly awful opinion. If he had experience I'd be more likely to think it was just talk, but given the lack of experience, being a talking head, and the company he keeps I see no reason to think he's secretly holding different opinions.
The Lemmy one. The other 5% is that you're just a pacifist or something.
Maybe they don't think of themselves that way, but if you believe that the whole world is not as it seems and being kept that way by a small group of evil people, and have made a movement around it, that counts.
Shill is still a skilled job.
... What are you even talking about anymore?
Nothing I said has anything to do with the world not being as it seems or being controlled by a small group of people.
Acknowledging that some public figures have expressed the belief that we've been insufficiently aggressive in wars and foreign policy over the past decades is hardly conspiratorial thinking.
What does that even mean in this context?
Yeah, sorry. If you hadn't responded yet I was going to add an edit. Not my best work.
I think Pete Hegseth is a reasonably intelligent person, and any reasonably intelligent person who spends time talking to Western military experts is going to learn something. The whole "we should have hit them harder in 'nam" thing is for people who don't know an AFV from a tank and think Rambo is a documentary. If you talk to people who are right wing but actually learned on the subject you get different narratives from that.
It's possible he believes some of what he's selling. He knows for sure he started the war, contrary to the statement, because he did that. If he wanted to rack up as many casualties as possible, he has better ways to do that, so most likely some degree of targetedness is intended. Is he very worried about legality, or civilian casualties beyond the PR effect? Maybe not.
No, it's not. If you're not the kind of person who prefers North Korea over France I apologise for cutting you off. It's just there's so many people like that on here, and I don't love spending time on it.
I think sh.itjust.works blocks the big "anti-imperialist" instances, but you've been around for three years, so you would definitely be aware of it at the very least.
I mean, I'm here so my politics are predictably best described as "complicated", but you can elevator pitch it as "human rights; morality and utility are different; context is everything". France does more to improve the human condition than north Korea, so I much prefer France, although some of their actions are also not great.
I do know the type you're talking about. Quite frustrating indeed.
Most of the point of my comments was purely to say that that type of hawkish mindset exists, initially for the purpose of clarifying things for the original comments question.
Beyond that, I just don't feel I have reason to doubt his words on the subject, including beyond the speech.
They're consistent with his actions, not particularly uncommon, and stubborn in the face of reason since it views the reasonable opinion as specifically weak.
I can't speak for the veracity of the claim that it was intentional itself, since I don't have the information.