Those were standard military engagements, as in two armies facing off against each other with clear strategic goals. The US had the greatest military force in the world at the time, so obviously they would win in a straight up fight. Where the US military struggled was with insurgency, and they struggled with it again in Afghanistan. When the force you are fighting is able to disappear into the forest, a lot of your advantages get neutralized. You can’t drive your tanks through the forest, for example. The ewoks obviously don’t work as a 1 to 1 comparison, but fit pretty well with popular perception of the Vietnam war.

Where? Israel? They don’t have any oil. We have had bases in Saudi Arabia since the 80s because they were one of the more stable Middle Eastern nations and because they were extremely anti-communist which made them good allies at the time. If you want to insist we were there for oil then we were there to make sure the Soviets didn’t get their oil. We expanded our presence there during the Gulf War because they have a border with Iraq and maintained that expanded presence until 9/11, at which point it expanded further to serve as a hub for Middle Eastern operations.

I think 9/11 was a terrorist attack by a fundamentalist Islamic terrorist organization motivated by Bin Laden issuing fatāwā against America for stationing troops in Saudi Arabia and for supporting Israel. I think Bin Laden stating that he believed that it was a justified attack because of America’s support for Israel points pretty solidly at the motivation behind the attacks:

“…it was a response to injustice, aimed at forcing America to stop its support for Israel…”

Also this from his video where he admits that he was behind the attacks and says that he was motivated by Israel bombing Lebanon

“…it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted…”

Interested in why you think oil had anything to do with 9/11. The destabilizing countries for oil stuff mostly came after 9/11. Middle Eastern hatred for America was mainly fueled by our support for Israel, and partially because Saudi Arabia had American military bases. Oil was not an interest to these terrorist groups until after Iraq.

Sources for those quotes:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1729882.stm

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2004/11/1/full-transcript-of-bin-ladins-speech

Okay but how did the US find out?

Lol literally every single line of that post is absolutely nonsense.

The US is on its last legs though.

Lol in what universe? By way metric is the most powerful nation in the world limping along?

It badly needed this win.

If we badly needed a win we wouldn’t be sending 30+ year-old surplus gear. Ukraine would have F-35s instead of the air force trying to pawn off A-10s because we’re retiring them and don’t want to break them down.

The US falls before Putin dies.

Unless he’s a Highlander there’s no fucking chance.

What exactly do you think it found out?

What drugs are you on and where can I get some?

The problem with the alternatives is there’s no draw to any of these sites. Like people aren’t going to Mastodon because it has some amazing features that everyone wishes Twitter had, they’re going because they don’t like Musk.

There’s so much on Twitter that these other sites don’t have that it’s hard to justify leaving. There are so many politicians, reporters, athletes and teams, bands, artists, etc all on Twitter. I follow hockey pretty closely and every major trade that happened last season was first reported on Twitter. Will I get that breaking news on Mastodon? No, so what is the draw to Mastodon? What does the average user get out of moving over?

What do content creators get out of moving? An artist can have years of their work on their account as a portfolio to draw new fans and get work, but if they move none of those posts show up on Mastodon. Now they have to post their entire portfolio again, and that doesn’t even guarantee that their audience will follow them. Now they’re on a much smaller website with a much smaller audience and they’re probably not going to get the same exposure or opportunities that they had when on Twitter.