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[MetalSlimeHunt]

It's safe to say that recent developments have shifted the bill from a coinflip to a likely failure. They were already operating from a bad position, with 4-6 risk votes in a group of 52. Now? I don't see how they can do it if even a few of these Senators are for real.

[misko27]

I mean, a tabled bill isn't officially dead until the year's Congress ends. But every passing day without a vote increases its deadness.

Very true. In practice, as well, McConnel has to give up on it soon, or table the whole Tax Reform thing they've been promising they'd do after Healthcare (Obviously if they can't pass repealing Obamacare, Tax Reform looks even harder). Tax reform is supposed to start by some date in the fall I believe, for some obscure budgetary reason that I can't be bothered to look up at midnight on a Friday. Maybe something to do with the restrictions placed upon them by their use of the Budgetary Reconciliation rules (which allow them to get by with a simple majority, but also require that they jump through a number of inexplicable parliamentary hoops). Also, if this goes on for longer it will continue to rattle insurance companies, which Mitch McConnell has warned he is concerned about (even saying that if repeal fails, Republicans will work with democrats to come up with a fix).

It's safe to say that recent developments have shifted the bill from a coinflip to a likely failure. They were already operating from a bad position, with 4-6 risk votes in a group of 52. Now? I don't see how they can do it if even a few of these Senators are for real.

That's my reading, yeah. We've got a number of Republican senators "opposing the bill in its current form", and since some of those are moderates and some are on the right (Rand Paul, I think), its hard to see what will satisfy both groups, especially without also alienating more senators. It's dead in its current form at least, and it's not clear what a bill that satisfies both would even look like. So to put it in "dead" terms, I'd say in one of those states where it could hypothetically recover (but probably won't) while relatives argue about whether to cut the plug.

[smjjames]

Don't forget that they have the debt ceiling+potential default wall in early October, so, they'd have to get that dealt with. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin also really wants them to try and get it dealt with before the August recess (some GOP Congressmembers are even calling to shorten or scrap the August recess altogether for this year). Not to mention that there will be squabbles over whether they want to do a clean bill or add stuff to it...

[Frumple]

Strange, when I shake my magic politics eight ball on that getting dealt with early or whatever comes of it being clean (at the start, anyway), the eight ball just laughs and laughs and laughs.

It doesn't have anything that would allow it to laugh. It also doesn't exist, and yet when I imagine shaking this hypothetical eight ball you can hear a laugh track going off in reality. Damnedest thing. Scares the hell out of the dog.

[Starver]

Uh, what does 9/11 have to do with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? That was orchestrated by a member of the Saudi royal family who would later hide in Pakistan and practically within sight of a major military base. Bush and Cheney would have happily attacked the middle east within a few years regardless; clearly 9/11 was a useful propaganda victory for him (since people still believe it was somehow related to his wars....), but it had no practical effect on which war he would declare.

Afghanistan was done on the excuse that it was there, with the tacit support of the Taliban, that OBL and AQ were based. Which was true in sufficient detail. There really wasn't a strategic reason to attack(/'free') Afghanistan without the 911-perpetrators, at least not since the point when the West had helped kick out Russia (and kick-start the 'insurgency' industry).

All of that being arguable.

The US invaded Afghanistan less than a month after 9/11, while the skies above New York was still thick with smoke and ash. Unless somewhat presents a significant amount of evidence as context for the view that the US invasion was in any way likely barring 9/11 or a 9/11-like attack, or that such an attack would not at a minimum look very radically different from the one we saw, it's not arguable, it's ridiculous.

I don't entirely understand your phrasing. I expected a counter-argument, but you're not even suggesting the "it happened too soon to be connected" angle (which, incidentally, I refute - there would have been a current Rainbow War Plan at hand, though not by that long-archaic name, sitting ready for dusting off). Insyead, as you say, the US finds itself in hot blood and in the crucible of Domestic reaction and the perrenial expectations that Afghanistan is easily 'conquered' - unlike every single prior attempt, back almost into prehistory - this was exactly the knee-jerk reaction one could expect.  And we know how it goes from there...

I don't know why the desire to reify Iraq and Afghanistan as if they were the same war.

Didn't do that, though I did link the 'success' of the former (based upon undue optimism as to the trajectory of the incomplete action) as an encouraging factor to open up a second front against an enemy, using "they're basically all the same, and we can handle both just as efficiently as one" as the misguided but sufficiently soundbitey public justification.

Hindsight shows us many of the errors with both approaches, but that's the one main resource that can't be stockpiled ahead of time....

[smjjames]

Strange, when I shake my magic politics eight ball on that getting dealt with early or whatever comes of it being clean (at the start, anyway), the eight ball just laughs and laughs and laughs.

It doesn't have anything that would allow it to laugh. It also doesn't exist, and yet when I imagine shaking this hypothetical eight ball you can hear a laugh track going off in reality. Damnedest thing. Scares the hell out of the dog.

Yeah, I'm not holding out on them getting it dealt with early, I half expect them to get it done at the last minute. Mnuchin is just being like "Guys, it would be a REALLY GOOD IDEA if we could get this dealt with ASAP. Possibly before August recess."

[Frumple]

I don't know why the desire to reify Iraq and Afghanistan as if they were the same war.

Didn't do that, though I did link the 'success' of the former (based upon undue optimism as to the trajectory of the incomplete action) as an encouraging factor to open up a second front against an enemy, using "they're basically all the same, and we can handle both just as efficiently as one" as the misguided but sufficiently soundbitey public justification.

Yeah... something along these lines. They were different wars, in a sense, but they were very much part of the same wave of sentiment, largely the same rhetorical basis, sent on targets that might as well have been the same so far as most of the country was concerned, overlapped a fair bit so far as the chronological aspect goes, etc., etc., etc. So far as the shit the stateside domestic (and a fair bit of the diplomatic, I guess) side of things got hit with related to them, they were functionally contiguous. Contributed to the same well of war fatigue, et al.

Only makes so much of a difference to differentiate, basically, and for most considerations of the two that aren't actually in theater military concerns, you probably have at least as good a grounds to treat them as a single thing as separate. Iraqi invasion, afgahn invasion, both part of the same segment of the "war" on terror.* Something along those lines. Kinda' like the local enforcement of the prohibition had different particulars and the work for it in cali or colorado were different things, but both were part of prohibition. If I had to mangle up a rather terrible equivalent on the spot.

* Seriously has to be a term more accurate to use there, though. The Last Major Shitkicking of the Middle East (TLMSME) or somethin'.

[Starver]

* Seriously has to be a term more accurate to use there, though. The Last Major Shitkicking of the Middle East (TLMSME) or somethin'.

But "The War Against Terror" acronyms much better. Almost an aptonym!

[Loud Whispers]

The wat

[misko27]

But now see, I disagree with a lot of that. In Afghanistan, there was an obvious (if somewhat vague) justification. By contrast, the invasion of Iraq occurred after a long and bitter diplomatic row in the UN and the long development of an argument (ultimately proven to be completely false) about WMDs. In Afghanistan, we attacked a nation whose political situation could best be described by the fact that it's most powerful, democratically minded warlord was assassinated two days before 9/11; in Iraq, we toppled an anti-American dictator who had ruled the country for decades. Iraq is a cultural touchstones of bad ideas, such that "a vote for/against the Iraq War" is a litmus test that earns powerful condemnation if failed (observe Trump's skill at revising history that he positioned himself as an opponent of the war); when have you ever heard of something similar for support of Afghanistan? Have you ever heard someone say "How dare you have supported the invasion of Afghanistan?" If you have, I'll be very surprised indeed.

In Iraq, we essentially won the war within a few months, and were left to say "Well, now what?" In Afghanistan we have still not completed the objective of wiping out the Taliban (Or as the Onion might put it, "Quick and Painless overthrow of the Taliban enters 12th year"). In Afghanistan you have the Pakistan connection, the China connection, the Opium Trade, Afghanistan's history as a graveyard of empires; meanwhile, in Iraq you have Ba'athists, Iran, Oil, the Syrian Civil War next door, etc.  In Iraq today, we fight a group that rose out of the power vacuum from when we left, while in Afghanistan we are still fighting the very same people we were fighting in 2001.

Those are all pretty big differences. What you identified as their related qualities are definitely related, but also among their only related qualities. Yes, they are wars generally propelled by the post-9/11 frame of mind, but, as they say, the devil is in the details.

I don't know why the desire to reify Iraq and Afghanistan as if they were the same war.

Didn't do that, though I did link the 'success' of the former (based upon undue optimism as to the trajectory of the incomplete action) as an encouraging factor to open up a second front against an enemy, using "they're basically all the same, and we can handle both just as efficiently as one" as the misguided but sufficiently soundbitey public justification.

You mean the success of the latter, surely? Afghanistan starts two years prior.

[Starver]

I don't know why the desire to reify Iraq and Afghanistan as if they were the same war.

Didn't do that, though I did link the 'success' of the former (based upon undue optimism as to the trajectory of the incomplete action) as an encouraging factor to open up a second front against an enemy, using "they're basically all the same, and we can handle both just as efficiently as one" as the misguided but sufficiently soundbitey public justification.

You mean the success of the latter, surely? Afghanistan starts two years prior.

(Relevant?)
No. The former's 'success' (note the scare-quotes), w.r.t. mobilising a force to take on a tin-pot feudal system (still to be completed, and not yet completed, nor seemingly likely to be - but by the time of this comparison not yet identified as anywhere near such a dangerous tarpit as we now see it) encouraged the latter (re)invasion of the more advanced country that was seemingly a similar "for the good of the world" proposition, regardless of what recused allies thought, albeit differently wrong from the Afghan situation and differently failed to find definite success (except insofar as toppling and disposing of Saddam, who was not even the most anti-American leader in the region)...

Oh so complicated., of course, and 'relative' values of legitimacy and success can be argued about until the camels go home...

[misko27]

I'm really sorry, but that whole statement is Nietzsche-tier difficult-to-read. There's not a single period in that entire first paragraph (after "No." at least); not even at the end, as it technically ends with an ellipsis. I'm pretty sure torturing a sentence like that is some sort of war crime, or at least, it should be.

[smjjames]

It's a problem inherent in any trade route system, and it doesn't neccesarily need corrupt officials, just clever smugglers.

China wouldn't be controlling and can't control the entire route anyway. But yeah, without the cooperation of other countries and good control of funds, etc, it can easily become a drug funnel.

We won't be seeing China take flamethrowers to Afghan opium crops anytime soon though, and they have pretty much zero taste for military adventurism, despite having a huge military.

[alway]

Just so long as they don't let US drug companies use it, it should be fine.

[Culise]

It's a problem inherent in any trade route system, and it doesn't neccesarily need corrupt officials, just clever smugglers.

China wouldn't be controlling and can't control the entire route anyway. But yeah, without the cooperation of other countries and good control of funds, etc, it can easily become a drug funnel.

We won't be seeing China take flamethrowers to Afghan opium crops anytime soon though, and they have pretty much zero taste for military adventurism, despite having a huge military.

I'd actually say it's more that they have little willingness for military adventurism that far abroad, rather, and there's little profit in moral adventurism specifically.  When it comes to their own interests close to home and absent opposition, the military is a frequently-used tool to assert their interests.  Consider the Nine-Dashed Line: send in the dredgers, construct an island, turn it into a fortified military base, and repeat with the next reef.  In the 60s and 70s in particular, though less the modern day, the PLA was also the tool of choice to assert diplomatic policy in their back yard: the Sino-Vietnamese War, the Sino-Indian War, the Sino-Soviet border conflict, or still earlier, the overt incorporation of "core areas" such as Tibet and Xinjiang.  More recently, the Taiwan Crisis in the 90s was accompanied by missile tests, the mobilization of forces in Fujian across the channel, and amphibious assault exercises.  The Diaoyu Islands see regular "visits" from Chinese Coast Guard and the PLAAF.  While they have little taste for unilateral adventurism far abroad and conduct what deployments they authorize almost solely under the aegis of the UN (contributing some 3072 soldiers, police, and military experts last year as of Feb 29 in a number comparing favorably to the US' 79, Russia's 78, France's 937, or the UK's 290), they're perfectly willing to be as adventurous as they wish when it comes to their core interests, Taiwan and the first island chain being the most prominent of this in the modern era.