On the Foreign Affairs piece, if the author thinks what's happening in Ukraine, Lebanon or even Gaza is "total war", she needs to go back to the history books. Total war, short of the nuclear threshold, is gloves off, folded up and put in a locked cabinet for a goodly while. Bomber Command didn't hold back on German cities, it calculated how it could cause the most damage and destruction: for Operation Gomorrah in 1943, they selected Hamburg because the city centre had a lot of wooden buildings and there had been a long period of hot, dry weather. They were actively looking for a tinder box. See also Stalingrad, Monte Cassino, the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, the bombing of Königsberg. It's so far removed from even the most high-intensity conflicts at the moment. Total war wouldn't have seen Israel carry out a limited number of targeted air strikes on military sites across Iran, it would have flattened whole districts of Tehran.
On the Foreign Affairs piece, if the author thinks what's happening in Ukraine, Lebanon or even Gaza is "total war", she needs to go back to the history books. Total war, short of the nuclear threshold, is gloves off, folded up and put in a locked cabinet for a goodly while. Bomber Command didn't hold back on German cities, it calculated how it could cause the most damage and destruction: for Operation Gomorrah in 1943, they selected Hamburg because the city centre had a lot of wooden buildings and there had been a long period of hot, dry weather. They were actively looking for a tinder box. See also Stalingrad, Monte Cassino, the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, the bombing of Königsberg. It's so far removed from even the most high-intensity conflicts at the moment. Total war wouldn't have seen Israel carry out a limited number of targeted air strikes on military sites across Iran, it would have flattened whole districts of Tehran.
such and odd and stressful time, days away from selecting from two different doors
door #1- lets compete, navigate the swirling currents of change with the best tools and resources available to any nation
door#2- shrink into a shell, pining for an unrecoverable (not to mention deeply flawed) past, aligning us with the worst leaders around the world
seems many lives are about to change